Machiavelli’s Conception of Virtu and Fortuna

Machiavelli's conception of virtu and fortuna

Niccolo Machiavelli is considered the father of modern political science. Living in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century's, Machiavelli was a citizen of the city-state of Florence where he served as a secretary to the city council and as a diplomatic envoy for 14 years. The Prince was published five years after his death and is regarded as his most famous work. The Prince is an articulate and precise explanation of the way to use the lesson of history in politics as an example to learn and build ideas from. The Prince can be broken up into four parts. Firstly, Machiavelli explains how a prince gets a state. Secondly, he explains how a prince holds on to a state. Thirdly, he explains how a prince deals with friends and foes. Lastly, Machiavelli applies all of his points to Italy. The two main themes of The Prince are virtue and fortune. Machiavelli uses these two themes throughout the book to explain his four main points stated earlier. Machiavelli believes that virtue and fortune are the two most influential forces in politics and he shows how, throughout history, they have affected different people in powerful positions. Using the lessons learned by previous people of great political power, Machiavelli points out virtues and fortunes present in the particular cases and then he explains his beliefs and solutions to the examples from the past. By looking at Machiavelli's The Prince, the two common themes which can be extracted are virtue and fortune and Machiavelli's conception of those two themes are presented and integrated with all of his main arguments in The Prince.

"Virtue", in Machiavelli's conception, can be defined as courage, efficacy, talent, strength, ability and, what might be most important, intelligence. Therefore, the opposite of virtue would be uncertainty and hesitation. Machiavelli examines