Machiavelli and Erasmus Compared

Two scholars who lived simultaneously during the Renaissance could be considered the principal representatives of two colossally different schools of thought, humanism and pragmatism, which may be termed diametrical opposites in many respects. In their theories regarding government, war, toleration, and the perception of the individual, Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) and Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) differed dramatically, though with a few curious convergences on certain particular issues.

Machiavelli on Government

Niccolo Machiavelli's political advice to Lorenzo de Medici the Younger, as outlined in The Prince (1513), amounted to a theoretical exposition of "realpolitik," a separation of politics from ethics and the direction of politics toward the "practical" enhancement of the state's power. All moral considerations are, according to Machiavelli, secondary or outright irrelevant. Whenever virtue or pretense at virtue serve a ruler's practical ends, they should be followed, but even simple honesty is not an absolute for a Machiavellian statesman. "It's good to be true to your word, but you should lie whenever it advances your power or security-not only that, it's necessary." (The Prince).

Though Machiavelli was a man of republican convictions, and a high-ranking diplomat and statesman for the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, he concerned The Prince primarily with the tactics and dynamics appropriate to an absolutist ruler. Machiavelli's professed motivation for this was a desire to see Italy united in an age when armed strife between the French and Spanish monarchies was wreaking devastation upon it. For this end, he was willing to sacrifice the republican ideal to a strong government capable of such unification, and aimed The Prince at his former political rivals, the Medici, who had tortured him prior to his exile from Florence.