Nature of Virtue in The Prince & The Discourses

Machiavelli clearly uses the term ôvirtueö in several senses. First, he uses it with its usual meaning of a trait that is an aspect of moral excellence, or sometimes he uses it as a synonym for moral excellence in general. Second, he uses it in the more general sense of an ability or capacity to do something. For example, in Chapter XX of Book I of The Discourses, he comments as follows:

if, as has been seen, two successive good and valorous princes are sufficient to conquer the world, . . . a republic should be able to do still more, having the power to elect . . . an infinite number of most competent and virtuous rulers one after the other; and this system of electing a succession of virtuous men should ever be the established practice of every republic (pp. 174-75).

Machiavelli is greatly concerned with distinguishing between what a man earns by means of his abilities or virtues and what accrues to him by mere fortune or happenstance. His approach is very commonsensical, not absolutist. He emphasizes elements of both virtue and fortune in all situations, each ineffectual without the other. For example, in Chapter VI of The Prince, he says that great princes ôowed nothing

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urces needed to maintain himself in office by force. In Chapter IX of The Prince, ôOf the Civic Principality,ö he comments that ôwhere a citizen becomes prince not through . . . violence, but by the favour of his fellow-citizens, . . . this position depends not entirely on worth or entirely on fortune, but rather on cunning assisted by fortuneö (p. 35). He comments that one attains such an office with the support of either the general populace or the aristocracy, for, he says, ôin every city these two opposite parties are to be found, arising from the desire of the populace to avoid the oppression of the great, and the desire of the great to command and oppress the peopleö (p. 35-36). This sounds basically similar to American party politics. Machiavelli argues that meeting the needs of the general population is much easier than meeting the needs of the nobility, since the former want merely to be protected from the latter, and he comments that ôit is necessary for a prince to possess the friendship of the people; otherwise he has no resource in times of adversityö (p. 38). In considering the relation between virtue and fortune, Machiavelli is in large part dealing with the problem of free will versus determinism, which people h
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Approximate Word count = 1648
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)