Nature of Virtue in The Prince & The Discourses

This essay will discuss the nature and uses of the term virtu, or virtue, in Machiavelli's The Prince and The Discourses. It will also discuss what Machiavelli considers the relation between the concepts of virtue and fortuna, or fortune, to be, and it examines how Machiavelli uses these two terms.

Machiavelli clearly uses the term "virtue" 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 "owed nothing

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Category: Philosophy - N