The Influence of Fortune on Human Affairs
Machiavelli is quite specific in deciding that human beings do have free will; if they did not, energy and ability would be useless qualities. He admonishes the Medici by saying that God wants people to act, not to sit around waiting for things to happen. But Machiavelli also limits the power of free will to only half of human affairs; the other half, the realm offortuna, cannot be controlled. The reasoning behind this remains obscure. Machiavelli says that people can only act according to their natures, which people are not flexible enough to alter. If, by nature, a prince is impetuous, and the times are ripe for impetuous action, the prince will be successful; but when the times change, a prince cannot change his natures with them, and this brings about his failure. Because a prince can neither choose his nature nor change it, free will seems illusory indeed, and virtù, for all its admirability, begins to look like a cruel trick played by God, or Fortuna, or some other uncontrollable force, on humankind. Although Machiavelli seeks to deny fatalism, he also seems to argue himself into it. Many critics have found in Chapter 25 of The Prince the lowest depths of Machiavelli's cynicism, because the logical conclusion of his argument is that nothing the prince does particularly matters, because he is a mere political time server.
If this is really his final conclusion, however, Machiavelli scarcely seems aware of it, and it does nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of his plea to the Medici to liberate Italy. It is difficult to accept that Machiavelli would spend so much effort honing his sharp advice to the prince if there is no real point in following it. This apparent contradiction has kept readers debating over the real meaning of Machiavelli's philosophy for centuries.
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