Having had great pleasure in reading "The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli, I can't help but writing down some thoughts I had in mind.
With all due respect, Machiavelli's advice to a new prince may seem novel to the Greco-Roman world but are almost trite to the Sino-centric world. For example, Cesare Borgia's plan of letting Remirro de Orco, an extremely cruel person (酷吏), do all the dirty job of purging the unruly lords in the newly acquired Romagna then cutting him in half to please the people, which Machiavelli praised as an excellent example of political maneuver, was in any Chinese princes' playbook since probably the beginning of written Chinese history.
What was new to me was Machiavelli's proto-scientific treatment of politics, which draws conclusions on logical analysis of the actual results of each political decision. For example, "it is better to be feared than loved." Modern political science's reliance on polls and data is simply a natural development. Also I feel Machiavelli's (dis)regard to religion was quite ahead of his time.
Machiavelli's life and work remains me of Han Fei (韩非), who also wrote a book meant to be read by a new prince. Indeed, the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇) was a fan of his work and his first Prime Minister, Li Si (李斯) was a keen follower of his political philosophy. Like Machiavelli's Italy, Han Fei's China, The Warring States (战国), was separated and chaotic; unlike Machiavelli's Italy, Han Fei's China did not have strong foreign invaders (France and Spain), although some nomadic peoples from the North did cause trouble from time to time.
Han Fei's fortune was worse than Machiavelli's in that he never held an office and was imprisoned and eventually killed by his envious classmate, Li Si, out of the fear of losing the office of the Prime Minister to him. Han Fei can only take pride over Machiavelli in the fact that his prince, Qin Shi Huang, succeeded in the unification of China, his fatherland.
Now that I have read "The Prince", it would be interesting for me to read Han Fei's "Complete Works" (《韩非子》) again in an Machiavellian point of view.
The translation I read was done by Harvey Mansfield, who did an excellent job preserving the original style and subtle nuances of Machiavelli's prose as much as possible. (Of course, speaking no Italian myself, I was just taking the translator's claim and other readers' reviews as true.) Translation is always a delicate compromise between accuracy and literacy. At the end of the day, preferring one translation to another boils down to personal taste. I personally liked the Mansfield translation although I haven't and most probably won't have time to read another translation. At any rate Mansfield himself seemed pretty confident of his own work and was well aware of the impossibility of a "perfect" translation by saying: "If the reader thinks my translation a bad one, let him try his own; if he thinks it good, let him learn Italian."
With all due respect, Machiavelli's advice to a new prince may seem novel to the Greco-Roman world but are almost trite to the Sino-centric world. For example, Cesare Borgia's plan of letting Remirro de Orco, an extremely cruel person (酷吏), do all the dirty job of purging the unruly lords in the newly acquired Romagna then cutting him in half to please the people, which Machiavelli praised as an excellent example of political maneuver, was in any Chinese princes' playbook since probably the beginning of written Chinese history.
What was new to me was Machiavelli's proto-scientific treatment of politics, which draws conclusions on logical analysis of the actual results of each political decision. For example, "it is better to be feared than loved." Modern political science's reliance on polls and data is simply a natural development. Also I feel Machiavelli's (dis)regard to religion was quite ahead of his time.
Machiavelli's life and work remains me of Han Fei (韩非), who also wrote a book meant to be read by a new prince. Indeed, the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇) was a fan of his work and his first Prime Minister, Li Si (李斯) was a keen follower of his political philosophy. Like Machiavelli's Italy, Han Fei's China, The Warring States (战国), was separated and chaotic; unlike Machiavelli's Italy, Han Fei's China did not have strong foreign invaders (France and Spain), although some nomadic peoples from the North did cause trouble from time to time.
Han Fei's fortune was worse than Machiavelli's in that he never held an office and was imprisoned and eventually killed by his envious classmate, Li Si, out of the fear of losing the office of the Prime Minister to him. Han Fei can only take pride over Machiavelli in the fact that his prince, Qin Shi Huang, succeeded in the unification of China, his fatherland.
Now that I have read "The Prince", it would be interesting for me to read Han Fei's "Complete Works" (《韩非子》) again in an Machiavellian point of view.
The translation I read was done by Harvey Mansfield, who did an excellent job preserving the original style and subtle nuances of Machiavelli's prose as much as possible. (Of course, speaking no Italian myself, I was just taking the translator's claim and other readers' reviews as true.) Translation is always a delicate compromise between accuracy and literacy. At the end of the day, preferring one translation to another boils down to personal taste. I personally liked the Mansfield translation although I haven't and most probably won't have time to read another translation. At any rate Mansfield himself seemed pretty confident of his own work and was well aware of the impossibility of a "perfect" translation by saying: "If the reader thinks my translation a bad one, let him try his own; if he thinks it good, let him learn Italian."
Comments