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(3) When Frederick II of Prussia became involved
in the struggle for Prussian aggrandizement Rousseau
said that it was appropriate for a disciple of Machia-
velli to begin his political career with a refutation of
Machiavelli. Frederick's Anti-Machiavel has frequently
been characterized as hypocritical, but this accusation
is not quite fair. In his Anti-Machiavel Frederick had
pointed out that Machiavelli's political experience
came from a scene in which princes ne sont proprement
que des Hermafrodites de Souverains, et des Particu-
liers; ils ne jouent le rôle de grands Seigneurs qu'avec
leur domestiques (“are only in fact hermaphrodites of
rulers and individuals; they play the part of great lords
only with their servants”). Frederick denied that this

Italian world of small princely states could serve as
a model for the conduct of politics. He thought it
necessary to distinguish between petty intriguing,
characteristic of small states, and the justifiable aims
of a great power to expand.

In Frederick's times it had become a widely recog-
nized theory that powerful states had a right to expand
and to pursue their interests by all possible means.
Machiavelli was certainly the most important influence
in the development of these ideas. However, because
of the evil repute in which his name was held in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was regarded as
inopportune to mention his name, and consequently
the name of Machiavelli remained rather detached
from that development of thought with which his ideas
are most closely linked—the attitudes toward foreign
affairs.

A point of departure for the development of new
ideas on the nature of foreign policy was Machiavelli's
thesis that the decisive factor in politics was power,
not justice; and that the attainment of political ends
permitted the use of force, violence, even crime. The
ensuing discussion centered on the problem of whether
there were limits to the application of force in the
struggles among states, and if so, what they were. The
crucial concept in this development was the notion
of ragione di stato (“reason of state”), which implied
that the relationship among states had its own rules,
different from those determining human behavior in
other spheres of life. Although some statements made
by Italians of Machiavelli's time suggest that they
recognized that in affairs of state actions might be
necessary that are not permissible in other fields of
human activities, the term ragione di stato neither
occurs in Machiavelli's writings, nor was it used in the
early sixteenth century. It came into use in the middle
of that century and then soon became immensely pop-
ular. It was heard in the marketplace but also in the
council room; for instance, as early as 1584, James VI
of Scotland declared to his Privy Council “that he
married for reasons of state, chiefly to provide his
kingdom with an heir.”

Originally the meaning of ragione di stato was not
very different from that of the medieval notion of ratio
status or ratio publicae utilitatis which permitted the
ruler to violate positive law if the promotion of the
higher spiritual aims of the social order made such
action necessary. But the idea of reason of state became
strikingly transformed in the modern period. The reli-
gious struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies—or, more precisely, weariness produced by
these struggles—gave rise to the view that one state
could embrace adherents of different churches and that
politics had its own principles independent of those
of religion. Politics had its own law, that of the interest
of the state. Furthermore, the rise of absolutism re-
sulted in an identification of prince and state. The
interest of the ruler became the reason of state. Never-
theless, a line was drawn between those political aims
in which the interest of the prince coincided with the
interests of the entire political body and those ambi-
tions which arose from personal desires or arbitrary
whims. The latter had to be repudiated as signs of
tyranny.

From these assumptions there developed an exten-
sive literature on the interests of the state and of the
princes. The writers of this school tried to establish
criteria for distinguishing between true and false inter-
ests and to determine those factors which constituted
the true interests of the state. Because the presupposi-
tion of these thinkers was that politics was an autono-
mous field, speculations about the interests of the state
were calculations in terms of power politics. They were
concerned with those factors which constituted the
strength of a state and would make aggrandizement
possible: population, geographical position, financial
resources, military posture, relation to neighbors. In
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the writings
on reason of state and interests of state amounted to
a considerable part of the existing political literature.

The crucial influence of Machiavelli on the develop-
ment of these ideas is obvious. He had proclaimed that
politics ought to be conducted for purely political ends,
for increasing the strength of the political body. He
was instrumental, therefore, in introducing into the
theory of reason of state that element which separated
it from the older medieval concept in which the ratio
status remained subordinated to nonpolitical or supra-
political values. The emphasis on competition for
power as the central factor in political life was thor-
oughly Machiavellian, although in Machiavelli's writ-
ings the word stato in the modern sense of embracing
territory, ruler and ruled, rarely occurs. Machiavelli's
principe had only to be interpreted as synonymous with
the state in order to find in Machiavelli's writings a
serious discussion of the problem of ragione di stato.

Although the writers on the interests of state did
not acknowledge their debt to Machiavelli, and even
concealed it by attacking him, their writings reflect
their careful reading of the Florentine's works. Gio-
vanni Botero, whose Della Ragione di Stato (1589) is
one of the most influential early statements of the
problem, accepted Machiavelli's thesis that no reliance
could be placed on alliances or treaties. Traiano
Boccalini (1556-1613) commented in his Bilancia
politica on many of Machiavelli's theses and made the
very Machiavellian statement that self-interest è il vero
Tiranno dell'Anime de'Tiranni, ed anche de'Principi

non Tiranni (“is the true tyrant of the souls of tyrants
as well as of princes who are not tyrants”). Although
Paolo Paruta (1540-1598) declared in his Discorsi
politici that Machiavelli was “buried in perpetual
oblivion” he agreed with him on many issues and
acknowledged that the operations of a prince should
be measured by quite different rules from those of a
philosopher.

Two centuries later, in the eighteenth century, dis-
cussions of the European political situation, historical
works, invented political testaments ascribed to famous
rulers and statesmen, and pamphlets—all made use of
reason of state and interests of princes in their argu-
ments; at that time Machiavelli's name was no longer
to be passed over in silence. However, the connection
of his name with the ideas of this school of political
thought did not help Machiavelli's reputation among
the philosophes and the reformers. They were pro-
foundly critical of the manner in which foreign policy
was conducted in this period. They saw no sense in
wars of aggrandizement and regarded the money spent
on the maintenance of a large army as an obstacle to
the economic well-being of the masses. These were
features of the ancien régime that ought to be elimi-
nated. As a master in the arts of ragione di stato
Machiavelli became associated with the ancien régime.

The most characteristic representatives of the
abhorred policies of the ancien régime were the diplo-
mats—the “ministers” as they were called at this time.
They became the particular target of the reform-
minded writers of the eighteenth century who, in their
descriptions of the activities of the diplomatic profes-
sion, endowed ministers with Machiavellian features.
Such ministers, according to G. F. Le Trosne, cultivated
art obscure qui s'enveloppe dans les plis et les replis
de la dissimulation (“a dark art wrapping itself up in
the folds and cloak of dissimulation”); because they
lack frankness they become compétiteurs en grimaces
(Mirabeau). Machiavellists, as we mentioned before,
can be found in all groups and professions. If one
profession is particularly identified with this attitude
it is the diplomatic profession, and in the popular view
it has remained so since the eighteenth century.

In the last year of the eighteenth century a French
translation of the works of Machiavelli was published
with an introduction by T. Guiraudet who had first
served the ancien régime, then the Revolution, and was
finally a high official in the Foreign Office under the
Directorate. With its emphasis on Machiavelli's anti-
clericalism and his nationalism Guiraudet alludes to
aspects of Machiavelli's thought, one of which had
agitated his readers in the past, and the other was to
occupy students of Machiavelli in the future, although
the prominent place given to these two ideas echoed
the ideas of the French Revolution. But the most strik-
ing and interesting feature is the attempt of Guiraudet
to reconcile those contradictory features of Machiavelli
which in the course of the eighteenth century had
emerged in sharp contrast:

(“Machiavelli, with his enlightened love of freedom,
knew that men, who have united in society, came
together primarily to be happy and not simply to be
free.... They have seen that freedom was a means
and not the end... that the primary good is the
welfare of the State, the happiness and prosperity of
its members, who can be hurt for a while by unlimited
freedom; now to allow momentarily certain limits to
be imposed on their freedom does not mean being a
slave or a coward, but only proves that we are not
always as free as a madman.”)