CHAPTER 15: ON THOSE THINGS FOR WHICH MEN AND ESPECIALLY PRINCES ARE PRAISED OR BLAMED

With his discussion of the prince’s enemies and the art of war completed, Machiavelli makes another explicit transition at the outset of chapter 15: “It remains therefore to see what should be the ways and conduct of a prince, whether with his subjects or with his allies [or “friends”—amici].”1 With this seemingly innocuous transition in place, he then pens one of the most important passages in The Prince:

Several points should be noted about this passage. First, we saw in our discussion of the end of chapter 14 how

Machiavelli wrote about writers and readers, suggesting that a prince should model himself after excellent men recounted in histories, pointing in particular to Xenophon’s account of the life of Cyrus. Now in chapter 15 we see him drawing attention to the fact that he himself is a writer and that he addresses his work to “whoever understands it.” We also saw how his example in chapter 14 of Philopoemen, who practiced the art of war by

debating and reasoning with his friends about how they would attack and defend themselves in various situations, and now in chapter 15 Machiavelli announces that he will “debate” the material he is now going to discuss through an implicit dialogue with those who have written about it in the past. In short, at this important juncture we are reminded that we are readers of The Prince who should actively enter into the debate he takes up in his book. Second, by saying that he worries that he will be “held pre-

sumptuous” in writing about how a prince should conduct himself, especially given that he will “depart” from what others have written on the subject, Machiavelli reminds us of the Dedicatory Letter, where he rebuffed the charge that he might be held presumptuous for daring to “discourse on and give rules for the conduct of princes” given that he was a man “of low and basest state.” However, whereas the charge of presumption in the Dedicatory Letter regarded how a man of his low stature could dare address himself to a prince, now his presumption consists in daring to challenge what others have written about the conduct of princes or, more pointedly, in presuming to depart from the traditional or authoritative view of how men and especially princes should act.2