Name: "馬基雅維利 "到底是什麼意思？ (What "Machiavellian" really means?)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T08:15:47.000Z
Duration: 5 min 10 s
Description: 【看影片學英語】數萬部 YouTube 影片，搭配英漢字典即點即查，輕鬆掌握單字發音與用法，長久累積看電影不必再看字幕。

From Shakespeare's plays  to modern TV dramas,

the unscrupulous schemer for whom  the ends always justify the means

has become a familiar character type  we love to hate.

we've had a single word to describe  such characters: Machiavellian.

But is it possible that we've been using  that word wrong this whole time?

The early 16th century statesman Niccoló  Machiavelli

wrote many works of history, philosophy,  and drama.

But his lasting notoriety comes from a  brief political essay known as The Prince,

framed as advice to current  and future monarchs.

Machiavelli wasn't the first to do this–

in fact there was an entire tradition of  works known as “mirrors for princes”

Machiavelli didn't try to describe an  ideal government

or exhort his audience to rule  justly and virtuously.

Instead, he focused on the  question of power–

And in the decades after it was published,

The Prince gained a diabolical reputation.

both Catholics and Protestants  blamed Machiavelli

for inspiring acts of violence and tyranny committed by their opponents.

Shakespeare was using “Machiavel” to  denote an amoral opportunist,

leading directly to our popular use of  “Machiavellian”

The Prince's reputation as a manual for  tyranny seems well-deserved.

Throughout, Machiavelli appears entirely  unconcerned with morality,

except insofar as it's helpful or harmful  to maintaining power.

For instance, princes are told to  consider all the atrocities necessary

Attacking neighboring territories and  oppressing religious minorities

are mentioned as effective ways of  occupying the public.

Machiavelli advises keeping up the  appearance of virtues

but being ready to abandon them as soon  as one's interests are threatened.

Most famously, he notes that for a ruler,

“it is much safer to be feared  than loved.”

The tract even ends with an appeal to  Lorenzo de' Medici,

the recently installed ruler of Florence,

urging him to unite the fragmented  city-states of Italy under his rule.

Many have justified Machiavelli as  motivated by unsentimental realism

and a desire for peace in an Italy torn by internal and external conflict.

Machiavelli was the first to understand  a difficult truth:

is worth whatever unsavory tactics  are needed to attain it.

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin suggested  that rather than being amoral,

The Prince hearkens back to  ancient Greek morality,

placing the glory of the state above the  Christian ideal of individual salvation.

But what we know about Machiavelli might not fit this picture.

The author had served in his native  Florence for 14 years as a diplomat,

staunchly defending its elected  republican government

it's possible to read the pamphlet  he wrote from exile

but a scathing description  of how it operates.

Indeed, Enlightenment figures like Spinoza

of the various ways in which they can be subjugated by aspiring rulers.

Machiavelli may have written a manual for  tyrannical rulers,

but by sharing it, he also revealed  the cards to those who would be ruled.

laying the foundations for Hobbes and  future thinkers

to study human affairs based on their  concrete realities

Machiavelli sought to shatter popular  delusions about what power really entails.

And as he wrote to a friend  shortly before his death,

he hoped that people would “learn the way  to Hell in order to flee from it."

字幕列表影片播放

"馬基雅維利 "到底是什麼意思？ (What "Machiavellian" really means?)

reveal

deserve

urge

conflict