Anti-machiavellism
Anti- Machiavellism is a countercurrent to Machiavellianism , which goes back to the font Il Principe by Niccolò Machiavelli .
In the book of Frederick the Great it's like Machiavelli to the acquisition, expansion and maintenance of power in principalities. The political goal for Machiavelli is a republic . The anti- Machiavellists (supporters of anti- Machiavellism ) criticize, among other things, the unscrupulousness that Machiavelli gives as a recommendation for action.
The Jesuits , who in 1557 provided for a papal indexing (by Paul IV ) of the text Il Principe , can be understood as the first anti-Machiavellists .
The term anti-Machiavellism goes back to Frederick the Great. He wrote Anti-Machiavel, or attempted a criticism of Nic. Machiavel's Government Art of a Prince [sic], published by Voltaire in 1740 . There the Freemason deals critically with Machiavelli's theory of power. The Crown Prince formulated the goal: “I will take on the defense of humanity against this monster [Machiavelli] who wants to destroy it; I oppose reason and justice to deceit and vice, and I have dared to go through my reflections on Machiavel's book from chapter to chapter, so that the antidote may follow the poisoning immediately. "
In his political wills and already in the Anti-Machiavell, Friedrich II admitted that he was right in some parts, but revised Machiavelli's theses at any time and countered them with a moral counterpart.
The anti-Machiavellist starts from a fundamentally different view of the world and of man . While Machiavelli assumes a fundamentally bad, power-hungry, imperfect person, an anti-Machiavellist takes an optimistic-humanistic point of view.
Dirk Hoeges assumes that Machiavelli will miss the criticism. “That applies to the reception through the centuries, by enlighteners like Voltaire and Frederick the Great, who lost his literary mind for sheer morality and righteousness; this applies to fascism in the person of Mussolini and to some self-righteous democrats. Zeal, drooling, narrow-minded moralizing, cheap indignation, text poking, usurpation and flower picking on all sides; there is no mention of the writer, poet and virtuoso in language and style. Not to mention Machiavelli's suffering in his time. The story of his work is the story of his exploitation. Above all the commissioners of the respective prevailing morality. "
Anti-Machiavel
Anti-Machiavel is the name of a work that developed from the correspondence between Frederick II of Prussia and Voltaire in 1736–1740. At the age of 24, the then Crown Prince had contacted the philosopher and writer through a letter dated August 8, 1736. In one of his replies, Voltaire had sent him a few chapters from his Siècle de Louis XIV for reading beforehand. The Crown Prince praised the design as a whole, but criticized the fact that Voltaire Machiavelli had ranked among the great men of his time in it.
The crown prince was referring to the bad reputation that Machiavelli had already acquired and the broadly developed anti-Machiavellism that sought to stand out from the Machiavellianism practiced in current politics. When the Crown Prince expressed the vague plan in a letter of March 22, 1739 to write a work against Machiavelli's princes , Voltaire encouraged him in this plan because he hoped that such a work by a future monarch would have a positive effect on current politics.
The Crown Prince sent the first chapters, which he had drafted, to Voltaire, from which he primarily expected linguistic proofreading, since the work was written in French. The Crown Prince studied Machiavelli in a poor French translation. Voltaire, however, suggested that each chapter should not be preceded by a résumé of Machiavelli's remarks, but rather that Amelot de la Houssaye added the complete translation of the prince to the book. After the work was ready for printing, it was initially unclear whether the Crown Prince wanted Voltaire to issue and publish it in the present form. But suddenly it turns out that the father Frederick II is seriously ill and the latter must quickly take office. In this political situation the Crown Prince no longer had a clear head for book publications; He also feared more and more that critical passages of his text about other rulers or the Church could give rise to diplomatic complications. So he gave Voltaire the task of having his work printed anonymously in Holland and gave him more or less a free hand in the other editorial tasks. Voltaire hurried to grant this wish. But his zeal turned out to be premature, as it quickly broke up with the publisher Jean van Duren in The Hague. This was not inclined to change subsequent changes in the print version, which arose in particular due to political concerns of the Prussian king. In June 1740, King Voltaire asked to buy the entire edition. At the beginning of August he asked him to correct the manuscript thoroughly. Voltaire was ultimately forced to retrospectively deteriorate the manuscript handed to the publisher. Since he was still unable to prevent this first publication under the title Examen du Prince de Machiavel, avec des notes because of the stubborn resistance of the publisher, he publicly distanced himself from it and tried a new edition with an adjusted and revised version, this time by Pierre Paupie under the title: Anti-Machiavel ou Essai de critique sur le Prince de Machiavel. Publié by Mr. De Voltaire . It was immediately announced by Voltaire as the only authentic version of the work. Voltaire sent both editions to the king; the adjusted edition, however, displeased the king, who found too much strange in it. He was now planning his own edition in Berlin and publicly distanced himself from both published editions. Voltaire then brought out another edition, but only with minor corrections.
After Frederick II entered politics as King of Prussia, he regretted the publication of the work that could be assigned to his person or his own political role. It was an open secret everywhere; however, Voltaire later found that the Anti-Machiavel could be bought anywhere in Europe , just not in Prussia. There you could get, at least officially, only Prince Machiavelli.
literature
- Christian Heger: Conscience versus reason of state. On the idea of public opinion in Frederick the Great's 'Anti-Machiavel' , in which: In the shadowy realm of fictions: Studies on the fantastic history of motifs and the inhospitable (media) modernity. AVM, Munich 2010 ISBN 978-3-86306-636-9 , pp. 245-278
- Frank Deppe : The »Antimachiavell« of Friedrich II. , In Supplement to Socialism (magazine) , 1, VSA-Verlag , Hamburg 2013 ISBN 9783899659702 (special issue)
Web links
- "Anti-Machiavel or attempt to criticize Nic. Machiavel's government art of a prince " by Friedrich II. In the digital university library Bielefeld page by page, version 1 -1751
- "Anti-Machiavel or Examination of the Prince of Machiavell" by Friedrich II. In the digital university library Trier chapter by chapter, version 2 - 1780
Footnotes
- ^ Herfried Münkler : Machiavelli. The justification of political thought in modern times from the crisis of the Florence Republic , Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-596-27342-0
- ^ The works of Frederick the Great in German translation, Ten Volumes-Seventh Volume, Antimachiavell and Testaments, Ed .: Gustav Berthold Volz, Verlag Reimar Hobbing in Berlin 1912; P. 160, The Political Testament of 1752
- ^ Dirk Hoeges: Niccolò Machiavelli. Die Macht und der Schein , Munich, 2000, p. 60
- ↑ Avant-propos . To: Anti-Machiavel . Edition critique par Werner Bahner and Helga Bergmann. In: The Complete Works of Voltaire . Vol. 19. Voltaire Foundation Oxford 1996. ISBN 0-7294-0508-7 . S. xxiii.