Niccolo Machiavelli

Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, born 3 May 1469 and died 21 June 1527, was a Florentine diplomat, author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Italian Renaissance, often called the father of modern political philosophy and political science. He is best known for his political treatise The Prince, written around 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after his death; for many years he served as a senior official in the Florentine Republic, working as secretary to the second chancery from 1498 to 1512, before being expelled from his duties, suspected of treason and sent into exile when the Medici retook power in 1512, after which he took up the life of a political writer. In The Prince, Machiavelli argued that rulers must sometimes take on unsavory policies in the furtherance of their political society, in contradiction to classical political thought, advising that successful founders and reformers of governments should be excused for killing their political enemies, and the work has been surrounded by controversy ever since, with many commentators viewing it as a manual teaching would-be tyrants how to seize and hold authority. His Discourses on Livy has been said to have paved the way for modern republicanism, and his works were a major influence on later Enlightenment era political authors including Jean-Jacques Rousseau.