Niccolò Machiavelli

Italian political theorist and diplomat (1469–1527), author of The Prince and the Discourses on Titus Livy. In *Signs*' "A Note on Machiavelli" (1949, originally given to a Rome-Florence conference on humanism and political science), Merleau-Ponty reads Machiavelli as the first theorist of political power as a structure of recognition — a power that can never be naked coercion and that always depends on the tacit consent of the ruled. Machiavelli's virtù, in MP's reading, is the political form of action-at-a-distance.

Key Points

  • Power as structure of recognition: "Power... is not naked force, but neither is it the honest delegation of individual wills... Whether new or hereditary, power is always described in The Prince as questionable and threatened" (Signs, p. 213). Power is "of the order of the tacit" and exists only as a "crystallization of opinion" that the ruled give to the ruler.
  • Struggle that becomes recognition: "While men are trying not to be afraid, they begin to make themselves feared by others... It is the same aggression that I repel and send back upon others... a face is only shadows, lights, and colors; yet suddenly the executioner, because this face has grimaced in a certain way, mysteriously experiences a slackening — another anguish has relayed his own... We have gone from 'beasts' to 'man'" (Signs, pp. 213–214). Machiavelli discovers intersubjectivity in the very structure of political struggle.
  • Virtù, not cynicism, not moralism: Machiavelli's virtù is neither cynical (denying values) nor innocent (sacrificing action). It is "a means of living with others" (p. 216) that requires "mastery of his relationships with others" — the capacity to "speak to these mute spectators gathered around [one] and caught up in the dizziness of communal life" (p. 218).
  • Good politics vs. naked force: "The best upholders of authority are not even those who created it; they believe they have a right to it" (Signs, p. 214). Pure coercion is episodic and cannot substitute for the deep-seated agreement that constitutes power. Machiavelli anticipates the theory of "collaboration" and rallying the opposition — not as cynical techniques but as structural facts about political power.
  • The just rule: Machiavelli is "not a humanist" if humanism means "a philosophy of the inner man which finds no difficulty in principle in his relationships with others" (Signs, p. 223). But he is a humanist if humanism means "a philosophy which confronts the relationship of man to man and the constitution of a common situation and a common history between men as a problem." MP claims this is the only serious humanism.

Details

Goodness That Is Sometimes Catastrophic

MP's central text is Machiavelli's famous observation that "Cesare Borgia was considered cruel; but it was to his cruelty he owed the advantage of reuniting Romagna... And all things considered, it will be admitted that this prince was more humane than the people of Florence who, to avoid seeming cruel, let Pistoia be destroyed" (The Prince, ch. XVII, cited Signs, p. 217). MP reads this as a structural claim about political action: "in historical action, goodness is sometimes catastrophic and cruelty less cruel than the easygoing mood."

The claim is not that the ends justify the means. It is that acts of authority "awake an echo which is at times immeasurable... or as mirrors set around in a circle transform a slender flame into a fairyland, acts of authority reflected in the constellation of consciousnesses are transfigured" (Signs, p. 218). Politics unfolds "in the realm of appearance," and the ruler must have "a feeling for these echoes that his words and deeds arouse."

The Critique of Machiavelli

MP is not uncritical. He notes that Machiavelli "was not wrong to insist upon the problem of power. But he was satisfied with briefly evoking a power which would not be unjust; he did not seek very energetically to define it" (Signs, p. 222). Machiavelli's failure is that he believed "men are immutable, and that régimes follow one another in cycles" — and therefore could not define a guideline for distinguishing just from unjust power. "What discourages him from doing so is that he believes there will always be two kinds of men, those who live through history and those who make it" (p. 222).

MP links this to Marx: "Today these means exist, and the problem of a real humanism that Machiavelli set was taken up again by Marx a hundred years ago" (p. 223). And after Marx, after Kronstadt, "we can conclude that, one hundred years after Marx, the problem of a real humanism remains intact." The Machiavelli essay is therefore an essay on the unfinished project of humanism, with Machiavelli as the first theorist and Marx as his heir.

Virtu as Higher Seriousness (Chouraqui 2025)

Chouraqui 2025 §3.2 reads MP's Note as part of his polemic with Koestler's The Yogi and the Commissar (1945). Citing Inédits Vol. 1 p. 198 (footnote 17 of Chouraqui 2025), Chouraqui argues that the Note on Machiavelli (1949) is the direct extension of HT (1947) — specifically of MP's rejection of the Koestler "neo-Machiavellianism" that had set Machiavelli on the side of the Commissar (objectivist cynicism, the principle that "the end justifies the means," tennis-rules abandoned for revolutionary ethics). MP redeems Machiavelli as the political philosopher of higher seriousness — neither the cynic of objective force nor the moralist who flees action; the agent who recognizes that they are "condemned to play, wager, and take responsibility for their freedom."

The Hegelian frame Chouraqui supplies (also from the Inédits, Vol. 2 p. 520): "play opposes seriousness, dependency and necessity. […] Or, compared to this kind of seriousness, play belongs nonetheless to a higher seriousness for in it, nature is informed in spirit." MP cites this with his own emphasis on "higher seriousness." Machiavellian virtu, on this reading, is exactly such play: the political agent's higher-serious engagement with the indeterminacy of action.

This places Machiavelli in continuity with MP's play-as-virtue reconstruction and supplies the positive political virtue corresponding to the negative diagnosis of agnosia. See virtu-machiavelli for the dedicated concept page; see trotskys-horse for the recurring image-anchor by which MP figures the same combination of recognition and institution in the political register.

Connections

  • provides the political form of action-at-a-distance — virtù as distance-with-commitment
  • is the first theorist of political intersubjectivity — the struggle that becomes recognition
  • cited throughout the Introduction to *Signs* as the figure of virtù against Sartrean rebellion
  • contrasts with moralizing humanism — which MP reads as "the pious dodge of those who turn their eyes and ours toward the heaven of principles in order to turn them away from what they are doing" (p. 223)
  • read by MP alongside Montaigne as the Renaissance precursors of the late MP's political ethics

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-1964-signs — "A Note on Machiavelli" (pp. 211–223); the Introduction's reference to "unremitting virtù" (p. 35) as the proper response to the crisis of 1960.
  • Machiavelli's The Prince and Discourses on Titus Livy, cited throughout MP's essay.
  • chouraqui-2025-healing-schneider — §3.2 reads MP's redeemed virtu as higher seriousness, the political application of play as ethical-political virtue. Inédits Vol. 1 p. 198 + footnote 17 establishes the Note on Machiavelli (1949) as the direct extension of MP's polemic with Koestler in HT (1947).