PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICAL SCIENCE

2018, VOL. 47, NO. 1, 27–37

https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2017.1385358

Machiavelli: A Socratic?
Catherine H. Zuckert
Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA

ABSTRACT
Erica Benner and Leo Strauss have recently challenged the reigning consensus that, having
concentrated on politics, Machiavelli was not a philosopher. Readers did not always consider
Machiavelli’s work to be unphilosophical; and whether a commentator considers Machiavelli to be a
“philosopher” depends on his or her understanding of what a philosopher is. Neither Benner nor
Strauss takes the activities and studies of professors of philosophy in universities today to be definitive.
Instead, they look to an older tradition both describe as “Socratic.” Benner rests her argument
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primarily on Machiavelli’s references to Xenophon, Plato, and Plutarch. Unfortunately, Machiavelli’s

references to the works of Xenophon and Plato do not include those that feature Socrates. Strauss
points out the similarities between Socrates and Machiavelli’s emphasis on the political and their
appeal to the young, but he concludes that, although Machiavelli is a “political philosopher,” his use of
philosophy to serve the desires of the demos means that he is not a “Socratic.”

Readers of Machiavelli have disagreed markedly about
the character of his thought: some have argued that he
was “teacher of evil,” others that he was a civic republi-
can; some that he was a pagan, others that he was merely
a critic of a corrupt Church; some that he advocated
imperialist policies, others than he favored a federal
republic; some that he was an admirer of antiquity,
others that he initiated a distinctively modern form of
politics. Nevertheless, most commentators have agreed:
having focused almost exclusively on politics, Machia-
velli was not a philosopher.1
Two commentators recently challenged this reign-
ing opinion, however. First, they point out, readers
did not always consider Machiavelli’s work to be
unphilosophical. On the contrary, in Machiavelli’s
Ethics Erica Benner points out that both early
admirers of Machiavelli, such as Henry Neville, and
early critics, such as Alberico Gentili, called him a
philosopher, and that acknowledged philosophers,
such as Francis Bacon, Benedict Spinoza, and Jean
Jacques Rousseau, treated him as a peer.2 Likewise, in
Thoughts on Machiavelli Leo Strauss observes that
Christopher Marlowe begins The Jew of Malta with a
prologue delivered by a character named Machevill
who declares that he holds “there is no sin but igno-
rance.” In doing so, Strauss concludes, this sixteenth-
century playwright was suggesting that Machiavelli
was a Socratic philosopher.3
Whether a commentator considers Machiavelli to be a
“philosopher” depends, of course, on his or her under-
standing of what a philosopher is. In arguing that
Machiavelli is a philosopher, neither Benner nor Strauss
takes the activities and studies of professors of philoso-
phy in universities today to be exemplary or definitive.
Instead, they both look to an older tradition that both
describe as “Socratic.”
Machiavelli and the “Socratic Tradition”
In considering what Machiavelli means when he limits
what he knows to the things of the world, Strauss sug-
gests that it would be “imprudent to assume that his
knowledge of the things of the world is limited to things
political and military in the narrow sense. It is more pru-
dent to assume that his knowledge … is all-comprehen-
sive. In other words, it is more prudent to assume that
… he has excluded from consideration only such sub-
jects that could possibly be relevant for the understand-
ing of the nature of political things as he explicitly
excludes.” In the two works in which Machiavelli claims
to convey all that he knows (in the dedications of The
Prince and Discourses on Livy) he explicitly excludes
only one subject: “How dangerous a thing it is to make
oneself the head of a new thing which concerns many
people” (D 3.35), because “it would be too large and too
exalted a matter to discuss.” So, Strauss reasons, “all

CONTACT Catherine H. Zuckert czuckert@nd.edu Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame, 2060 Jenkins-Nanovic Hall, Notre Dame, IN
46556, USA.
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC