PEMIKIRAN POLITIK NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI: STUDI KASUS DINASTI UMAYYAH

The Umayyad dynasty was an Islamic caliphate regime after the khulafa urrasydin which managed to maintain its power for 90 years before being overthrown by the Abbasids. This dynasty is famous for its political stability from the beginning of his reign to a systematized public administration and military. Nevertheless, this dynasty raised pros and cons in terms of morality which were considered to deviate from Islamic teachings at least during the political revolution and post-Caliph Mu'awiyah. The author tries to examine the practice of such government using the political theory of Niccolo Machiavelli in which there are also thoughts about the ethics of power. This study tries to answer several questions, namely what is the ideal government practice in the book "Il Principe" by Niccolo Machiavelli? and whether the practice of Umayyad dynasty government can be said to be ideal in terms of administration and ethics of power in Machiavelli's perspective? This research is a qualitative research with primary sources in the form of historical literature about the Umayyad Dynasty and the books by Machiavelli mainly on "Il Principe". This study shows that in making political policies, for the sake of government stability, moral values do not need to be considered except in a pragmatic context. The stability of the state is also influenced by the ability and luck of the leader in managing the government. This study shows that the practice of the Umayyad dynasty has a correlation with the main goal of Machiavelli's political theory, namely state stability.

Machiavelli’s Commonwealth without Justice

This chapter illustrates the fundamental divergence between the republican visions of Cicero and those of Niccolò Machiavelli. It demonstrates that Machiavelli does not share Cicero’s vision for a just commonwealth and should not be considered an heir to his strain of republican thought. The chapter also argues that Machiavelli moves further away from what would later become known as liberalism. He rejects the Ciceronian account of natural law, and his regime leaves no room for rights, consent, or the constitutional limitations on power that characterize Cicero’s thought. Machiavelli represents a failed challenge to the Ciceronian tradition. The chapter challenges long-standing accounts of Machiavelli’s place in the history of political thought.

The Nature of the Commonwealth

An important catalyst for the upsurge of interest in analysing earthly political communities came in 1510, when the French king Louis XII called a Council of the Church to Pisa. Like previous Councils, it encouraged debate about the location, representation, and exercise of power, but the Council at Pisa was especially notable because its defenders—including Jacques Almain and John Mair—leaned heavily on the concept of natural law in making their case against the Pope. By appealing to natural law they made clear that they saw their writings as relevant not only to the internal workings of the Church, but to all communities, temporal as well as ecclesiastical. Soon new arguments began to circulate in Europe in which the basis of political power was grounded in natural law rather than in any direct grant of power from God. These arguments helped to explain why political power was diffused among a number of independent communities rather than united in the Empire, and they could also be used to show how and why the Church was different from the state or temporal community. This chapter also considers alternative ideas about the relationship between Christianity and politics, including those developed by Thomas More, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Francesco Guicciardini.

Kualifikasi Penguasa Ideal Telaah Filsafat Politik Machievelli Terhadap Tokoh Frank Underwood dalam Serial TV House of Cards

Salah satu serial TV populer di dunia adalah House of Cards. Serial TV bertemakan politik Amerika Serikat ini menarik perhatian banyak pihak karena memperlihatkan secara representatif dan transparan bagaimana politik AS yang sebenarnya terjadi. Melalui tokoh fiksi utama Frank Underwood, pemirsa menyadari bahwa politik bukan suatu yang dapat ditanggapi secara polos sebagaimana tampil dalam layar kaca. Frank Underwood sendiri memiliki persona seorang politisi yang pragmatis, licik, berani, seorang negosiator, orator dan diplomat ulung, tetapi juga sekaligus tak ragu bertindak kejam dan bengis untuk menumpas lawan politik demi mencapai tujuan dan ambisi kekuasaanya. Karakter Underwood ini sejalan dengan pemikiran filsuf dan diplomat besar Florence dan Italia, Niccolo Machiavelli. Dalam tulisan ini, penulis hendak meninjau dan menelaah filsafat politik Machiavelli dalam karya besar Il Principe (Sang Penguasa) terhadap tokoh fiksi serial TV ini, Frank Underwood. Metodologi yang penulis gunakan adalah studi literatur atas karya Machiavelli dan observasi mendalam atas serial TV House of Cards. Penulis menemukan adanya kesejajaran pandangan politik Machiavelli dan praksis politik yang dijalankan Underwood dalam kongres dan pemerintahan Amerika Serikat.

Brand Machiavelli

In this paper I analyze the reputation of Niccolò Machiavelli against the criteria of celebrity found in the Cultural Studies literature. Applied to Machiavelli these criteria include the detachment of his name from any substance of his works, life, or thought; trading on the recognition of his name; the appetite for biographies of him; and the integration of his very name into the common parlance in the adjective “Machiavellian” and the noun “Machiavellianism” which are widely used as self-explanatory in the media, press, and You Tube videos, music, and social media. The evidence adduced for these conclusions is mainly in books—print and digital—but incorporates film, plays, music, and commerce. In short, Machiavelli has accumulated sufficient media capital to be internalized into the popular culture and so rendered an immortal celebrity, i.e., that is Brand Machiavelli.

Niccolo Machiavelli and His Influence on Lesotho Political Rulers

In his famous “The Prince”, Machiavelli drastically differs from all political writing of ancient antiquity, the Middle Ages and Renaissance that had one central question: the end of the state. Machiavelli assumes that power is an end in itself, and maintains that the ruler ought to focus on acquiring, retaining and expanding power. While the moralist adheres to the supremacy of his moral code and the ecclesiastic to his religious code, Machiavelli recognizes the supremacy of the precepts of his code in politics: the acquisition, retention and expansion of power. It is argued that most Lesotho political rulers follow in the footsteps of Machiavelli, and this has occurred from gaining independence in the Mountain Kingdom. For Lesotho political rulers heavily influenced by Machiavelli’s amorality, power is regarded as an end in itself. Consequently, the Mountain Kingdom governed by ruthless and tyrant rulers whose aim is to retain and expand power, have subjects who live below poverty line.

On Striking Similarities between Chapters XIV – XIX of Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Fifth Book of Aristotle’s Politics

In the article, I try to refute an old and widespread superstition according to which the new political philosophy created by Niccolo Machiavelli breaks with classical political philosophy by taking a novel position toward the political; that is, that classics were idle “idealists” while Machiavelli is a coldblooded “realist”. To do that, I compare the most explicit part of The Prince (chapters XIV-XIX) with the end of the fifth book of Aristotle’s Politics and attempt to show that in the most pivotal chapters of his most famous work, the Florentine, in fact, often borrows Aristotle’s advice on how to preserve a tyrannical rule.