SINCE Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte held the reins of government, our leader has been at loggerheads with the Church and human rights advocates. Duterte’s brand of politics has flabbergasted critics and moralists as well. While a majority of politicians gravitate and realign in support of his administration, there are those who are compelled to ask: “Where is this Catholic nation headed?”
What will be our final destination amid fears that the Philippines might become an autonomous region of China, a communist country?
“The end justifies the means” is just one of Niccolo Machiavelli’s principles. Some world leaders idolize other leaders. Machiavelli was an Italian diplomat, politician, historian, philosopher, humanist, writer, playwright and poet of the Renaissance period. He has often been called the father of modern political philosophy and political science. He wrote his best known work “The Prince.”
Wikipedia quoted several commentators who wrote about their opinion on Machiavelli’s brand of governance. According to Joshua Kaplan, “Machiavelli wanted to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved. In much of Machiavelli’s work, he often states that the ruler must adopt unsavory politics for the sake of the continuance of his regime.”
Leo Strauss said: “Even if Machiavelli was not himself evil, he counsels the princes to avoid the value of justice, mercy, temperance, wisdom, and love for their people in preference to the use of cruelty, violence, fear and deception.”
Italian anti-fascist philosopher Benedetto Croce in 1925 concluded that Machiavelli is simply a “realist” or “pragmatist” who actually stated that moral values in reality do not greatly affect the decisions that political leaders make. German philosopher Ernst Cassirer held the opinion that Machiavelli simply adopted the stance of a political scientist, a Galileo of politics in distinguishing between the “facts” of political life and the “values” of moral judgment.
Felipe Lamus did a Master’s thesis on Machiavelli’s Moral Theory: “Moral Christianity versus Civic Virtue” at Duke University in 2017. Lamus’ conclusion was that Machiavelli was not an amoral thinker but defended a different morality based on civic virtue in contra-position to Christian morality.
Should Duterte embrace one or several of Machiavelli’s principles, I pray that God save the Philippines.