Niccolo Machiavelli’s views on public security
Abstract
The article investigates and reveals the comprehension of how the concepts of the public security phenomenon are constructed in the philosophical and legal views of Niccolo Machiavelli.
In Europe at that time, ensuring public security was an extremely urgent task for almost every state, which involved concern for the individual human salvation, i.e. the search for confidence in faith, at the individual level, and at the collective level – concern for the protection of subjects from violence, war, injustice, hunger, rising prices, poverty, and concern for public welfare in the broadest sense. It is emphasised that one of the most popular and detailed concepts of public security at that time was proposed by the prominent Italian philosopher, diplomat and politician Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527). There have been and still are heated academic discussions around its content, meaning and focus, which touch upon some controversial aspects of the security concept and help to clarify important nuances of Machiavellian vision of public security and key instruments for its guarantee better.
According to the results of the study, it has been concluded that Machiavelli's security concept is characterised by rationalism, secularism, pragmatism, nationalism, an emphasis on a combination of power and legal elements with the predominance of the former, institutional and personal factors of public security with the priority of the former, instruments of psychological pressure (intimidation to keep the people in line), military force and diplomacy (to prevent external threats), separation of ethics and politics in the field of public security, a balanced attitude to the need to maintain internal and external security, and a high appreciation of the historical experience of ensuring security in antiquity and in modern centralised and absolutist states at an early stage.
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