Machiavelli and Fanon: Ethics, Violence and Action

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Periodical article

Title:	Machiavelli and Fanon: Ethics, Violence and Action
Author:	Tucker, Gerald E.
Year:	1978
Periodical:	Journal of Modern African Studies
Volume:	16
Issue:	3
Period:	September
Pages:	397-415
Language:	English
Geographic term:	developing countries
Subjects:	politics political philosophy literature French language Politics and Government colonialism nationalism Law, Human Rights and Violence
About person:	Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/160034
Abstract:	Niccolo Machiavelli and Frantz Fanon are in the tradition of political philosophy. Do they not address themselves to the notion of freedom, the concept of legitimacy, and the moral basis of political action? This article argues that there exists a notable correspondence of thought between them: Renaissance and third-world conditions - Public action as source of ethics in politics - Humanist ethic as root of political violence - Political prescriptions for a new order - Conclusions: Both Machiavelli and Fanon addressed their political writings to the heroic qualities in man. Machiavelli's heroic prince may now be superseded by Fanon's heroic masses institutionalised in the apparatus of the state. Thus Fanon may have been an unusually faithful heir of Machiavelli, advocating force by the republican element as the only political safeguard of essential virtues. Notes.