Staatsraison

Others — perhaps the majority of his interpreters — look on him as the originator, or at least a defender, of what later came to be called "raison d'état," "Staatsraison," "Ragion di Stato" — the justification of immoral acts when undertaken on behalf of the state in exceptional circumstances.

A Special Supplement: The Question of Machiavelli Berlin, Isaiah 1971

Boccalini is shocked by him, but cannot deny the accuracy or importance of his observations; so is Meinecke for whom he is the father of Staatsraison, with which he plunged a dagger into the body politic of the West, inflicting a wound which only Hegel would know how to heal.

A Special Supplement: The Question of Machiavelli Berlin, Isaiah 1971