A Review and Critique of Machiavelli’s Ideas Based on Transcendent Theosophy

Abstract

This study aims to examine and critique the foundations of Niccolò Machiavelli’s political thought based on the components of “Transcendent Theosophy.” The central problem of the article is to address the question of how the absence of ontological foundations and teleology in Machiavelli’s perspective led to the reduction of politics to the “art of preserving power,” and how its opposition to the perfection-oriented worldview of Transcendent Theosophy can provide the tools for critiquing this thought. The research method in this study is descriptive-analytical, conducted through the use of sources related to political theology and Sadrian philosophy. The findings of the article indicate that Machiavelli, by adopting a realist approach and a pessimistic anthropology, separated politics from the domain of “virtue and truth.” In contrast, Transcendent Theosophy, by proposing concepts such as the “principiality of existence,” “substantial motion,” and “ontological justice,” redefines governance from a merely mechanical instrument into a ground for “human transcendence and perfection.” The final conclusion of the study indicates that overcoming the structural crises of politics in the modern world requires a transition from “power-centered politics” toward “transcendent politics”; a paradigm in which power is not the ultimate end, but rather a means for the realization of a comprehensive and ontological justice.