Epistemological Misalignment as the Key to Understanding Machiavelli's Political Theory

This article proposes a systematic epistemological interpretation of Niccolò Machiavelli's political theory, reframing the long-standing controversy surrounding his work as a problem of scale misalignment, rather than moral or ideological failure. Using the Theory of Measure and Identity and the Theory of Perceptual Scale, the paper demonstrates that: 1. Political phenomena possess a distinct measure and identity, and Machiavelli's analysis operates strictly within these boundaries. 2. Interpretive distortions arise when his propositions are transferred to perceptual scales for which they are ontologically inappropriate, producing second-order falsehoods—formally true claims rendered epistemically invalid. 3. Apparent conflicts between moral intuitions and political analysis can be resolved through scale alignment, restoring the identity of political systems and clarifying the epistemological basis of Machiavelli's insights. The article offers a novel methodological framework for analyzing persistent misinterpretations in social and political theory, providing a formal account of how epistemic conflicts emerge from inter-scale transitions, rather than factual error.