Machiavelli's Politics

Catherine H. Zuckert

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780226434940
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Machiavelli is popularly known as a teacher of tyrants, a key proponent of the unscrupulous "Machiavellian" politics laid down in his landmark political treatise The Prince. Others cite the Discourses on Livy to argue that Machiavelli is actually a passionate advocate of republican politics who saw the need for occasional harsh measures to maintain political order. Which best characterizes the teachings of the prolific Italian philosopher? With Machiavelli's Politics, Catherine H. Zuckert turns this question on its head with a major reinterpretation of Machiavelli's prose works that reveals a surprisingly cohesive view of politics.Starting with Machiavelli's two major political works, Zuckert persuasively shows that the moral revolution Machiavelli sets out in The Prince lays the foundation for the new form of democratic republic he proposes in the Discourses. Distrusting ambitious politicians to serve the public interest of their own accord, Machiavelli sought to persuade them in The Prince that the best way to achieve their own ambitions was to secure the desires and ambitions of their subjects and fellow citizens. In the Discourses, he then describes the types of laws and institutions that would balance the conflict between the two in a way that would secure the liberty of most, if not all. In the second half of her book, Zuckert places selected later works— La Mandragola, The Art of War, The Life of Castruccio Castracani, Clizia, and Florentine Histories —under scrutiny, showing how Machiavelli further developed certain aspects of his thought in these works. In The Art of War, for example, he explains more concretely how and to what extent the principles of organization he advanced in The Prince and the Discourses ought to be applied in modern circumstances. Because human beings act primarily on passions, Machiavelli attempts to show readers what those passions are and how they can be guided to have productive rather than destructive results.A stunning and ambitious analysis, Machiavelli's Politics brilliantly shows how many conflicting perspectives do inform Machiavelli's teachings, but that one needs to consider all of his works in order to understand how they cohere into a unified political view. This is a magisterial work that cannot be ignored if a comprehensive understanding of the philosopher is to be obtained.

Part I

Machiavelli’s Comprehensive Treatises

1

Machiavelli’s New Approach to the Study and Practice of Politics

THE PRINCE

Few works of political philosophy have been so often or so variously read as Machiavelli’s Prince. Failing to discern the underlying argument that ties together the apparently disparate topics he takes up, many commentators have emphasized the importance of one aspect or part.1 By bringing out the argument that culminates in Machiavelli’s passionate call for the Medici prince and pope to free Italy from the barbarians, I show that in The Prince Machiavelli presents an entirely new approach to the study and practice of politics.

The Dedication: Teaching or Testing Lorenzo

All the remaining manuscript copies of De principatibus have the dedication to “the magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici” attached. We do not know whether Machiavelli ever actually presented a copy of his little book to Lorenzo.2 But whether Machiavelli actually presented his little book to the prince or not, he apparently wanted it to be read as if he were giving it to a Medici prince for the purpose of gaining employment.

At the beginning of the letter of dedication, Machiavelli emphasizes the unusual character of his gift. “It is customary . . . for those who desire to acquire favor with a Prince to come to meet him with things that they care most about in their own possessions or with things that they see please him most” (3). But Machiavelli clearly is not giving Lorenzo what he has seen please the prince. (Hence the anecdote about Lorenzo’s liking the dogs he was given by another man much more than the book.) Machiavelli is giving Lorenzo what in his own possessions he cares most about; rather than trying to please the prince, Machiavelli is acting on the basis of his own understanding of what is important. And that is “the knowledge of the actions of great men, learned by me from long experience with modern things and a continuous reading of ancient ones” (3).

Machiavelli demonstrates that knowledge not by cravenly trying to please the prince, but by recognizing the demands on a prince’s time and attention: he has reduced his thoughts and examinations of the deeds of great men to one small volume so that the prince will be able to peruse it in a short time.3 In one of his several clearly ironical (dissimulating) protestations in this letter, Machiavelli “judges this work undeserving” of the prince’s attention, but appeals to his “humanity.” That “humanity” first appears to consist in Lorenzo’s accepting the book out of a kind of charity or pity, because he understands that Machiavelli’s gift of his knowledge is the greatest gift the poor ex-magistrate is able to present. However, Machiavelli goes on to state that Lorenzo could receive “no greater gift” than “the capacity to be able to understand in a very short time all that I learned in many years with so many hardships and dangers” (4). Machiavelli thus claims, in effect, to know what Lorenzo does not yet but needs to understand in order to be an effective ruler. Rather than a form of generosity, the prince’s “humanity” appears to consist in a willingness to concede his own ignorance by learning from another. Having made this very bold claim in the guise of a suppliant, Machiavelli again emphasizes the unusual form of his gift and the fact that he has not ornamented it as is customary: he does not want it to be honored or to please for anything but the variety of the “matter” and gravity of the subject.4

Machiavelli recognizes that he may seem presumptuous in claiming to know the business of a prince better than the prince himself, but to excuse himself he offers a metaphor: Just as those who sketch landscapes have to place themselves below the mountains to consider the nature of the mountains, i.e., to see the way they tower over and above, and to place themselves on the mountains, conversely, to consider the nature of the plains, i.e., how much flatter, broader, lower, but more fertile they are, so “to know well the nature of peoples one needs to be prince” (to look down from on high), and “to know well the nature of princes one needs to be of the people” (to look up). What, we might ask, are the people able to see about a prince from below that he is not able to see so clearly about himself? The answer would seem to be, the quality of his deeds as prince. Is he ruling well and so benefiting the people, or is he failing to keep order and actively oppressing them? The people are in a position to know the effects of a prince’s rule better than he.5 What the prince sees about the nature of the people from his high position is that they are fearful and that they will, therefore, obey his commands (if and when those commands are backed by force). In P 18 Machiavelli observes that people do not see a prince well from their lowly station and can, therefore, easily be deceived by what he says are the reasons for his actions, although they cannot be so easily deceived about the effects of his acts. Machiavelli indicates in this brief introductory dedication, however, that he is able to see things from both perspectives. He is a member of the people who knows what a prince needs to learn.6

Observers see things differently from different positions, but Machiavelli makes clear in the last paragraph of his dedication that the position from which they view others (i.e., whether they are a prince or a member of the populace) is a matter not of nature or of desert, but of fortune (which, of course, includes the accident of birth into a given family). Even though his book is short, Machiavelli suggests that Lorenzo will have to read it diligently if he is to “arrive at the greatness” that Machiavelli desires for him and “that fortune and your other qualities promise.” The contents of Machiavelli’s little treatise are not so easily understood or quickly mastered as he first suggested; Lorenzo will probably need help. Machiavelli concludes by observing that if Lorenzo looks down from the summit of his height to these low places, he will learn how undeservedly Machiavelli endures a great and continuous malignity of fortune. That malignity of fortune, to which Machiavelli refers repeatedly in his letters, is his exclusion from public office. It consists not merely in his poverty and the contempt that poverty will bring him, but in his lack of opportunity to demonstrate the utility of the knowledge he claims to possess by advising someone who has the power to put it into practice.

In the last chapter of The Prince Machiavelli explicitly states that the “greatness” he desires for Lorenzo is for Lorenzo to become conqueror and thus savior of Italy by freeing her from domination by “the barbarians.”7 Machiavelli explains that Lorenzo has an opportunity to become the redeemer of his nation not only because her people, now suffering from the depredations of foreign powers, will follow a leader who promises to liberate them, but also because he has the good fortune of being a member of the family that also controls the Church. Even more and better than Ferdinand of Spain (P 21), Lorenzo will thus be able not only to fund his wars of “liberation” with the help of the pope but also to justify or cloak his conquests in the name of religion. The “other qualities” that added to the promise of Lorenzo’s greatness probably included his military tastes and ambitions.8 By 1515 he had become the virtual ruler of Florence; he was elected captain general in May. His uncle Giuliano, to whom Machiavelli initially planned to present his treatise, died on March 17, 1516, but Lorenzo continued to show his ambition to rule. He was made duke of Urbino through papal investiture in October 1516. However, as early as February–March 1514, Machiavelli had written to Vettori:

everyone is beginning to recognize in [Lorenzo] the beloved memory of his grandfather because His Magnificence is diligent in his work, generous and agreeable during an audience, deliberate and serious in his replies. His way of conversing is . . . [such] that people attribute no pride to it; nor does he mingle too familiarly so that he generates too low a reputation for himself. . . . In sum, he makes himself both loved and revered rather than feared. . . . In his palace there is great magnificence and liberality, yet he does not stray from decent living. So that in all his activities . . . nobody is aware of anything offensive or reprehensible.9

Machiavelli might merely have been trying to seek favor with a Medici by praising him to a mutual friend and potential go-between. The “qualities” for which Machiavelli praises Lorenzo in this letter are not exactly those he recommends in The Prince. They might be close enough, however, to indicate an inclination on Lorenzo’s part to want to act and be perceived as a “prince” and so a willingness to learn how to do so effectively from Machiavelli.

If, as Machiavelli argues in chapter 22, “there are three kinds of brains: one that understands by itself, another that discerns what others understand, the third that understands neither by itself nor through others,” in giving Lorenzo The Prince, Machiavelli was presenting him with a test.10 If Lorenzo recognized good counsel when he received it, he would prove himself to be prudent. If he did not perceive the wisdom of Machiavelli’s advice and offer him a position, Lorenzo would show that he was not able to understand things either on his own or with the help of others.11

I. The Classification of Principalities—and the Foundations of Political Order

In Discourses 1.25 Machiavelli observes, “if someone who desires to reform a state in a city wishes it to be accepted and capable of being maintained to the satisfaction of everyone, he is under the necessity of retaining at least the shadow of its ancient modes so that it may not appear to the peoples to have changed its order even if in fact the new orders are altogether alien to the past ones” (60). And in presenting his educational treatise for a prince, Machiavelli seems to have retained bits of the outer appearance of the existing genre (as, for example, in Erasmus’s The Education of a Christian Prince): Latin chapter titles and an initial dry, almost scholastic classification of types.12

Despite its classical cover, however, Machiavelli’s classification was, in fact, revolutionary, beginning with the very first sentence: “All states, all dominions that have held and do hold empire over men have been and are either republics or principalities” (5). Whereas previous authors had categorized governments or regimes according to the number of rulers, whether they ruled for the sake of the community as a whole or their own advantage, and whether or not the government was restrained by law, Machiavelli began by dividing “states” or “dominions” simply according to the number of rulers, into republics or principalities.13 Commentators like Benedetto Croce have taken this first division to show that Machiavelli was the first “value-free” political scientist, because he did not categorize governments as good or bad, just or unjust. However, since Machiavelli goes on to make a great many “value judgments” in The Prince, his analysis cannot accurately be described as value-free. Machiavelli drops the traditional distinction between governments that serve the common good and those that serve the good of the ruler(s), because he observes that human beings never act simply or solely for the sake of others. The differences among governments cannot, therefore, be attributed to differences in motive or purpose on the part of the rulers. Individuals may sacrifice their lives or their fortunes for the sake of others, but in doing so they are seeking another kind of compensation—honor or glory. Rulers may—indeed, Machiavelli will argue that they should—seek to benefit their people. But he suggests that rulers will most reliably do so if they think that defending their people and contributing to their greater prosperity will keep them in power, if not make them revered.

Machiavelli’s refusal to classify governments as just or unjust does not explain why he reduces the classification apparently on the basis of number to only two types of command rather than the traditional three (one, few, or many). Does the “republican” Machiavelli not see a fundamental difference between the rule of a few in aristocracies or oligarchies and the rule of the majority or many in democracies? In chapter 9 he says that the desires of the many are more decent (onesto) than those of the great. But, as we have already seen, Machiavelli does not distinguish governments on the basis of their decency or desire to dominate (which would be versions of just and unjust).14 In The Prince Machiavelli gradually shows not only that it is in the interest of the “prince” to seek the support of the people, but also that the people are never safe and secure without an effective leader or “prince.”15 As his explicit denomination of leaders of republics as “princes” in both the Discourses and his Florentine Histories indicates, Machiavelli thinks that all peoples need leaders to establish and maintain “law and order.”16 The fundamental question or characteristic that distinguishes “principalities” from “republics” thus proves not to be whether the first have “princes” and the second do not, but whether or not potential “princes” have to compete with each other for popular support.17

Having drawn the basic distinction between principalities and republics, Machiavelli proceeds to discuss the six types of principalities he lists in P 1.18 The “types” are distinguished primarily by the way in which they are acquired and secondarily by the characteristics of the peoples acquired—specifically, whether the people in question is accustomed to living under a prince or under its own laws in a republic—because these characteristics make any given territory more or less difficult to acquire and retain. The first distinction between hereditary principalities “in which the bloodline of their lord has been their prince for a long time” (5) and new principalities might appear to be temporal, simply between the old and the new, or between established (and hence presumably legitimate) and “upstart” (hence questionable) governments. For Machiavelli, however, heredity is a mode of acquisition.19 His typology embodies the general principle he announces in chapter 3: “Truly it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire, and always, when men do it who can, they will be praised or not blamed; but when they cannot and wish to do it anyway, here lies the error and the blame” (14–15). Recognizing that princes will be praised as such only if they retain what they have acquired, in the discussion of the types of principalities that follows Machiavelli combines considerations of how they are acquired with considerations of the relative ease or difficulty of maintaining rule once attained.

Not all ways of acquiring rule are equally onerous. Indeed, it is so easy for a person who is born first in line to inherit that Machiavelli does not even comment on the way hereditary principalities are acquired other than to describe the basis: the blood (or bloodline) of the prince. Instead he emphasizes that “the difficulties in maintaining them are much less than in new states, because it is enough only not to depart from the order of his ancestors, and then to temporize in the face of accid...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• ABBREVIATIONS
• INTRODUCTION  Reading Machiavelli
• PART I  Machiavelli’s Comprehensive Treatises
• PART II  Later Developments
• INDEX