Machiavelli — the watershed to modernity

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527, Florence) stands on the borderline between the medieval and modern ages. A diplomat shaped by the “rough and tumble” of Italian politics, he grounds inquiry in what rulers actually do, not what theologians say they ought to do.

Space & time

• Renaissance — new age, new man (ambitious, glory-seeking), self-determination; growth of commerce, the printing press, geographic discovery ending the Church’s monopoly over knowledge.
• Italy of that time — Florence, Milan, Venice and Naples warring among themselves and with France and Spain; this turmoil forms the backdrop of his attempt to unify Italy.

Harold Laski held that the whole Renaissance could be seen in Machiavelli’s works; Dunning — he ushered in modern political thought by separating politics from the vassalage of religion.

Method

Historical · Empirical · Realist — the present read through the past (human nature is constant); conclusions from observation and historical data. Unlike Aristotle’s abstract classification, Machiavelli studies the actual working of governments.

Fundamental premises

Two works carry the thought — The Prince (advice to rulers on holding power) and the Discourses on Livy (a case for republican government).

Autonomy of politics: Political action is judged by political standards, not by ethics or religion — the reason Machiavelli is called the father of modern political science, against Aristotle’s science of virtue.

• Moral indifference — neither moral nor immoral but amoral; he separates the facts of political life from the values of moral judgement.
• Universal egoism — human nature is driven by self-interest; men are “generally ungrateful, disloyal, insecure, deceitful, timid of danger, and avid for profit”; desire is limitless, breeding everlasting conflict.
• Secularism — religion is useful but must not be the foundation of political behaviour; the state must be supreme in worldly matters.

Leo Strauss calls him the “teacher of evil” for preferring cruelty, fear and deception to the common values of justice and mercy.

Advice to the Prince · virtu & fortuna

“How we live is far different from how we ought to live” — the ruler who chases what ought to be will ruin himself. The prince must be a realist, combining the strength of the lion and the cunning of the fox; cold-blooded, opportunistic, keeping the interest of the state above all and ready to commit sins unhesitatingly in its service.

• Fear over love — fear is the more reliable bond; love is easily broken, but dread of punishment holds men fast. Yet keep your hands off the property and women of subjects, and avoid heavy taxation.
• Expansion or perish — neighbours are natural enemies to be acquired; states that do not expand are bound to perish.
• Citizen army — maintain a nationalised standing army of patriotic citizens, never mercenaries, who fight for anyone.

virtu & fortuna: virtu = the prince’s capacity to achieve and preserve the state — situational, strategic, tied to power, not moral goodness. fortuna = chance, “a fountain of misery,” to be mastered by the bold and impetuous rather than the cautious. virtu is the preparation that fights fortuna.

His reading of human nature seeds the classical realist school of International Relations.

Religion & secularism

A utilitarian view of religion — not against religion, but against the Church’s command over the state. Religion is a disciplinary force that maintains order; useful as an organ of state policy, but it must not dominate political affairs. He thus lays the foundations of European secularism.

Critique — Gandhi: sought to spiritualise politics; “politics without religion is a death trap.” Machiavellian secularism is of only instrumental value, with no doctrinal commitment to secularism as Sarv Dharma Sama Bhava.

“It is illogical to expect Rose flower by sowing the seed of Babool.”

M. K. Gandhi (Hind Swaraj)

The Prince vs the Discourses

Two systems of government run through his thought — held together by humanism, a concern for the common good and the welfare of the people.

George H. Sabine sees two admirations — for monarchy and for self-government — which some read as inconsistency; most scholars find no contradiction, since despotic violence in The Prince is a remedy to restore a corrupt state.

Assessment — “narrowly dated and narrowly located”?

The charge (George H. Sabine): Machiavelli’s theories are “narrowly dated and narrowly located” — shaped by faction-riven Italy and its peculiar ecclesiastical dominance; his pessimism on human nature and politics would have differed in another time and place. He is also “almost blind” to the role religion would play over the next two centuries, and never built a psychological basis of human behaviour as Thomas Hobbes later did.

The defence: a “child of his times,” yet his moves escaped their birthplace — he anticipated the central, sovereign modern state and the nationalised army; secularised and amoralised statecraft; was the first pragmatic thinker. Sabine himself admits Machiavelli, more than any other thinker, created the modern meaning of the state.

“Machiavelli is the only major political thinker whose name has become synonymous with a kind of politics … associated with cynicism, manipulation, and amorality.”

Leo Strauss

Benedetto Croce reads him as a realist and pragmatist — “non-moral” rather than “immoral.” Quentin Skinner defines virtu as “the ability to shape one’s circumstances rather than be shaped by them”; J. G. A. Pocock names the “Machiavellian moment” of civic virtu against corruption; Isaiah Berlin calls him “one of the makers of pluralism” for exposing the clash of ultimate values. Dunning‘s paradox: everyone is Machiavellian in practice, but no one admits it.