Reading Political Philosophy

Machiavelli to Mill

Derek Matravers, Jonathan Pike, Nigel Warburton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134692378
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie der Philosophie

This clear and thorough introduction provides students with the skills necessary to understand the main thinkers, texts and arguments of political philosophy and thought. Each chapter comprises a brief overview of a major political thinker, followed by an introduction to one or more of their most influential works and an introduction to key secondary readings.
Key features include:
* exercises
* reading notes
* guides for further reading
The book introduces and assesses: Machiavelli's Prince; Hobbes' Leviathan; Locke's Second Treatise on Government; Rousseau's Social Contract; Marx and Engels' German Ideology (Part 1); Mill's On Liberty and The Subjection of Women. Reading Political Philosophy requires no previous knowledge of philosophy or politics and is ideal for newcomers to political philosophy and political thought.

Chapter 1

Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince

Nigel Warburton

By the end of this chapter you should:

Have read Machiavelli’s The Prince at least twice.

Appreciate some relevant features of the original historical context in which The Prince was written.

Have a good critical understanding of Machiavelli’s position on virtù, cruelty, human nature, honesty and deceit, and fortune.

Have read and understood some present-day commentators’ interpretations of Machiavelli.

Appreciate the continuing relevance to political philosophy of some of the central issues raised by Machiavelli, particularly that of ‘dirty hands’ in politics.

Introduction

Why bother reading Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince today? It is, after all, almost five hundred years since it was written. One simple answer is that it is a key text in the history of Renaissance Italy; but that is not the way we will be approaching it here. Another answer is that it has been and continues to be an immensely influential book. This is closer to our concerns. Perhaps most relevant though is the fact that it is a forceful piece of writing that still has the power to provoke and inspire its readers. Although Machiavelli was not strictly a philosopher, but a statesman, political theorist and historian, his ideas have deep philosophical implications. The Prince, published posthumously in 1532, is his most famous and most controversial book. Within its pages he presents a challenge to conventional morality that is still relevant to present-day political debate. In particular he suggests that political leaders must sometimes act in apparently immoral ways, even perhaps using violence against their own supporters, in order to be effective. This raises philosophical questions about the status of individual morality, and about the alleged inevitability of ‘dirty hands’ in politics. Historically, many readers of The Prince have denounced it as a textbook for ruthless despots. Fewer readers are likely to denounce Machiavelli as the devil incarnate than in some previous ages, but his name is still used as a synonym for evil. In reading The Prince a central question will be the extent to which this picture of Machiavelli is an accurate one, or whether a subtler Machiavelli emerges.

Machiavelli in exile

The most significant year in Machiavelli’s life, at least as far as understanding the circumstances of his writing The Prince is concerned, was 1513. On 12 February, aged 44, he gave himself up to the authorities of his native city state, Florence, who had accused him of plotting against the new government. Florence had just reverted from a republic to an oligarchy, once more ruled by the powerful Medici family and Machiavelli had been Second Chancellor to the Florentine republic since 1498. His fortunes changed dramatically.

While in office as a diplomat he had seen many of the most powerful statesmen and rulers at work: he had met Cesare Borgia, visited the court of the French King Louis XII and the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian. He had a particular interest in strengthening Florentine defences, and developing a citizen militia in place of the mercenary armies on which Florence had traditionally depended, an interest which resurfaces in The Prince, and subsequently in the only book of his to be published in his lifetime, The Art of War (1521).

With the Medici’s regaining control of Florence in 1512, Machiavelli first lost his post, and then his liberty. He was imprisoned and tortured. The method of torture was the strappado, a particularly humiliating procedure whereby the victim, whose hands were tied behind his back, was suspended on a rope tied to his wrists, sometimes for days at a time. Every so often the victim was lifted several feet and allowed to drop so that the tautening rope jerked the ligaments of his shoulders. In the circumstances it is hardly surprising that some of his alleged co-conspirators confessed and were duly executed. Machiavelli, however, survived six of these drops, and torture over several days, without admitting guilt. Despite this, he was kept prisoner for a month, and was only released as an act of charitable celebration on the occasion of Giovanni de’ Medici’s being elected Pope Leo X.

Machiavelli was now left outside the mainstream of political life. His name had been tarnished by association with the anti-Medici conspiracy, whether or not he had genuinely been a part of it. He was banned from the city of Florence, but not allowed to leave the region. He was an internal exile on his farm in Sant’ Andrea in Percussina, about seven miles south of Florence. He desperately wanted to re-enter the political fray, and did everything in his power to bring this about. Not least of his efforts was the writing of The Prince, which he intended to use as a demonstration of his suitability as an adviser to a new prince taking the reigns of a city state, a barely disguised reference to the position of the incoming Medici prince. His oft-cited letter to his friend Francesco Vettori (see below), describes this intended use to which the book was probably not in the end put. There he sketches the conditions under which he wrote The Prince. It is clear from the letter that Machiavelli was not yet ready to retire from public life.

Activity

Read this extract from Machiavelli’s letter to his friend Francesco Vettori below.

…When evening has come, I return home, and enter my study; and at the door I take off my everyday clothing, full of mud and mire, and I put on royal and courtly clothes; and, appropriately attired, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, welcomed lovingly by them, I partake of that food which is mine alone, and for which I was born. Here I am not ashamed to speak with them, and to ask them about the reasons for their actions; and they, in their kindness, answer me; and for four hours I feel no affliction, I forget every trouble, I do not fear poverty, death does not make me afraid; I become completely absorbed in them. And because Dante says that there can be no knowledge without retaining what one has learned,¹ I have noted what I have gained from my acquaintance with them, and have composed a little work De principatibus,² in which I go as deeply as I can into thoughts on this subject, discussing what is a principality, of what kinds they are, how they are acquired, how they are held, why they are lost. And if ever you liked any of my whims, this one should not displease you; and to a prince, and especially to a new prince, it should be welcome; therefore I am addressing it to his Magnificence Giuliano.³ Filippo Casavecchia has seen it; he will be able to tell you something both about the work itself and about the discussions I have had with him, although I am still filling it out and polishing it.

You would like me, magnificent ambassador, to leave this life and come to enjoy yours with you. I shall do so in any case, but what tempts me now is certain affairs of mine which will take me about six weeks to settle. What makes me hesitate is that those Soderini are there;⁴ I would be obliged, if I came, to visit them and speak to them. I would be afraid that on my return I would expect to dismount at home but would in fact dismount in the Bargello,⁵ because, although this regime has very strong foundations and is very secure, still it is new, and for this reason full of suspicion; nor is there a shortage of smart alecs who, to make an impression like Pagolo Bertini, would invite others to table and would leave me to foot the bill. Please allay this fear for me, and then I will in any case come to see you within the time stated.

I talked to Filippo about this little work of mine, whether it would be a good idea to present it or not to present it; and, if so, whether it would be a good idea for me to bring it or to send it. In favour of not presenting it, there was the fear that it would not even be read by Giuliano, and that this Ardinghelli⁶ would take the credit for this latest effort of mine. In favour of presenting it, there was the need which is driving me, because I am wearing myself out, and I cannot go on for long like this without poverty making me despicable; there was also my desire that these Medici lords should begin to make use of me, even if they were to start by getting me to roll a stone;⁷ for, if I were not then to win them over, I would regret it deeply; and through this work, if it were read, it would be evident that the fifteen years I have been studying statecraft have not been spent by me in sleeping or playing; and anyone should be glad to make use of someone who at the expense of others was full of experience. And about my good faith nobody should be in doubt, because, having always kept faith, I am not going to learn to break it now; and someone who has been faithful and good for forty-three years, as I have, cannot change his nature; and my faith and goodness are testified by my poverty.

I should therefore like you too to write to me with your opinion on this matter, and I commend myself to you. ‘Be favourable.’⁸

10 December 1513

Niccolò Machiavelli in Florence

Notes

¹ Dante, Paradiso, V, 41–2.

² The work here entitled De principatipus (‘Of Principalities’) was to become II Principe (‘The Prince’).

³ GiuIiano de’ Medici (1479–1516), son of Lorenzo the Magnificent and younger brother of Pope Leo X.

⁴ Piero Soderini (gonfalonier of Florence from 1502 until forced into exile on the return of the Medici in 1512) and his brother Cardinal Francesco.

⁵ The palazzo of the Bargello (head of police), in which Machiavelli had already been imprisoned earlier in the year.

⁶ Pietro Ardinghelli (1470–1526), personal secretary of Pope Leo X.

⁷ A reference to the eternal labour of Sisyphus in the underworld.

⁸ The Latin phrase used by Machiavelli, ‘Sis felix’, seems to be cited, as a counterpart to the opening quotation on divine favours, from another poetic text which both he and Vettori knew well, Virgil’s Aeneid, I, 330: here Aeneas, driven ashore in an unknown country, has met his mother, Venus, disguised as a huntress, in a wood, and pleads for her help.

(in Coyle (1995), pp. 198–9)

Discussion

The letter reveals Machiavelli as unhappy with what for some would be a rural idyll. For a man of political action and intrigue, the enforced retreat must have seemed like a continuation of his torture. Nevertheless his internal exile provided him both with the time and the incentive to write his most famous works: The Prince, the Discourses, The Art of War, Mandragola and the History of Florence. Ensconced in his study, in the quiet of the night, he drew both on his own knowledge of political power and on the insights he gleaned from classical authors. It is interesting that he imagined conversations with the great of the past: for him the ancient past was as relevant as the recent present to understanding the ways of humanity and the complexities of political power.

The dedication of The Prince, as the work now survives, is to Lorenzo de’ Medici, but it was probably originally intended for Giuliano de’ Medici. It was a contribution to the established genre known as ‘mirrors for princes’: short books exhorting princes to virtue (for further details see Reading 1.1 ‘The Adviser to Princes’ by Quentin Skinner, and Reading 1.3 ‘The Originality of Machiavelli’ by Isaiah Berlin). However, Machiavelli’s approach was very far from typical. Where contemporary readers would have expected discussions of the importance of honesty, compassion and mercy in a just ruler, he gave them justifications for acts of deceit and cruelty; where they would usually have read about paragons of moral virtue, he provided them with Cesare Borgia’s acts of calculated cruelty as worthy of emulation. Indeed, so untypical of the ‘mirrors for princes’ genre is Machiavelli’s version that some commentators have even suggested, somewhat implausibly, that the book is an ironic commentary on the genre: merely a work of satire.

Although circulated amongst his friends, the book was not published in his lifetime: it was first published posthumously in 1532. It immediately stirred up a shocked and outraged response. Machiavelli and the adjective ‘machiavellian’ quickly became synonyms for evil machination.

The Prince is certainly Machiavelli’s most widely read and most influential work. However, his other major contribution to political thought, The Discourses on the First Decade of Livy (usually known simply as the Discourses), also published posthumously, overlaps significantly with it. The Discourses reveals him to have been wholeheartedly committed to republicanism, a view that it would have been imprudent to reveal in a work dedicated to members of the Medici family. Indeed, there he explicitly describes it as the best form of government. Some have accused Machiavelli of inconsistency between the two works: preferring republicanism in the Discourses, but siding with tyrannical rulers of principalities in The Prince. However, it is possible that when writing The Prince in 1513 he sincerely believed that strong rule by a virtuoso prince would be in Florence’s best interests, despite his general preference for republics. Machiavelli was a practical man in that he was concerned with the actual and the possible rather than with Utopian ideals. If a republic was not a realistic possibility for Florence once the Medici had returned, then it was nevertheless important for the city state to achieve the best possible form of government. He would undoubtedly have preferred strong rule by a strong prince to a weak and vulnerable republic. An alternative interpretation of The Prince is that it was a cynical piece of dissimulation completely consistent with the principles of behaviour laid out in that book: Machiavelli recognized that appearances are important; as he put it: ‘Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.’ (The Prince, XVIII, p.58). He had every reason to want to appear to be committed to rule by the Medici. Some indirect evidence for this interpretation exists in a passage in The Prince in which he makes the implausible claim that new princes

have found men who were suspect at the start of their rule more loyal and more useful than those who, at the start, were their trusted friends.

(The Prince, XX, p.69)

This transparent special pleading – it after all describes his own position exactly – suggests that Machiavelli wasn’t above using rhetoric to defend a position which suited him. It suggests too, perhaps, that he would have been capable of disguising his true beliefs abou...