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The Place of Machiavelli in the History of Political Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Charles N. R. McCoy
Charles N. R. McCoy
Affiliation:
College of St. Thomas
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Extract

The chief reason for the lack of intelligibility in a course in the history of political thought is the absence of any standard by which the great writers in the field may justly be compared. The usual course in the history of political thought is thoroughly historical and scrupulously indifferent to philosophical analysis; at best, a semblance of comparative analysis is achieved by simply telling the student that different needs of different periods suggest different and equally valid theoretical constructions. The question of natural law, for example, is handled in something like the following fashion. The Aristotelian notion of natural law is no sooner inadequately in the mind of the student than it fails to survive the downfall of the Greek city states. The student is told that Aristotle's notion of natural law restricted his vision and blinded him to the inevitable growth of the empire of Philip, his own student. The Stoics, whose views were perfected by Cicero, held to a notion of natural law much more in keeping with the needs of a world civilization. The Church adopted the Stoic conception of natural law. Subsequently, after the writings of Aristotle had been discovered, St. Thomas Aquinas wedded natural law to the law of the Church. The Renaissance and Reformation liberated men's minds from the shackles of Mediaeval Scholasticism. The concept of natural law came gradually to be abandoned; it is already repudiated in the writings of William of Occam and Marsilius of Padua, and its disappearance is complete in Machiavelli. Accustomed to the tradition of 1066 and All That, the student gathers that this disappearance was “a good thing.” In the eighteenth century, there is a revival of natural law.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , August 1943 , pp. 626 - 641
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1943

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References

1 Allen, J. W., A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (The Dial Press, Inc., New York, 1928), p. 464.Google Scholar

2 Hearnshaw, F. J. C., Social and Political Ideas (New York, 1932), p. 107.Google Scholar More than this, of course, Machiavelli insists that evil is radical in man. Discourses, I, 3; The Prince, ch. 23.

3 J. W. Allen, op. cit., p. 452.

4 Machiavelli, The Prince and Other Works, ed. Gilbert, Allan H. (Chicago, 1941).Google Scholar Professor Gilbert writes: “The chief [of Machiavelli's] political ideas is to be found in the traditional political conception of the common good…” (p. 15).

5 In “The End of Machiavellianism” (Review of Politics, Jan., 1942), M. Jacques Maritain examines the inner logic of Machiavellianism and shows how its internal principle ultimately works the destruction of states. In the end, the argument of M. Maritain and the argument presented in this paper are in agreement. But M. Maritain starts out with a Machiavelli whose prince rules for the sake of his own power, and who, “as a cynic, operates on the given moral basis of civilized tradition.” Subsequent history gives us two forms of Machiavellianism. The first of these M. Maritain calls “moderate Machiavellianism”; this is characterized by the preservation in some way—contrary, M. Maritain says, to Machiavelli's own thought—of the concept of common good. The second form of Machiavellianism is “absolute Machiavellianism.” This form of Machiavellianism comes about when the disproportion between Machiavellian means and traditional common good (characteristic of moderate Machiavellianism) leads to a perversion of the idea of common good itself (ibid., p. 11). Thus for M. Maritain, Machiavelli's prince does not employ Machiavellian means to establish common good as traditionally understood; this is what moderate Machiavellianism attempted. Nor does authentic Machiavellianism have any interest in any kind of common good, whether genuine or perverted. Machiavelli's prince rules for the sake of his own power, and operates on, but has no care for, the given moral basis of civilized tradition.

The point of departure for this paper is the view, taken by modern scholarship, that The Prince, interpreted in the light of the Discourses, was written for the purpose of securing a man powerful enough to establish the common good of the Italian people. Assuming the justice of this verdict of modern scholarship, the argument here examines the notion of common good in the light not only of the Discourses, but of the rules which Machiavelli prescribes for his prince. It is then found to be not quite true to say that Machiavelli had no conception of common good. Rather, the notion of common good which he had was derived from an admiration for the virtues of Republican Rome; but because of his failure, as M. Maritain himself points out, to appreciate the realist and existential character of moral science, he was intellectually powerless to restore the classical concept of political virtue to its metaphysical value. Thus, conceiving moral science as dealing with “the beautiful rules of some Platonist and separate world of perfection,” Machiavelli finds the remedy for the corruption of states to lie in non-attachment to the principles of morality. Hence the notion of common good which is found in Machiavelli is already perverted by its inner principle of evil. The perversion of the concept of common good, which M. Maritain ascribes to a later “absolute Machiavellianism,” is already found in an incipient form, but perfectly generated in Machiavelli himself; and it is a conception of common good opposed to the idea of rule for the sake of the ruler.

Although M. Maritain does not explicitly allow that Machiavelli had any interest in common good, I think that the argument which I here propose is suggested by him when he says that the divergences between The Prince and the Discourses “are real,” but “remain quite secondary” (ibid., p. 8, n. 6). By relating these differences to the literary genus of the two works, M. Maritain adequately accounts for their remaining quite secondary, but not for their being real.

6 “I love my native land more than my soul.” Letter of April 16, 1527. Cited in Gilbert, op. cit., p. 17, par. 41.

7 Berlin papers please copy.

8 The Prince, ch. 18.

9 There is to be noted here that complication which M. Jacques Maritain has pointed out. It is the complication arising from Machiavelli's “rough and elementary idea of moral science,” which makes him fail to understand its “realist, experiential, and existential character. Accordingly, what he calls vice and evil, and considers to be contrary to virtue and morality, may sometimes be only the authentically moral behavior of a just man engaged in the complexities of human life and of true ethics….” Op. cit., p. 5.

10 The Prince, ch. 18.

11 Ibid., ch. 18.

12 Ibid., ch. 18.

13 The Prince, ch. 18.

14 Machiavelli insists that the prince guard above all against a reputation for cowardice. The Prince, ch. 19. It is evident that the successful prince will find opportunity for acts of cowardice, but will avoid getting a reputation for cowardice.

15 Gilbert, op. cit., p. 19. Professor Gilbert writes: “… Machiavelli did not present his ultimate principles in The Prince, but expresses in terms of the ruler alone what he intends to apply to the whole people.” Ibid.

16 M. Jacques Maritain remarks that “The Discourses … owed it to their rhetorical and academic mood as well as to Roman antiquity to emphasize the republican spirit and some classical aspects of political virtue.” Op. cit., p. 8, n. 6. Taking Machiavelli from the point of view primarily of The Prince, M. Maritain holds that the conception of common good had no place in Machiavelli's thought. “He knows that no political achievement is lasting if the prince has not the friendship of the people, but it is not the good of the people, it is only the power of the prince, which matters to him in this truth perversely taught” (ibid., p. 8). And again, speaking of “moderate Machiavellianists,” M. Maritain says that in preserving or in believing that they were preserving in some way the concept of common good, “they were unfaithful to their master…” (ibid., p. 11). Assuming that the Discourses compel us to admit, with Professor Gilbert, that the chief of Machiavelli's political ideas is to be found in the political conception of the common good, then even from M. Maritain's analysis of Machiavelli's thought as contained in The Prince it is possible to show how some conception of common good can be ascribed to Machiavelli. Viewing Machiavelli as “a cynic operating on the given moral basis of civilized tradition,” M. Maritain says that when Machiavelli “writes that the prince must learn how not to be good, he is perfectly aware that not to be good is to be bad” (ibid., p. 7). But as M. Maritain has observed in describing the first complication which arises in the case of Machiavelli himself, Machiavelli's notion of good was inadequate and fantastic: “The man of Ethics appears to him as a feeble-minded and disarmed victim … of the beautiful rules of some Platonist and separate world of perfection” (ibid., p. 5). It is true that Machiavelli knows that not to be good is to be bad, but because of what M. Maritain calls his failure to understand the realist, experiential, and existential character of moral science, Machiavelli thinks that goodness has been the cause of the corruption of states, and that the cause of that vigor and skill and spirit which he equates with political health is to be found in non-attachment to the principles of morality.

It is precisely energy and intelligence and spirit that are lacking to moral virtue as Machiavelli conceives virtue; and, per contra, it is precisely these qualities that constitute Machiavelli's virtu. It follows logically that this virtu can be practiced only by one who is not attached to the principles of morality. Thus the healthy condition of a people—the condition to which the prince as exemplar cause of this kind of common good is to bring the Italian people—is conceived in terms of power and spirit and reckless daring. And the ultimate and exemplar cause of this kind of common good lies in the prince's (and the people's) non-attachment to the principles of morality. But it is a common good that Machiavelli's seeks—the good of the Italian people and not of the prince alone.

17 The Prince, ch. 15.

18 J. W. Allen, op. cit., p. 457.

19 Discourses, II, 2.

20 Ibid.

21 What Machiavelli meant here is at best doubtful, but perhaps the meaning is that which is conveyed in the following extract from this letters: “For years I have never said what I believed, nor ever believed what I have said; and if it sometimes happens that I tell the truth, I conceal it among so many lies that it is hard to find it.” Familiar Letters. In Gilbert, op. cit., p. 260.

22 Discourses, II, 2.

23 J. W. Allen, op. cit., p. 464.

24 Ibid., p. 465.

25 The parallel of the Hitler régime suggests itself. Hitler has a thoroughly perverted conception of common good, but it is not quite true to say that Hitler does not think that he is working for Germany's common good. The purpose of the Nazi state has been said by Hitler to consist in the organization of “a community homogeneous in nature and feeling.” (Mein Kampf, trans. Johnson, Alvin and others, New York, 1939, p. 164Google Scholar). And again: “… it is not the highest aim of man's existence, to maintain a state or government, but to conserve its national character…. Human rights are above State rights” (ibid., pp. 104–105). “The basic conclusion, then,” writes Hitler, “is that the State is not an end, but a means” (Mein Kampf, trans. Sons, Stackpole, New York, 1939, p. 379)Google Scholar.

“Even those who are hacking at democracy,” writes Professor Charles E. Merriam, “cannot escape its implications. In Germany and Italy today, why do they not abolish the vote? Why do they not abolish the forms of representation and consultation? Why do they profess their solicitous regard for reflecting the people's will and interest? Why does Hitler, speak of ‘a true Germanic democracy’?” (What is Democracy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1941, p. 7).Google Scholar The reason “why” is that Hitler has a purged and pure and Machiavellian love for die Einheit Deutscher Seelen. Obviously what Professor Gilbert says of Machiavelli may be said of Hitler: “The chief of his political ideas is to be found in the traditional political conception of the common good….” (Op. cit., p. 15.)

26 The Prince, ch. 15.