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Machiavelli's Realism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Grant B. Mindle
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Abstract

Declaring his departure from the modes and orders of his predecessors— especially the creators of imaginary republics and principalities (men like Plato, Aristotle and Augustine) — Machiavelli undertakes to show “whoever understands” a new and more promising road to political salvation and personal well-being. So compelling is Machiavelli's rhetoric that we seem to have forgotten just how “realistic” or “moderate” Machiavelli's predecessors we're, and how “unrealistic” or “immoderate” Machiavelli's own teaching is. This essay attempts to bring to light the extremism which underlies Machiavelli's realism and raises doubts about his ability to provide his readers the security he promises.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , April 1985 , pp. 212 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1985

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References

Notes

I wish to thank Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., for his patient and generous assistance in the preparation of this article.

1 Prince, chap. 15. Cf. Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr. Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), p. 441.Google Scholar

2 Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: University Press, 1978), 1:129.Google Scholar

3 Aristotle, Politics 1288b 25–27Google Scholar, trans. Lord, Carnes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 118.Google Scholar See also 1288b 35–36.

4 Jaffa, Harry V., Thomism and Aristotelianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), p. 184Google Scholar; Aristotle, EthicsGoogle Scholar 1104a 1–10; 1134b 18–1135a 14.

5 Aristotle, Ethics 1180a 4–5Google Scholar, trans. Ostwald, Martin (Indianapolis, 1980), p. 296.Google Scholar

6 Wolin, Sheldon, Politics and Vision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), pp. 200–202.Google Scholar

7 Prince, chap. 3, beginning; cf. chap. 2.

8 Wolin, , Politics and Vision, p. 202.Google Scholar

9 Prince, chaps. 24, 25; cf. Strauss, Leo, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), pp. 56–57.Google Scholar

10 Consider Prince, chaps. 14, 19; Discourses, 1:2, 10, 11, 19, 20.Google Scholar

11 Florentine Histories, 3:13.Google Scholar

12 Ibid. But how can one be sure that the speech delivered by Machiavelli's nameless plebeian is the truth and his assertion in Prince, chap. 2, is merely tentative? Besides the citations in note 10, the reader should consider Machiavelli's celebration of Roman wisdom in Prince, chap. 3, especially their rejection of “what is in the mouth of the wise men of our times, ‘to enjoy the advantages of time,’” as well as his insistence in Discourses, 3:1Google Scholar, that no order can long endure without returning periodically to its beginnings.

13 Cf. Hobbes, , LeviathanGoogle Scholar, chaps. 11, 15.

14 Prince, chap. 21; Discourses, 3:1.Google Scholar Consider also the Mandragola where the only trust that remains inviolate is that between the fellow conspirators. All other trusts, between master and servant, doctor and patient, husband and wife, mother and daughter, priest and confessor, are violated. I owe this observation to Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr.

15 Prince, chap. 25. Consider also Discourses, 2:13Google Scholar, where the examples of have-nots turn out to be the prince's nephews.

16 To appreciate just how provisional this alliance is see Discourses 1:60Google Scholar (especially the final word); 2, preface.

17 Discourses, 1:6.Google Scholar

18 Consider the Mandragola, Act 3, 10 and 11 where the necessity Machiavelli unveils governs ordinary as well as extraordinary times. If Lot's daughters were allowed to lie down with their father, believing him the last man in the world, then surely Lucrezia may commit adultery and endanger the life of a stranger in order to provide her husband with an heir. But Lucrezia is not the last woman nor Nicia the last man.

19 Prince, chaps. 14 end, 15 beginning.

20 Aristotle, Politics 1324b 32–35Google Scholar, trans. Lord, , p. 201.Google Scholar

21 Plato, RepublicGoogle Scholar 375a–e; 469b–c; Aristotle, Politics 1265a 19–28Google Scholar; 1268b 22ff; 1331a 1–18.

22 Jaffa, , Thomism and Aristotelianism, p. 183.Google Scholar

23 Plato, RepublicGoogle Scholar 519c–520b; 540d 1–3; 545c–d; Aristotle, EthicsGoogle Scholar 1100a 10–1101a 20.

24 Orwin, Clifford, “Machiavelli's Unchristian Charity,” American Political Science Review, 72 (1978), 1217–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Prince, chap. 15.

26 Discourses, 1:9; 3: 41.Google Scholar

27 Prince, chap. 18.

28 Ibid., chap. 15. Machiavelli never speaks of virtue in chap. 15, only of “apparent virtue.”

29 Aristotle, EthicsGoogle Scholar 1119b 20–1122a 17, trans. Ostwald, , pp. 83–89.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., p. 85.

31 Observe how Machiavelli's realism dissolves the distinction between public and private, reducing the state to the private and temporary preserve of the prince. On Machiavelli's use of stato, see Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr., “On the Impersonality of the Modern State,” American Political Science Review, 11 (1983), 849–857.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the connection between liberality and justice, see Strauss, , Thoughts on Machiavelli, pp. 238–39.Google Scholar

32 Aristotle, Ethics 1100b 28–30.Google Scholar

33 As if to indicate the irrelevance of the traditional moral dichotomy (virtue and vice), Machiavelli prefers pairing virtú, with fortuna. Consider, for example, the titles of Prince, chaps. 6–7.

34 Discourses, 1:55.Google Scholar