Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Thoughts on Machiavelli, Part I



THE PRINCE, AN INTRODUCTION(9)

I take my title from what is to many an infamous book about an infamous book. It was a little over fifty years ago that Leo Strauss attacked the prevailing liberal scholarly opinion that Machiavelli should not be evaluated morally, as a "teacher of evil," but rather as the first political scientist and analyst of modern political reality. Strauss held, to the contrary, that we should evaluate Machiavelli morally--and even ask if he might not be right.

For better or for worse, I've confined my study of Machiavelli to the Prince and his 'naughty' comic drama Mandragola, never taking the time to read his Discourses (which I assumed required reading Livy first; the Prince is perhaps in the truer sense his more 'popular' work). I've taken Machiavelli at his word when he says each of his major works contains all of his wisdom, though they are marked by differences, e.g. someone who is called a prince in the one is designated a tyrant in the other. Is the distinction meaningful only from the perspective of the people, while the prince sees things as they are? Or do we need to see things from both perspectives, i.e. differently, to see how they are nonetheless the same? Perhaps I will never understand Machiavelli.

I have begun, in any case, to develop a sense of the movement of the work, in what I see as its four parts (i) States/principalities: 1-11 (ii) Art of War 12-14; (iii) Princely Virtue, including the Princely Counselor 15-23; (iv) Virtue and Fortune 24-26, and peaks e.g. 6, 19, 25; as well as its cast of characters, ancient and modern, founders (e.g. Moses) and failures (King Louis), lions (Cesare Borgia and Severus) and foxes (Alexander VI and Julius II).

I'm also cognizant of the world of difference between the Prince and its most relevant forerunner, Aquinas book On Kingship, which has as its ancestors the works of Plato and Aristotle, i.e. the "imaginary republics" of the ancients, as well as its other great influence, the "imaginary republic" of God. One of the revolutionary or mind-blowing exercises the reader can enter into is the task of developing Machiavelli's theology. What kind of a prince is the Christian God? What kind of a prince is Jesus? What is the power of this Prince over men, and in what sense do men rely on him for arms? What does it mean, to liberate Italy--and is this really Machiavelli's intention?

The great idea Machiavelli works with is the idea of "founding new orders," i.e. of conquering the world in such a way that it embraces you as its liberator. This is the path to double glory, even if it calls for violent crimes, verbal or not, at the beginning--they should be spectacular and memorable, and leave us amazed and stupified. I can't deny that is how Machiavelli leaves me feeling some times, e.g. his story of Cesare and Romagna, his praise of Ferdinand's piety, the re-conceiving of man as lion and fox. (In the comic version, the art of seduction replaces the art of love, and everyone ends up happy!)

We are left with the challenge by Machiavelli that the arts of living we have inherited from our philosophical and religious ancestors are dogmatic chains, while he tempts us with the ability to forge our own arms, acquire virtu (virtuousity), achieve a life of real, not imaginary success. It is a bold, radical, utterly free conception of the art of living, unfettered by God or reason or nature. Is Machiavelli a prophet of new orders, armed with weapons unlike any seen before--or is he a "teacher of evil"?

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