Machiavelli

by Miles J. Unger

  But attributing the achievement of the ancients to their virtue presents a fundamental problem. Though Machiavelli never explicitly denies his own faith, he observes that those men who knew nothing of Christ possessed admirable qualities absent among followers of the One True Faith. As if this weren’t dangerous enough, Machiavelli establishes a causal link between the rise of Christianity and the decline of civic virtue:

  If one asks oneself how it comes about that peoples of old were more fond of liberty than they are today, I think the answer is that it is due to the same cause that makes men today less bold than they used to be; and this is due, I think, to the difference between our education and that of bygone times, which is based on the difference between our religion and the religion of those days. For our religion, having taught us the truth and the true way of life, leads us to ascribe less esteem to worldly honor. Hence the gentiles, who held it in high esteem and looked upon it as their highest good, displayed in their actions more ferocity than we do . . . . Our religion has glorified the humble and contemplative man, rather than men of action. It has assigned as man’s highest good humility, abnegation, and contempt for mundane things, whereas the other identified it with magnanimity, bodily strength, and everything else that conduces to make men bold. And, if our religion demands that in you there be strength, what it asks for is strength to suffer rather than strength to do bold things.

  If, as Machiavelli asserts, Christianity has “taught us the truth and the true way of life,” why do we have so little to show for it? Far from setting us free, the truth in this case has sapped our strength and degraded our spirit. Here Machiavelli reaffirms the dichotomy, so prominent in The Prince, between what is “good” and what is “useful.” It goes without saying that what is preached in the Gospels is good and true; it is equally obvious that following the example of Christ makes men weak and incapable of managing their affairs. Without the spur of fame and riches, the best among us retire to pursue the perfection of their own souls while corruption and hypocrisy flourish in the world they leave behind. Before the “truth” leads us to our doom, then, we should turn aside and follow instead the crooked paths of deceit.

  Because Machiavelli is unwilling to contradict the fundamental tenets of Christian belief, he presents us with a paradox: that good can lead to evil and that progress can be made only by acting as if what is true is actually false. Much of the tension and many of the apparent contradictions in both The Discourses and The Prince stem from this clash between the Christian faith in which he was raised and which provided a conventional moral frame that not even he could escape, and the pagan virtues of strength, boldness, and civic-mindedness that he admired. This is what Machiavelli demands we confront in his preface to The Discourses: the unresolved, and perhaps unresolvable, dissonance between morality and utility. Were Machiavelli a more systematic thinker, he might well have ended up an avowed atheist, but in fact the former Second Chancellor of Florence seems willing to accept paradox. He was too keenly aware of Fortune’s puckish sense of humor, too skeptical that universal solutions could accommodate messy reality, to make categorical statements, and while future generations, reading between the lines, have detected in his writings the suggestion that God is indeed dead, Machiavelli himself never went so far.

  Do these logical knots reflect Machiavelli’s own tortured conscience, or are the occasional nods he makes in the direction of conventional piety merely a concession to the papal censors? Clearly Machiavelli was not a particularly religious man. In one letter Guicciardini teases his friend that “your honor . . . would be darkened if at your age you started tending to your own soul, since having always lived by another creed it would be attributed to your entering a second childhood rather than to any native goodness.” When it came to the outward forms of religion Machiavelli was less than diligent in his observance. “On feast days I hear mass,” Vettori wrote to his friend, “and do not do as you do, who sometimes doesn’t bother.” Machiavelli could have pointed out in response that at least he was free of the sin of hypocrisy, since while both men were in the habit of frequenting prostitutes, he did not attempt to conceal his vice beneath a veneer of piety.

  But for all his irreverence Machiavelli was probably not an atheist. Like many educated Florentines he derided the primitive superstition of his less enlightened compatriots and had nothing but scorn for the ignorant and vice-ridden clergy, feelings that emerge clearly in the character of Frate Timoteo, the money-grubbing monk in his play La Mandragola. He was also skeptical about much Christian doctrine. But there is no reason to believe he was tormented by these doubts. Metaphysics simply did not interest him, and he may well have retained some vestige of belief simply because he lacked the passion required to demolish it.

  • • •

  What is significant, however, is his insistence that one could not build a functioning society on Christian values. This does not mean that he had no respect for religious institutions. He often cites their social utility while dismissing their beliefs. “It was religion,” he claims, “that facilitated whatever enterprise the senate and the great men of Rome designed to undertake.” By contrast, Christianity promoted a “pattern of life” that “appears to have made the world weak, and to have handed it over as a prey to the wicked.” And while Machiavelli blames this sorry state of affairs on “the pusillanimity of those who have interpreted our religion in terms of idleness not in terms of virtù,” it is clear that he believes there is something in the nature of Christianity itself that encourages exploitation by corrupt and unscrupulous men. In fact there seems to be an inverse relationship between what is true and what is useful, since the pagan religions he praises as socially beneficial are exactly those that are, at least as far as Machiavelli was concerned, patently false.xi

  This alone might have been sufficient to earn Machiavelli the condemnation of the Church, but the outrage he provoked from generations of clerics rests on more specific provocations. When, shortly after Machiavelli’s death, a prominent cardinal described him as “the finger of Satan,” he spoke as a defender of the Church rather than as a theologian. If Machiavelli’s attitude toward the most profound issues raised by religion was one of studied indifference, his attitude toward the Church, neighbor to the Florentine Republic in Italy and its frequent political and military rival, was one of barely contained rage. All the potentates of Italy, Machiavelli claims, contributed to the current sorry condition of the country, but the institution that above all others condemned them to misery and ignominy was the Holy Church:xii

  It is the Church [he writes in The Discourses] that has kept, and keeps, Italy divided. Now of a truth no country has ever been united and happy unless the whole of it has been under the jurisdiction of one republic or one prince . . . . And the reason why Italy is not in the same position . . . is entirely due to the Church. For, though the Church has its headquarters in Italy and has temporal power, neither its power nor its virtue has been sufficiently great for it to be able to usurp power in Italy and become its leader; nor yet, on the other hand, has it been so weak that it could not . . . call upon one of the powers to defend it against an Italian state that had become too powerful . . . . The Church, then, has neither been able to occupy the whole of Italy, nor has it allowed anyone else to occupy it. Consequently, it has been the cause why Italy has never come under one head, but has been under many princes and signori, by whom such disunion and such weakness has been brought about, that it has now become the prey, not only of barbarian potentates, but of anyone who attacks it. For which our Italians have to thank the Church, and nobody else.

  Many Italians would have agreed with Machiavelli in private, even if most were more circumspect about such direct attacks in public.xiii But Machiavelli went further, attacking the Church not only for its meddlesome role in the temporal realm but also for corrupting religion itself:

  [O]wing to the bad example set by the Court of Rome, Italy has lost all devotion and all religion. Attendant upon this are
innumerable inconveniences and innumerable disorders; for as, where there is religion, it may be taken for granted that all is going well, so, where religion is wanting, it may be taken for granted the opposite. The first debt which we, Italians, owe to the Church and to priests, therefore, is that we have become irreligious and perverse.

  Given this double-barreled assault on Christianity and the Church, it is not surprising that Machiavelli’s works were among the first to find their way onto the Papal Index of Prohibited Books in 1559—a grudging admission of the enduring power of his ideas.xiv

  • • •

  On the most obvious level the difference between The Prince and The Discourses lies in their subject matter: one book deals with principalities, the other with republics. “All states and all dominions that rule or have ruled over men were once or are now either republics or principalities,” Machiavelli declares in the first chapter of The Prince, proposing to treat each separately without offering any judgment as to which is better. In 1517 when, at the behest of Pope Leo, he wrote his “Discourse on Remodeling the Government of Florence,” he adopted a similarly evenhanded tone, declaring “that in all cities where the citizens are accustomed to equality, a princedom cannot be set up except with the utmost difficulty, and in those cities where the citizens are accustomed to inequality, a republic cannot be set up except with the utmost difficulty.”xv

  Machiavelli’s ethic is that of the craftsman, not the ideologue, the ethic of someone who treats ideas as objects that must function in the world and must be judged by the impact they have on the lives of real men and women. Given the fact that men live under both principalities and republics, the only responsible approach is to ensure that each runs as smoothly as possible. In a break with medieval tradition and anticipating modern attitudes, Machiavelli is concerned with the practical effects of an idea rather than its abstract or metaphysical qualities. While he is willing to sell his services to whoever holds the reins of power, he tailors his philosophy to suit his potential employer only to the extent of providing him with such knowledge as might prove useful. He approaches politics as a civil servant, proffering his best advice to those responsible for the welfare of the state in the belief that this is the best way to minimize the risk of anarchy.

  If Machiavelli can be said to have a political bias it is for order rather chaos. “[I]t is the man who uses violence to spoil things, not the man who uses violence to mend them, that is blameworthy,” he insists. Machiavelli had witnessed firsthand the suffering caused by chaos and so is willing to pay almost any price for stability. “Wherever you turn your eyes, you see the earth wet with tears and blood, and the air full of screams, of sobs, of sighs,” he wrote after visiting the war-torn Veneto in 1509. His assumption, not always borne out by subsequent history (witness Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia), is that strong states are less violent than states of anarchy. Since anarchy, Fortuna’s gift, seems to be the natural condition of the world, only great diligence and even ruthlessness—qualities associated with masculine virtù—can halt the downward spiral.

  Though his defense of violence in the pursuit of order might appear to justify the actions of a despot, the bulk of Machiavelli’s thought provides little comfort to the would-be tyrant. Machiavelli prefers stability to chaos, but he knows that this is impossible to achieve without tactical flexibility. In a world governed by chance and populated by selfish and ambitious men, government must be built from multiple moving parts if it is to accommodate competing interests. If at all possible power should be dispersed to prevent one man or faction oppressing his fellow citizens.

  Despite his ideological flexibility, Machiavelli clearly states his preference for republican government:

  [A] republic has a greater life and enjoys for a longer time good fortune than a principality since, due to the diversity of its citizenry, it can accommodate itself better to changing circumstances than can a prince. For a man who is accustomed to proceed in a certain way never changes, as we have said, and so when times change and no longer suit his ways, he comes to ruin.

  Note that his preference is based not on ideology but on the utilitarian grounds that republics are more stable than principalities. If, as Machiavelli asserts, “government by the populace is better than government by princes,” this does not blind him to the fact that even the best system occasionally fails.

  When a free society grows irredeemably weak or corrupt, the only recourse is for the people to place themselves under the care of a strong ruler. Machiavelli has as little patience with democratic purists as with defenders of tyranny. Examining the history of the Roman Republic, Machiavelli’s ideal, he noted that “dictatorship, so long as it was bestowed in accordance with public institutions, and not assumed by the dictator on his own authority, was always of benefit to the state.” The argument he puts forward in The Prince in favor of a powerful ruler, then, does not contradict the case he makes for republics in The Discourses.xvi Rather, the conditions prevailing in Italy represent one of those special cases when “imminent danger” demands a “dictatorship . . . [or] some form of authority analogous to it.”

  Some have accused Machiavelli of moral relativism: of advocating one set of principles for a certain situation, and a different set when conditions change—an accusation that he would not so much refute as recharacterize as a sensible adaptation to shifting realities. In an imperfect and chaotic world a one-size-fits-all morality is self-defeating. Rigidity is harmful, flexibility beneficial, and because republics embrace a diversity of opinions and interests they are more likely to withstand unexpected blows of Fortune. Ethics, it turns out, is less a matter of hard and fast rules than of playing the odds, of preparing the ground in advance so that good outcomes are more likely than bad. It is here that republican government excels. Princes, no matter how able, tend to be set in their ways, but in a free society each citizen tugs in a slightly different direction, allowing the whole to navigate more nimbly history’s wreckage-strewn landscape.

  More is at stake in choosing the proper form of government than mere survival. Republics are not only more durable, but offer the best hope of promoting the greatest happiness for the greatest number of citizens:

  [F]or it is not the well-being of individuals that makes cities great, but the well-being of the community; and it is beyond question that it is only in republics that the common good is looked to properly in that all that promotes it is carried out; and, however much this or that private person may be the loser on this account, there are so many who benefit thereby that the common good can be realized in spite of those few who suffer in consequence.

  But if rule by the people is preferable in normal times, such an inefficient system is ill adapted to times of crisis. “One should take it as a general rule,” he argues, “that rarely, if ever, does it happen that a state, whether it be a republic or a kingdom, is either well-ordered at the outset or radically transformed vis-à-vis its old institutions unless this be done by one person.” Founding a state requires boldness, courage, even ruthlessness—qualities rarely seen in bourgeois democracies. In writing The Prince, Machiavelli was hoping to inspire another Lycurgus who would repair the shattered states of Italy, even out of the unpromising material of the Medici heir.

  Like the framers of the American Constitution, Machiavelli had a healthy skepticism of human nature. “[I]t must needs be taken for granted,” he declared, “that all men are wicked and that they will always give vent to the malignity that is in their minds when opportunity offers.” Given our debased nature, the most sensible form of government is one where power is divided among many hands. Each man will still be inclined to pursue his own selfish ends, but excesses will be curbed by the collective efforts of jealous, fearful neighbors.

  In The Discourses, Machiavelli’s system of checks and balances, to use an anachronistic phrase, is most often described as a dynamic tug-of-war between the haves and have-nots, the aristocracy and the people, each of whom has radically different interests an
d perspectives. “[I]n every republic,” he says, “there are two different dispositions, that of the populace and that of the upper class and . . . all legislation favorable to liberty is brought about by the clash between them.” Paradoxically, then, stability can be achieved only by permitting a degree of internal dissension and channeling those passions to constructive ends. In the case of Rome, “good laws . . . [came] from those very tumults which many so inconsiderately condemn.” By contrast, Machiavelli’s native Florence never succeeded in transforming mutual antagonisms into productive legislation, succumbing instead to the plague of faction. “The enmities in Florence,” he wrote, “were always accompanied by sects and therefore always harmful; never did a winning sect remain united except when the hostile sect was active, but as soon as the one conquered was eliminated, the ruling one, no longer having fear to restrain it or order within itself to check it, would become divided again.” It is obvious that the creative tumult of the kind that was so constructive in Rome could easily devolve into the pernicious faction of the kind that was so destructive in Florence, one explanation for history’s violent and unpredictable course.

  Machiavelli’s analysis, derived from his close study of Roman history, constitutes a profound rupture with centuries of political thought. Instead of assuming that comity is the highest political good, he insists that social tensions are not only inevitable but can even be beneficial. This concept flows inexorably from his pessimistic view of human nature. He replaces the ancient ideal, championed by Plato and Aristotle, of a republic of virtue with one based on interest. To the Greeks, good government resulted only when high-minded men came together to pursue the common good. To Machiavelli, who assumes that all men are scoundrels, it is obvious that this happy moment will never arrive. Instead, good government must somehow arise from selfish people pursuing selfish ends. By demonstrating that Rome’s success was born of the clash between the aristocracy and the people, each looking out for its own interests, Machiavelli shows how a well-ordered society can profit when base human nature is exploited to increase the well-being of all. This insight lies at the heart of modern democracy. In Federalist No. 51, Madison offers his own version of Machiavelli’s revolutionary idea: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition . . . . This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public.” Democracies, by bringing together “opposite and rival interests” through the electoral process, place government on a firmer footing than societies that depend for their survival on the unreliable virtue of their people or even their leaders. We don’t require that each citizen enter the voting booth as a disinterested servant of the public good. Instead we assume that if each citizen pursues his own advantage, the aggregate will serve the greater interests of all.