Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 349 - No More Mr Nice Guy - Machiavelli.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the King's College London Philosophy Department and the LMU in History of Philosophy. Today's episode, No More Mr. Nice Guy, Machiavelli. Sometimes it seems like there's only one political dispute which simply manifests itself in many different ways. Should we be bleeding-heart idealists or hard-nosed realists? The idealist wants us to act nobly and morally in political life, the realist knows that this is wishful thinking and that we should instead do what might actually work. The idealist says, seek peace. The realist says, arm yourself to the teeth just in case. The idealist says, help the poor. The realist says this will only encourage them not to get jobs. The idealist says you should read philosophy, perhaps Plato. And the realist agrees, but says read Machiavelli instead. Rather ironically, given his irreligious reputation, Machiavelli is the patron saint of political realism. His most famous work, entitled The Prince, instructs its noble recipient on how best to exercise political power. The advice it contains has won Machiavelli a reputation for realism, indeed for cynicism, for being rather, well, Machiavellian. That word is rarely a compliment. It has a rather sinister connotation and means someone who is happy to use wicked means to attain his or her ends, which is why Shakespeare refers to him as the murderous Machiavelli. Is this reputation deserved? We might be skeptical if we think of the way we use phrases like platonic love and Epicurean pleasures. We just saw in a recent episode that it was some fancy interpretive footwork that allowed the Renaissance humanists to de-emphasize Plato's interest in sexual love. And as those same humanists understood, Epicurus's commitment to hedonism actually demanded strict moderation rather than gourmet eating precisely because an abstemious diet is more pleasant in the long run. But The Prince provides plenty of ammunition to support the popular conception of Machiavelli's thought. Speaking of ammunition, one example comes when Machiavelli takes up the question of whether it is better to control a foreign territory with a military garrison, or by sending some of the ruler's own people to colonize it. He recommends the method of colonization. Whereas the garrison will instigate hostility from the locals, the colony will uproot the locals and take away their land, rendering them powerless in the process. In one of the cold-hearted aphorisms that make The Prince a guilty pleasure to read, Machiavelli observes that people with small grievances are more dangerous than those with large ones, since if you hurt someone badly enough, they'll be in no position to secure their revenge. But understanding The Prince properly means more than just quoting the nasty bits. We need to realize that Machiavelli is writing for a very specific purpose, which has to do with his historical context. Machiavelli was born in 1469 and died in 1527 and thus lived through a turbulent time in Italian politics. In this respect, of course, his lifetime was entirely typical. Of particular relevance for The Prince is the rise, fall, and rise of a family that has already played a significant role in our story, the Medici. When the Medici were deposed in the 1490s and the republican government brought in, that government featured the talents of Machiavelli himself. He was put in charge of organizing a local militia, anticipating advice he would later give in The Prince when observing that a homegrown military force is far preferable to the use of paid mercenaries. Unfortunately for Machiavelli, the Medici returned to power in 1512 with predictable consequences for his political career. He was even jailed and tortured after being accused of scheming against the Medici. The Prince, later dedicated to one of the Medici, was his attempt to get into the good graces of the city's new and old ruling family. Later, Machiavelli would be accepted back into the fold. A Medici pope gave approval for a play by Machiavelli to be performed, and a Medici cardinal gave Machiavelli an official task. He was told to help arrange the affairs of some Franciscan convents, and then asked by the cloth guild of Florence to appoint a preacher. I wonder whether the cardinal himself appreciated that these assignments were deliciously ironic, as well as depressingly trivial. Friends were amused that the notoriously impious Machiavelli was taking on such tasks when compared to appointing a well-known homosexual to choose somebody a wife. Machiavelli replied with an aphorism that sums him up pretty well. He said that he was in fact a good choice for the job, since he could find a preacher for the guild that would lead the parishioners to damnation and, The true way to get to Paradise is to learn the way to Hell in order to escape it. In another irony, it was while he was in the political wilderness that Machiavelli used his enforced leisure to write the books that have secured his lasting renown. In this respect, we might compare him to an author he knew well, namely Cicero, who similarly set down his philosophical writings in the idle hours after his enemy Julius Caesar achieved a dominant position in Rome. Cicero wasn't the only ancient author known to Machiavelli. He once signed a letter referring to himself as, Historian, comic author, and tragic author. And he himself would probably be surprised to learn that his modern reputation rests more on the Prince than his much longer historical works. In addition to tackling a history of Florence, he wrote a set of discourses analyzing Livy's history of Rome. These are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Machiavelli's political thought because he thought about politics historically. Readers of the Prince are liable to be surprised by the extent to which it too is a historical work. The ages of it are devoted to ancient history and the recent history of Italy. So much so that it's sometimes unclear whether Machiavelli is setting out his political ideas to explain historical events, including the events of his own time, or whether it's the other way around and the history is just there to support and illustrate his political ideas. In fact, his project must be understood in both directions. His understanding of human nature informs his work as a historian, and his expertise in history has given him the basis to make sound proposals for good government. You may be taken aback that I speak of good government in discussing Machiavelli. His reputation would have it that his advice in The Prince has to do solely with political expedience, morality be damned. This is a guidebook for powerful men who want to stay powerful. And certainly, The Prince seeks to speak truth to power and not just about power. It is addressed to Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici. This is not Lorenzo the Magnificent, the patron of Ficino, who had already died in 1492, but a less celebrated member of the family, who was born in that same year and ascended to rule Florence until his untimely death in 1519. So Machiavelli's treatise is no disinterested meditation on the lessons of history. Rather, it is an instruction manual for the young Lorenzo, an exhortation that he and his family should seek to restore Italy to its glories by rescuing it from foreign domination, and at the same time, an advertisement for bringing Machiavelli out of political exile and back into the active political life he understands so well. The Prince is thus an example of that age-old genre of political writing, the so-called mirror for princes, in which a philosopher gives advice to a monarch. Because he is indeed writing for a monarch, Machiavelli says explicitly that he will simply ignore other possible ways of arranging political rule, but we'll come back to those other ways. Actually, the advice laid out in the Prince is aimed at a specific kind of ruler, the one who holds a so-called New Monarchy. It is much more difficult for a man who has seized power to hold onto it than it would be for a hereditary ruler, like one who has taken over the Principiate from his father. The new ruler's goal is, first and foremost, to maintain his position, despite his deficit of legitimacy. He must be bold in action and thought, rather than playing for time or waiting to see what happens as crises arise. After all, at the moment he's in charge and the future is bound to bring change, he needs to make sure that change doesn't involve his downfall. He must constantly work to stay on top or be toppled. In the Discourses, too, a similarly Machiavellian note is struck in remarks about the predicament of new princes. Whereas it is normally a good idea to maintain institutions to promote stability in a city, the new ruler is better advised to remake this city completely. New titles for offices, the rich thrown down, and the poor raised up. The upheaval leads to suffering, and Machiavelli admits that one would be better off staying out of politics than to be a king who brings such ruin on men. Moral scruples notwithstanding, the point stands that only this kind of bold measure will keep the new monarch in power. This sort of advice is not just cynical realpolitik, though. Though Machiavelli does recommend that the prince be cruel on occasion, this is always in the service of political continuity, which is the precondition for the flourishing of both the prince himself and of his subjects. But as he says, it is stability, not justice, that must be the primary concern of the state. It is for this reason, Machiavelli remarks, that the prince needs to learn to dispense with virtue in some cases, namely the cases where acting virtuously would undermine the stability of the state. Consider a virtue like generosity, for instance. Everyone agrees that it's better to be generous, but the prince has the responsibility of looking after the city's finances. Given the choice between displaying generosity and balancing the books, the prince must choose the latter, even if it means that he will seem miserly to his subjects. The same reasoning underlies some of the most notorious passages in The Prince. For example, Machiavelli asks whether it is better for a leader to be feared or loved, and says that it is of course best to be both feared and loved, but if only one is possible, then fear is a more reliable way to keep the population in line. This is because people are fickle and will forget their love when the chips are down. It's vital though that the ruler not actually be hated, since this itself will undermine his state. In fact, the ruler should strive to be loved, not for the warm fuzzy feeling, but because this is itself a step towards stability. As he says in another ready-made aphorism, the best fortress is the love of the people. On the other hand, he's already struck a somewhat more cynical note earlier in The Prince, when he points out that winning the favor of one's people is not that hard a trick to pull off. Really all they want is not to be oppressed, so there's really no excuse for not keeping them content. Here it's worth noting that when Machiavelli speaks of the people, he's not talking about the whole population of the city, but about the poorer citizens, as contrasted to the nobility. He even asks which group's approval is more important for the prince. This shows the extent to which Machiavelli is still operating within the parameters of ancient political theory. If we look all the way back to Aristotle's politics, we may recall that he also assumed a deep and ineradicable opposition of interests between the people and the nobles, the many and the privileged few. In the Discourses, Machiavelli applies his customary hard-nosed realism to this issue, explaining that the best political system is not one that eradicates the antagonism between the two classes, but recognizes and takes advantage of it. The Romans manage this by letting the aristocrats run the state as senators, but also giving the plebeians a role by assigning them the tribunate. Machiavelli does not then celebrate wickedness for its own sake, but he does think the prince must learn to be wicked sometimes in order to deal with the weakness of human nature and the inevitable wickedness of others. A celebrated passage in The Prince states that the ideal ruler can act like both a fox and a lion. He appears mighty like the lion to intimidate his rivals, but must be crafty like a fox to spy the traps those rivals have laid for him. Machiavelli's pessimism about human nature leads him to depart from previous Renaissance political theorists who were on the idealist side of the spectrum. Authors like Petrarch had argued optimistically that the statesman who acts virtuously will always reap the best results. Himself drawing on Cicero, Petrarch had also identified glory as the objective of political life as Machiavelli will do, but for Petrarch this could be attained only through upright action. He wrote that, Nothing can be useful that is not at the same time just and honourable. For Petrarch, it was absurd to prefer fear to love in one's subjects, as Machiavelli recommends, or to think that stability takes precedence over justice. In fact, the two go hand in hand. But Machiavelli thinks that such pious sentiments are quite simply detached from reality. Sometimes a leader must be cruel to achieve his political objectives. In The Prince, he gives the example of Hannibal, whose ferocity enabled him to hold together a desperate army through great hardships in a long campaign against the Romans. Yet even the leader who is both a lion and a fox, who knows how to inspire fear through cruelty and also win the people's love, is not guaranteed indefinite success. Machiavelli is inspired by his reading of Lucretius, whose Epicurean philosophy taught that events are not predetermined or even predictable. Randomness and not divine providence rules the universe. This is not to say that events are entirely beyond human control, though. Machiavelli reckons that about half our life is ruled by our own actions, with the other half being controlled by fortune. Again, the successful leaders are those who boldly take initiative, because this is how you can exploit chance events. Fortune can never be thwarted, but it can be assisted. So fortune really does favour the brave, and a mixture of ability and luck is essential. The ones who achieve a lasting reputation for success, though, are usually those who died before their good luck ran out. The twists and turns of fortune, and the inevitable resistance the ruler will get from both the people and the aristocrats, mean that it is incredibly difficult for a man to bend the city to his will over many years. As he will also observe in the discourses, on the basis of Roman history, the most skilled and lucky autocratic ruler is only going to achieve in the short run what a free republican government may be able to achieve in the longer run. Of course, this fundamental contrast between republican government and princely rule is itself inspired by Roman history. The paradigm for the former is the Roman Republic, for the latter the dictatorial, and then imperial rule exercised by Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, and their successors. And Machiavelli does not just draw his big picture according to a Roman plan, he also cites ancient history from more detailed points. When explaining the superiority of colonies to garrisons, he points out that this was the successful strategy used by the Romans. And after issuing his caution that generosity can undermine the state, he refers to Julius Caesar, stating that if Caesar hadn't been assassinated, he might well have bankrupted Rome, given his lavish spending habits. Greek history is also mentioned, as when Machiavelli explains how Alexander the Great was able to conquer and hold such a huge swath of territory, something that Machiavelli's theory suggests is rather incredible. It's because he was taking over lands used to centralized autocratic rule, simply replacing the Persian Great King with his own royal self. Machiavelli also cautions that these ancient figures achieved glory beyond what may be available in Renaissance Italy. When we take them as our exemplars, we are like archers, aiming beyond the reach of our bows, in order to shoot as high as possible. Machiavelli ends the Prince with an almost hysterical description of the parlous state of Italy, as he exhorts Lorenzo to do something about it. He saw his age as one of corruption and his times as evil, something he in part blamed on the Church of his day. He saw the Church as a force that divided Italy and undermined religion because of its corruption. This makes him sound like a religious reformer, like Savonarola, but his ideas about the religious life were markedly different from that firebrand preacher. Machiavelli wrote a treatise with the pious-sounding title, Exhortation to Penitence, but in it he advised a characteristically active approach to the spiritual life, discouraging mere lament over one's sins and encouraging a disciplined life of good action. A good example would be the Crusades, which he admired as expressions of a more muscular Christianity. These points fit with comments he makes about religion in his more famous works, especially The Discourses. He worries that Christian faith tends to render believers passive and peaceful. Its valorization of humility and contempt for this world weakens its adherents and leads them to ignore insults to their honour that they should be avenging. He thinks the Byzantine Empire fell, for example, because the Ottoman Turks had paired intense religious fervor with military aggression, allowing them to crush the more passive Greek Christians. In The Discourses, he goes so far as to suggest that Christianity is not the sort of religion that is really conducive to the attainment of glory, even if the founders of religion in general can claim to be the most famous of all famous men. Hence, Machiavelli's diagnosis of the failure of Savonarola in Florence. As an unarmed preacher, he relied exclusively on religious conviction among his followers, and had no military force to pair with that conviction. In the final chapter of The Prince, in which he encourages Lorenzo to liberate all of Italy, Machiavelli seems to be casting his prospective patron as a religious and military leader, a man wielding the two swords of faith and violence. Just as Moses led his people from slavery in Egypt, Lorenzo should bring liberation to Italy and defend its cities from foreign exploitation. If he takes Machiavelli's advice on how to establish himself as a prince, he may succeed in this where others have failed. By the way, that idea I mentioned just a minute ago, that republics may be more stable than principiates may leave you scratching your head. Why does Machiavelli spend so much effort telling the prince how to hold on to power if what he really wants is a republic? And in addition to that, did Machiavelli really want a republic in Florence and elsewhere? How does he fit into the developments in Renaissance political thought and the movement called civic humanism that we looked at in the previous episode? These are questions we need to explore in greater depth, and I've come up with what I hope will be an interesting way to do that, in a very special installment that will celebrate reaching the 350th episode of The History of Philosophy without any gaps.