Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 350 - The Sentence - Machiavelli on Republicanism.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the University of London. When you teach philosophy for a living, there are certain things you find yourself telling students over and over. Try to write shorter sentences, avoid jargon, work on transitions between paragraphs. Maybe this point would be clearer if you illustrated it using a giraffe as an example. One of the most common pieces of advice I give is that students should address a tightly focused question. This is true even in a doctoral thesis. Almost every graduate student I've ever supervised wound up narrowing their project from their original conception. They might start out wanting to look at theories of free will in all of ancient philosophy and wind up writing about the use of a single Greek term in early Stoicism. This is one reason why people outside the academic world think that specialists are in an ivory tower, arguing over angels dancing on the heads of increasingly small pins, rather than tackling big and urgent questions that face all of humankind. Which is true enough, but also not without good reason. Doing the history of philosophy properly means lavishing exquisite attention on the details of texts and arguments in order to yield insights that have escaped previous readers. If you're trying to do it all, chances are that you'll wind up doing nothing. For this reason, I frequently tell students who are writing seminar term papers, so this would be say a 10 or 15 page essay, that if they can give me a really good interpretation of just one sentence in a philosophical work, that would be job done. In this respect, and maybe some others as well, the way I usually proceed here on the podcast is rather misleading. I typically range widely over an author's works discussing big themes and rarely dwelling on the small details and individual passages that are the bread and butter of actual research, the kind of research I do in my day job, as it were. Again, this is not without good reason. Goodness knows, it's taking me long enough for me to make progress through the history of philosophy without trying to do it one sentence at a time. But, as you know, in this podcast series I have a tradition of doing something special every 50 episodes. Since this is episode 350, I thought it might be interesting to follow the advice I give to students and focus on just one sentence. It's an especially good moment to do that, because we're in the midst of looking at Machiavelli, whose aphoristic writing style, subtlety of font, and legion of interpreters makes him ideal for this sort of treatment. Last time, we concentrated on his most famous work, The Prince. In this episode, I want to move on to a longer treatise that he wrote between 1514 and 1518, his Discourses on the Roman Historian Livy. Naturally enough, Machiavelli has a lot to say here about Roman history, but it is not a historical work, strictly speaking. Rather, his goal is to draw lessons from Roman history that are applicable to political decision-making in Machiavelli's own day. So, even as they follow and comment on Livy, the discourses are not that far from The Prince in approach, and scholars routinely draw on both works in interpreting Machiavelli's political thought. So, I've chosen my single sentence from the Discourses, to be specific from Chapter 4 of Book 1. Here it is. And they do not consider that in every republic there are two different humours, that of the people and that of the great, and that all the laws made in favour of liberty are born from their disunion, as we easily see to have happened in Rome. So, how should we go about trying to understand this sentence? First, we need to look at its immediate context, issues having to do with the wider context, for instance, the general aims of the discourses, and the historical setting in which the discourses were written, will come later. Our sentence is part of Machiavelli's defence of the idea that class opposition kept Rome free, as he puts it. So, when the sentence begins, they do not consider, he means those who deny the useful role played by struggles for dominance within Roman society. And in fact, most of his contemporaries would indeed have disagreed with him on this point. Medieval and Renaissance thinkers were nearly unanimous in assuming that unity of purpose and amity between social groups is politically healthy. Commentators like the younger historian and political thinker Francesco Guicciardini rejected Machiavelli's idea out of hand, saying that even if social tumult led to certain good outcomes, praising it would be like praising a sick man's disease because of the virtue of the remedy. Even Machiavelli himself, in his treatise On the Art of War, says that we should look to the Romans to learn how to live without factions. But as our sentence shows, Machiavelli is not in favour of just any rivalry or enmity within the political life of a state. He specifically refers to two groups whose contested relationship is an engine of liberty within the state. This brings us to our next task in understanding the sentence. You should never take yourself fully to understand a remark in a historical work unless you've read it in the original language. In this case, the relevant Italian terms are Popolo, the people, and Grandi, which I translated rather literally as the Great. We already encountered the concept of the Popolo a couple of episodes back. The people are, roughly speaking, the citizens who are not rich and powerful, smaller merchants and the like. In Renaissance Italy, the interests of this group would have been represented above all by the guilds. For instance, in Florence, the ruling legislature, the Signoria, included members put forward by the guilds and then chosen by lot. Not exactly a Roman institution, but that doesn't stop Machiavelli from more or less equating the Italian concept of the Popolo with the Roman lower class, which was represented by the office of the tribune. As Machiavelli explains, in the ancient Roman political system, the office of the tribunes was introduced precisely to stop the more aristocratic elements from ruling with a free hand. As for the rich, called the Grandi in our sentence, but often referred to as the Ottimati, in the Roman Republic, they were of course represented by the Senate. There was also a kind of executive position which rotated between leading men. These were the consuls, who had a significant military role. For Machiavelli, the secret of Rome's success, at least until the whole thing fell apart and became an empire controlled from the top by Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, and their successors, was precisely a balance between these three political institutions. This was a kind of mixed government, which in Machiavelli's view is more solid and more stable, because one keeps watch over the other if in the same city there are princedom, aristocracy, and popular government. This brings us to a more puzzling term in Machiavelli's statement. He calls the lower and upper classes to umori, humours in the city. He is of course drawing an analogy between the body politic and a real human body, which was of course seen as having four, rather than two, humours, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile, and blood. As we learned in long ago episodes, in ancient and medieval medical theory, the humours were the constituents of the human body and the main determinant of health. When they are in balance, the body will function well. When they are imbalanced, disease results. The bodily humours have certain innate tendencies, so that yellow bile for instance is hot and dry, and has a corresponding effect on the temperament of the body as a whole. Machiavelli thinks something of this sort is also true of the two political humours. It is simply in the nature of the nobles that they want to rule, and in the nature of the people that they want freedom from being ruled. This is just an inevitable fact about the two classes, and does not vary from one time and place to another. As Machiavelli says, men are born, live and die always with one and the same nature. More specifically, Machiavelli thinks that all men are evil, and they never do anything good except by necessity. For this reason, confusion and chaos will indeed result in the city if there is excessive freedom, which is why you can't have a political structure where the popolo are allowed to run things with no constraints by the upper classes. That sort of approach actually tends to result in the destruction of republican governance, as on the other hand, will untrammeled power in the hands of the nobility. In both cases, the dominant class will inevitably turn to a single man to represent their interests, who will become a tyrant. Thus, as Machiavelli says later in the first book of the discourses, tyranny comes both from the too great desire of the people to be free, and the too great desire of the nobles to command. He's skeptical that either group will establish true liberty left to its own devices. As he writes in another work devoted to the history of Florence, the promoters of license who are the people and the promoters of slavery who are the nobles, praise the mere name of liberty, for neither of these classes is willing to be subject either to the laws or to men. We can actually press the medical analogy a little bit further. According to the humoral theory, all humans have the same basic makeup, but there's variation in temperament from individual to individual. Though he doesn't make a big deal about it, Machiavelli evidently thinks that something similar applies to human societies. Thus, while he lays down general principles of political theory, based on long-ago examples drawn from Roman history, and insists that these principles remain valid for the Italy of his own day, he also acknowledges something we might call national character. The French, for example, are known to be avaricious and treacherous, and of course this is an insult, even though Machiavelli's tolerance for avarice and treachery was pretty high. That may recall an idea we saw in Savonarola, who claimed that monarchy was in general the best form of constitution, but inappropriate for the Florentines. However, Machiavelli does not seem to think that humans vary that much. His ideas about the best way to organize political life are, in broad terms, universally applicable, which is precisely why the Florentines can learn lessons from reading Livy's History of Rome, with Machiavelli's help. Let's go back to our sentence then and Machiavelli's claim that the laws that supported Roman liberty are born out of the disunion of the popolo and the grandi, not from their harmony. First of all, notice that the word born, nascono, once again underscores the naturalism underlying Machiavelli's observation. This is not an isolated example, but exemplifies his habit of comparing political affairs to natural phenomena, sometimes more explicitly, as when he says that small cities rarely dominate large ones, because all our actions imitate nature, it is not possible or natural for a slender stem to bear up a large limb. More arresting, though, is what our sentence identifies as the happy outcome of class conflict or disunion, namely liberty. This confirms what we already know from other passages, namely that Machiavelli considers liberty an admirable feature of the Roman system, and also as a valuable goal for the Florence of his own day. From this we may infer that in the discourses, he is situating himself in the history of Italian republicanism, we looked at a couple of episodes back. At first, this seems to be a sharp contrast with The Prince, which explicitly began by saying it would focus only on the political challenges and solutions relevant to autocratic rule. But we also saw that even in The Prince, Machiavelli made positive remarks about republics, and especially their capacity for long-term stability. Taking both works together, then, the question is not really whether Machiavelli was a republican, it is rather, precisely what form of republic did he want? And this turns out to be a highly contested question. Most readers, on the basis of our sentence and other similar remarks in the discourses, think that Machiavelli wanted a perfect balance between the optimates and the people, and that the laws and cultural norms of the Romans show how this is possible. This seems right, but raises the further question of what a perfect balance would be. Running throughout the history of Renaissance republicanism was the tension between broad and narrow government, or in Italian, the governo largo, as opposed to the governo stretto. The former would give more scope to the popolo, while the latter would reserve most power for the grandi, with just enough influence given to poorer citizens that they would be discouraged from overthrowing the government or causing other disturbances. A concrete example can be taken from Florence, where the nobles would vet candidates for elected office and eliminate anyone who didn't measure up to their expectations, on the basis of such criteria as family lineage. It seems clear, however, that in the discourses at least, Machiavelli wants to give the people much more power than that. In contrast to the smoke-filled room of patricians just described, he praises the idea of giving all citizens a chance to raise questions in open debate about the suitability of respective officeholders. The scholar John McCormack has argued that this exemplifies a thoroughgoingly democratic approach to republican government on Machiavelli's part. McCormack contrasts Machiavelli to Guicardini, whose name has already come up a few times. As we saw, Guicardini was also a republican who favored the selection of nobles for political office by means of a free election among the people. Tellingly, he felt the need to justify giving the people even this much say in the political life of the city. But Guicardini was not trying to maximize popular liberty. To the contrary, one reason he favored the use of elections is that rich people with well-known names have an enormous advantage in them. As we can see from the recent political history of the United States, where the presidency tends to go to men with great wealth, a famous name, or both, elections are not necessarily a bar to oligarchy. That's why Guicardini liked them. Machiavelli seems to have wanted a more genuinely democratic form of republicanism. Like Guicardini, he has faith in the decision-making powers of the popolo. They sometimes make mistakes, but so do princes, and an unlawful prince is even worse than a deluded populace. The reason writers on politics and history so often criticize the people, says Machiavelli, is that you can always get away with doing so, whereas complaining about autocrats is risky business. Machiavelli's relative affection for the popolo and distrust of the nobility is easy to explain given his own experiences. He was without illustrious lineage, but was put forward as a talented administrator by Piero Soderini, who was elected in 1502 by the nobles to run Florence. Soderini himself was one of the grandi, and they assumed he would rule the city in their interests. When he instead showed sympathy to the popolo and promoted men like Machiavelli, he was deposed with predictable results for Machiavelli. The Medici family, whose name was synonymous with oligarchy despite their republican propaganda, returned to rule Florence in 1512. Under their regime, Machiavelli was imprisoned and tortured, events which would have been fresh in his mind when he wrote the discourses. When you consider that this work is actually dedicated to noble readers, whose patronage Machiavelli hoped to secure, and that the prince is addressed to a member of the Medici family, you realize that Machiavelli is quite daring in the extent to which he argues for republican government in these writings. So that provides us some of the wider context for understanding our sentence. Speaking of which, remember that according to this sentence, liberty comes from the productive rivalry of both the people and the great. Why does Machiavelli say this, if he really wants to maximize authority for the people? Apart from the point we've already seen, that uncontrolled popular freedom leads to chaos and eventually tyranny, we need to recognize that the natural tendencies of the nobility are also useful to the state. In the same chapter from the discourses where our sentence is found, he says that the aspirations of free peoples are seldom harmful to liberty because they result either from oppression or from fear that there is going to be oppression. But this literally populist agenda is not going to maximize the potential of the city to achieve greatness, which Machiavelli takes as an axiomatic goal in political life. To reach that goal, you need the drive and ambition of the nobles. Without the grandi, there will be no grandezza. The lust of the nobles for power and rulership may be unnerving from a republican point of view, but it is like an engine of outstanding achievement, as the ultimati constantly push for opportunities to win fame and fortune for themselves. And when the nobles undertake great deeds, the results are ultimately to the credit of all citizens. As Machiavelli says, what brings greatness to cities is not individual benefits but the pursuit of the common good, and there can be no doubt that it is only in republics that this ideal of the common good Looking back as always to antiquity, Machiavelli observes that the success of the Roman Republic did not consist merely in securing long-term liberty for the people. This was no quiet democracy but an all-conquering militaristic superpower. Indeed, expansion and warfare were key ingredients in the recipe for Roman liberty. Idleness and sustained peace lead to weakness in the state, which is dangerous because there are always neighbors ready to exploit weakness. The power-hungry nobility who want both wealth and fame push the republic to engage in what Machiavelli sees as a healthy and vital quest for expansion. Again, we can invoke the historical context here. In 1494, Florence lost dominion over the city of Pisa, a major factor in the emergence of the Savinarolan Republic. Pisa was not retaken until 1509, with the surrender to the Florentines being counter-signed by, among others, Machiavelli himself in his capacity as a military advisor. Back in 1499, he had written, "...it is necessary to retake Pisa to maintain our liberty, underlining the intimate relation between domestic freedom and military conquest abroad." The people also have a role to play here, because one of Machiavelli's favorite themes is that true military strength lies in the citizenry, another lesson he learned from the Romans. He wants to see the people armed, as in the militia he helped organize for Florence, so that they will always be prepared to defend or prosecute the interests of the city. Professional soldiers or mercenaries tend to undermine the city leadership, something easy to illustrate from the long record of emperors being overthrown by military coup in later Roman history. And mercenaries are expensive too, to the point that their salaries may offset any riches gained through the conquest they win. By contrast, properly motivated citizen-soldiers will fight fiercely for their city, winning fame for their high-born generals in the process, and then go back to their occupation once the campaigning season is over. As Machiavelli puts it, the ideal citizens gladly make war in order to have peace. Nearly constant warfare also provides an outlet for ambitious men to seek fame and booty on the battlefield, rather than by staging a takeover of the government. Here we can perhaps think one last time of the comparison to a human body, implied by that reference to the humors in our sentence. For Machiavelli, the healthy body is one involved in vigorous activity. Just so, in political life it is, as he says in The Prince, very natural and normal to wish to make acquisitions. Before ending our elaborate explanation of this one sentence, we should broaden out to include one final sort of context, Machiavelli's whole writing career. We've seen that the sentence fits well thematically with the discourses and other works, namely The Prince and his dialogue on the art of war, but there is a later treatise I haven't mentioned, namely his Discourse on the Affairs of Florence, which was not written until 1520. On one reading of this work, it departs from the sentiment expressed in our sentence, according to which productive conflict, or tumult, is the key to a vibrant and long-lasting, and well-balanced, Republican form of liberty. Now Machiavelli seems to have had a change of heart, fearing that the lust for greatness will tend more to undermine the city than to keep it healthy. Instead, he proposes a carefully calibrated set of institutions designed to prevent any individual or group from gaining too much dominance. So this is more along the lines of the idea of a stable balancing act that we considered and rejected before as a reading of the discourses, on the grounds that the Machiavelli of that work would have found it too inert. If he now, in his later career, accepts a less dynamic but more secure constitution, this may be due to his recognition of a middle class that can mediate between the popolo and the grandi. He has, as you might say, found another sense of humor. Actually, there's one very last point I want to make about our sentence, which has been obvious throughout, but is worth stressing. Machiavelli is here making a sweeping claim about the internal workings of cities, one applicable to the Florence of his own day, by drawing analogies to the days of ancient Rome. This illustrates something I also said about The Prince. Both that famous treatise and the discourses are at once works of political philosophy and historical analysis, with these two projects mutually supporting one another. As I also said, Machiavelli considered himself a historian, something he shared with his rival political theorist Guicardini, as well as other prominent humanists like Leonardo Bruni. In a couple of episodes, we'll be contextualizing Machiavelli in yet another way, by comparing his approach to history and his ideas of what history is for to those of other Renaissance Italians who contributed to the genre. But first, we'll be meeting a historian of our own day. He is indeed one of the leading historians of the whole Renaissance and of Machiavelli's thought in general. He is without doubt one of the grandi in this area of scholarship, Quentin Skinner, and he'll be my guest next time here on The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.