Political Power 2019-20. Notes for Week 2.
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
1. Introduction
The Prince, written just over 500 years ago, addresses the problems faced by monarchical rulers or princes. It assumes that a prince has a job to do, which is above all to maintain his state. It asks what policies he should pursue to do this as successfully as possible (Dedication). The book wasn’t published until 1532 but circulated widely during Machiavelli’s lifetime.
What is it to maintain your state? To promote the wellbeing and safety of the people. The job of a prince is to maintain the safety and wellbeing of their people regardless of how circumstances change. And as we shall see, Machiavelli follows a long tradition in presenting this process as a struggle between a prince and the force of luck or chance, which he portrays as the goddess Fortune. The job of the prince is to maintain his state by making it as secure as possible against Fortune.
Fortune is unpredictable, but there are some things a prince can count on.
a) States are surrounded by other states, each trying to maintain itself. So a prince must reckon with the fact that, just as he is trying to make his state as secure as possible, so his neighbouring rulers will be trying to do the same (end of Ch. 3).
b) One way to make your state more secure is to weaken the states of your neighbours. So each state will try to weaken the others.
c) To maintain his state, a prince must be willing to fight neighbouring powers.
d) To avoid being weakened, a prince will have to have strong and loyal military forces, and ensure that his citizens and officials will not rebel or betray him. (On this last point see Ch. 4.)
To successfully maintain his state, a prince must cultivate and display the quality of virtù. This is a traditional view.
i) It is specifically addressed to new princes (Ch. 24: ‘If the above mentioned measures are put into practice skillfully, they will make a new ruler seem very well established, and will quickly make him more secure and stable than if he had always been a ruler.’).
ii) It offers a novel account of what virtù consists in.
2.Why concentrate on new princes?
a) New princes are in a particular difficult situation. (Ch. 3. ‘it is in new principalities that there are real difficulties.’ ) So he’s taking what he presents as the hardest case.
Why are new princes up against it? A hereditary prince who comes to power just has to keep things going (Ch. 2). But with a new prince:
People who supported the accession of the new prince are liable to oppose him if they become dissatisfied, as some will (Ch. 3).
People find it difficult to accept new rules and customs, and rulers who speak a different language (Ch. 3, 5).
Surrounding states will try to exploit this weakness for their own ends (Ch. 3).
b) Machiavelli also has more local reasons for being interested in new princes. From 1494 until 1512, Florence had been a republic. It was then invaded by the King of Spain who (in league with the Pope) sacked the city. The republic collapsed, and the Medici family took power. The Prince was written in 1513 and is dedicated to Lorenzo de Medici II, who faces all the problems of a new prince.
In part, then, Machiavelli is writing about the situation of Florence. He’s addressing a particular political situation and a particular prince (Ch. 26). The situation is dire: Italy has been enslaved to foreign powers, despoiled and devastated (Ch. 26). But this presents an opportunity for a liberator to come to power.
c) What makes Machiavelli think he has any useful advice to offer Lorenzo? From 1498, so for fourteen years before the collapse of the Florentine Republic, Machiavelli had occupied a high-ranking position within the republican government. During this period he’d been sent on several major diplomatic missions to represent Florentine interests at the courts of major princes, whose policies are discussed in his book. They include Cesare Borgia, the Duke of one of Florence’s neighbouring states, the Romagna, and himself a new prince (Ch. 7); Pope Julius II who reconquered the papal states and in these regions also became a new prince (Ch. 25); and Maximilan, the Holy Roman Emperor (Ch. 23). It’s on this basis that he presents himself to Lorenzo as an expert who can give him useful advice (Ch. 24).
d) Did it just occur to Machiavelli that he could write a book of advice and send it to Lorenzo? No.
i) When the Republic collapsed, Machiavelli was exiled. He dedicated The Prince to Lorenzo di Medici in the hope that he would be re-employed and allowed to return to Florence.
ii) To understand why Machiavelli wrote a book of advice we need to take account of the intellectual context in which he was writing and of his own intellectual formation. The Florentine élite, and thus the men who ran the republic, had a humanist education, which focused on Latin, rhetoric, and classical history and philosophy. In some of the classical texts that were most widely read, we find reflections on how to rule. (E.g. Cicero’s De Officiis/Of Duties, Seneca’s De Clementia/On Mercy and De Beneficiis/On Benefits.) Taking up these models, many humanist authors in turn contributed to what became a popular genre of advice books to princes (e.g. Pontano, Patrizi, Castiglione). The Prince is an instance of this genre. So people who opened it would have had certain expectations about the questions it would deal with and the advice it would offer. Machiavelli’s book stands out because it doesn’t say what an educated reader would have expected. So to see what is original in his account of how to be a good prince we have to situate his work in this intellectual tradition.
3. Machiavelli’s Conception of Virtù
a) Managing Fortune
Virtù is the quality that a prince needs in order to maintain his state or master the goddess Fortune. Reiterating a classical line of thought, Machiavelli claims that Fortune is dangerous and not to be trusted, but also offers opportunities to achieve good things that can’t be gained in any other way, notably honour and glory. She’s like a river (Ch. 25). So a prince must learn to control Fortune as far as possible (Ch. 6). A new prince is bound to owe something to Fortune – the opportunity that allows him to come to power (Ch. 6), and he must make the best of his chances. But he must never rely on her or forget that his luck may run out (Ch. 25).
Machiavelli, stresses the importance of boldness and ambition. Fortune ‘is a woman, and if you want to control her it is necessary to treat her roughly. And it is clear that she is more inclined to yield to men who do so than to men who treat her coldly.’ (Ch. 25). However, even a virtuous prince who does everything he should can be defeated by Fortune. (e.g. Cesare Borgia, Ch. 7: his failure ‘resulted from extremely bad fortune’).
b) Domains of Virtù
To maintain his state, a prince needs to display both caution and boldness in three overlapping domains: military, civil and personal.
i) Military qualities
Military strength is essential to the prince’s virtù and he must never hesitate to use it (e.g. Ch. 3 on the Romans: ‘they never allowed trouble to develop in order to avoid fighting a way, because they knew that that wars cannot be avoided but are merely postponed to the advantage of others’). Machiavelli fervently believes that a mercenary army is less good than a civil militia (Chs. 12, 13). But whatever sort of army a prince has, he must be a good military commander (Ch. 14).
ii) Civil Qualities
Maintaining your state depends on good laws (ordini) as well as arms (Ch. 12). `a second aspect of virtù therefore lies in designing laws that strengthen the state. Some of the greatest leaders whose names are singled out for their virtù in The Prince are renowned as lawmakers. e.g. Romulus, the founder of Rome.
iii) Personal Qualities
In military and civil contexts, and in his relations with other rulers, a prince needs to have personal qualities that enable him to maintain his state. Ambition. But also fame and glory. These qualities have instrumental benefits; but quite aside from this, they are part of what it is to have virtù.
4. Virtù and Virtue
How should a prince should exercise his virtù and maintain his state? E.g., should he be brutal in the pursuit of military success? Should he show mercy in the face of civil disobedience? Here Machiavelli radically departs from the views expressed by an authoritative range of classical writers and echoed by their humanist successors.
a) According to a standard view, the way for a prince to control Fortune and attain virtù is to possess the traditional virtues; he’ll be just – he’ll keep his promises and won’t be cruel – and also courageous, temperate, prudent and magnanimous.
b) Furthermore, as Cicero and others explain, behaving virtuously is a mark of being a man or virin the fullest sense, whereas being vicious is a mark of bestiality. (Cicero, De Inventione/On Invention; Seneca, De Beneficiis/On Benefits.)
Machiavelli opposes this outlook. Ch. 15: ‘how men live is so different from how they should live that a ruler who does not do what is generally done, but persists in doing what ought to be done, will undermine his power rather than maintain it… So a prince who wants to maintain his state must learn how not to be good, and to act as necessity demands.’ Furthermore, his opposition is rooted in his view that, in order to tame Fortune, you have to act as circumstances demand (Ch. 15).
a’) A prince needs to have some bestial qualities, namely the cunning of a fox and the force of a lion (Ch. 18).
b’) A prince won’t be able to maintain his state if he commits himself to invariably doing what is traditionally held to be virtuous. So the virtù of a prince cannot be aligned with a traditional conception of virtue, in the way that advice books to princes have previously claimed.
Machiavelli sets out this view in Chapter 15 of The Prince and develops it in chs. 16-19.
First kind of case: should a prince be generous/liberal? (Ch. 16). According to the classical authorities, a virtuous prince will be liberal, i.e. lavish in his hospitality, gifts, and ceremonies. Machiavelli disagrees. A prince who lives like this will live beyond his means and in due course have to increase taxes to pay for it. He’ll have to treat his people ungenerously and will be hated and despised by his subjects. So the really liberal course is to be what is usually regarded as mean.
Is Machiavelli advising rulers to be mean? Or is he offering an unconventional account of what generosity consists in.
(For a comparable question see his discussion of cruelty and mercy at the start of Ch. 17.)
Second kind of case: Should a prince try to be loved or feared? (Ch. 17.) The traditional answer is loved. Machiavelli: a prince should try to be both, but ‘it is much safer to be feared than loved’. Whether men love a prince depends on them, but whether they fear him depends on what he does. And a wise ruler should rely only on what is under his control rather than on what is under the control of others.
In this case, Machiavelli isn’t proposing a redefinition of love. He’s saying that a quality that’s usually considered a vice has an essential role in princely virtù.
(Note that princes should be feared but not hated. Ch. 8 (p.31 and 33) and Ch. 19.)
Thirdkind of case: Should a prince keep his promises? (Ch. 18). The traditional answer is yes. Machiavelli adds i) that a prince will sometimes have to break his promises to maintain his state; ii) when he breaks promises he should try to seem to keep them. ‘Foxiness should be well concealed. A prince must be a great feigner and dissembler.’
A conflict? Princes are praised for possessing qualities that are considered good: mercy, trustworthiness, humanity, straightforwardness, devoutness, etc. Also grandeur, courage, seriousness and strength (Ch. 19). But a prince can’t maintain his state and always act as these qualities dictate. He sometimes has to be treacherous, ruthless inhumane, etc. So he should act rightly as far as possible but be prepared not to, varying his conduct with the winds of fortune. Machiavelli even goes so far as to say that possessing the traditional virtues is damaging whereas seeming to possess them is useful/beneficial.
5. How should we characterize Machiavelli’s position? Three interpretations.
a) Princes are justified in doing anything in their pursuit of power.
b) Princes are above all responsible for maintaining their state – that’s the moral end that they must above all pursue – and this means we have to consider what count as individual princely virtues. But there are moral limits to what they can do. For example, princes are morally bound to avoid brutality and rapaciousness.
c) At The Prince’s core is a biting critique of both ruthless realpolitik and amoral pragmatism, not a revolutionary defence of both these positions. Far from eroding ancient contrasts between good and evil, just and unjust … Machiavelli’s book shows readers the dire consequences that ensue when our language and practices fail to clearly distinguish them.’ (Brenner, pp. xxi-xxii).
d) Other interpretations?
