Machiavelli on Freedom and Civil Conflict: An Historical and Medical Approach to Political Thinking 9004323236, 9789004323230

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Machiavelli on Freedom and Civil Conflict

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004376014_001

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Thinking in Extremes Series Editors Filippo Del Lucchese, Brunei University Fabio Frosini, Università degli Studi di Urbino Vittorio Morfino, Università di Milano Bicocca Editorial Board Etienne Balibar, Université de Paris-Ouest and Kingston University London Thomas Berns, Université libre de Bruxelles Alison Brown, Royal Holloway, University of London Jean-Louis Fournel, Université Paris 8 Marie Gaille, CNRS Andrea Guidi, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Giorgio Inglese, Sapienza Università di Roma Warren Montag, Occidental College Gabriele Pedullà, Università degli Studi Roma Tre John P. McCormick, University of Chicago Peter Stacey, University of California, Los Angeles Sebastian Torres, National University of Córdoba Miguel Vatter, The University of New South Wales, Australia Stefano Visentin, Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo Yves Winter, McGill University Jean-Claude Zancarini, ENS de Lyon, Triangle

VOLUME 2

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/tie





Machiavelli on Freedom and Civil Conflict An Historical and Medical Approach to Political Thinking By

Marie Gaille

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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This is a revised and translated edition of Conflit Civil et Liberté: la Politique Machiavélienne entre Histoire et Médecine, first published in French, Éditions Honoré Champion, 2004.

 Published with the support of SPHERE.

Tanslated by Anita Conrade. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2352-1155 isbn 978-90-04-32323-0 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-37601-4 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,  Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

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The reason why Machiavelli is not understood is that he combines the most acute feeling for the contingency or irrationality in the world with a taste for the consciousness or freedom in man. Considering this history in which there are so many disorders, so many oppressions, so many unexpected things and turnings-back, he sees nothing which predestines it for a final harmony. He evokes the idea of a fundamental element of chance in history, an adversity which hides it from the grasp of the strongest and most intelligent of men. And if he finally exorcises this evil spirit, it is through no transcendent principle, but simply through the givens of our conditions. With the same gesture, he brushes aside hope and despair. If there is an adversity, it is nameless, unintentional. Nowhere can we find an obstacle we have not helped create through our errors or our faults. Nowhere can we set a limit to our power. Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 218.

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Contents Contents

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Contents Acknowledgments ix Foreword x Matters of Method xvi xxii 1 Describing Hot Societies 1 2 Tumult in the City: Neither to Abuse, Nor to Deride, but to Understand 16 3 On Institutions Favourable to Freedom: Machiavelli’s Use of Humoural Theory 33 4 Corruption and the Ethos of Freedom 70 5 Rome, Inimitable Paradigm 92 6 Machiavelli as a Mirror for Contemporary Democracy, or How to Ruminate on His Writings 120 Bibliography 153 Index of Names 166 Index of Subjects 169 170

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Acknowledgments Acknowledgments

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Acknowledgments This volume is a revised version of my first published work on Machiavelli, Conflit civil et liberté – la politique machiavélienne entre histoire et médecine (2004). Its publication in English has been inspired and made possible by Filippo Del Lucchese, to whom I wish to express my utmost gratitude and friendship. After the work published in 2004 and a few others, I maintained an interest in Machiavelli’s thought and the always incredibly flourishing scholarship dedicated to it. I collaborated with Brazilian colleagues who have been working to translate and comment upon Machiavelli in their own language, in order to offer their co-citizens the opportunity to read and understand his masterpieces. However, in 2008, I felt that I had exhausted my ideas on Machiavelli and decided to turn to other issues. Fortunately, various colleagues prevented me from utterly leaving the Machiavellian realm. In this regard, I owe a special debt of gratitude to Helton Adverse, Newton Bignotto, Jose Ames, Marie Goupy, Sébastien Roman, and Nadia Urbinati. Let me thank again Étienne Balibar, Didier Deleule, Christian Lazzeri, Giacomo Marramao, Alain Pons, Michel Senellart, and the members of the Centre de recherche sur la pensée politique italienne, especially Jean-Louis Fournel and Jean-Claude Zancarini, as well as Gianfranco Borrelli, Marco Geuna and Pierre-François Moreau. They have been my guides in Machiavelli’s lively and complex dominion. This book has been made possible thanks to a grant from SPHERE, a joint research centre from the French National Centre for Scientific Research and the University of Paris Diderot, with which I am affiliated. Finally, I also want to thank Anita Conrade for her translation and continuous interest in the project.

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Foreword

Foreword The Latin word civis, like the Sanskrit terms śeva- and śiva-, is associated with social togetherness, connoting a commonality of dwelling and political rights. The genuine meaning of civis is more precisely ‘co-citizen’ than simply ‘citizen’. Considering the element of reciprocity inherent to civis, the word civitas must be understood as a collective concept.1 To arrive at a conception of co-citizenship in our own times, can we limit our vision to that of a political body of free and equal citizens, whose rights are defined in relation to each other? The only problem conceived – or, at least, the main problem – this vision permits us to consider concerns potential abuses by leaders in charge of the institutions theoretically designed to maintain and promote freedom and equality. If we judge that the structure provided by liberal political thought only barely (if at all) enables us to wonder about the fringes of the city, and the rights of those who are denied the status of citizen, or perhaps of those who are considered ‘second-class citizens’,2 if we hope to understand the citizen’s political action, which is most often a collective enterprise, from the taking of sides to the public demonstration of opinion, if we suspect that democracy is a political regime that cannot get rid of social unrest, protest, and civil conflict,3 in itself, and if we ultimately consider that the question of the legitimacy of sovereign institutions, even democratic ones, is still unresolved, we must explore other ways of describing co-citizenship. Machiavellian thought can contribute to this endeavour. The most compelling reason for us to reread the Florentine is not his best-known and most extensively commented work, The Prince, or even the most common interpretation of his thinking, this ‘Machiavellian delusion’, as Montesquieu termed it, which consists of ‘having given to Princes, for the maintenance of their power, principles which are necessary only in despotic governments, and which are useless, dangerous, and even impracticable in monarchic ones’.4 Instead, we shall examine three closely connected dimensions which are part of the structure of Machiavelli’s thinking. The first is his conception of the body politic, in which the citizen is never envisaged as an individual, but rather grasped within aggregations or groups defined by a certain type of behaviour and interest. The city is perceived not as an entity made up of different 1 2 3 4

Benvéniste 1969, p. 337. Taylor 1992. Roman 2017, p. 9. Montesquieu 1951, p. 996.

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parts, but as a dynamic whole with unstable borders that are constantly shifting and evolving. Machiavelli drew metaphors from classical writings on medicine, describing the city as a ‘mixed body’ composed of elements called ‘humours’, which are defined by the dynamic relationship they maintain with each other. This vision provided him with the theoretical resources necessary to observe the institutional dynamics of the cities, from the reform of the distribution of power to regime change. When Machiavelli writes the terms ‘people’ and ‘great’, he is referring less to social categories that can easily be identified by economic and social indicators than to a couple of elements that played a driving role in this institutional dynamics. The analysis of this relationship centres Machiavellian thought on the many power struggles going on within the city. From the outset, he avoids the negative judgment usually associated with civil disorder, based on the fright caused by its manifestations – the sound and the fury – and its effects, such as assassinations, destructions, exiles, and institutional dysfunctions. Machiavelli succeeds in fulfilling two requirements: describing the diversity of forms that may be assumed by civil conflict, of variable intensity; and defining the principle of this conflict, in a way that accounts simultaneously for its irreducible presence in the city and for its multiplicity of expressions. Thus, Machiavelli sees in the city an irreconcilable opposition, and considers it impossible to simultaneously satisfy the humour of the great and that of the people. One side wishes to establish control, and the other side refuses to be controlled. The conflict between the two is expressed with varying intensity, in a variety of forms, because of the way the desires of the parties are modulated as a function of power relationships that have gradually accrued throughout the city’s history, and also due to the tendency of desire to continually expand. By nature, desire is never satisfied; it is always being transferred to new objects. Machiavelli’s opposition between a desire to control and a desire to be free of control may be judged simplistic, at first glance. However, lest we forget, the philosopher puts it forward for the purposes of identifying the source of a dynamic, and not in order to describe the attributes of such and such a social class, like a sociologist. Moreover, compared to an approach strictly limited to socio-economic terms, Machiavelli’s vision is intrinsically valuable insofar as it provides ample perspective for the analysis of the subject of all policy: collective passions and feelings – hatred, fear, ambition, envy, wrath, discontent. In relationship with this role granted to civil conflict, Machiavelli is led to write a whole new type of history, which radically departs from a ‘Jupiterian history’ representing the powerful. Jupiterian discourse, in addition to defining the image of power, also constitutes ‘the reinvigoration procedure’ thereof. In other words, Machiavelli breaks away from history as an exposition of the obligations to which the people must submit, as a testimonial to the brilliance of

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state power and to the fear it engenders in subjects.5 The Machiavellian history of the institutional dynamic of societies, based on civil conflict, provides absolutely no basis for the establishment and protection of a political order. His statements are undeniably startling, regardless of the group to which the proved or presumed reader of his work belongs. They reveal the fact that any given political order, any distribution of power, corresponds to a certain balance of forces between the desire of the great and that of the people. Machiavelli binds the analysis of civil conflict to an investigation of the conditions of freedom. Although, in his eyes, co-citizenship is essentially adversarial and conflict-ridden, this relationship does not lock every member of society in a perpetual civil war. In the first place, the conflict of humours does not systematically correspond to a generalized form of armed struggle. It is occasionally manifested simply as a ‘dispute’. Secondly, and especially, in Machiavelli’s eyes, this relationship is where the fate of political freedom is determined: its advent, maintenance, decline, and disappearance. It is in this sense that the terminology of humours, inherited from ancient Greek medicine, is re-invested by Machiavelli in order to create an original metaphor for the institutions of the free republic. When he casts the humours in a key role, he opens the imagination of the reader to the sorts of institutions that might govern a politics of freedom which accepts civil conflict as its fundamental condition, rather than denying it. These three dimensions place the thinking about co-citizenship under the auspices of a question that, initially, might seem to be unanswerable: How can we conceive of difference and commonality, of conflict and the public interest together? Machiavelli suggests an answer to this question by putting forward his theory of civil conflict as the laboratory where freedom is forged. Machiavelli’s response to our question invites us to evaluate the many uses to which his writings are applied today. He himself, attuned to conjuncture, to the specificity of situations and of eras, stands at the opposite extreme from a ‘monumental history’,6 to cite Nietzsche’s expression when he is considering the advent and fate of freedom. Contrary to current interpretation, there is no encouragement in Machiavelli to imitate the men of the past. Events, phenomena, and moments, past and present, should be used rationally and critically. As a consequence, it is now our task to define the conditions according to which the contemporary debate on freedom might be broadened by Machiavelli’s contribution.

…

5 Foucault 1997, p. 68. 6 Nietzsche 1910, p. 16.

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Machiavelli’s success has endured. He is one of the rare authors familiar to the general public, and at the same time, his writings have been the subject of innumerable scholarly interpretations: to the surprising number of ‘interpretations of Machiavelli’s political opinions’ is added a continuously growing ‘cloud of subsidiary views and glosses’, as Berlin states.7 As a result, the reader might be surprised that a new analysis of Machiavelli’s oeuvre is offered herein, one that is particularly focused on the three closely connected dimensions. By only rarely defining the terms he employs, Machiavelli did not facilitate the task for readers seeking to understand the relationship established between civil conflict and freedom. Moreover, in Rome, this relationship is defined as the advent of freedom due to discord, whereas in Florence, civil conflict seems to lead only to exile, assassination, and the incessant transition from one form of government to another. This absence of definition and lack of uniformity from one case to the next are troubling, confusing the reader. True, the relationship between civil conflict and freedom has been remarked upon before, in the long tradition of scholarly commentary on The Prince. For example, we need only think of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s observations emphasizing how much ‘at each instant, Machiavelli speaks of oppression and aggression’, and sees ‘collective life’ as ‘hell’. However, Machiavelli’s work is original in that, ‘having laid down the source of struggle, he goes beyond it without ever forgetting it’.8 Nevertheless, few commentators have actually granted this relationship their full attention, and it has never been approached or interpreted unequivocally. The school of contemporary interpretation that identifies with republicanism – essentially John G.A. Pocock and, with some nuances, Quentin Skinner – pays only limited attention to this relationship. Actually, The Machiavellian Moment excludes it from consideration entirely. Pocock’s omission is all the more surprising in light of his position that civil upheaval degenerating into violent, armed conflict is one of the elements that weaken republics; disorder characterises his conception of the ‘Machiavellian moment’. Skinner, in the commentary he devoted to Machiavelli, grants only minor importance to the theme of civil conflict, citing it chiefly to underscore the role played by laws in dealing with manifestations of disagreements between the great and the people, and the scandalous nature, in the eyes of Machiavelli’s contemporaries, of his positive assessment of civil disorder. Liberal authors display an even more striking lack of interest in the theme, with the notable exception of Italian 7 Berlin, 1979, p. 25. 8 Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 211. G. Cadoni points out that, since the 1960s, the most significant progress made in interpreting Machiavelli has consisted in focusing on civil conflict (Cadoni 1994, p. 15).

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political theorist Niccoló Matteucci, whose vision of a necessary theoretical reform of liberalism implies a better understanding of civil conflict. Certain Marxist and post-Marxist historians and scholars, particularly those who sustain a critical relationship with Marxism, show a greater interest in this theme. Among our contemporaries, Claude Lefort examined this relationship repeatedly, within the perspective of totalitarianism conceived as a negation of the sphere ‘of politics’. Surmising that Machiavelli is closest to effectual truth when he is considering social division and political freedom,9 Lefort observes that he does not conceive of freedom independently from civil conflict. According to Lefort, this is due to the nature of the people’s desire, which is a desire for freedom and, more precisely, the confrontation of this desire with the desire of the great. Left to its own devices, in fact, this desire of the people swells to the point where it in turn becomes a desire for domination. The ongoing confrontation between these two desires is therefore what matters. Moreover, Lefort points out, in the Machiavellian universe, it is vain to hope for the advent of a peaceful, reconciled society. It is impossible to end the conflict between these opposing desires; in fact, there is no reason even to seek such a goal.10 Lefort’s conception of civil conflict has a dual impact. On the one hand, the classical typology of governments (government by one, by a small number, by a great number, and by respective corrupt forms of these three) is no longer current, because it prevents us from considering how power is acquired in the first place, and then maintained. On the other hand, the idea of the law takes on a new meaning: it is neither the effect of natural regulation, nor the product of a reasonable instance. Instead, it is conceived as the fruit of the confrontation between the two opposing desires, and more specifically as the final outcome of the people’s desire for freedom and their refusal of oppression. Antonio Negri also examined Machiavelli’s writings on civil conflict, within the context of his reflection on the concept of constituent power. In Negri’s opinion, Machiavelli, Spinoza, and Marx are the only thinkers in the philosophical tradition who develop theories that are capable of understanding the idea of democratic politics and their creative dimension. In analysing Machiavelli’s contribution to his own conception of democracy, Negri emphasizes the Florentine’s vision of conflict, as put forth in books II and III of Florentine Histories (Istorie fiorentine).11 Nevertheless, these analyses are all similar in that they consider Machiavellian civil conflict in terms of class struggle. An attentive reading of Machiavel9 10 11

Lefort 1992, p. 172. Lefort 1992, p. 175. Negri 1997, pp. 120-121.

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li’s oeuvre, however, makes it clear that this perspective is extremely limited. Of course, it is impossible to integrate Machiavellian thought into a theory according to which a natural harmony of interests is produced by free-market mechanisms. Nevertheless, Machiavelli also resists confinement within the sphere of Marxism or that of the social theorists who borrow concepts from Marx. For those reasons, it is necessary to write a new interpretation of Machiavelli’s oeuvre, focusing on the following three dimensions: his description of the body politic, the nature of civil conflict, and the conditions for freedom.

…

The objection might be raised that such a rereading is liable to distort Machiavelli’s thought by concentrating too closely on these three dimensions. Is it possible to dismiss Machiavelli’s ‘delusion’; that is, The Prince, and his considerations on cruelty and the uses of evil – in short, all that has constituted the raw material of Machiavellianism? In response, we attest that we have absolutely no intention of ignoring either The Prince or the strong connection existing between that work and the Discourses on Livy (Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio), in which we will be seeking the key to the relationship between freedom and civil conflict. Furthermore, we are convinced that it is futile to attempt to present the thought of Machiavelli as a whole, because it lacks homogeneity and does not function as a system. It is true that we have chosen only a single path through Machiavelli’s writings, venturing that it will be a productive one. If the reader, following it with us, gains deeper political insight as a result of our travels between past and present, between the questions Machiavelli examined and our own, we will have achieved our goals.

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Matters of Method

Matters Of Method

Matters of Method The interpretation we offer herein is based on The Prince, the Discourses on Livy, and the Florentine Histories. An immense body of Machiavelli’s writings is available to contemporary scholars, and much of it has been translated into various languages other than Italian. In addition to the three works we have just cited, one may refer to the Legations, to proposals and plans for civil or military reform, plays and poetry, a few portraits, various collections of maxims, a biography – Life of Castruccio Castracani, letters, and a dialogue, The Art of War. This last work was the only one of Machiavelli’s books published during his lifetime, and it quickly became a ‘best-seller’ throughout Europe. For the purposes of our investigation of how Machiavelli can inform contemporary conceptions of co-citizenship, however, The Prince, the Discourses on Livy, and the Florentine Histories are the sources that provide us with the most valuable and explicit material. These three works contrast in terms of form and subject. It would seem that The Prince was composed over the course of about six months, in 1513. However, certain researchers believe Machiavelli rewrote or retouched it several times in 1514, and may have returned to it as late as 1518. This question will probably never be resolved completely, because the autograph manuscript of the work has been lost. More crucially, in addition to the philological disputes still surrounding the date when the text was established,1 it is important to determine whether Machiavelli was working on The Prince at the same time as he was writing the Discourses on Livy. Before The Prince, it is likely that Machiavelli drafted a book about republics, upon which he then drew more or less directly for the first 18 chapters of the Discourses. He may have referred to it in The Prince: I shall leave out reasoning on republics because I have reasoned on them at length another time. I shall address myself only to the Principality, and shall proceed by weaving together the threads mentioned above; and I shall debate how these principalities may be governed and maintained.2 It is believed that after writing the pamphlet, before embarking on The Art of War, Machiavelli resumed working on the Discourses, restructuring his earlier draft and adding to it.3 1 Inglese 1994 and 2006; Martelli 1999. 2 Machiavelli 1998, p. 6. 3 See Larivaille 1982 on this issue.

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Whereas The Prince, dedicated to Giuliano de Medici (1479-1516), and then to Giuliano’s nephew Lorenzo, is written in a dense, straightforward, unadorned style, the style of the Discourses on Livy is quite different. The pace is much freer and less hurried. It comments a well-known work on Roman history.4 Conversely, the two works are not at all opposed in terms of subject: the first is no more a tyrant’s bible than the second is an argument for the republic. Were we to substitute the word ‘republic’ for ‘principality’ in Machiavelli’s description of The Prince to Francesco Vettori, it would apply just as well to the Discourses: I have jotted down what capital I have made from their conversation and have composed a little work [opusculo], De principatibus (‘Of principalities’), in which I delve as deeply as I can into the cogitations concerning this topic, disputing the definition of a principality, the categories of principalities, how they are acquired, how they are maintained, and why they are lost.5 In both cases, Machiavelli is seeking to elucidate the genesis of an imperium – regardless of form – and what causes it to emerge, grow, decline, and dissolve. Because it was written on commission, Florentine Histories stands apart from the rest of Machiavelli’s oeuvre. Indeed, on 8 November 1520, Machiavelli was entrusted with the task of writing the annalia et cronacas of his native city, by the domini officiales Studii florentini, then presided by Giulio di Giuliano de Medici, the future Pope Clement VII. Due to this fact, generations of Machia4 Petrarch rediscovered some Decades, and seems to have owned and annotated two manuscripts (later annotated by Lorenzo Valla, as well). They are now catalogued as MS. Paris Lat. 5690 and MS. Harley 2493 (British Museum). The Harleian manuscript contains the 1st, 3rd, and 4th Decades, the 1st and 4th dating from the first half of the 14th century and the 3rd from the late 12th-early 13th. The manuscript copy of the set is not written entirely in the hand of Petrarch or his assistants. Moreover, the manuscript contained many blanks, particularly in the 3rd Decade. Petrarch assembled the three texts into a single set we now call Ab urbe condita. The textual tradition of the 1st Decade is the least problematical, because it has been studied by several scholars. Conversely, even today, that of the 3rd is still a mystery. Petrarch patiently reconstituted the text, drawing on a variety of sources, some of which are lost to us today. The 4th and 5th Decades were the most neglected ones. The first five books of the 5th – the only ones to have survived – were discovered only in 1527 by Simon Grynaeus. A single manuscript copy of them survives, catalogued as Vienna Lat. 15. The 4th, after having disappeared for several centuries, reappeared in the early 14th. Starting then, it was diffused far and wide. See Billanovich 1951. 5 Machiavelli to Vettori, 10 December 1513, 1996b, pp. 263-265.

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velli scholars have dismissed the Florentine Histories as failing to offer a reliable portrayal of Machiavelli’s opinions. Machiavelli’s letter dated 30 August 1524, addressed to Francesco Guicciardini, attests to his awareness of the limitations that might be imposed by official historiography. Nevertheless, it is also evidence that he remained faithful to his ambition to tell the truth: I have been staying and now stay on my farm begun to write the History, and I would pay ten soldi – I do not intend to say more, to have you by my side so that I could show you where I am, because, having to come to some particulars, I need to learn from you if I give too much offense either by raising or by lowering these things. But I shall keep on taking counsel with myself and shall try to act in such a way that, since I tell the truth, nobody will be able to complain.6 We are convinced that Florentine Histories deserves the same consideration as The Prince and the Discourses. It provides an endless source of material for the analysis of civil conflict and its relationship with freedom, a subject Machiavelli explicitly places at the centre of his narrative. We find the same questions, strategies, and processes as in The Prince and the Discourses. Finally, as the other two books already suggest, Machiavelli’s political thinking unfolds chiefly within a conception of the historical fate of cities and their evolution. From this perspective, his account of Florence’s growth, from the time it was founded until the death of Lorenzo de Medici in 1492, represents an outstanding case study. The fact that Machiavelli did not write the work on his own initiative does not constitute an argument for disqualifying the book. Admittedly, the official nature of the writing makes the book more of a puzzle: it is necessary to read between the lines, and to identify the omissions or gaps in Machiavelli’s account by comparing it to earlier histories and chronicles of Florence.

…

Our interpretation relies upon certain fundamental principles. Regardless of which of the three works we consider, Machiavelli develops a reasoning that travels between several incompatible viewpoints: that of the great and that of the people; that of the prince, of the governors, of the governed. He seeks neither to reconcile them nor to unite them from some overarching position. The reader is sorely tempted to do something Machiavelli avoids: to arrange or rearrange these viewpoints so that a guideline for thinking emerges. Our primary 6 Machiavelli to Guicciardini, 30 August 1524, 1989, 2, p. 978.

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principle, as we interpreted the text, was to resist that temptation. Machiavelli deliberately refrained from assigning an order to these viewpoints – ‘the work is there to carry out these transitions from one place, and one phrasal universe, to another place, and another phrasal universe’.7 The primary manifestation of the implacable nature of civil conflict is the impossibility of the various ‘humours’ of the city to share the same outlook. It is also easy for the reader to observe that in most cases, Machiavelli delivers only partial and fragmentary truths. A single example will suffice to illustrate this feature. At the end of Chapter 14 of The Prince, we read that Scipio was wise to imitate Cyrus, described by Xenophon in the Cyropaedia. By copying Cyrus’s chastity, cheerfulness, kindness, and generosity, Scipio magnified his own glory. But in Chapter 15, Machiavelli abruptly ceases this praise. In the name of effectual truth, he makes a point of outlining how the Prince should behave in order to maintain his power. For, to remain powerful, the Prince must occasionally be wicked. Thus, from one paragraph to the next, from one chapter to the next, from one book to the next, we come to possess the wariness Nietzsche recommended in relation to ‘systematisers’. Nietzsche asserted that the core of the system is its lack of integrity: and that statement certainly seems to be true, at least when applied to Machiavelli’s writings.8 As a result, we have not assumed that from one book to another, or within one book, Machiavelli’s rhetoric would not evolve, deviating significantly from its original course. And although we were able to accomplish certain aspects of our analysis no matter which book we consulted, others required careful book-by-book examination and comparison. Moreover, certain specific features of Machiavelli’s style are worthy of attention. Various voices utter sentences, not always speaking the same language: the doctor, the legal scholar, the philosopher, the historian, the astrologer, etc., all speak in turn, as if each knew how to say something that no other is able to express, or knew how to say it better than the others. It is important to distinguish between these languages, trace them to their sources, and analyse the uses to which Machiavelli puts them. It is also interesting to note that verbs, particularly verbs of motion and action, command a prominent position in Machiavelli’s rhetoric. Although he does not relegate the substantive – the name given to the substance – to the background entirely, he does not endow it with the conceptual importance it is usually given, in philosophical discourse. Mainly, a noun must be analysed hand-in-hand with the verbs surrounding it, for they make a decisive 7 Sfez 1999, p. 64. 8 Nietzsche 2005, p. 159.

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contribution to understanding its meaning. In most cases, the most important terms in Machiavellian reasoning are abstract, with multiple and sometimes even ambiguous definitions. This is the case of ‘libertà’, ‘corruzione’, ‘ordine’, ‘costumi’, and ‘civiltà’, for example. On the surface, this ambiguity and polysemy could be construed as an obstacle to the elaboration of a coherent commentary on Machiavelli’s thought. Nevertheless, the slippery nature of the definition actually proves to play a key role. By endowing a term with several meanings, a writer can use it in many different contexts, to link separate and distinct realities, in order to show the similarities between them or, on the contrary, the contrasts. It is therefore essential for us to overcome the challenge posed by the multiple meanings and ambiguity, and attain an understanding of how this semiotic device functions within Machiavelli’s oeuvre.9 Finally, let us note the unusual purpose served by example in Machiavellian rhetoric. Example is hardly ever illustrative, and only rarely indicates the path to follow. In writing this way, Machiavelli departs significantly from the humanist practice that, as J.D. Lyons points out, tends to evoke ancient wisdom and elevate it to the status of a model for action.10 When Machiavelli draws an example from ancient or modern history, it is usually the heart of the demonstration – for which, if necessary, the historical material is rewritten, reworked, or given some cosmetic touches. In this sense, the example is valuable from the viewpoint of reflection, rather from that of action. It plays the same role as it does in Kant’s Critique of Judgment: serving to expose ‘the reality of our concepts’ when it is a matter of empirical concepts, a function fulfilled by the 9

10

Let us take the term ‘corruption’, for example [corruzione]. In Discourses I, 55, it is used to describe the cities or territory inhabited by a multitude of ‘nobles’ and lords. Within the commentary on the history of Rome and the fall of the republic, the term appears again and again to qualify a neglect of public interest. From one context in which it is uttered to the next, the use of this term is relatively coherent. In the ‘regions’ where ‘nobles’ and ‘lords’ have settled in such great numbers that the desire to be free of domination is impossible to express, the humour of the great prevails absolutely, and no concern for public interest can emerge. Nevertheless, significant differences between the two usages exist: – In Chapter 55 of Book 1, instead of being characterised as a gradual process, corruption is described as a permanent condition, always identical in intensity. – By asserting in the same chapter that it is impossible to create a republic in a corrupt region, Machiavelli stipulates that such a condition is unchangeable, whereas if corruption is construed as a process, it can be countered, to some degree. – Finally, although Machiavelli’s account of the decline of the Roman republic emphasizes the tendency of popular sentiment to evolve toward excess, in this chapter he insists on the ‘excessive ambition and corruption of the powerful’ (Machiavelli 1996, p. 112). Lyons 1989.

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schema, for the pure concepts of understanding.11 Thus, the analysis of Machiavellian examples requires that we seek a simultaneous understanding of the parts of the example that refer to the specific, and those that refer to the general; in other words, the example may have a general scope we must highlight.

…

Reading Machiavelli demands that we engage in a two-sided exercise of contextualization. In addition to a familiarity with the historical events and characters to whom he refers in his ancient and modern examples, a familiarity that is necessary in order to see to what degree he has reworked his textual sources, it is important to be aware of the issues and references that Machiavelli shared with his contemporaries in the early 16th century. Machiavelli’s implicit or explicit references raise all sorts of questions: in his time, which books were most influential? Did he and his peers have access to translations, if they were unable to read the works in their original language? Which books might he have merely discussed orally, without actually having read them? Which authors does he refer to, and which ones does he omit? In what way does he make reference to them – does he praise them, or criticize them? In this regard, three aspects require particular attention: Machiavelli’s relationship to classical texts, his reference to medical and physiological writing belonging to the Hippocratic-Galenic heritage, and his conception of historical time. Moreover, Machiavelli’s reflection on the relationship between civil conflict and freedom is part of two debates and his opinions cannot be perceived as such and understood unless one knows their subject and participants. The point is not to reduce the scope of Machiavellian judgment to these discussions. Nevertheless, knowledge of the context in which Machiavelli asserted his opinions helps us avoid the pitfall of reading Machiavelli in light of questions that have nothing to do with him. First, as suggested by his foreword to the Florentine Histories, his account of the city’s past, and his interpretation of it, should primarily be confronted with those of the historians who preceded him.12 In addition, during his lifetime, Machiavelli was engaged in discussions about government policy in Florence: what should be done to reform failing 11 12

Kant 2007, p. 178. See on this issue Arendt 1991, p. 125. For this purpose, we were able to rely upon a large body of studies – particularly those by Anselmi, Baron, Cabrini, Cochrane, Garin, Gilbert, Matucci, and Rubinstein (see the Bibliography).

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civilian and military institutions? How could the stability of the government of this turbulent city be guaranteed? If freedom is part of the nature of this city, what institutions correspond to such a nature, and how should they be set up? We have attempted to give the reader some idea of these discussions by analysing the sermons of the Dominican monk Savonarola, the writings of Francesco Guicciardini, and the Venetian myth of good government, all of which were important themes in Machiavelli’s day.

Describing Hot Societies

1

Chapter 1

Describing Hot Societies From the start, Machiavelli’s theory concerns the context of the ‘city’ [città]. Although he describes, judges, and analyses wars – of defense and conquest – between principalities, republics, and empires, wars in which condottiere, men with no allegiance to territory, were sometimes engaged, human ‘tumult’ always brings his thinking back to the interior of the city. Had Machiavelli read the works of Claude Levi-Strauss, he would undoubtedly have understood and appreciated Lévi-Strauss’s expression ‘hot society’. Hot societies are those in which ‘caste and class distinctions are incessantly milked to extract energy and a future’.1 Indeed, history bursts in upon the world of Machiavellian cities. Far from persevering in simply being, they are in a constant state of flux. The core of their history is a conflict which operates as a motor, driving civic life. Like the ‘hot societies’ identified by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Machiavelli’s insights emphasize ‘differential gaps between power and the opposition, majority and minority, exploiters and exploited’.2 The primary elements of Machiavellian thought on civil conflict can be found in the very description of the city. In order to identify them, however, it is important to avoid projecting onto the term ‘city’ conceptions associated with the expressions of political or social body, or of polis, full of meaning and history. Machiavelli’s city is primarily defined geographically as an urban space surrounded by walls and inhabited by human beings who may or may not be endowed with the status of citizen. Moreover, Machiavelli’s discourse is descriptive rather than prescriptive. In other words, unlike Plato in Book IV of the Republic, his purpose is not at all to recommend an organizational norm, by distributing positions and power according to skills, titles, or merit. Instead, Machiavelli sets out to catalogue the parts of the city, to draw its portrait. If we follow the progress of his thought, we realize that his description nevertheless raises a number of questions. They cannot be answered unless we make the journey step by step from The Prince to the Discourses, and from the Discourses to the Florentine Histories. In The Prince, we find an initial, succinct description of the city in Chapter 9, ‘Of the Civil Principality’. A constitutional republic occurs when a member of the city, ‘a private citizen’, becomes a prince, with the support of some of the 1 Levi-Strauss 1973, p. 40. 2 Ibid.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004376014_002

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Chapter 1

city’s inhabitants. To explain this process, Machiavelli provides a description of these inhabitants: But, coming to the other policy, when a private citizen becomes prince of his fatherland, not through crime or other intolerable violence but with the support of his fellow citizen (which virtue nor all fortune is necessary to attain it, but rather a fortunate astuteness) – I say that one ascends to this principality either with the support of the people or with the support of the great. For in every city these two diverse humours are found, which arises from this: that the people desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great, and the great desire to command and oppress the people. From these two diverse appetites one of three effects occurs in cities: principality or liberty or license.3 Therefore, in every city, regardless of time or place, there are two sorts of inhabitants: on the one hand, ‘the people’, designated by a singular collective noun, and on the other, ‘the great’. Machiavelli uses the term ‘people’ in other contexts as well, especially when writing about matters of war. In that case, it designates the entire population of a city or territory, fighting an enemy army. However, in Chapter 9, he is describing a group within the city. This introductory characterisation of the people and the great asserts that there is a balance of power between the two entities. They are defined in relation to each other. The ambition of the great is to dominate the people, whereas the people want to be free of domination. Two further conclusions can be drawn from this chapter. First, it is difficult for the prince to rule without the support of the people, because of their number. Second, and conversely, however, sheer number does not constitute a decisive advantage against the great. The latter, though in the minority, compensate for this weakness by relying on two qualities, cleverness and the ability to plan for the future. Note that we are not given many details about the lives of the great and the people. We have no evidence on which to base a portrait of their mores, customs, and manners; we cannot even connect them to an economic and social position. In any case, Machiavelli does not try to provide such a portrait in this chapter, because the subject of his reflection is the conditions whereby a prince, new or old, conquers and maintains power. The entities making up the city are therefore analysed in terms of this dynamic, not for themselves. In The Prince, it is important to distinguish between the term ‘people’ and others which seem close to it in meaning: the multitude [moltitudine], the vul3 Machiavelli 1998, pp. 38-39.

Describing Hot Societies

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gar [vulgo], the generality of people [universale or universalità]. ‘Moltitudine’ and ‘vulgo’, the latter derived from the Latin ‘vulgus’, seem both to designate a great number or mass, and to characterise a set of anonymous men. The terms ‘universale’ and ‘universalità’, like the Latin expression ‘in universali’, can be used in more varied ways. They resemble “moltitudine” and “vulgo” in that they express the idea of a great number, but they are occasionally employed in contexts that make them synonyms of the ‘popolo’ defined in Chapter 9. This is the case in Chapter 19, in which Machiavelli analyses the chances of a conspiracy’s success. He asserts that the best way for the prince to maintain his power is to avoid being the target of the people’s hatred, and mentions the constitution of the kingdom of France. In writing on these matters, he uses the terms ‘popolo’, ‘universale’, and ‘universalità’ interchangeably. However, this interchangeable usage does not signify that these expressions are synonyms. First of all, because the usage is not at all systematic; secondly, because only the people defined in Chapter 9 are characterised by a desire, an appetite, that is aimed at thwarting the appetite of the great. Chapter 19 seems to challenge the thesis put forth in Chapter 9. Machiavelli is investigating a likely explanation for the fact that certain Roman emperors who have ‘always lived excellently’ and “shown great virtue of spirit’4 were nevertheless assassinated or overthrown. This investigation prompts Machiavelli to introduce a third humour, that of the army: And first it is to be noted that whereas in other principalities, one has to contend only with the ambition of the great and the insolence of the people, the Roman emperors had a third difficulty, of having to bear with the cruelty and avarice of their soldiers. This was so difficult that it was the cause of the ruin of many, since it was difficult to satisfy the soldiers and the people. For the people loved quiet, and therefore loved modest princes, and the soldiers love a prince with a military spirit who was insolent, cruel, and rapacious. They wanted him to practice these things on the people so that they could double their pay and give vent to their avarice and cruelty.5 This particular case is unique, and does not fit into the structure suggested in Chapter 9. Here, Machiavelli does not depict a city with its own specificities that relates to the type of city described in this Chapter 9. He is describing a different configuration, which forced emperors to make choices that the 4 Machiavelli 1998, p. 75. 5 Machiavelli 1998, p. 76.

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Chapter 1

princes of Italy did not even have to consider. Does that disqualify the description in Chapter 9, supposed to be valid for ‘any city’? First of all, let us note that Machiavelli himself makes absolutely no reference to a difference between the statements in Chapter 9 and those in Chapter 19. True, the definition of the city is not the subject of the later chapter, but he could have digressed, to point out the discrepancy. Instead, he simply tells us that the Roman armies were deeply rooted [inveterati] in the provinces. They benefited from the effects of the long term; in other words, over the course of time, they had gradually formed bonds that made them a homogeneous body, endowed with a specific identity. The usage, in the same chapter, of the term ‘community’ [università] to describe this condition means just that. Actually, the Latin term universitas, from which the Italian università is derived, is the one that applied in the Latin Middle Ages, to express the idea of a homogeneous whole arranged as a unit, in principle.6 The army, like the people and the great, is defined by a desire or humour: the soldiers’ greed. We are forced to admit that The Prince offers two descriptions of the city, one of them binary and the other ternary. However, although the description provided in Chapter 9 does not reflect all of the configurations ever observed in human history, it does have a special status for Machiavelli. Reading the Discourses on Livy will shed some light on the matter. With the Discourses, Machiavelli attains a new level in his description of the city. It begins with the eight chapters making up Book I. At first (in Book I, Chapter 2), Machiavelli writes of the powerful [potenti] and the multitude [moltitudine], but also of the plebs and the Senate, the nobility, or even the optimates, and finally of the people. In Chapter 3 and most of Chapter 4 of Book I, the use of the terms ‘plebs’, ‘nobility’, and ‘nobles’ prevails. However, in Chapter 4, the terms suggested in Chapter 9 of The Prince reappear in Machiavelli’s statement of his essential thesis: They do not consider that in every republic, are two diverse humours, that of the people and that of the great, and that all the laws that are made in favor of freedom arise from their disunion, as can easily be seen to have occurred in Rome.7 Informed by this chapter, we note that the pairing between the great and the people covers and includes all the other couples cited earlier. Although the plebs/Senate, plebs/nobility, and people/nobility pairings do not disappear as the book goes on, when Machiavelli is describing the antagonism occurring in 6 Michaud-Quantin 1970. 7 Machiavelli 1996, p. 16. See also I, 39, p. 257.

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the history of every city, the one between the people and the great is the most striking. As a result, it acquires generic status. Hence, even if the description of the city offered in The Prince, 9, and Discourses, I, 4, does not embrace all of the possible historical configurations, it is nevertheless the only valid one when Machiavelli is treating the subject of their opposing desires and appetites, a conflict that gives rise to the type and transformations of the government adopted by the city. Moreover, the Discourses confirm the reader’s intuition that, in Machiavelli’s mind, the categories ‘people’ and ‘great’ do not embody socio-economic strata. Instead, they are related to shared interests or situations to be defended. The members of these groups are united by a certain desire, and the fact that they share it is what makes them stick together. It is true that economic considerations are not entirely foreign to Machiavelli’s conception of these categories, as Book I, 55 attests. However, the relationship between these desires or appetites and an economic condition is not really determined. Instead, in Chapter 55, Machiavelli is concerned with defining a feeling that mediates the relationship between desires or appetites and economic conditions. Ultimately, this feeling distances us from analysing the latter. For example, he makes a distinction between various ways of distributing wealth, depending on the type of nobility hosted by the city: true or false, and the number of such nobles. True ‘nobles’ own land and rule over subjects, whereas the prosperity of those who are ‘nobles’ only in name – like the Venetians – is based on ‘trade and movable things’.8 However, Machiavelli defines the conditions that permit various sorts of regimes – monarchy, republic – based on the feeling of equality or inequality engendered by these means of distributing the wealth, rather than directly on the basis of the wealth itself. If true ‘nobles’, for example, are great in number, there is very little chance that a republic will be established, because this type of regime is based on a feeling of equality, and such a feeling cannot develop in a context marked by subjection to long-established landowners. Moreover, the Discourses bring out a motive that is ignored in The Prince. The ruler, be he ancient or modern, invariably faces a set of constituted communities – the people, the great, the soldiers. He does not exercise his power over a city in which men come to claim, for themselves, to the detriment of 8 Machiavelli 1996, p. 112 and see also p. 111: ‘to clarify this name of gentlemen such as it may be, I say that those are called gentlemen who live idly in abundance from the return of their possessions without having any care for cultivation or for other necessary trouble in living. Such as these are pernicious in every republic and in every province, but more pernicious are those who, beyond the aforesaid fortunes, command from a castle, and have subjects who obey them’.

6

Chapter 1

others or in opposition to their domination, a share of magistracies. In the Discourses, on the contrary, Machiavelli examines the movements and struggles for the acquisition of an institutional status; in other words, the right to participate in the processes of deliberation and decision-making in Rome. The main example is that of the tribunes of the people: But let us come to Rome. Notwithstanding that it did not have a Lycurgus to order it in the beginning in a mode that would enable it to live free a long time, nonetheless so many accidents arose in it through the disunion between the plebs and the Senate that what an orderer had not done, chance did. […] Hence, when the Roman nobility became insolent, for the causes that will be told below, the people rose up against it; so as not to lose the whole, it was constrained to yield to the people its part, and on the other side, the Senate and the consuls remained with so much authority that they could keep their rank in that republic. Thus arose the creation of the Tribunes of the plebs …9 Here, Machiavelli is referring to the gradual transformation of the Roman ‘plebs’ from an anonymous multitude or mass, devoid of structure, to a fullfledged political power, conquering visibility first and an institutional status later.10 True, Machiavelli does not centre his analysis on this process. Instead, in the chapters which follow, he writes about the communities that are already constituted, and the antagonistic relationships they maintained. Indeed, his goal is to make it understood why, in Rome, the opposition between them resulted in laws that favoured freedom and military power, whereas in Florence, this opposition led to conflict characterised by assassination, exile, and near political instability. Nevertheless, he returns to the question twice. On the one hand, in Chapter 1, 6, the comparison between Rome and Sparta enables him to establish a link between the politics of conquest, costly in human lives, and the conquest of an institutional status by men who were initially considered to be foreign to the Roman urbs.11 On the other hand, in Discourses II, 3 he notes 9 10

11

Machiavelli 1996, p. 14. Jean-Claude Richard’s study provides an enlightening analysis of the formation of this patricio-plebeian dualism. Originally, the patriciate was made up of the members of the senate of Curiate Rome, while the plebs referred to a heterogeneous mass of persons left out of this elite. They emerged from non-being in the first years of the 5th century BC (Richard 1978). Richard points out that the term ‘plebs’ did not always have ‘political content’, although the ancient formula ‘populus plebsque’ may lead one to believe that it did. See Richard 1978, p. 118. Machiavelli 1996, I, 6, pp. 20-21.

Describing Hot Societies

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the factors that caused Rome’s growth, based on openness to foreigners and conquest.12 Therefore, it is important that we keep in mind the idea of the permeability of the Roman city and its advantages, particularly in terms of military power. It contributed to challenging the idea that the city was a finished, immutable structure. Machiavelli’s analysis of the way the plebe conquered an institutional role, in particular, shows that the magistracy must not be thought of as a position that is obviously reserved for a group (which deserves it by virtue of talent, nobility, etc.) within the city, but that these positions are accessible to all those who conquer them.13 This suggestion, controversial at the time, is associated with an equally scandalous analysis examining the people’s ability to govern. Although Machiavelli is not the last to stigmatize the silliness and naivety of the people, he nevertheless strives to convince the reader that such an ability exists (the two aspects are not contradictory, because the assertion of an ability that is the same as that of the other groups in the city does not in any way prejudge the effective qualities of the people, placed at the head of government). In Chapter I, 58, taking a position that is unusual for him, he unhesitatingly presents himself as the advocate of the people. Unable to defend themselves alone, the people are presented as a group that is unfairly denigrated. Citing another historical account, Machiavelli protects the people from illegitimate accusations: But the opinion against peoples arise because everyone speaks ill of peoples without fear and freely, even while the reign; princes are always spoken with a thousand fears and a thousand hesitations.14

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14

Machiavelli 1996, II, 3, pp. 113-114. Here, he refers to an ancient practice in Rome, ‘its refusal of any exclusivism where the collation of the civitas was concerned, and its faithfulness to the rule it set for itself, upon its founding, to practice a policy of assimilation and integration of foreign populations’ according to Richard 1978, p. 85. We can identify at least two sources for Machiavelli’s accounts on this subject. The first is Livy, describing the acquisition of rights by the ‘plebs’, often in exchange for helping to wage a war. Although he does not cite the work Roman Antiquities by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, we can surmise that he knew of it directly or indirectly. The first Latin version, published in Treviso in 1480, was translated by Lapus Biragus of Milan. Of the historians of Rome writing in Greek, Dionysius of Halicarnassus is the one who praises this dimension of Roman history the most, as we will see later on in Chapter 5. Book I of Roman Antiquities contains a mention of how foreigners were granted citizenship, associated with power (Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1960 and 1961). Machiavelli 1996, p. 119.

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Chapter 1

At first, the argument set forth in Chapter I, 58 may appear insufficient. In fact, Machiavelli asserts that the vices of which the commoners are accused – fickleness, lack of wisdom – are true of all men, and of princes, in particular. The effect of this statement is to include the people in the group of human beings, without claiming they are innocent. The fact is they simply share the same flaws as everyone else. Likewise, princes, like other humans, fail to foresee crises in times of peace (Chapter 24 of The Prince). Nevertheless, corruption is the decisive factor. If the people are corrupt, they will lack constance and wisdom; if they are not, they will possess these qualities.15 Finally, contradicting the statement he developed in Chapter 1, 53, he goes so far as to lend an occult virtue to the people: the ability to discern the truth and to choose properly between two opposing orators.16 Machiavelli does not conceal the highly controversial nature of this certification: That nothing is more vain and inconstant than the multitude so our Titus Livy, like all other historians, affirms. [...] I do not know if I shall take upon myself a hard task full of so much difficulty that it may suit me either to abandon it with shame or continue it with disapproval, since I wish to defend a thing that, as I said, has been accused by all the writers. But however it may be, I do not judge nor shall I ever judge to be a defect to defend any opinion with reasons, without wishing to use either authority or force for it.17 This broad-mindedness is reminiscent of the tone of Chapter 15 of The Prince, in which Machiavelli also announces a significant departure from prevailing opinion. It was a truly radical shift, in light of debates in Florentine institutions surrounding the foundation and role of the Great Council. The confrontation between the Machiavellian perspective and the theory of good government put forth by Guicciardini in Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze illustrates the schism. Guicciardini’s Bernardo figure voices the opinions of those who are opposed to the idea of allowing the people to participate in the legal system to any significant extent, granting them merely a minimal, symbolic role. For, in the absence of the people’s participation, small as it might be, in courts and other institutions where legal matters were deliberated and ruled upon, Florentine freedom was in danger. It would leave too wide a horizon for the 15 16 17

Machiavelli 1996, p. 117. Machiavelli 1996, p. 118. Machiavelli 1996, pp. 115-116.

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ambition of the great. According to Bernardo, commoners lack good judgment. They are like unskilled doctors, who ‘use on the head ointments that are only effective on the stomach’.18 Add to this the fact that the majority of commoners are ‘incompetents’, that they know nothing of others’ lives, and Bernardo arrives at the conclusion that they should not demand participation in the magistracy. This contrasts with the analysis of ‘opinione universale’ Machiavelli constructs in Chapter I, 58, grounding the people’s claim to a participation in government. In the Discourses, then, the people emerge as a community that is capable of government, and likely to demand a share of power. The malleable quality of the internal and external borders of the Machiavellian city make it impossible for him to engage in a representation of the city as a body politic, the organic metaphor that dominated in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The purpose of these metaphors is to emphasize the collective, supra-individual character of the city, and the rigid hierarchy of its internal organization. Like the organic metaphors employed by the Ancient Greeks, they are based on the idea that the head – the soul – rules the other parts of the body.19 These analogies offer a vision of the city as a whole made up of parts, 18 19

Guicciardini 1994, p. 41. Prior to the rediscovery of Aristotle’s Politics, the body-politic metaphor was relatively rare. When it was used, it was derived from the Paulist idea of the mystical body. P. Archambault notes such a kinship in De institutione regia by Jonas of Orleans (a 9thcentury treatise): there, the body of Christ incarnates the universal Church, the head of which is Christ himself. In a later treatise, the Tractata de regia potesta by Hugo de Fleury (11th century), the prince’s power over his kingdom is compared to the soul’s power over the body, while Christ embodies the double figure of the perfect king and prince (Archambault 1967). Until Policraticus by John of Salisbury (1159), the metaphor of a body dominated by the head was used to raise the question of the relationship between the power of Christ (and, by extension, of the Church) and the power of the king. Through Policraticus, John of Salisbury played a fundamental role in the elaboration and diffusion of the organic metaphor (‘est autem respublica corpus quoddam...’). To the question of how the two powers, temporal and celestial, should be articulated, he added the one of the articulation and hierarchization of the parts of the body. After the rediscovery of Aristotle (the first Latin translation of Politics dates from 1260), there is a great deal of evidence of the grip of the organic metaphor on political theory. On Kingship, by Thomas Aquinas, for example, asserts that the heart and head refer to the reigning part of the city; moreover, he demonstrates the need for government by comparing the city to the human body (Thomas Aquinas 1926). In Defensor Pacis by Marsilius of Padua, the organic metaphor is employed to show that the city is in good health when each citizen fulfills the purpose that corresponds to him in nature. The reference to nature makes it possible to introduce the distinction between men according to their skills or talents, leading to the constitution of habitus: working together, the body of men accomplishes perfection in the city.

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Chapter 1

differentiated by their respective nature and function. They are also designed to support the idea of a natural hierarchy among the citizens, or to make everyone feel more secure in his position. In Machiavelli’s writings, they appear solely to establish a map of military forces, in The Prince and the Discourses.20 Because this metaphor depends upon rigid definitions of the boundaries of the body, the number and functions of its parts, it cannot be used in the description of the city. Yet Machiavelli does conceive of the city as a body. Borrowing his vocabulary from the medical conceptions of his time, combined with Aristotelian natural philosophy, Machiavelli develops another organic metaphor. In his work, the city appears as a living, mortal body, a complex mixture, like a human being, composed of simple, opposing elements.21 Each city has its own lifespan. Some cities die before they reach a ripe old age, but if their rulers are wise enough to take the appropriate measures, cities endure. These city-bodies undergo an alteration, in the Aristotelian sense of the term: that is, a modification that affects their properties alone, not their substratum. Growth and imperial expansion are examples of such changes.22 Cities are also subject to another type of evolution which, by contrast, modifies their nature. It necessitates a change in institutions and procedures. This evolution is corruption. Such a conception of the body politic differs significantly from the other organic metaphors dominant in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, due to its fundamental egalitarianism (the simple elements that form the mixed bodies are not ranked hierarchically). Likewise, it differs in that it insists on one aspect that these metaphors elude: the life cycle, from the moment of birth to that of death. The metaphor of the city-body identified in the Discourses is not Machiavelli’s alone. We encounter some semblance of it in the authors who were his contemporaries, like Guicciardini – a thinker who insists on the pace of growth and decline, and on the possibility of staving off the fall or death of

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Finally, we must recall the speech made by Menenius Agrippa to the plebs, who had staged an uprising and fled to the mountains. Unlike the preceding metaphors, it emphasizes the need for cooperation between the various parts of the body, and the stomach, not the head, plays an essential role (Livy 1919, II, 32, p. 325). Machiavelli 1996, II, 30 and 1998, 26. See on this issue Aristotle 1984, On Generation and Corruption, II, 8, p. 2019: ‘Now all compounds presuppose in their coming-to-be constituents which are contrary to one another: and in all compounds there is contained one set of the contrasted extremes. Hence the other set must be contained in them also, so that every compound will include all the “simple” bodies’. Aristotle 1984, On Generation and Corruption, I, 4, 319b, pp. 1197-1120.

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the city.23 Nevertheless, as we shall see, Machiavelli uses this metaphor in an original way, in his thinking about institutions.24 Reading Florentine Histories confirms two aspects of the Machiavellian description of the phenomenon of the city, for which the Discourses lay the groundwork. Yet, at first glance, it would seem that Florence is a special case, in many respects. Whereas Rome is apprehended from the outset as an example of discord, Florence remained united until 1215.25 Until that time, antagonistic humours had not really had an opportunity to develop, because the city was preoccupied with its survival and independence. As a result, there was no room for internal dissension. Moreover, when the first hostilities appeared in

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Guicciardini 1998, 71, p. 137 and above all p. 139, p. 163, 189, p. 184; Guicciardini 1994. On this point, it is important to point out that 20th-century French philosopher and physician Georges Canguilhem’s criticism of the use of organic metaphors for the body politic notably excludes Machiavelli. The fact that Machiavelli refers to the theory of humours rescues him, for his logic does not steer him towards a representation of the city as an organic whole. It is worthwhile to cite Canguilhem’s remarks in full, because far from constituting an objection to Machiavelli, they attest, on the contrary, to a shared conviction: the government of men is essentially fragile and precarious: ‘Concerning society, we must address a confusion that consists in the confounding of organization and organism. That fact that society is organized – and there’s no society without a minimum of organization – does not mean that it is organic; I would gladly say that organization at the level of society is of the order not of organic organization, but of design. What defines the organism is precisely that its purpose, in the form of its totality, is present to it and to all its parts. I apologize – I will perhaps scandalize you – but society has no proper purpose; a society is a means; a society is more on the order of a machine or of a tool than on the order of organism. Certainly, a society bears a resemblance to what is organic since it is a collectivity of living beings. We cannot, properly speaking, decompose a society, but if we analyze it, which is a very different thing, we discover that while a society is a collectivity of living beings, this collectivity is neither an individual nor a species. It is not an individual, because it is not an organism endowed with a purpose and a totality that are obtained by a specialized system of devices of regulation; it is not a species, because it is, as Bergson says, closed. Human societies are not the human species. Bergson shows that the human species in is search of its own specific sociability. Thus, society, being neither an individual nor a species, but a being of ambiguous genus, is as much a machine as it is a living being; not being its own end, it simply represents a means, it is a tool. Consequently, not being an organism, society presupposes and even calls for regulations; there is no society without regulation, and there is no society without rules, yet in society there is no self-regulation. There, regulation is always, if I may say so, added on and always precarious.’ Canguilhem 2012, pp. 76-77. Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1083.

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1215, they turned out to be the product of a family conflict.26 True, the dispute, which began as a private matter, rapidly broadened in scope until it turned into the opposition between Guelphs and Ghibellines. It is not related to the conflict between the desires of the people and those of the great, because each party included a combination of noble families and commoners.27 Starting in Chapter II, 12, however, we encounter the familiar template set up in The Prince and, especially, the Discourses. Machiavelli actually establishes a hierarchy between two sorts of antagonism: The wars without and the peace within had almost destroyed in Florence the Guelph and Ghibelline parties. There remained active only those disagreements that naturally exist in all cities between the powerful and the people, because, since the people wish to live according to the law and the powerful to control the laws, it is not possible for them to agree. Such disagreement was not revealed as long as both feared the Ghibellines, but as soon as they were conquered, it showed its power; every day, someone of the people was injured, and the laws and the magistrates were not strong enough to avenge him, because relatives and friends protected the noble against the power of the Priors and the Captain.28 Thus, different sorts of humours exist, as attested by Machiavelli’s occasional employment thereof to designate all of the inhabitants of a city, a region, a country, etc. Nevertheless, the predominant usage refers to the people and the great: these are ‘ordinary’ humours. Likewise, different sorts of conflicts exist within the city, but the antagonism that plays a driving role in its history is the 26 27

28

Machiavelli, 1989, 3, pp. 1083-1804. As Machiavelli himself indicates, Dante tells the story of this conflict (Dante 1996, Paradiso, XVI, vv. 136-147). The names ‘Guelphs’ and ‘Ghibellines’ are derived, respectively, from the German ‘Welf’ – the family name of the dukes of Bavaria – and “Waiblingen,” the name of the family seat of the Hohenstaufen dukes of Swabia, apparently used as a battle cry. They were probably introduced in Italy between 1198 and 1218, when partisans of the emperor Otto IV, a Welf, were fighting for central Italy, with the support of Philip of Swabia and his nephew Frederick II. In chronicles of the conflict between imperial and papal powers between 1235 and 1250, the Guelphs supported the Papacy and the Ghibellines opposed them, supporting empire. The link between a family conflict and the one between Ghibellines and Guelphs goes back to the time when, in order to rule Tuscany, and to the detriment of the Church, Frederick II backed one family group (the Ubertis and their allies), who had been wronged by a broken promise of marriage. This group therefore became Ghibelline, and its opponents the Guelphs. Machiavelli 1989, 3, pp. 1093-1094.

Describing Hot Societies

13

one opposing the great and the people. Just as Marx later emphasized the real class struggle (between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie),29 so Machiavelli favours the conflict that opposes the ordinary humours, those of the great and those of the people. In Book II, we find several references to a description of the city which, it would seem, was inspired more by a concern for reporting on the social reality of Florence, and based on the terms that were commonly used at the time to designate the various categories of the population. These terms are: the ‘noble’/the ‘lower class’/the ‘people’ (II, 34); the ‘people’/the ‘noble’/the ‘lower class’ associated with the ‘humble people’ (II, 36); the ‘noble’/the ‘people’/the ‘lower people’ (II, 39 et 40).30 Such designations are the echo of the qualification of social groups that gradually entered the vocabulary starting in the 10th and 11th centuries in Italy’s city-states. Initially, the maiores were landowners, who were also engaged in merchant activities. They held de facto domination over the processes of political deliberation and decision-making, by contrast with the minories – that is, the craftsmen or peasants. Some of the latter lived in the surrounding countryside; others, in the city, where they sold what they produced. A third class, the mediocres, covered craftsmen organized into guilds and merchants who were not nobles. By the 12th century, the need emerged to establish more precise distinctions, particularly to describe the richest members of the people. Some of the expressions we noted were boni homines de populo, or grandi e nobili popolani. The latter is fairly surprising, since by definition, the popolo is not noble. As a result, there is a name for the more powerful among the people, differentiating them from the more humble (popolo minuto and plebe), excluded from wielding any power. It is important to note that, on the whole, these terms refer to a classification forged primarily from socioeconomic distinctions, to which political distinctions were then grafted.31 Nevertheless, just as the socio-economic considerations stated in Chapter I, 55 remain fairly rare in the Discourses and are mediatized by the analysis of a feeling, this description of the Florentine city is presented only in its vaguest outlines. It is as though Machiavelli had ventured towards a socio-economic vision of the composition of the city, only to turn away from it in the end. It 29 30

31

Marx 1972. Machiavelli 1989, 3. In this translation, the expression ‘the noble’ is used to designate what we call, in this book, ‘the great’; the choice of the word ‘class’ – as in the phrase ‘lower class’ – to translate ‘popolo minuto’ should not let us infer that Machiavelli’s thought paves the way for Marx’s theory, even though socio-economic inequalities and status are indeed at stake in these names. On this subject, see Waley 1969.

14

Chapter 1

appears in his work, but does not play any real role in the heart of his thought. In the Discourses, the analysis of the conflict opposing the desires of the great and those of the people, in Rome, is the exemplary case of conflict. The history of Florence is penetrated by an identical conflict, the particularity of which is that it is borne by different agents. First, two communities of nobles clash; then the nobles clash with the people; and finally, at the point where Machiavelli concludes his account, the people are opposed to the populace. Machiavelli’s treatment of the Revolt of the Ciompi (1378) confirms two things: first, the primacy, in Machiavelli’s mind, of the conflict between the desire to command and the desire not to be commanded and, secondly, his tendency to conceal a socio-economic analysis, preferring an examination of the passions and collective sentiments in play in the conflict. The account centres on provisional access of the populace and popolo minuto to the magistracy. A similar process was already mentioned in the Discourses, in reference to the Roman plebs. Here, the lines of opposition are drawn between the populace and the populo minuto, on the one hand and, on the other, the rich citizens, the heads of guilds, and their henchmen. The working classes despised the rich citizens, ‘because they were not paid for their labour according to what they believed their just deserts’.32 Indeed, these two lower classes were not organized into their own guilds and corporations. As a result, they were subject to arbitrary treatment, and had absolutely no way to defend themselves or make demands: Moreover, in organizing the corporations or the gilds, many of those trades in which the lower class and the very poorest people engage did not have corporations or gilds of their own, but were subject to various gilds according to the nature of their trades. Hence when they were dissatisfied with their labors or in any way oppressed by their masters, they had nowhere to go for refuge except to the magistrate of the gild that ruled them, yet they believed he furnished them with no proper justice.33 This dissatisfaction led to a riot. Initially, its outcome was positive for the common labourers and lower classes. Guilds were created for them, and they were granted magistracies. Nevertheless, the Ciompi turmoil ultimately ended in a failure for them because, three years after the revolt occurred, Florence returned to its earlier guild organisation, and access to the most important magistracies was forbidden to the populace and popolo minuto. At the end of this 32 33

Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1158. Machiavelli 1989, 3, pp. 1158-1159.

Describing Hot Societies

15

period, conflict broke out between two other groups, the ‘wealthy citizens’ and the ‘lowest class’. Our reinterpretation of The Prince, the Discourses, and the Florentine Histories shows that three descriptive modes are operating in the Machiavellian conception of the city, but the emphasis he places on them is unequal. The first, belonging to a socio-economic register, casts the groups by distinguishing between their relative wealth or poverty, and the methods adopted by the city over the course of its history to distribute the sources of wealth. The number of groups is not rigidly fixed; it varies, depending on the city and era under consideration. This descriptive mode appears ‘mutedly’ in Machiavelli’s analysis.34 The second, which is of an institutional nature, refers to political participation. It catalogues and names the groups which have access to magistracies. Again, in this case, the number of groups is not necessarily defined, nor is the nature of their composition. In Rome, for example, the people’s tribunes did not appear until 479 BC. The signification of the institutional mode becomes apparent when it is compared to the third, which is concerned with humours, desires, and appetites. The people and the great fight over access to magistracies and how they are distributed. This mode describes communities that identify themselves by a specific desire or interest (not to mention the passions and social habitus associated with these desires and interests). The third mode ushers us into the universe of relativity and viewpoint. Indeed, Machiavelli does not describe the city objectively. Instead, he portrays the city in terms of the communities that make it up. The desire of each of these communities is what determines the history of the city and the distribution of power. Machiavelli’s work does not produce any all-federating or overarching rhetoric. No single viewpoint wins out over its opposite. Each desire produces a different painting of the city.35 Because Machiavelli demonstrates the civil conflict and makes it possible to decode the history of hot societies, the third mode of describing the city takes precedence over the others. It represents Machiavelli’s specific contribution to conceptualizing the body politic. 34

35

The role and scope of economic interests were not ignored by Machiavelli (Barthas 2011) and we agree with Del Lucchese that Machiavelli’s attention to the economic causes and motives of social struggle is clearer in the Florentine Histories than in his previous works (Del Lucchese 2009). However, even in this work, his conception of humours remains focused on passions and desires and their political effects. We are deliberately employing a pictorial metaphor. Indeed, we believe we see a relationship between Machiavelli’s political thinking and the experimentation with perspective under way at that time in painting.

16

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Tumult In The City: Neither To Abuse, Nor To Deride, But To Understand Vertigo of the One. No doubt. I see in it above all the trace of a fundamental denial: the denial of conflict as the law of politics and life in the city Anything is preferable to recognizing that in the city power rests on the hands of one group even if this group constitutes a large numerical majority. It would be fruitful to consider the ways in which modern representations of the political have retained this logic. But we might also ask why there is such a consensus to make consensus the bond of politics. Or in other words, what is it that makes the choice of consensus seem incontrovertible?1 Far from being among those afflicted by the Vertigo of the One, Machiavelli is constantly committed to asserting that the phenomenon whereby one group dominates another is present in every city, and to understanding the resultant ‘tumult’. Any vertigo his work does contain is caused by division. The subject of civil conflict prompts him to write one of his only political and epistemological recommendations: chiding earlier historians of Florence, including the most famous, Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini, for neglecting the matter, he states that nothing is more useful to citizens governing States than an account of hatred and division, ‘in order that such citizens, having grown wise through the suffering of others can keep themselves united’.2 Actually, these historians, like Marchione di Coppo Stefani and Alamano Acciaioli, pay considerable attention to inner turmoil. They report the historical conflicts, and pass a range of judgments on them, going from compassion for the people in rebellion to the conviction that, ultimately, the course of history is steered by fortune, to the detriment of cities and their inhabitants.3 If, in his own account, Machiavelli arouses some doubt about consensus as a necessary bond in politics, he is not boundless in his praise of civil conflict. Instead, he elaborates on conflict in order to evaluate its effects, both positive 1 Loraux 2006, p. 70. 2 Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1031. 3 Stella 1993. Donato Acciaioli translated two books by Bruni into the vernacular: L’Historia fiorentina and L’Historia universale de’ suoi tempi. Poggio Bracciolini is also the author of an eight-book History of Florence, covering the period between 1350 and 1455.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004376014_003

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Tumult In The City

and negative. The analysis of his account does not require that we successively review The Prince, the Discourses, and lastly, the Florentine Histories, the way we did in Chapter 1. Actually, Machiavelli’s theory of civil conflict is remarkably coherent from one text to the next, so it is possible to analyse it by comparing various statements derived from all three.

…

Altercation, argument, confusion, controversy, difference, discord, disorder, disagreement, dispute, dissension, disunion, division, furor, civil war, hostility, scandal, sedition, tumult, upset: all of these terms appear either scattered or in succession, with no apparent order or criterion for their selection. However, although the abundance of the terminology Machiavelli borrowed from everyday language to apply to civil conflict might seem to make the conceptualization of this conflict impossible, the reader must not be deterred. The terms all refer to the opposition between the desires of the great and those of the people, desires which cannot be gratified together. Machiavelli is not seeking a single term to designate this conflict. For, although it is important to him to show that the various forms of “tumult” identifiable by all these terms arise from one central opposition, the variety of forms is an essential feature of the antagonism. Nor are the desires of the great and those of the people, made to be the centre of our attention, described in a one-sided way; although in most cases, the crux of the matter is the desire to dominate and the desire not to be dominated, we also encounter the verbs ‘command’ and ‘oppress’ (The Prince, 9) and, speaking of the people, Machiavelli mentions ‘a greater will to live free’ (Discourses I, 5), and also of a ‘too great a desire of the people to be free’ (Discourses I, 40). As we shall see, the many and varied formulations, instead of attesting to a conceptual hesitation, demonstrate shades of meaning that are an accurate reflection of the nature of conflict, as ever-changing and evolving. For the moment, let us study an antagonism between the great and the people in the case where the desire driving the people is not ‘too great’. In this configuration, the desire of the great is defined in a simple way. All of the verbs Machiavelli applies refer to a superior stance, and the expression of this superiority to the other. ‘Oppress’, in particular, means to burden someone, to put pressure on him. In meaning, the verbs remain general. This aspect of the language is important: under a single idea, Machiavelli subsumes all of the different ways in which the great gratify their desire, depending on whether the state is a republic or a principality. In a principality, the great may be ‘nobles’ in the sense Machiavelli confers upon this term, so that the people are the

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Chapter 2

subjects not only of the king, but also of the nobles. In a republic, the great’s desire for superiority is expressed by a desire to occupy the magistracies. In fact, for them, it is the only position from which they can dominate the people. In either case, the point is to impose a prevalence, based on the great’s feeling of inequality. Such a prevalence does not rely upon the consent of the people, or on a competence recognized by all. In this sense, when Machiavelli says that the great desire freedom, he means that the great wish to enjoy a ‘freedom of egoism, of greed – a taste for battle, conquest and plunder (…) that can be exercised only through domination’.4 As for the desire of the people, in this case, it first seems to arise from a reaction to the desire of the great: the people wish to be neither oppressed, nor dominated. This description is incomplete. Actually, Machiavelli sometimes gives popular will a positive connotation. When he does, this will arises not as a reaction to another desire, but as the way to fulfil a more fundamental desire: to live in security.5 Machiavelli does not explicitly define the concept of security, but Chapters 7 and 21 of The Prince make the meaning fairly clear. A feeling of security refers to leading a life free of the fear of personal crimes and governmental abuses, a life in the course of which one can peacefully ply one’s trade and be assured of one’s possessions. The people’s desire, like that of the great, has a malleable aspect: it is expressed differently depending upon the form of government, principality or republic. In a principality, it consists of a desire for protection from the prince, explicit in the civil principality – ‘the people, when they see they cannot resist the great, give reputation to one, and make him prince, so as to be defended with his authority’6 – but in fact present in every sort of principality. The expression of popular will is more complex in a republic. It is a desire for participation in both senses of the term: to share common characteristics with, and to take part in. If, to assure their superiority over the people, the great wish to monopolise the magistracy, the people wish on the contrary to share these positions with them, to ensure that the great will be unable to dominate them. But this participation in the processes of deliberating and deciding the public affairs of the city is based on a quality – the ability to govern – that is shared with the great. In order to share the magistracies with the great, the people must first prevail as a part of the city possessing the ability to govern.7

4 5 6 7

Foucault 2003, p. 148. See particularly Discourses on Livy, I, 16 on this issue. Machiavelli 1998, p. 39. Gaille 2002.

Tumult In The City

19

Once that is accomplished, they can aim for effective conquest of the magistracies. Machiavelli associates the manifestation of several passions, notably hatred, fear, ambition, and envy, with this disunion. In relation to these passions, Machiavelli, like Spinoza, adopts an approach aimed at understanding, not at abusing or deriding.8 Two types of passion are discussed in his analysis: those which attest to the relations between the great and the people – hatred and fear – and those associated with the insatiable aspect of desire – ambition and envy. Hatred plays a predominant role. Elicited by the betrayal of desires, hatred reinforced by indignation [sdegno]9 becomes a source of many demonstrations of civil conflict and its intensification. Anger and the desire for revenge are associated with it.10 The other major passion is fear, or dread – Machiavelli uses the terms interchangeably – and associates suspicion [sospetto] with it.11 His analysis points out that fear is often the root of contention, and cites the reign of the Tarquins as an example: It appeared that in Rome there was a great union between the plebs and the Senate after the Tarquins were expelled, and that the nobles had put away their pride of theirs, had taken on a popular spirit, and were tolerable to anyone, however mean. This deception remained concealed, nor did one see the cause of it while the Tarquins lived. Fearing them, and having fear that if the plebs were treated badly, it would not take their side, the nobility behaved humanly toward them; but as soon as the Tarquins were dead and fear fled from the nobles, they began to spit out that poison against the plebs that they had held in their breast, and they offended it in all the modes they could.12 He nevertheless indicates that fear does not necessarily lead to passivity and submission; it can also be a source of action. Thus, fear of the great may drive the plebs to support a private citizen and make him prince.13 Likewise, in the tumult of the Ciompis, fear is what motivates the assemblies of the wool-card-

8 9 10 11 12 13

Spinoza 2002, p. 277. See Del Lucchese 2004, on fear and hope, p. 219 sq. See, for example, Machiavelli 1989, 3, pp. 1102-1103. See Machiavelli 1996, III, 7. See, for example, Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1097. Machiavelli 1996, 3, p. 15. Machiavelli 1998, 3, p. 39.

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Chapter 2

ers, in which they discuss ‘the events that had taken place’ and show ‘one another the dangers they were in’.14 Ambition (for power) and envy (of glory, wealth, or honours), related to fundamental human discontent, are also repeatedly demonstrated in civil conflict.15 They rank alongside hatred and fear as secondary causes of civil conflict or its escalation. Competition for honours, glory, or wealth, creating a situation where these goods are rare, is not in itself a source of contention. Instead, it is the resentment and ambition of some, and the fear of others of losing these goods – especially when women and property are at stake, according to Machiavelli – which engender and fuel discord.16 Overall, Machiavelli grants a central role to memory and imagination in the relationship linking passions to civil conflict. Memory and imagination maintain the passions: memory, by drawing support from past experience, and imagination by fictitiously transposing into the future events that are likely to occur. In Machiavelli’s eyes, the fact that men have been robbed of their property is an especially indelible memory, constantly aroused by the aching need they feel for their lost possessions. This memory hardens their hatred for those who stole from them.17 Imagination also fires the passions that are the source of conflict. For example, the wealthy are hostile to the poor chiefly because the rich fear and imagine the loss of their property, not because they face any real threat of losing it.18 Hatred, fear, ambition, envy: these passions are not equally shared by the people and the great. To Machiavelli, although hatred seems to be distributed to both, fear appears to be a passion of the plebs while ambition and envy are those of the great.19 As a result, characteristic behaviours are associated with the humours. The people tend to be turbulent and uncontrollable, while the greats tend to be insolent and arrogant.20 Of course, cases may occur where the great are fearful and the people are envious or ambitious. To use a musical metaphor, however, fear is the dominant chord in popular passions while ambition sets the tone for great. The great are well aware of this, and use their power to awe and amaze the people to their own advantage. Cesare Borgia stages the spectacular murder of his minister, leaving his subjects ‘satisfied and 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1159. P. Vincieri insists on the role played by these motivations, reminding us that Machiavelli made them central themes as early as the Capitolo dell’Ambizione (Vincieri 2000, p. 22). See Machiavelli 1996, I, 5. Machiavelli 1996, III, 23. Machiavelli 1996, I, 5. Machiavelli 1998, 19. Machiavelli 1996, I, 46.

Tumult In The City

21

stupefied’;21 the bishop of Volterra dons his ecclesiastical robes to calm an angry mob.22 The effects of this manipulation dawn on the people only occasionally, in relation to exceptional events – ‘Dress us then in their clothes, and they in ours; without doubt we shall seem noble and they ignoble’, asserts a seditious plebeian in the revolt of the Ciompi.23 The description of these opposing desires and the passions associated with them leads neither to a theory of the genesis of conflict nor to an explanation of what causes it to be perpetuated. True, in the Discourses, I, 2, Machiavelli mentions the emergence of social classes which resemble the people and the great, to some degree: on the one hand, the multitude, weak and timid, and on the other, those who stand out due to a combination of qualities, both moral and material – magnanimity, generosity, wealth, and nobility. However, try as we may, it is impossible for us to match these categories with those of the people and the great defined by their desires in the Discourses, I, 4, an impossibility that is exacerbated when Machiavelli explicitly sets aside the classification of governments that is the backbone of the analysis in Chapter I, 2. Moreover, the reasons for the perpetuation of the desires of the great and the people do not seem to elicit any special interest from him. At the most, in Discourses III, 56, he mentions the fact that customs and mores are perpetuated by family education. Machiavelli’s writings situate us more in a historical period when the differentiation process between the people and the great has already occurred, when their humours have already been composed. In Machiavelli’s work, civil conflict is devoid of an origin or assignable cause: it is something primal that has always existed. The fact that Machiavelli’s writing contains no theory of the source of conflict is due neither to chance nor to negligence. The desires of the great and of the people appear and are perpetuated hand-in-hand. One cannot be considered in the absence of the other, as is proved by the formal analysis of their antagonism. That very characteristic invalidates any inquiry into their genesis. Their opposition does not correspond to the model provided by logical contradiction. In fact, ‘The term “contrary” is applied (1) to those attributes differing in genus which cannot belong at the same time to the same subject’.24 As we saw in the preceding chapter, the great and people do not make up the parts of a whole. What is more, the desire of the people is not the opposite of the

21 22 23 24

Machiavelli 1996, p. 30. Machiavelli 1996, I, 54. Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1160. See Adverse 2009 on visibility, appearance, and politics. Aristotle 1984, Métaphysique, ∆, 10, 1018 a, p. 4570.

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desire of the great (A/non-A): it is another desire, the satisfaction of which is impossible at the same time as the satisfaction of the desire of the great. Nor does this opposition refer to ‘real opposition’ defined by Kant with regard to the concept of negative greatness; in other words, the opposition in which one of the predicates rules out the consequence of the other.25 The relationship between the desires of the great and those of the people certainly has something in common with ‘real contradiction’, in the sense that Machiavelli thinks the confrontation of the two phenomena is positive. Actually, the desire of the people – even if formulated as a negation, ‘not to be dominated, commanded, controlled’, etc., is not the deprivation of the desire to dominate; it is a desire of another nature altogether. Moreover, in the Kantian idea of ‘real contradiction’, we find the fact that although the two desires can be asserted together, their consequences cannot – that is, the oppression of the people and distribution of magistracies favourable to the people’s desire not to be oppressed.26 This definition enables us to escape from the trap we encountered earlier, with the Aristotelian definition of ‘contrariness’. Nevertheless, like Kant’s definition, it relies on a distinction between the predicates of a single object, whereas the point is to conceive of an opposition between two elements that are not the parts of a whole. Pierre Macherey suggests an interpretation of the expression ‘One divides itself into two’ which informs the nature of the relationship between the desire of the great and that of the people.27 The expression cannot be correctly understood unless we succeed in holding the One and division together, without attributing an original position to either one. Actually, the elements of this division represent two inseparable aspects in the sense that the identity of each is conceivable only in their mutual exclusion. In and of themselves, they do not exist. The identity of opposites is also their mutual exclusion: it is not given by and of their union, addition, or fusion, but by and of their division. Therefore, it is not the innate identity of an essence which would seemingly be asserted in its relation to the self; but it is this unique “unity” that makes 25 26

27

Kant 1992, p. 211. Ibid: “For that which is posited by the one tendency, construed as existing on its own, is cancelled by the other tendency, and the two tendencies are true predicates of one and the self-same thing, and they belong to it simultaneously. The consequence of the opposition is also nothing, but nothing in another sense to that in which it occurs in a contradiction”. Macherey 1999, p. 66.

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Tumult In The City

it so a contrary never exists in or for itself. The existence of “its” contrary is implicated from the outset, intrinsically and not extrinsically. It could again be said that identity is nothing other than difference.28 The opposition Machiavelli identifies between the people and the great corresponds to the type of identity consisting solely in division and difference. It is true that the desires of each, while they are invariably defined in relation to the other, are incompatible. They therefore refer to nothing other than themselves.

…

Unlike the desire of the great, the desire of the people can take on another form – mentioned by Machiavelli in his accounts of both the history of Rome and that of Florence: it can be, or become, the desire to dominate or conquer honours and riches, like the great. In that case, the city is divided by a conflict opposing two identical and competing desires. In order to understand the reasons for this transformation and the configuration to which it leads, we must return to the work Machiavelli carried out, in his writings, on distinction with regard to civil discord. He assigns a role to the common perception of the conflict. A series of terms attest to this consideration, all referring to ways in which conflict is sensed or felt: cries [grida, gridare], turmoil [la turba], roars [romori], disturbances of the existing situation [perturbare], the fury or energy of the troublemakers [furore], confusion [confusione], tumult [tumulti]. By applying these terms, Machiavelli makes explicit the source of the common judgment – which is negative – in relation to civil conflict. The formation of this judgment is akin to the processes described by David Hume, using the concepts of impression and idea:29 strong, vivid impressions derived from experience strike the mind, spawning ideas and then thoughtful impressions, such as desire or aversion. Here, the clamour, the chases in the streets, the disturbances, and the rallies in public squares engender an unpleasant impression, inspiring fear. Machiavelli elaborates his own thinking in opposition to this common perception of civil conflict. To go beyond the common perception, Machiavelli studies subtle distinctions in relation to two main subjects. The first consists of grasping the varying degrees of intensity of the civil conflict. Although to some degree, the word 28 29

Macherey 1999, pp. 70-71. Hume 1888, I, 1.

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Chapter 2

‘tumult’ is neutral from this standpoint, the expression ‘civil war’ is applied only once by Machiavelli. It refers to an extreme intensity of civil conflict, as opposed to a more attenuated form which could be described by the term ‘dispute’, for example. Similarly, there are differences of degree ranging from ‘controversy’ to ‘scandal’, from ‘contention’ to ‘sedition’. These differences derive from the level of violence in the means employed – the fundamental question being whether the citizens ‘take up arms’ [venire nelle armi], ‘come to blows’ [venire alle zuffe], or simply fight with words [venire a parole]. We find the same range of degrees in Machiavelli’s description of the actions of the antagonistic persons or groups. These antagonists may simply be the ‘partisans’ of a leader – for example, the Orsinis and Colonnas who, honoured with many offices and commands, become the partisans of Cesare Borgia – but also the ‘factious’.30 From taking a stand to physical confrontation, they engage in the broadest variety of behaviour – accusation, insult, threat, calumny –, and likewise, clash in a variety of ways – destruction, looting, pillaging, burning, and killing. The second subject of Machiavelli’s discriminatory work consists in evaluating what it is appropriate to call ‘good’ and ‘bad’ conflicts, although Machiavelli does not use these terms himself. In other words, Machiavelli judges whether the outcome of the conflict is positive or negative for a city’s free development. For example, the term ‘scandal’, applied to disturbances in Florence which, according to Machiavelli, were engendered by the absence of ‘an order’31 making it possible to accuse citizens and punish calumniators, gives this conflict a negative cast. Some of the terms Machiavelli uses to designate the parties in conflict – parte [sides], i partigiani [partisans], i aderenti or i seguaci [followers], le sette [sects], and i fazioni [the parties] – also connote his disapproval. This is the case with ‘parties’ as applied to the actions of the Gracchus brothers, responsible for the end of freedom in Rome (Discourses, I, 37), and also with the term ‘sect’ to designate the common practice of calumny in Florence (Discourses, I, 8). The judgmental aspect is explicit in Book VII of the History of Florence, presented as part of a wide-ranging survey: But first, according to my habit, I wish to some extent to explain in general why those who believe republics can be united are greatly deceived in their belief. It is true that some divisions injure republics, and some divisions benefit them. Those do harm that are accompanied with factions and partisans; those bring benefit that are kept up without factions and without partisans. Since, then, the founder of a republic cannot 30 31

Machiavelli 1998, p. 83. Machiavelli 1996, p. 27.

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provide that there will be no enmities within it, he needs at least to provide that there will be no factions.32 The multiplicity of terms Machiavelli draws upon to describe civil conflict is meaningful. Some of these terms convey the common perception, which he intends to overcome. Another set have been carefully chosen for their ability to point out distinctions, in order to shed light upon a variation in intensity of the civil conflict, from verbal dispute to armed battle. Still other terms connote a positive or negative evaluation of this conflict. The key idea in Machiavelli’s judgment of the antagonism between the great and the people is the one of excessive desire. He presents it in Book III, Chapter 1 of the History of Florence. In this chapter, Machiavelli compares the histories of Rome and Florence, from the standpoint of the divisions and enmities that have occurred in the two cities. For centuries, in Rome, these conflicts led to laws. However, in Florence, their outcome has been clashes, murders, and exiles. According to Machiavelli, this difference can be explained by the nature of popular desire in each of the two cities. Let us quote the whole of this essential comparison: This [the diversity of humours] kept Rome disunited. This, if small things with great may be compared, has kept Florence divided, though in the two cities diverse effects were produced because the enmities that at the outset existed in Rome between the nobles and the people ended by debating, those in Florence by fighting; those in Rome were terminated by law, those in Florence by the exile and death of many citizens; those in Rome always increased military power, those in Florence wholly destroyed it; those in Rome brought that city from an equality of citizens to a very great inequality; those in Florence brought her from inequality to a great equality.  It must be that this difference of effects was caused by the difference of purposes of these two peoples, for the people of Rome wished to enjoy supreme honors along with the people; the people of Florence fought to be alone in the government, without any participation in it by the nobles. Because the Roman people’s desire was more reasonable, their injuries to the nobles were more endurable, so that the nobility yielded easily and was not coming to arms; hence, after some debates, they agreed in making a law with which the people would be satisfied and by which the nobles would remain in their public offices. On the other hand, the Florentine people’s desire was harmful and unjust, so that the nobility with 32

Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1336.

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greater forces prepared to defend themselves, and therefore the result was blood and the exile of citizens, and the laws then made were planned not for the common profit but altogether in favor of the conqueror. From this it also resulted that through the people’s victories the city of Rome became more excellent, because, along with nobles, men from the people could be appointed to administer the magistracies, the armies, and the high offices; thus the latter acquired the same ability the former had, and that city, as she increased in excellence, increased in power. But in Florence, since the people won, the nobles continued to be deprived of high offices...33 Here, Machiavelli emphasizes the role played by popular desire. In Florence, the people’s appetite goes beyond the desire not to be dominated. Not satisfied merely with not being commanded, the people have developed a thirst for domination, which can only be slaked at the expense of the great. In Rome, by contrast, the desire of the plebs was reasonable. Machiavelli gives a masterly illustration of it in Discourses, I, 47, when he mentions the episode when, realizing that the plebeians were incompetent as tribunes, the same plebeians appointed tribunes from the nobility. He agrees with Titus Livy’s praise for the decision.34 In Florence, the desire was harmful and unjust. It provoked the wrath of the great. In this case, civil conflict no longer refers to a match between opposites, as we identified it above. Instead, it results in competition that is the source of violent, destructive clashes. Thus, Machiavelli measures an excess of desire according to two rules: if it is aimed at satisfying a personal ambition, it is excessive, and if it causes a desperate reaction from another humour, it is also excessive. In other words, excess is defined both by the goal of the desire (personal ambition as opposed to concern for the common good) and by its effects on the opposing humour – which is, in fact, coherent with the relational conception of the two desires Machiavelli suggests. The reason why desire evolves towards excess in itself is partly due to its nature: It is the verdict of the ancient writers that men are wont to worry in evil and become bored with good, and that from both of these passions the same effects arise. For whenever engaging in combat through necessity is taken from men they engage in combat through ambition, which is so powerful in human breasts that it never abandons them at whatever rank 33 34

Machiavelli 1989, 3, pp. 1140-1141. Machiavelli 1996, I, 47; Livy 1922, IV, 6, 12, p. 279.

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they rise to. The cause is that nature has created men so that they are able to desire everything and are unable to attain everything. So, since the desire is always greater than the power of acquiring, the result is discontent with what one possesses and a lack of satisfaction with it. From this arises the variability of their fortune; for since some men desire to have more, and some fear to lose what have been acquired, they come to enmities and to war, from which arise the ruin of one province, and the exaltation of another.35 Whereas Plato defined the tyrannical man as the victim of naturally lawless desires,36 Machiavelli regards all men as creatures who are essentially dissatisfied with their fate, regardless of what it may be: they always desire but cannot obtain everything. The gap between the wish and its fulfilment gives rise to a constantly throbbing ‘discontent’ in the human mind.37 This view of humankind, shared by some of Machiavelli’s contemporaries, like Guicciardini, surviving in the Christian vision of human desire, and backed up by the Galenic medical theory of the insatiate desires of the body and soul,38 has been an anthropological topos since Antiquity: man is by essence anxious and, as a result, can never derive constant enjoyment from the same object. The ‘ancient writers’ to whom Machiavelli refers are doubtless Horace, Livy, and Thucydides (translated into Latin by Lorenzo Valla), but also Lucretius, whose De rerum natura we know Machiavelli had copied.39 However, Machiavelli is unlike his fellow thinkers in that once he observes the insatiability of human desire and the dissatisfaction it engenders, he does not seek the means to control, treat, or lessen it. Instead, he analyses its political effects: in relation to changes in factors that are socio-historical themselves (the means by which wealth is distributed, by which citizenship is granted, and by which magistracies are distributed), men’s insatiable desire is aimed at different objects, objects which are increasingly likely to cause armed conflict and an overflow of the passions of the great and the people.

…

35 36 37 38 39

Machiavelli 1996, p. 78. See on the nature of desire Del Lucchese 2004, p. 50 sq. Plato 2003, p. 285. See also Machiavelli 1996, III, 21 and Machiavelli 1989, 3, II, 21 and 22, and V, 14. Guicciardini 1994, pp. 36-37; Gilson 1994, pp. 266-268; Galen 1963. Lucretius 2001, III, vv. 1053-1067, p. 97. Machiavelli’s manuscript copy is preserved in the Codex Rossianus 884 at the Vatican Library. It is believed to date from 1495. See Brown, 2010.

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The conviction that the emergence and survival of political freedom are associated with strife opposing the great and the people, and the revelation of a phenomenon – the transition of desire to excess – which tips a city into a time of violence and destruction, are the concepts underpinning the attempt to differentiate between conflict with negative effects and conflict with positive effects on the free becoming of the city. Only certain forms of civil conflict bring about freedom. It is erroneous to assert that Machiavelli breaks away from a tradition going back to Socrates, extolling civil concord. The tradition itself is fictitious; actually, there are several different conceptions of civil harmony.40 It is just as erroneous to say that Machiavelli is systematically opposed to the ideal of civil concord. In his eyes, freedom is the fundamental issue in civil conflict, even if the agents of the conflict do not perceive it as such. The freedom at stake in the opposition between the great and the people is civitas libera, the type characterising republican government. It must not be understood from the standpoint of the liberal conception of freedom, derived from the Hobbesian definition.41 The republican freedom Machiavelli describes refers to the rise of the city-states in northern and central Italy: that is, cities independent of monarchic rule to which they had earlier been subject.42 On the one hand, freedom is erected as a political ideal, opposed to the authority the signori claimed to exert; on the other hand, the city-states cannot be free unless their citizens effectively take part in the political life of the city – by paying their taxes, participating in the magistracy, and fulfilling their military duty.43 In these cities, freedom is above all a property of oneself,44 in the sense that the city-states are self-governing and no external source of authority – a lord, the Empire, or the papacy – governs or makes laws for the inhabitants. Understood in this context, the concept of freedom qualifies two states of being: on the one hand, the independence of the city-state in relation to any outside power, and on the other hand republican government. When Machiavelli is dealing with civil conflict, he has his sights set on freedom as a form of  human government. 40

41 42 43 44

On this issue, see Senellart 1996, pp. 117-133. An analysis of different ideals of civil peace leads M. Senellart to show that Machiavelli is opposed to two of them, specifically – eudemonic and irenic – and maintains a complex relationship with the harmonic conception (rejecting its Pythagorean and Platonic components and accepting only the Polybian structure). Skinner 1998, p. 10. See the analyses suggested by Q. Skinner (Skinner 1978). M. Viroli emphasized the relationship between the pursuit of the ideal of liberty and the theme of love of the fatherland, which must be defended no matter what (Viroli 1988). Esposito 2000, p. 23.

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In Chapters 4 to 8 of the Discourses, Book I, he sets forth, in a somewhat provocative tone, two theories that make civil conflict the crucible of freedom. On the one hand, he asserts that Rome’s republican institutions appeared and survived for several centuries thanks to civil conflict.45 On the other hand, he judges that these institutions were strengthened all the more when Rome was a people’s republic, as opposed to an aristocratic one. This relationship between freedom and the disunion of the great and the people puts law at the centre of the Machiavellian history. In order to fulfil their wish to avoid being dominated, the people actually sought the establishment of institutional representation and laws guaranteeing and protecting their status from the ambition of the great. For the law subjects the great, and limits, or even forbids, their dominion. It puts all citizens on an equal footing, as illustrated in Discourses, I, 7 and 8. In those chapters, Machiavelli establishes a comparison between Rome and Florence, regarding the procedure a group of citizens must follow to accuse one of the members of the community. Florence lacked institutions making such an accusation possible, whereas Rome was endowed with them. The absence of this formal legal procedure in Florence led to an increase in calumny in the public squares, not to mention vigilante justice in which persons or groups seek revenge by private, violent means. It hindered the popular struggle against the ambition of the ‘powerful citizens’. Inversely, the procedure for accusation in Rome, requiring the accuser to put forth proof, kept all the members of the community from accusing individuals without reason. Moreover, it constituted a public venue for settling disputes, and its authority was recognized. It was customary for the Roman people to raise a tumult, to obtain a law or to refuse military conscription.46 Livy describes many tumultuous events, popular outcries against enlistment in the army. For example, when the Sabines attacked in 457 BC, military enrolment was negotiated in exchange for an increase in the number of popular Tribunes.47 Likewise, during the war against the Fidenates and the Etruscans (445 BC), the plebeians were granted the right to marry into patrician families.48 Livy seems to regard this phenomenon, whereby rights were bartered for participation in battle, as an ineluctable event in the course of Roman history. Rome and its empire lasted for so many centuries that institutional adjustments were necessary.49 45 46 47 48 49

Machiavelli 1996, I, 4. Machiavelli 1996, I, 4. Livy 1922, III, 30, p. 101. Livy 1922, IV, 5-6, pp. 279-273. Livy 1922, IV, 4, pp. 269-273.

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Moreover, Livy usually interprets these adjustments from the viewpoint of the unity and concord of the Roman populace. Although Machiavelli draws upon Livy as a source of examples, the viewpoint from which he interprets them is exclusively that of the ‘vivere libero’. He revises or recasts Livy’s history for the purposes of defining the conditions of this ‘vivere’. Two important examples attest to Machiavelli’s revisionism: that of the creation of plebeian Tribunes, and that of Appius’s tyranny. In Livy’s account of the secession of the plebs to Mons Sacer (494 BC) and the creation of the tribunes, the explicit concern of the Senate is the unity of Rome’s citizenry, and Livy relates the history from the senatorial viewpoint: There was a great panic in the City, and mutual apprehension caused the suspension of all activities […] Assuredly no hope was left saved in harmony among the citizens, and this they concluded they must restore to the state by fair means or foul.50 ‘Harmony’ becomes the very subject of the historical account.51 Moreover, Titus-Livy considers the episode of the tyranny of Appius from the viewpoint of freedom and civil concord, whereas according to Machiavelli, freedom was the only issue at stake.52 The explanation suggested by Machiavelli of the tyranny of the Decemvirate, and of Appius, in particular, emphasizes the inability of the great and the people to moderate their own desires in order to protect freedom.53 Because Machiavelli explicitly refers to Livy’s history much more than usual, the reader might be led to believe that he agrees with the ancient historian’s analysis of the creation of the Decemvirate. Machiavelli’s portrayal of Appius is largely based on Livy’s, it is true. But otherwise, the two texts are quite different: although Titus Livy mentions that the government of Appius endangers freedom, in his concluding statements, concern for concord and reconciliation predominate.54 This freedom, which emerges from the effective struggle of the people against the greats’ desire to dominate, is not the freedom of the people strictly defined as a group; it is the freedom of the city. Of course, laws specifically enable the people to assuage their desire not to be dominated, but in Machiavelli’s estimation, they constitute a framework for a ‘vivere libero’ that is beneficial 50 51 52 53 54

Livy 1922, IV, 32, p. 323. Ibid. Machiavelli 1996, I, 6. Ibid. Ibid.

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to the city as a whole, in terms of prosperity, happiness, and power. His judgment reflects a topos of Florentine political thought initially developed by Leonardo Bruni in his biographies of Dante and Petrarch – that of freedom as the element which stimulates overall growth and creativity, boosting artistic development, economic prosperity, and political power: It is an easy thing to know whence arises among peoples this affection for a free way of life, for it is seen through experience that cities have never expanded either in dominion or in riches if they have not been in freedom. [...] The reason is easy to understand, for it is not the particular good but the common good that makes cities great. And without doubt this common good is not observed if not in Republics, since all that is for that purpose is executed, and although it may turn out to harm this or that private individual, those for whom the aforesaid does good are so many that they can go ahead with it against the disposition of the few crushed by it. The contrary happens when there is a Prince [...] For all towns and provinces that live freely in every part (as was said above) make very great profits. For larger peoples are seen there, because marriages are freer and more desirable to men since each willingly procreates those children he believes he can nourish. He does not fear that his patrimony will be taken away, and he knows not only that they are born free, and not slaves, but that they can, through their virtue, become princes. Riches are seen to multiply there in large number, both those that come from agriculture, and those that come from the arts. For each willingly multiplies that thing and seeks to acquire those goods he believes he can enjoy once acquired. From which it arises that men in rivalry think of private and public advantages, and both the one and the other come to grow marvellously.55 Popular tumults which lead to laws promoting freedom must therefore be envisaged not only from the standpoint of the people’s desire, but also from the perspective of the entire city, for not only do they fulfil the desire, but they also result in government by free republican institutions – in Machiavelli’s works, a positive outcome of disunity and civil conflict. This perspective does not subtract in any way from the special role played by the people in the advent and preservation of freedom. It is this group which effectively combats the great’s desire for dominion, to assert its own desire. In doing so, it brings about laws favourable to freedom. Described in Chapter I, 4 55

Machiavelli 1996, pp. 129-132. See on this subject Baron 1989, p. 31 sq.; Gaille, 2007b.

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of the Discourses, this role is more explicitly confirmed in Chapter I, 5, by a comparison between the ability of the people and of the great, respectively, to maintain freedom. Machiavelli defends the idea that it is harmful to entrust ‘the guard of freedom’ to the great. In fact, if freedom is entrusted to men who are constantly driven by their desire to ‘acquire’ more, to the detriment of others, it arouses in them resentment, a desire for revenge, and a thirst for more for themselves. They imperil freedom in two ways, because their desire for domination constitutes in itself a risk for the survival of the ‘vivere libero’, and also because they elicit violent clashes that cannot possibly result in a law. The portrait of the people as the guardian of freedom, by opposition to the great, is therefore lightly outlined: the people safeguard freedom the best, for they do not demand a share of the magistracies to dominate, and because the expression of popular desire sets in motion a legislation process which introduces equality into the distribution of magistracies and in the private aspects of life. This is the process we shall analyse next.

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Chapter 3

On Institutions Favourable to Freedom: Machiavelli’s Use of Humoural Theory The concept of humour [umore or omore] is an essential key to understanding the conditions Machiavelli defines as those which are likely to bring about and maintain a free government. Absent from his chancery writings, the idea emerges in The Prince, the Discourses, and the Florentine Histories. Machiavelli uses the term ‘humour’ interchangeably with those of ‘desire’ and ‘appetite’, to designate the great and the people. In The Prince, 9 and 19, the usage of the term is associated with determining the form of regime, which depends upon the balance of the humours and the degree to which they are corrupted. The Discourses also employ the humours within the context of reflection on institutions: ‘laws favourable to liberty’ are the outcome of conflict between the great and the people; in other words, from the disunion of their respective humours (I, 4). Due to humour, the people are better guardians of freedom than the great (I, 5); judicial procedures and laws enable the humours to be ‘vented’ without resorting to private violence (I, 7). The question Machiavelli examines in Chapters 4, 5, and 7 of Book I is that of the distribution of magistracies in the Roman republic, contrasting an aristocratic republic with a popular one. In the Florentine Histories, the agitation of humours corresponds to conflicting institutional demands which are impossible to satisfy simultaneously: Chapter III, 21, commenting on the consequences of the revolt of the Ciompi, is an excellent example. On the one hand, in fact, Machiavelli describes the city riven by antagonistic humours, and on the other hand, he qualifies the humours on the basis of institutional demands. The old nobility is furious about being excluded from the magistracies, and the most powerful members of the populace are reluctant to share their rights with the minor arts and common people; the minor arts are clamouring for more authority and the common people fear they will be deprived of guilds. The key to any government appears to reside in the control, even temporary, of the agitation caused by the humours in the city. The type of action Machiavelli recommends, to soothe these seething humours and the effects thereof – from disputes to civil war – is legislative: drafting a law, and having it voted in; or redistributing the magistracies. By containing or satisfying the humours of the great and of the people, these measures aim to strike a balance so that no one humour dominates the other, for the prevalence of the humour of the great is especially harmful.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004376014_004

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Why did Machiavelli feel a need to apply the concept of bodily humours from medical theory to his reflection on government? Certainly, it was not rare for political philosophers to borrow terms from medicine. The practice was so common, in fact, that one might suspect the existence of ‘an extremely close and original bond between medicine and politics, since the pre-Socratics’.1 During the Renaissance, the body/body politic analogy acquired even more intensity because medicine, alongside law, was the paradigm of the sciences.2 However, these reasons are too general to account for the borrowing, its full signification, and its specific implications. In order to understand them, we must take a slight detour. Let us momentarily put aside Machiavelli’s thinking, and review the history of medicine.3 Machiavelli borrowed the concept from the medical theory of his time, itself the heir to Galenic-Hippocratic tradition.4 But the humoural theory is equivo1 Terray 1990, p. 83. The hypothesis that the political field was initially transferred to the medical one is formulated by M. Vegetti (Vegetti, 1981). 2 Hale 1971. 3 Only recently have scholars examined the concept of humour in Machiavelli’s writings, and they have been inconsistent. Pocock devotes no analysis whatsoever to the organic, medical vocabulary, despite its relevance to the idea of corruption and the temporal finitude of the city (Pocock 1975). Before him, L. Zanzi alone developed a general framework for interpretation, in which the idea of humour was inserted. However, the political implications of the use of this analogy were not specifically pointed out (Zanzi 1981). Skinner describes the theme of the humours as axiomatic in Machiavellian thought, without developing an explanation of it (Skinner 1981, p. 65). Among Italian writers, the usage of the analogy of humour was noted, but not studied specifically until the early 1980s. As early as 1969, F. Chiappelli underscored the importance of the lexical field of organic life, of life and death, typical of the Renaissance, mentioning the recurrence of the concept of humour in The Prince and the Discourses. However, he does not linger on the theme (Chiappelli 1969). G. Sasso, while asserting the importance of the theme of humours, nevertheless does not analyse it specifically (Sasso 1980). In France, Gérald Sfez’s writings on civil conflict (to be discussed below) were the first to demonstrate the importance of the analogy. 4 When Machiavelli was writing, medical instruction was based on a textual tradition established in the 11th century, driven by the first translations from Arabic by Constantine the African and his disciples. Starting in the 12th century, medical training in Salerno, for example, drew upon a corpus of texts which were bound together and referred to as L’Articella (‘the little art’). It included the Aphorisms and Prognostics by Hippocrates, De urinus by Theophilus, De pulsibus by Philaretus, and the Tegni by Galen. Later, the Isagoge ad artem parvam Galeni (editio princeps: Padua, 1476), was added, along with others, as time went on. On the whole, this canon taught Galenism in the form it had assumed in Alexandria and then among Arab physicians. The Isagoge is the Latin translation of Kitāb al-masa’il fī ţ-ţibb, written in Baghdad by Hunayn bin Ishāq or Ioannitius (9th century AD). It presents the general concepts of Alexandrian Galenism that were the basis for medieval and Renaissance physiology and medi-

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cal and, for various reasons, was not transmitted exactly the way it was formulated in Antiquity. These reasons are the vagaries of text preservation, the theoretical choices of such authors as Galen, or the composition of the textbooks used in the early 16th century. To interpret exactly what Machiavelli means when he writes about humours, it is not enough to refer to the Hippocratic canon. One must go all the way back to Alcmaeon of Croton, a thinker associated with the Pythagoreans (peak circa 500 BC). His medical thinking is original in that it is based on an analogy between the human body and the body politic. However, it is impossible for us to be certain whether the analogy chiefly serves explanatory purposes, or if it refers to a real association between these components.5 He defines health as a balance between the four primordial qualities (hot, cold, dry, moist), classified as pairs of opposites, just as in the Pythagorean tradition, and employs the term ‘isonomy’ to designate this balance. Disease is associated with their imbalance, and is described as a monarchy: the human body is diseased when one of the powers rules over the other.6 Aetius’s testimony about Alcmaeon of Croton (Vors 24 B 4) is, to this day, the first text in which the political vocabulary, and more specifically the terms ‘monarchia’ and ‘isonomia’, are used to gain insight into the nature of the health, disease, and the human body. Alcmaeon of Croton seems to have believed that all things were composed of pairs of opposites.7 He does not set a number on the pairs of opposites he examines; e.g., hot/cold, moist/dry. cine, in a simplified form to facilitate memorization. This canon must be supplemented by a text known in the Middle Ages and Renaissance by the title Pantegni (The Whole Art), which drew upon the work by Alī ibn al-‘Abbās al-Mağūsī (10th century AD), al-Kitāb al-Malak ī, which translates as The Royal [or Complete] Book of Medical Art. Like the Isagoge, this text presents in an abbreviated form various definitions essential to medicine: those of the humours, the complexions, or the temperaments, the spirits or pneumata, the forces or functions and the solid components of the human body. Like the other components of the universe, they are believed to derive from the four basic elements (earth, air, water, fire). They are varied mixtures of the primary qualities. Finally, until the 17th century, medical training in Europe also drew upon the Canon of Avicenne or Ibn Sīnā, translated by Gerard of Cremona, the Liber continens by ar-Razi, and the Colliget by Averroës. 5 G. Cambiano has theorized that Alcmaeon’s goal was mainly to point out an ‘analogy of relationships’ (Cambiano, 1983, p. 442). 6 This conception is not unrelated to the thinking of Empedocles, who postulated that the universe is composed of the four elements earth, water, air, and fire. The theories of the school of medicine he founded in Agrigentus are nearly the same as those of the school of Croton (see Battistini 1998, fragments 17-22, pp. 126-129 and the statement by Galen – ‘Bodies are made up of a mixture of the four imperishable roots: Hippocrates and Empedocles knew it the first’, quoted pp. 163-164). 7 Diogenes Laertius 1999, pp. 1008-1009; Aristotle, Metaphysics, A, 5, 986 a.

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What matters to us, in Aetius’s account, is that the correspondence between the human body and the body politic, according to Alcmaeon, seems designed to demonstrate the relationship between opposing dynamics within a couple. The isonomia must above all be understood as a negative determination. Health is not the result or corollary of a situation in which the opposites are balanced quantitatively. These opposites are equal in the sense that neither dominates, and their equality is maintained thanks to their opposition: According to Alcmaeon, it is the balance of powers [isonomia ton dynameon] like moist and dry, cold and hot, bitterness and sweetness, etc., which produces and maintains good health; on the contrary, the predominance [monarchia] of one of them is what causes illness and when two of these powers rule, death ensues […] But, to return to good health, it is the harmonious mixture [krasis] of the qualities.8 The theory of health and disease developed by Alcmaeon of Croton, the cornerstone of the humoural theory, is reinforced by the Hippocratic Corpus. It is a collection of texts by various authors, and presents varied if not opposing theories.9 In part, it inherits from the Alcmaeonian conception. The treatise that interests us is On the Nature of Man, for it is the one which presents the theory of the four fundamental humours – blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile – which, via Galen’s interpretation, would dominate Western medicine until the 16th century (even though a binary humoural system prevailed in the Corpus).10 Health and disease are explained on the basis of a mixture, judged to be harmonious [krasis] or not, of the humours [dynamis]. Just as in Alcmaeon, war and politics provide metaphors that describe disease, although less systematically. Within the Hippocratic Corpus, this conception of the role of the humours fits into a broader theory of health and disease, taking into consideration the more or less harmonious relationships maintained by the body with its environment, ranging from what penetrates from outside (air, food, drink), to the 8

9 10

Aetius 1988, p. 226. D. Delattre points out that the term ‘mixture,’ translated from the Greek ‘krasis’, more precise than ‘mixis’ in that it contains the idea that the elements making up the mixture temper each other (Delattre, Les Présocratiques 1998, note 7, p. 1259). This fragment is presented by H. Diels & W. Kranz (Diels 1975, 24 B 4). The accounts of Plutarch and Stobaeus on Alcmaeon of Croton, collected by H. Diels (Diels 1965, p. 442 sq.), are consistent with it. Here, we are following an interpretation suggested by G. Cambiano (Cambiano, 1983, pp. 443-444). See Jouanna and Magdelaine 1999, p. 19 and 1995. Jouanna and Magdelaine 1999, p. 24.

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natural milieu, often defined according to a four-part system like the one characterising the humours, and to the climate. The term katastasis, which we might translate as ‘constitution’, designates the array of climatic elements. The treatise On the Nature of Man is one of the most systematic presentations of the humoural theory: The body of man has in itself blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile; these make up the nature of his body, and through this he feels pain or enjoys health. Now he enjoys the most perfect health when these elements are duly proportioned to one another in respect of compounding, power and bulk, and when they are perfectly mingled. Pain is felt when one of these elements is in defect or excess, or is isolated in the body without being compounded with all the others.11 In On Ancient Medicine, we find another version of the humoural theory of the source of disease, much closer to the thinking of Alcmaeon of Croton as presented by Aetius. However, this treatise cannot be taken into our consideration, for it was not commented by Galen, doubtless because of its violent criticism of the figure of the physician-philosopher prized by Galen and its refusal of the elementary qualities at the basis of the system of humours Galen adopted.12 It was not translated into either Latin or Arabic, and was published only in the 19th century by Littré. Hence, it could not have inspired the theory of humours circulating in Machiavelli’s time. In the works of Galen, the third phase of our detour into the history of medicine, this theory is integrated into an eclectic array of ideas.13 Humouralism is supplemented by the Plato-inspired theory of the three souls and their connection to the brain, the heart, and the liver, as well as the finalist idea and the theory of sympathy between the parts of an organism, produced by Aristotle and the Stoics. Galen’s humoural theory is supplemented by an anatomo-pathological explanation based on the idea of a dysfunction of one organ or another, following a lesion or alteration. By referring to On the Nature of Man, the Hippocratic treatise, Galen based his physiology on the idea that there are four primary elements, fire, air, water, and earth, each of them being characterised by two of the four primary qualities, hot, cold, dry, and moist. For example, 11 12 13

Hippocrates 1931, 4, pp. 11-13. See Jouanna and Magdelaine 1999. This eclecticism would in fact be ‘a deliberate and admitted collection of various doctrines’, according to P. Pellegrin (Pellegrin, in Galen, 1998, p. 26). For the works of Galen, see Pinchot 1994; Starobinski 1995; Boudon-Millot 2012.

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blood is hot and moist; phlegm (or pituita) is cold and moist; black bile is cold and dry; and yellow bile is hot and dry.14 The humours correlate with the seasons; for example, diseases characterised by an excess of pituita occur in the winter – and age: diseases characterised by an excess of blood tend to affect individuals in childhood, whereas excesses of yellow and black bile affect youth and adulthood and excesses of pituita, individuals in old age. Finally, the person’s constitution and temperament are also decisive factors. The way in which the four humours temper each other within a specific body, the way they balance each other by allowing one or the other to predominate slightly, must be considered in order to understand the disease. A ‘sanguine’ temperament, for example, is subject to diseases caused by an excess of blood. While health is conceived in terms of equality and symmetry – so much so that parallels have been drawn between Galen’s thinking and the Canon of Polykleitos15 – pathologies, corresponding to imbalances in one or several humours, are thought to correlate with either an overabundance or a lack of one humour or another. Thus, in Machiavelli’s times, the definition of health and illness was based on the humoural theory. If we compare this theory and the way Machiavelli applies it, it is easy for us to observe that the presence of the humoural vocabulary in strategic places in Machiavelli’s writing does not imply that he adopted neither the humoural theory of the health of the human body literally and identically, nor the distinction between four humours prevailing in his day. His own pair of humours, that of the great and that of the people, bears a greater resemblance to the pairs of opposites conceived by Alcmaeon of Croton. However, this comparison is limited: its binary nature does not match the Alcmaeonian idea of an infinite number of opposing couples. The chief difference is that, according to Machiavelli, one humour in particular (that of the great) is relatively more harmful to the city than the other, whereas in the medical model, no humour is considered to be inherently negative. In medicine, only an excess or deficit of one or the other humours causes disease. Despite the liberties Machiavelli takes in relation to his source, it does play an essential role in his reflection on government. It enables him to formulate his conception of political freedom. Like physical health, political health is based on a mixture. The mixture that promotes freedom consists in an equiposition of opposites such that neither dominates. For this reason, the ideas of Alcmaeon of Croton, to a greater degree than Machiavelli himself knew, are of primary interest to us. 14 15

Galen 1952, II, 9, p. 195 sq. Pigeaud 1991, pp. 7-42.

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In fact, Machiavelli’s ignorance of them is not decisive, insofar as with regard to the question of a balanced mixture, the differences between the Hippocratic Corpus and Alcmaeon of Croton tend to blur.16 Actually, as Georges Vlastos suggests, medical theory provided Greek political thinking with a model for the conception of civil concord based on equality. In return, the political usage of the concepts of isonomia and isomoria (referring to the idea of an equality of rights) makes the egalitarian assumption, implicit in the terms dynamis and krasis, employed by medical thinkers, explicit: The original meaning of dynamis [...] is not ‘a substance that has power’ but rather ‘a substance which is a power’, which can assert itself, and by the simple act of asserting itself, by being too strong, stronger than the others, can cause trouble. Its strength must, therefore, be ‘taken away’ and thus ‘moderated’. And this is to be done not through repression by a superior, but through counterpoise against an equal. This is the heart of the doctrine of krasis. Alcmaeon’s isonomia of the powers is no more than its earliest-known statement at a time when interest still centered in the fact of equilibrium itself rather than in the specific nature of the equilibrated powers. [...] Powers are equal if they can hold one another in check so that none can gain ‘mastery’ or ‘supremacy’ or, in Alcmaeon’s term, ‘monarchy’ over the others. Medical theory assumes this kind of equality even when it conceives krasis not as the equipoise of pairs of physical opposites (hot-cold, dry-moist, etc.) but as a many-valued blend of powers, for here, too, the purpose of blending is to insure that ‘no individual power is displayed’.17 From this perspective, it does not matter whether we are dealing with a philosophy of medicine based on a four-humour model or one characterised by an infinite and indeterminate number of qualities, nor does it matter which concept, isolation or isonomia, is the central focus of analysis. In either case, the physician’s task consists in determining the proper, temperate, balanced, and harmonious blend; that is, to make sure that no one term dominates the others. It is therefore possible to see the authors of the Hippocratic treatises as disciples of Alcmaeon of Croton. In either case, the concept of excess plays a key role in the approach to pathology. This idea can therefore serve as an axis to gain insight into either the Alcmaeonian vision of excessive power, or that of isolation, which we find in On the Nature of Man and other Hippocratic texts. 16 17

For an in-depth analysis of this point, see Cambiano 1983. Vlastos 1947, pp. 157-178.

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In both cases, medicine must supplement or reduce, in order to attain a sort of balance, an isonomia.18

…

What is the political translation of this balanced mixture of humours? What is the ‘proper mixture,’ favourable to freedom? Before we begin reflecting on this subject, it is necessary to note certain aspects of the institutional vocabulary Machiavelli uses. Indeed, it is important to define the institutional concept that is the overall qualification for this mixture. In Machiavelli’s writings, we encounter the term ‘constitution’ [constituzione], referring to the idea of disposition or of ‘fundamental laws’19 which are not necessarily formalized as a code or charter.20 However, Machiavelli only rarely uses the term ‘constitution’, and it is not the one designating the theme of his theory of institutions. His legislative thinking is essentially based on the terms ‘legge’ and ‘ordine’, which appear both as a pair and separately. The meaning of the term legge must be specified, for neither it nor ordine are defined by Machiavelli. The question about its definition is elicited by the fact that Machiavelli exposes his ideas on the basis of the case of the Roman republic, particularly in the Discourses. Yet, starting in 451-450 BC, the Latin term leges was a strict designation of a certain number of practices derived from customary law, codified as a series of written laws (also known as the Twelve Tables) promulgated by the people’s assembly. Until then, law had been constituted by a series of unwritten customary rules valid for Roman citizens. After the leges were promulgated, customary law was maintained, enriched with written formulas derived from the practice of presenting cases in court for judgment. When the Republic gave way to the Empire, the leges were abandoned, and senatus consulta, decisions by the senate, acquired authority as lex. The distinction between written law, strictly defined, customary laws and, within both types, violations of the law which carry heavy penalties or those which incur only censure does not seem to matter to Machiavelli. In fact, in Chapter I, 49, he uses no less than four terms, apparently interchangeably, to

18 19 20

Terray 1990, p. 121. Machiavelli 1998, 6 and 19; Machiavelli 1996, I, 2, 6, 57, 58, II, 2, 24, 26, 27 and III, 1. Conversely, the term is not found in Florentine Histories. Machiavelli 1996, I, 57 and 58, II, 24 and 26.

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designate Roman censure – law, provision, magistracy, order.21 However, the absence of distinction and loose application of the term ‘law’ are not specific to Machiavelli’s writings, for the early 14th-century thinker Marsilius of Padua writes that in his eyes, the term ‘law’ generally designates ‘the customs, statutes, plebiscites, decretals, and all other rules of this kind.’22 This broad way of defining the law was actually derived from the heritage of Roman law, itself essentially compound in nature, and it is congruent with a vision that was current in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. However, what we are seeking here is not one law or even a body of laws. We are investigating the ordine which fosters freedom: the republican balance. The term ordine conjures up a host of associations: procedure, in politics or in war; discipline; a way of organizing troops on the battlefield, and also command. It also has an institutional meaning, referring to the distribution of magistracies, and procedures inherent to them – hence the frequent need to associate modo with ordine. Does the ‘mixture’ favourable to freedom refer to the idea of a ‘mixed’ constitution?23 Indeed, we could judge that the presence of this humoural vocabulary is a sign that institutional balance is desirable: because the unity and health of the human organism are the result of cooperation between opposing humours, due to the fact that no one humour comes to dominate the others, Machiavelli employs the humoural theory as a model for the organization of the city or body politic, based on an equilibrium of humours and their respective satisfaction.24 21

22 23 24

Machiavelli 1996, p. 100: ‘The course of the Roman Republic demonstrates extremely well how difficult it is, in ordering a republic, to provide for all the laws that maintain it free. Notwithstanding the many laws [leggi] that were ordered there by Romulus first, then by Numa, by Tullius Hostilius and Servius, and last by ten citizens created for like work, nonetheless, new necessities in managing that city were always discovered, and it was necessary to create new orders [ordini], as happened when they created the censors, which were one of those provisions [provvedimenti] that helped keep Rome free for the time that it lived in freedom. [...] But, returning to the beginning of this discourse, I say that the creation of this new Magistracy [magistrato] should make one consider that if those cities that have had their beginning free and that have been corrected by themselves, like Rome, have great difficulty in finding good laws [leggi] for maintaining themselves free, it is not marvelous that the cities that have had their beginnings immediately servile have not difficulty but an impossibility in ever ordering themselves so that they may be able to live civilly and quietly.’ Marsilius of Padua 2005, I, 10, 6, p. 54. We pursued our inquiry on this complex issue (Gaille 2005a and 2005b). Parel 1992.

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However, it could on the contrary be a sign that the antagonism between the people and the great is ‘an opposition that constitutes politics’ and not ‘a de facto distinction’:25 it might be the mark of an impossible reconciliation, of any common proportion, between the desire of the people and that of the great, opposing the vocabulary of interest, insofar as this interest would be the most straightforward and tangible means of establishing homogeneity or a common measure in intra-human relationships:26 The humour, irrepressible, causes disequilibrium, and exposes [the body] to the constant ordeal of a total loss of equilibrium. Consequently, speaking of the political relationship in terms of humours is to speak of it in terms of a search for equilibrium amid disequilibrium. (...) Humours complement rather than balance each other. They may combine well, which is not at all the same thing as balancing each other.27 The description of Rome as a perfect republic (in Discourses, I, 2) because power was shared argues in favour of the first interpretation of the humoural vocabulary: Fortune was so favorable to it that although it passed from the government of kings and of aristocrats to that of the people, by the same degrees and for the same causes that have been discoursed of above, nonetheless it never took away all authority from kingly qualities so as to give authority to aristocrats, nor did it diminish the authority of aristocrats altogether so as to give it to the people. But, remaining mixed, it made a perfect republic, to which perfection it came through the disunion of the Plebs and the Senate, as will be demonstrated at length in the next two chapters.28 Doesn’t this characterisation invite us to see Rome as an especially successful example of mixed government, the only form likely to maintain freedom? If so, Machiavelli is the heir to Polybius, Cicero, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, earlier thinkers who cited a mixed government as one of the pillars of Rome’s power; and of a line of medieval theoreticians who based their thinking about 25 26 27 28

Lefort 1972, p. 382. I have dealt with such an issue in a study on Albert Hirschman’s thinking about class conflict and multicultural democracy; see Gaille 2005c, pp. 413-446. Sfez 1995, p. 28. Machiavelli 1996, p. 14.

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the mixed constitution on the Roman example. Let us return to the idea of a mixed constitution, for the purposes of evaluation. It originated in ancient Greece.29 More precisely, the expression we translate today as ‘mixed constitution’ was formulated for the first time in Greece in the 4th century BC by advocates of a moderate aristocratic regime. The Greeks claimed to be inspired by an almost mythical model of government, the ‘Council of Elders’, which ruled the Sparta of Lycurgus and the Athens of Solo. They saw these models of governmental organization as the means for guaranteeing the stability and moderation of the regime. These are the goals cited by Thucydides, for example, in his account of how the government of the Five Thousand replaced the rule of the Four Hundred: And during the first period the Athenians appear to have enjoyed the best government they ever had, at least in my time; for there were a moderate blending of the few and the many, and this was that first caused the state to recover from the wretched plight into which it had fallen.30 The formulation of the idea of a ‘mixture’ refers to a specific historical context: that of the oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants in Athens, followed by the advent of democracy. The moderate oligarchs were opposed to both types of regime and saw a ‘mixture’ as a sort of compromise between oligarchs and democrats. Thus, the template for this constitutional model is aristocratic: its primary aim is to limit the ability of the masses to intervene in the government of shared matters, in democratic Athens. This primary formulation of the idea of a mixed constitution has one other important characteristic. It expresses the idea of a happy medium, of the middle path, of wise moderation, of the rule of due measure, the Golden Ratio. This aspect is especially evident in the history Plato devotes to the organization of power in Sparta in the Laws, III. The ideal of 29

30

Our assertions are based on a study by Carsana (Carsana 1990). Carsana’s analysis refers to the findings of Von Fritz (von Fritz 1954). However, Carsana differs from von Fritz on two points: first, her analysis is not confined to Polybius, but studies a whole body of ancient texts participating in elaborating the idea of a mixed constitution. It thereby underscores the political issues involved in defining this constitution. Secondly, unlike Von Fritz, Carsana makes no effort to verify whether the various conceptions of mixed constitution she discusses refer to any historical reality. Instead, Carsana considers these ideals as frameworks for analysis and interpretation. The first part of James M. Blythe’s study (Blythe 1992) also provides valuable information on the elaboration of the idea of the mixed constitution in Ancient Greece. Thucydides 1965, VIII, 97, p. 373. James M. Blythe notes that the ascendancy of the mixed constitution can also be found in Tyrtaeus and Isocrates (Blythe 1992).

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perfect proportions is reached thanks to a system that blends various elements that “curb” each other. Two kings, Procles and Eurysthenes, rather than one, share royal power and in so doing, one limits the other to the proper measure. The existence of the Senate, made up of twenty-eight old men, has imposed a limit on their passions, while the Ephors limited the power of the Senate.31 Generally speaking, good government is defined as a mixture, and only as a mixture. Here, it is presented as a combination of the democratic and monarchic elements by the Athenians, shortly after the description of Sparta.32 From the mixture of extremes, we obtain a medium element, just as in Pythagorean mathematics, as attested by a passage in Gorgias. This element is the equality of reason, found in geometrical proportions.33 Polybius was the first to subtract from the Greek context and apply to Rome this model of the mixed constitution, characterised generally by the ideal of moderation, the rejection of pure forms, the principle of co-participation, and the co-presence of elements from different constitutions, limiting the authority of each. He never explicitly applies the expression ‘mixed constitution’ itself, but there is no doubt that he is referring to this ideal of the ‘constitution of the Ancients’.34 He prefaces Book VI, ‘Political Constitutions’, of his Histories by observing the power of the Roman Empire and his wish to account for it.35 The insistence on ‘Fortune’ as the cause of the vicissitudes of human history, immediately after his statement of intention, should be interpreted with care. If Polybius sees Roman power as the accomplishment of the plans of fortune, his writings nevertheless concentrate on what could be called the secondary causes of this power, to differentiate them from fortune as a primary or ultimate cause.36 Rome’s form of government is essential in this respect, and Polybius gives an account of it in Book VI, of which only fragments have been preserved. From the outset, he presents the constitution of the Romans – the ‘politeia’ – as one of the principal factors in the power of the empire. However, he does not immediately broach the subject. First, he examines the three types of constitution distinguished by ‘most authors’. This digression, as we can see in retrospect, proves to be necessary to an understanding of the nature of the Roman constitution and its decisive role in Roman supremacy.37 Polybius 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Plato 1961, III, 691 e- 692 a, p. 219. Plato 1961, III, 693 d, p. 225. Plato 1979, 508 a, p. 86 Weil 1977, p. 24. Polybius 1923, p. 269. Polybius 1923, p. 271. Polybius 1923, p. 273

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criticizes this division into three parts. In his eyes, it is incomplete, and fails to explain a fact of nature, the ineluctable transition from one regime to another – from monarchy to kingship, from kingship to tyranny, from tyranny to aristocracy, from aristocracy to oligarchy, from oligarchy to democracy and finally to mob rule.38 The question which then arises – and which is formulated by Polybius in reference to the constitution Lycurgus gave to Lacedaemon – is that of the resources available to remedy the instability of the constitutions: [Lycurgus] had perfectly well understood that all the above changes take place necessarily and naturally and had taken into consideration that every variety of constitution which is simple and formed on one principle is precarious, as it is soon perverted into the corrupt form which is proper to it and naturally follows on it. […] Lycurgus, then, foreseeing this, did not make his constitution simple and uniform but united in it all the good and distinctive features of the best governments, so that none of the principles should grow unduly and be perverted into its allied evil, but that, the force of each being neutralized by that of the other, neither of them should prevail and outbalance another, but that the constitution should remain for long in a state of equilibrium like a well-trimmed boat…39 Certainly, Lycurgus’s constitution did not enable Lacedaemon to escape from the cycle outlined above. Nevertheless, even though the decadence is unavoidable, it can be postponed for a long time. That is the advantage sought by this particular constitution, which is neither simple nor homogeneous – ‘The consequence was that by drawing up his constitution thus he preserved freedom at Sparta for a longer period than is recorded elsewhere.’40 In Polybius’s writings, the constitution given by Lycurgus seems to serve as an outline for the ideal constitution – a proportional mixture of the qualities and specificities of each of the three good constitutions, and a system of checks and balances. This ideal mixture refers here to two components: on the one hand, a balance between the forms of government making it possible to avoid the excesses of each, and on the other hand, the mixture of the respective virtues of each form. The ‘constitution’ of Rome was modelled on the Spartan example. It is the same as Lacedaemon’s, only it was drafted over a longer pe38 39 40

Polybius 1923, p. 275. Polybius 1923, pp. 289-291. Polybius 1923, p. 293.

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riod of time and its genesis therefore cannot be pinpointed.41 Despite this difference, the result is identical: no one, not even a native, could say for certain whether the constitution as a whole was an aristocracy or democracy or despotism. In both states, the distribution of authority was such that each power – the people, the Senate, the Consuls – could limit the power of the others.42 The description of the relationships between the Senate, the people, and the Consuls teaches us that, to Polybius, this distribution is the result of a compromise between an aristocracy and emerging social classes in the city. The nobles held supreme power for some time, without sharing it, and were gradually forced to yield somewhat to the emerging classes, although they maintained the dominant position. In this way, Polybius is close to the original matrix of the mixed constitution, in the description of how the Roman constitution actually functioned – at least, in his eyes. In On the Commonwealth, Cicero adopts the Polybian idea according to which, as time went on, Rome endowed itself with a mixed constitution. In Book I, after giving an account of the human rejection of solitude, Scipio postulates that the purpose of every republic is to provide a stable government for men living together in the city. Yet each of the three forms of government – kingship, aristocracy, democracy – ‘has a path’ it cannot escape: ‘a sheer and slippery one – to a kindred evil’.43 In turn, Cicero puts forth the idea that cities undergo a cycle of rule.44 Although this cycle is not identical to Polybius’s, Cicero and Polybius concur in concluding that due to the instability of each type of government in its pure state, the genus mixtum, the regime resulting from the combination and blending of the three basic politic forms, is the choice of Scipio.45 The idea of harmony proves to be decisive here, as Scipio’s statements in Book II of On the Commonwealth show.46 How are harmony and temperance achieved, according to Scipio? Perhaps the answer to this question can be found in the account of the secession of the plebs, where Cicero defines in a somewhat negative way ‘an equitable balance in the state of rights, duties and responsibilites’: without corresponding to an egalitarian distribution of magistracies, so that no part of the city causes revolution.47 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Polybius 1923, p. 293. Polybius 1923, pp. 303-311. Cicero 1999, I, 44, p. 19. . Cicero 1999, I, 45, p. 20. Cicero, 1999, I, 69, p. 31. Cicero 1999, II, 69a, p. 56. Cicero 1999, II, 57, p. 52.

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It is doubtless in light of this statement that we can reread the second argument offered by Scipio in Book I of On the Commonwealth, to advocate the mixed constitution. In addition to stability, such a structure has ‘a certain degree of equality, which free people cannot do without for very long’.48 If we follow the definition of a ‘fair balance’, this equality is not tied to an arithmetical distribution of power. Instead, its goal is a distribution that does not cause any discontent. The magistrates are satisfied with the power they have; the council, with its authority; and the people, with their freedom. This last group is granted a share of power only to avoid its dissatisfaction.49 Stability does not depend only on the ability of the government to resist the natural process of corruption; it is also connected to civil concord. From this viewpoint, as we mentioned earlier, it is significant that in Book II, one of the first qualities Scipio attributes to the leading citizens is the ability to compose a harmony – to employ a musical metaphor – with the various parts of the city, an ability which itself relies upon a spirit of justice.50 At first glance, the historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus would seem to be the heir to the analyses of Polybius and Cicero. He also writes that Rome is endowed with a mixed constitution elaborated as time went on. Actually, the kinship between these writers is complex. Like Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus justifies his choice of subject, in Book I of the Roman Antiquities, by invoking the glory of the Roman Empire, observable by anyone.51 Roman political organization, established little by little, is among the primary reasons accounting for this power and its duration.52 Within this organization, Diony48 49

50 51 52

Cicero 1999, I, 69, p. 31. Whether the accent is placed on the power of one man, wise and full of merit, the tutor and republican prosecutor, in the Republic or in that of the Senate, in the treatise On Laws, the point in every case is to avoid government by the people (Cicero 1999). For Cicero, this does not mean that the people should be deprived of prerogative. On the contrary, he suggests in On the Commonwealth that the power of the ‘first citizens’ is better maintained by granting a share of power, be it ever so limited, to the people. Publicola is praised thus, as ‘a man of no average talent: by giving a moderate amount of freedom to the people, he more easily maintained the authority of the aristocracy’ (Cicero 1999, II, 55, p. 51). This idea is explicitly developed especially in On Laws. Only the attribution of a share of power to the people makes it possible to avoid the revolutions likely to be caused by the people. Here, the role of the people in institutions is conceived of as a way of protecting the city from uprisings against the Senate and magistrates (Cicero 1999, III, 23, p. 166). Cicero 1999, II, 69a, p. 56. Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1960, I , 3, p. 11. Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1960, I, 9, p. 31.

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sius attributes a central role to the Senate [gerousia], ‘the council of elders’,53 and, in this respect, cleaves to the aristocratic republican matrix of the mixedconstitution idea. However, although he praises civil concord, he withholds judgment, either positive or negative, on the evolution of the distribution of magistracies in favour of the people. He underscores the destructive effects of senatorial dissensions as much as those of public disorder.54 Mainly, he considers this evolution less within the framework of the classification of pure forms of government than in relation to the emergence of new social categories in the city, making institutional adaptations necessary: as a result, the mixed constitution acquires a dynamic dimension, open to the ways in which the composition of the city is evolving. The mixed-constitution concept here differs slightly from the one we find in Polybius or Cicero: it is less a question of mixing the virtues of each form of government or of avoiding their respective excesses by a system of checks and balances than of reaching a balance of social groups in the appointments to the magistracies.

…

Machiavelli had read or learned of the ideas of Polybius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, if not those of Cicero. Until the 19th century, only certain passages of On the Commonwealth had survived; the work as a whole was missing or unknown.55 An edition of Roman Antiquities had been available in Italy since 1480. The long-debated question of whether Machiavelli was aware of the ideas of Polybius, for he probably was unable to read Greek and Book VI had not been translated, seems to have been resolved today: Polybius had been rediscovered by Leonardo Bruni who, around 1418-19, based his account of the first Punic War and the wars of Illyria and Gaul on the ancient source. After 1450, only the first five books of the Polybius’s Histories were circulating in Italy. But we know that Book VI was known orally.56 Based on the discovery and translation of Politics by Aristotle (1260, by William of Moerbeke), a classical philosophical tradition had begun to develop in the Middle Ages, so Machiavelli was also familiar with the theory of the mixed constitution, applied to Rome and elsewhere. Actually, although it is impossi53 54 55

56

Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1960, II, 12, p. 347. Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1960, II, 14, p. 353. For example, the passage where Cicero employs the image of a lyre to describe civil concord (Cicero 1999, II, 69a, p. 56) had been cited by Augustine of Hippo in The City of God (II, 21, 14-24). Bernardo Rucellai, who died in 1514, mentioned it in his De urbe Roma liber (printed for the first time in Florence in the 18th century). On this subject, see Momigliano 1973.

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ble to assert that in the eyes of Thomas Aquinas, the mixed constitution was the ideal form of government, and even though in his writings, he depicts it as a moderate monarchy, it is nevertheless defined and defended in his writings as the mixture of the three pure forms, which temper each other mutually.57 Later, his disciples developed their own individual analyses of the mixed constitution. In the writings of Giles of Rome, it does not appear, as strictly defined, for Giles advocated a monarchy in which the king governs his subjects according to his own will, or the laws he himself proclaimed. However, according to James M. Blythe, Giles’s emphasis on the need for wise councillors and popular consent can be identified as a form of influence of the ideal of the mixed constitution.58 Peter of Auvergne, by contrast, presents it as the ideal political regime, due to the blend of the virtues of each pure form. The mixture confers a true role on the multitude, he says. The concept of a mixed constitution can also be found in Bartholomew of Lucca: applied to Rome, it means that every category of the population takes part in the government. Engelbert d’Admont, the only thinker to analyse all of the possible combinations of mixed government, favoured a type of monarchy based on popular consent. John of Paris considered a mixed constitution in his reflections on the best type of government for the Church. Subsequently, the scholars who mentioned this ideal form of government were Marsilius of Padua, William of Ockham, Bartolus de Saxoferato, Jean Buridan, and Nicole Oresme. Because this tradition which arose in the Middle Ages chiefly applied the idea of the mixed constitution to an ideal of monarchic government with limited powers, it did not serve Machiavelli’s purposes. He was seeking the answer to another question: which institutions fostered Roman freedom? Might we say, on the other hand, that he is an heir to Polybius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, or even to Cicero – although he is unaware of the kinship? The above quotation from Book I, 2 of the Discourses seems to indicate the direct influence of Polybius. Not only does Machiavelli state that following the creation of the tribunes of the plebs, ‘all three kinds of government had their part’,59 but more generally, we know that the description of the cycle of  regimes (monarchy, kingship, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and finally mob rule) draws in part on the text by Polybius.60 57 58 59 60

See In octo politicorum Aristotelis espositio, 2.7. 245. In Summa Theologica I-2. 95.4.3, he points out that it is the form of rule God thought best for his chosen people. Blythe 1992. Machiavelli 1996, p. 14. G. Sasso has commented scrupulously on what Machiavelli included and left out, so we recommend his analyses of this question (Sasso 1987). We shall refer to them only when

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The three good forms of government should be rejected along with the three bad ones, because of their fragility. Instead, a form that borrows upon the qualities of each should be instituted: I say thus that all the said modes are pestiferous because of the brevity of life in the three good ones and because of the malignity of the three bad. So those who prudently order laws having recognized this defect, avoiding each of these modes by itself, chose one that shared in all, judging it firmer and more stable; for the one guards the other, since in one and the same city there are the principality, the aristocrats and popular government.61 Moreover, in the examples he cites, Machiavelli does not deviate from earlier thinkers on mixed government: besides that of Rome, he mentions the legislative deeds of Lycurgus in Sparta.62 However, in Book I, Chapters 2-6, he does break away from the framework suggested by Polybius. He begins by describing the development of the mixed government model in Rome in relation to the disunion of the plebs and the Senate, and not as a means of eliminating this disunion. At most, in Book I, Chapter 3, he offers a new reference framework, for both historical and theoretical analysis. The time is just after the overthrow of the monarchy and the expulsion of the Tarquins – that is, just before the birth of the people’s republic in Rome, with the institution of tribunes. The evolution of Roman political organization is no longer described on the basis of a theory of regimes. Instead, Machiavelli considers human malignity:

61 62

the identification of the similarities and contrasts between the two texts is relevant to our subject. Machiavelli drew upon the description of the cycles of rule suggested by the Greek Polybius in Book VI of the History, with the exception of the distinction the latter makes between monarchy and kingship. For Polybius, kingship is characterised as a necessity, whereas for Machiavelli, it is not. Although Polybius writes of a ‘natural transformation’ (Polybius 1923, p. 277) in relation to anacyclosis, Machiavelli does not think that cities perpetually follow the course described by Polybius, nor that they manage to complete the cycle: ‘It is while revolving in this cycle that all republics are governed and govern themselves. But rarely do they return to the same governments, for almost no Republic can have so long a life as to be able to pass many times through these changes and remain on its feet. But indeed it happens that in its travails, a republic always lacking in counsel and forces becomes subject to a neighbouring state that is ordered better than it’, Machiavelli 1996, p. 13. Machiavelli 1996, p. 13. Ibid.

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As all those demonstrate who reason on a civil way of life, and as every history is full of examples, it is necessary to whoever disposes a republic and orders laws in it, to presuppose that all men are bad, and that they always have to use the malignity of their spirit whenever they have a free opportunity for it. When any malignity remains hidden for a time, this proceeds from a hidden cause which is not recognized because no contrary experience has been seen. But time, which they say is the father of every truth, exposes it later.63 After the expulsion of the Tarquins, the nobles had nothing to fear, and gave free rein to their ambition. Machiavelli’s description is forceful: ‘they began to spit out that poison against the plebs that they had held in their breasts, and they offended it in all the modes they could’. The tribunes of the plebs were established to remedy this situation.64 This chapter of the Discourses is pivotal in a change of course for Machiavelli’s theory, between Chapters 2 and 4. In some ways, it can still be connected to the previous chapter: the idea of human malignity, expressed whenever there is an opportunity, reflects the ideas about the corruption of kings by intermarriage, the descendants of the first nobles, and the licentious masses. Likewise, the institution of tribunes of the plebs, signalling the advent of a people’s republic in Rome, appears to belong directly to the theory of the cycle of government in Polybius. In both cases, the tyranny of the nobles is what sparks the revolt of the plebs. However, this chapter also paves the way for the next one. It situates us at the time of the birth of the people’s republic, and leads us to consider, rather than the three powers, the relationships between the plebs and the nobles, and the impact of these relationships upon the evolution of the city’s institutions. The next two chapters clearly demonstrate this departure from Polybius. The key sentence, encountered earlier, is the one where Machiavelli asserts that those who condemn the outcry and confusion of the Roman ‘tumults’ are failing to consider the fact that in every State, there are two different humours, that of the people and that of the great, ‘and that all the laws that are made in favor of freedom arise from their disunion’.65 Laws and institutions are presented as the fruit of a compromise between the plebs and the senate. Thus, Roman political organization is no longer considered as a mixture of forms of government, but as the result of a temporary, unstable agreement between two antagonistic desires. Each, in order to be assuaged, must grant something to the other. Certainly, it could be argued that a distinction must be made 63 64 65

Machiavelli 1996, p. 15. Ibid. Machiavelli 1996, p. 16.

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between the very genesis of the organization – the disunion of the two humours – and the result – Rome’s mixed government. However, this argument is devoid of validity, insofar as, starting with this chapter, Machiavelli buries the discourses on the forms of government completely, and analyses only the relationship between the great and the people, identified as the sole source for the creation of laws and institutions. At the beginning of Chapter 5, Book I, he has a new subject – presented, in fact, as something to be taken for granted from now on – to which he will devote all of his attention in the following chapters: Because in every Republic there are great and popular men, it has been doubted in which hands it is better to place the said guard. With the Lacedaemonians, and in our times the Venetians, it has been put in the hands of the nobles; but with the Romans it was put in the hands of the plebs.66 Therefore, Machiavelli is not the heir to the ideas of Polybius and Cicero. His reasons for adopting the mixed constitution are not the same as theirs: as a blend of the virtues of each form of government, or as a way of balancing the three forms in order to avoid their excesses. Although his ideas seem closer to those of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, for whom the distribution of magistracies is based on the social groups composing the city, he nevertheless differs from the earlier historian in his approach to the institutional order, based on the confrontation between the two desires and their dynamic. If so, how can we account for the presence of the humoural vocabulary, which still orients us towards the idea of a mixture? Actually, this vocabulary seems to have a dual function. On the one hand, it enables Machiavelli to demonstrate the perpetual dynamic, the outcome of the opposition between the desires. A text analysis shows that the term ‘humour’ usually occurs alongside verbs that describe motion – a dynamic in which the city is engaged, sometimes uncontrollably: ‘ribollire’ [to boil], ‘pertularre’ [to disrupt], ‘muovere’ [to 66

Machiavelli 1996, p. 17. We may wonder why Machiavelli proceeds this way: why would he ‘adopt’ Polybius’s analysis and description of the Roman republic as a mixed government in book II, if he subsequently concentrated on the opposition of humours as an explanation for the emergence of laws and institutions that foster freedom? In this respect, we might formulate the hypothesis of a contextual reading (which moreover does not exclude other interpretative paths): Machiavelli would be using a theoretical framework familiar in Florence – the theory of forms of government – because it is appropriate to a political debate centring on the reform of Florentine institutions and, more generally, on a good constitution (the distribution of magistracies). Just as he comments on Livy, a historian known to his contemporaries, in order to present his own ideas which sometimes depart from conventional Roman history, he subverts usual categories of analysis by initially presenting his theses in this familiar framework.

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move], ‘accendere’ [to kindle], ‘crescere’ [to grow], ‘alterare’ [to trouble]; the humours may be ‘rabbiosi’ – enraged – and they trouble the city’s inhabitants. Moreover, the idea that freedom is based on a certain distribution of the magistracies between the two antagonistic desires remains, so that one must understand two concepts at once: that freedom is unthinkable in the absence of this dynamic, and that the dynamic must be acknowledged in some way by an institution. We already know that ‘laws in favour of liberty’ come from the disunion of the humours of the great and of the people; we learn that the city is constantly and irreducibly ‘agitated’ by these humours and, what is more, it is possible to intervene, by making laws and establishing institutions, to ‘soothe’ this agitation. Finally, we learn that this intervention is also related to a ‘load balancing,’ continually disrupted by the dynamic of the humours, and yet always in need of renewal, between the power allocated to the great and that allocated to the people. Thus, the mixture favourable to freedom is achievable, but is by essence unstable and variable, a function of the balance of power between the two desires and their respective states of intensity. The investigation of the conditions whereby freedom is maintained, developed in this chapter 5 of Book I, enables him to specify the nature of the mixture. In order to answer the initial question regarding the conditions for preserving freedom – is it better to entrust the people or the great with safeguarding it? – Machiavelli undertakes a comparison between Sparta and Venice, on the one hand, and Rome, on the other. Sparta and Venice chose to grant the guardianship of freedom to the great, becoming de facto aristocratic republics. Rome, by contrast, chose to entrust the guardianship of freedom to the people. On the surface, the facts appear to prove Rome wrong, since the Roman people’s republic did not last as long as the Spartan regime. Nevertheless, Machiavelli explicitly endorses the Roman choice, explaining his reasoning by again making reference to the nature of the humours: Coming to reasons, taking first the side of the Romans, I say that one should put on guard over a thing those who have less appetite for usurping it. Without doubt, if one considers the end of the nobles and of the ignobles, one will see great desire to dominate in the former, and in the latter only desire not to be dominated; and in consequence a a greater will to live free, being less able to hope to usurp it than are the great. So when those who are popular are posted as the guard of freedom, it is reasonable that they have more care for it, and since they are not able to seize it, they do not permit others to seize it.67 67

Machiavelli 1996, p. 18. This choice is reiterated in Chapter I, 37, in which Machiavelli analyses the causes of the end of freedom in Rome, and insists on the excessive nature of

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Therefore, the Roman people’s republic appears to be the mixture most favourable to freedom, ever fragile – a mixture of two desires so that neither dominates. This thesis reinforces the idea that Machiavelli had broken away from the theory of mixed government, insofar as the option, in the wake of its Greek matrix, leads to a distribution of magistracies to the benefit of the minority. On several occasions in the Discourses, we encounter an analysis of the effects of the confrontation of the humours in terms of mutual surveillance and limitation, on the part of the great and the people, an observation that might again attract us to the idea of the mixed constitution. The creation of the tribunes ‘for the security of the Plebs’ against the nobility constitutes the most striking example: in any case, it is the founding deed of a political operating model that fosters freedom.68 Many passages in Machiavelli’s Discourses mention the negative effects of the suppression of such and such a magistracy, and of the existence of a single source of power in the city.69 The reader thereby understands that what is missing is an institutionalized means of confronting opposing desires, with the beneficial effect that would thereby result. By implication, magistracies should be created and maintained, in order to give each humour the resources to fight exaggerated assertions of the desire of the opposing humour. From this perspective, it makes sense to compare Machiavelli’s analysis to that of the proponents of a mixed constitution. It is nevertheless important to see beyond the thematic Machiavelli shared with these thinkers, that Machiavelli is estranged from an institutional philosophy based on considering the forms of government and their respective virtues, and that in this respect, he departs radically from the idea of the mixed constitution as formulated by classical, medieval, and Renaissance authors.

…

Our analysis of institutions fostering freedom would not be complete if we did not comment on the institutionalization of the disunion of the great and the

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the desires of the great and of the people. He nevertheless reminds us of the positive role played by the people in the long term, in favour of freedom: ‘So, if the contentions over the Agrarian law took three hundred years to make Rome servile, it would have perhaps been led to servitude had not always checked the ambition of the nobles, both with this law and with its other appetite, she would perhaps have been brought to servitude much sooner if the Plebs with this law and their other desires had not always restrained the ambitions of the Nobles.’ p. 80. Machiavelli 1996, I, 3. Machiavelli 1996, I, 39, I, 40, I, 50.

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people itself, and the ongoing need to increase and modify it. Reading Chapters 7 and 8 of Discourses, Book I shows from the outset that this institutionalization is, in itself, essential to maintaining freedom. It submits both parties to the law, thereby establishing an egalitarian regime between them. In these chapters, Machiavelli contrasts the private expression of this disunion with an institutional expression of it. The first, likely to engender an outbreak of violence, is unfavourable to free cities: ... consider how much ill would have resulted to the Roman Republic if he [Coriolanus] had been killed in a tumult; for from that arises offense by private individuals against private individuals, which offense generates fear; fear seeks for defense; for defense they procure partisans; from partisans arise the parties in cities; from parties their ruin.70 Machiavelli exalts the institutional expression of conflict for its ability to avoid this armed violence and the extension of the conflict to the entire city. Moreover, it does not endanger the city’s independence, the way private expression of conflict does – when one of the two humours resorts to employing a force external to the city, in order to prevail, there is the risk that this external force will take power.71 However, the institutional expression of the disunion between the great and the people is not enough, in and of itself, to maintain freedom. Because the mixture is precarious by essence, and continually upset by the dynamic of desires, the Discourses emphasize the need to constantly supplement the order of the people’s republic with a certain number of institutional provisions. In this respect, Machiavelli seems to intertwine two preoccupations. The first is connected to the idea that the body of laws must adapt to the evolution of customs over the long term of history.72 From this viewpoint, the analysis of this additional provision foreshadows Machiavelli’s thinking about ‘corruption’, which will be the theme of our next chapter. On this point, Machiavelli is probably the heir to one of Livy’s convictions, regarding the necessity of amending the laws of a state over the long term.73 Machiavelli transposes it to his analysis of freedom. Secondly, the framework provided by the humoural theory, which makes it possible to define the institutional order of the people’s republic as the ‘mixture’ which promotes freedom, intersects in this case with another line 70 71 72 73

Machiavelli 1996, p. 24. Machiavelli 1996, I, 7. Machiavelli 1996, I, 39. Livy 1922, IV, 4, pp. 269-273.

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of Machiavellian analysis, regarding the insatiability of human desire, the discontent resulting from this insatiability, and the passions associated with this discontent. In fact, this complementary provision is presented as a means of acting upon the desires of citizens, particularly the desires of the great, in a way that is favourable to sustaining the republic. It is not a question strictly of regulating these passions. Instead, the idea is to channel their expression into the legal framework offered by the institutional order of the popular republic. Thus, Chapters 24 and 28-31 of Book I point out the necessity, for a republican government, to set up a system of rewards and punishments for the citizens, in order to encourage actions undertaken in the shared public interest, and to discourage those that are aimed only at satisfying individual interest. This provision works either by restraining and slowing the humours, or by satisfying them. It mainly serves a contention function in respect to the great, their ambition, and their insolence, and intends instead to satisfy the desire of the people, to allow the people to express themselves, to ‘vent’ [sfogarsi] – according to the means provided for in the law, of course. The rule of law is therefore in itself totally decisive, in Machiavelli’s eyes. In reading his analysis, our attention is drawn to the fact that Machiavelli borrows a term from the political lexicon of his time, while employing it in an unusual way: the adjective ‘civil’, or, more rarely, its synonym ‘politico’, particularly in the expressions ‘vivere civile’ and ‘vivere politico’. These terms appeared in political philosophy – first in Latin, and later in the vernacular – with the translation of Politics and Nicomachean Ethics in the 13th century, when they had hitherto been associated with ecclesiastical learning, in particular.74 From a constitutional viewpoint, the term ‘politics’ means the existence of limitations placed on governmental power, and refers to the source of its authority in the people.75 In Italy, the concept of ‘regimen politicum’ and the expression ‘governo civile’ prevailed in the late 15th century, through the writings of Bartholomew of Lucca and Savonarola, to designate republican government. Machiavelli is not situated in the same perspective. He also applies these adjectives to the principality or to the reign of a single man (The Prince, 9; Discourses, I, 26) to signify that the prince acquires his power and remains the leader of a territory not by using violence, but with the backing of the people or the great. However, the concept of ‘civiltà’ in Machiavelli’s work has more than only this negative signification. It also re-

74 75

Rubinstein 1987; Tenenti 1978, p. 156. Tenenti 1978, p. 159.

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fers to a way of doing that respects the law – making laws, writing them, seeking advice about them, publishing them, respecting them.76 It must be noted that, for Machiavelli, this civiltà does not necessarily disappear under extraordinary circumstances. In fact, there is an institutional order designed to withstand such special circumstances without abandoning the rule of law: the dictatorship as conceived by Rome, the precise antithesis of tyranny. Machiavelli devotes only one chapter of the Discourses to it (I, 34), but that chapter is crucial to his thinking about freedom. He thus belongs to the tradition of thought that, until the end of the 19th century, saw dictatorship as an extraordinary magistracy set up during crisis situations. Like Livy, Machiavelli presents the establishment of dictatorship in a context where the ‘or­ dinary’ institutions are ineffective – during a crisis.77 In Machiavelli’s writings, this context must be differentiated from ‘necessità’, in which Machiavelli makes the principle of exception conceived in medieval treatises on the art of gov­ ernment a permanent principle for planning action.78 One must always act according to necessity, but one does not always find oneself in a time or emergency and crisis. To withstand a crisis without endangering freedom, Machiavelli says that an ad hoc institution has to have been planned in advance, known to all, subject to strict limitations in time, and instituted to accomplish a particular mission. The dictator enjoys an authority appropriate to extraordinary circumstances; i.e., free of the need to answer to any higher authority in the fields of both deliberation and decision. This is what explains the rapidity and effectiveness of the dictator’s action. Conversely, the dictator is not a legislator. That is why he is not a danger to the ‘vivere libero’. Providing for such an instance is a way for the government to avoid violating the law to resolve a crisis: For when a like mode is lacking in a republic, it is necessary either it be ruined by observing the orders or that it breaks them so as not to be ruined. In a republic, one would not wish anything to happen that has to be governed with extraordinary modes. For although the extraordinary mode may do good then, nonetheless the example does ill; for if one sets 76

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See on this matter Machiavelli 1996, I, 34, 40, and 45. It is not absurd on Machiavelli’s part to use the concept of ‘civile’/’politico’ in relation to the principality or the monarchy. On the basis of William of Moerbeke’s translation of Aristotle’s Politics, a debate arose around the association (or distinction) between political government and royal government, and of the opposition they share to despotic government. Bartholomew of Lucca seems to have been the first to have refused such an association. See Blythe 1992, p. 42. Livy 1922, III, 20, p. 73. Senellart 1989, p. 37 sq.

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up a habit of breaking the orders for the sake of good, then later, under that colouring, they are broken for ill. So a republic will never be perfect unless it has provided for everything with its laws and has established a remedy, for every accident and given the mode to govern it.79 Thus, a civil republican order can be asserted in both ordinary and extraordinary times, in either fair weather or foul.

…

However, in order to understand this republican order conceived by Machiavelli, it is not enough to demonstrate the importance of the institutional expression of disunion between great and people, nor that of the additional provision of laws and measures designed to orient the expression of passions and desires. In fact, other elements intervene to guarantee the maintenance of this order. First of all, even though the essence of the conditions for freedom is drawn from the Discourses, the closing remarks of The Prince, 5, deserve our attention, concerning the ‘name of liberty’. Moreover, the Discourses go into two series of considerations, one associated with religion and the other with poverty, indispensable to understanding how Machiavelli defines a free republic. Although they are integrated into the analysis of Roman institutions and presented as elements of the institutional order of the ‘vivere libero’, they nevertheless introduce a new dimension into the reflection. With these considerations, Machiavelli conceives an ethos of liberty, absent from the strictly institutional analysis of liberty he developed previously. Before we come to the ethos of liberty which, alongside the institutional expression of disunion, is the main subject of Machiavelli’s analysis of the conditions of liberty, let us take a moment to investigate the effects of liberty and of its name. They are described in the only chapter of The Prince dealing with republics, in a moment when Machiavelli is wondering about the ways for liberty to survive in the city, post-conquest, as a function of the regime which ruled the city before the conquest. Although Machiavelli spends little time on the subject, what he does say about the case of conquered republics reveals that they are self-maintaining institutional orders, by virtue of their own qualities. More precisely, as soon as people grow accustomed to liberty, the republican order exerts in and of itself a powerful attraction, and this effect is one of the elements that maintains it. This is a particularity that is not shared with the 79

Machiavelli 1996, p. 75.

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principality, in which the bond connecting the city to the prince is always fragile.80 Let us quote The Prince, 5: And whoever becomes patron of a city accustomed to living free and does not destroy it, should expect to be destroyed by it; for it always have as a refuge in rebellion the name of liberty and its own ancient orders which are never forgotten either through length of time or because of benefits received. Whatever one does or provides for, unless the inhabitants are broken up or dispersed, they will not forget that name or those orders, and will immediately recur to them upon any accident as did Pisa after having been kept in servitude a hundred years by the Florentines.81 In this statement, the reference to Pisa was not innocuous to an early 16thcentury Florentine. Actually, Pisa, ruled by Florence since 1406, rebelled in 1494, when Charles VIII invaded Italy. Machiavelli, as secretary to the Ten, was an active participant in the struggle to reconquer the rebellious city, which lasted for 15 long years. Not only was Machiavelli’s example striking to his contemporaries, it also contained the expression ‘name of liberty’, and the assertion that the name itself helped unify and prolong an insurrection in a city threatened by conquest. We can understand the power of the word and its charm, in the etymological sense of the term, only by recalling the unequivocal nature of the concept of freedom in Machiavelli. Considering the hostility between the great and the people, the thesis exposed in The Prince, 5 rests on the idea that the great make as much use of the word ‘liberty’ to define their desires as the people, and that this double reference, although it is based on a misunderstanding of the meaning of the word – liberty of respect and equality

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Foucault’s analysis is eloquent: ‘For Machiavelli, it was alleged, the prince stood in a relation of singularity and externality, and thus of transcendence, to his principality. The prince acquires his principality by inheritance or conquest, but in any case he does not form part of it, he remains external to it. The links that binds him to his principality may have been established through violence, through family heritage, or by treaty, with the complicity or alliance of other princes; this makes no difference, – the link remains, in any event, a purely synthetic one, and there is no fundamental, essential, natural and juridical connection between the prince and his principality. As a corollary of this, given that this link is external, it will be fragile and continually under threat …’ (Foucault, 2001, p. 204). Machiavelli 1998, pp. 20-21.

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for the people, liberty of ferocity and domination for the great – is not perceived as such by the parties in question.82 In the Discourses I, 16, Machiavelli himself employs the concept of liberty to define the desires of the people and the great. Two types of liberty are desired: the first, ‘to live secure’, and the second, ‘to command’.83 As a result of this, freedom and its name appear to be factors that contribute to maintaining the republican order: they introduce an element uniting the great and the people, and help to minimize the opposition between their desires. We shall see, however, that corruption undermines or cancels the effect of the name of freedom. The hypothesis that the word freedom has a unifying power, the concept that a community can be created on the basis of a fiction (because the term is actually defined in different ways by the great and the people) is not explored any further. In addition to the effect itself, be it temporary, of the word ‘freedom’, Roman religion and poverty also play essential roles in ensuring the survival of the republic. At first glance, they do not seem to belong within the analysis of conditions required to maintain freedom. Nevertheless, they make a decisive contribution to the republic’s vigour. In fact, because the institutional expression of disunion is essential, as we have seen, the citizens must have access to these institutions, and that access must be assured, as much as possible. However, this channel cannot be taken for granted, particularly when desires have overflowed into excess. The prospect of such a loss of control is what permits us to understand Machiavelli’s careful attention to the religion and poverty of the Romans. The particularity of Machiavelli’s analysis consists in his vision of religion and poverty as elements of the institutional order. His conception of religion as a civil institution is even easier to perceive than his institutional vision of poverty.84 By forging mores and customs – Machiavelli writes of ‘costumi’ – appropriate to freedom, Roman religion and poverty play a role upstream of the laws and institutional organs designed to restrain or satisfy the humours. Thus, as an element of the institutional order, religion is an incentive to respect laws; it creates or ‘reinforces’ a lifestyle favourable to the ‘vivere civile’. Similarly, poverty is the source of a lifestyle defined by the absence of greed 82 83 84

We borrow these expressions from Foucault’s analysis, already cited in Chapter II, regarding the liberty of the warrior aristocracy (Foucault 2003, p. 148 sq.) Machiavelli 1996, p. 46. Here we find an important aspect of Louis Althusser’s commentary: pointing out that Machiavelli takes religion as a de facto given, he asserts that it can be considered as ‘part of state ideology, not to say ideological state apparatus’ (Althusser 1999, p. 92).

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and the strength of the soul, two qualities that foster the survival of freedom, according to Machiavelli. If these ‘costumi’ were the product of legislative measures, we might find that the very term chosen by Machiavelli would be problematical, insofar as it refers to ways of behaving, physically or morally, occasionally defined by law, but ingrained in usage. We shall see that they are nevertheless justified: by this expression ‘costumi’, Machiavelli is actually trying to designate something which is simultaneously and indissociably the product of an institutional action and the boundary that limits such action. Machiavelli’s vision of the Roman and Christian religions, and of the role of the Catholic Church in Italian history, is an essential key for interpreting his reflection, and due to that fact, has been the subject of abundant commentary.85 Here, we shall approach it only from the viewpoint of the contribution of religion to the maintenance of freedom. To this end, it is important to consider first of all the position of Chapters 11 to 15 of Book I of the Discourses, in which Machiavelli examines the Romans’ religion, as a ‘textual island’:

• Chapter 4: assertion that tumults of the plebe and senate have a positive effect on freedom • Chapter 5: exploration of the humour most likely to become the guardian of freedom Chapter 6: demonstration that it is impossible to put an end to tumults be• tween the plebe and senate • Chapters 7 and 8: illustration of the role of laws and legal organisms in maintaining freedom • Chapters 9 and 10: reflection on the times when the cities were founded and the purposes sought by the founders • Chapters 11 to 15: commentary on the effects of religion in Rome. Thus, the chapters devoted to Roman religion follow immediately upon the analysis of the foundation of free city-states and the conditions for their survival. As a result, we are tempted to see the chapters on religion as a contribution to this analysis. Is this hypothesis confirmed when we examine the ideas Machiavelli puts forth in Chapters 11 to 15? In Chapter 11 of Book 1, Numa is presented as Rome’s second founder, and the one who organized the worship of the gods: Although Rome had Romulus as its first orderer and has to acknowledge, as a daughter, its birth and education as from him, nonetheless, since the 85

On this subject, see Cutinelli-Rendina 1998 and 1999. See also Geuna 2012.

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heavens judged that the orders of Romulus would not suffice for such an empire, they inspired in the breast of the Roman Senate the choosing of Numa Pompilius as the successor to Romulus so that those things that omitted by him might be ordered by Numa. As he found a very ferocious people and wished to reduce it to civil obedience with the arts of peace, he turned to religion as a thing altogether necessary if he wished to maintain a civilization.86 In this chapter, Machiavelli focuses on the effect of obedience resulting from religion, an effect connected to the fear of god.87 Although in the field of military endeavour, religious belief aims at hope, in terms of ‘vivere civile’, Machiavelli insists on a different emotion: the fear or awe that is specifically religious, or ‘paura religiosa’, sometimes bordering on terror [terrore], engendered by the belief in the gods. This fear is what makes religion an element essential to maintaining freedom. Roman religion, a vector for civil obedience due to the oath, appears as the required additive to the laws. It creates obligations that are stronger than the laws themselves. The oath, by the same virtue as the law but with greater effectiveness, is an instrument of government within the city, and an instrument of command on the battlefield. The Arendtian analysis of the concept of authority gives us insight into this recourse to the deities. Numa and other rulers relate to them not because the deities ‘order’ men to obey such and such a law. Instead, religion serves as a binding force due to the authority of the gods, which is a power in a class of its own. Depending on the meaning of the Latin verb ‘augere’, the root of the noun ‘auctoritas’, it ‘augments’ the law. In other words, the law is approved by the gods.88 The verb employed twice by Machiavelli is ‘consigliare’. He indicates that the laws are recommended by the deities, but not imposed or dictated by them. Therefore, the Roman laws are not divine laws, as strictly defined. They are ‘approved’ human laws. But, according to the terms of Mommsen cited by Hannah Arendt, a law that is approved by the gods is ‘more than a recommendation and less than an order; it is advice that cannot be overruled without harm’.89 Not only are laws and oaths envisaged as separate entities, the oath intervenes when the law is no longer respected, or insufficiently respected. In fact, in the same chapter, Machiavelli recalls that feigning a dialogue with a nymph, 86 87 88 89

Machiavelli 1996, p. 34. Ibid. Arendt 1961, p. 123. Ibid.

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Numa confers upon the institutions he is establishing a sort of divine lustre. Therefore, he employs the belief in the gods under ordinary circumstances in the creation (or reform) of institutions in Rome, and not only under exceptional ones – the foundation, internal crisis, or war. In doing so, he adopts an ancient practice: And truly there was never an orderer of extraordinary laws for a people that did not have recourse to God, because otherwise they would not have been accepted. For a prudent individual knows many goods that do not have in themselves evident reasons with which one can persuade others. Thus wise men who wish to take away this difficulty have recourse to God. So did Lycurgus; so did Solon; so did many others who have had the same end as they.90 In this perspective, religion not only has a role to play at the time of the birth of the institutional order; religious belief must subsequently be maintained, in order to maintain continual obedience after eliciting it, regardless of the life or death of the human rulers. Because Roman religion was based on ‘the responses of the oracles and on the sect of the diviners and augurs’,91 it was in every interest of the Roman republic to maintain public faith in these responses and, in particular, to prevent the discovery that the oracles had been manipulated, as Machiavelli points out in Book I, Chapter 12. This chapter analyses two other effects of the belief in the gods: the union of the people, and its goodness. When laws are ‘sponsored’ by the gods, so to speak, they are the object of respectful obedience. It does not occur to the citizens to challenge them, and the great and people can clash within the bounds of the laws and the ‘vivere civile’ prevailing in the republic. Through religion, rulers instil goodness and unity in the people: Those Princes or those republics that wish to maintain themselves uncorrupt have above everything else to maintain the ceremonies of their religion uncorrupt and hold them always in veneration. 92 90 91 92

Machiavelli 1996, p. 35. Machiavelli 1996, p. 37. Machiavelli 1996, p. 36. In this quote, one point deserves further clarification: Machiavelli speaks of the ‘princes’ of a republic or of a rule. How are we to understand the presence of a prince in a republic? On this subject, Machiavelli gives no explanation. Cicero’s writings about the constitution of a republic may help us formulate a hypothesis. Cicero considered the republic to be the perfect constitution. In his eyes, it accomplished the ideal of the mixed constitution, achieving a harmonious combination of the three possible

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The unity in question here is not the same as civil harmony. It must be understood negatively. For example, in the same chapter, Machiavelli describes the moment when the Roman plebs discovers the ‘falsity’: the oracles actually speak according to the wishes of the powerful. The people lose their faith, and are henceforth likely to violate the ‘vivere civile’ by refusing to express their wishes within the bounds of existing institutions. The unity of a religious city therefore makes no reference to a state of utter serenity, but to a time in history when ‘tumults’ do not challenge the institutional expression of the disunion between the great and the people. Moreover, the goodness referred to in this passage seems to have strictly religious aspects – citing Livy, Machiavelli describes human faith, and how reverent and full of devotion men are when they enter a temple.93 This goodness is therefore defined in opposition to the ‘wicked examples’ of the Roman Curiae and their extravagant way of life, cut off from the rules of a life spent in devotion to a god. Goodness refers to customs characterised by probity and the absence of desire for luxury. As suggested by the analysis of Roman law developed by Émile Benveniste based on an examination of the term ‘ius’ and its relationship to the verb ‘iurare’, it is not surprising that Machiavelli was able to formulate such a rela­ tionship between law and religion from the Roman case.94 Actually, the verb

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forms of government: the monarchical government represented by the consuls, the aristocratic government represented by the Senate, and the democratic government represented by the people’s assemblies. In this, the republic is the ‘optimus status’ (Cicero 1999, The Republic, I, 35, 51, 71 and II, 30, 40, 65, 66 and Cicero 1999, The Laws, I, 15). Despite this, it does not suffice unto itself. It needs a leader to guide it and, if necessary, to rescue it, when it is in danger: the ‘princeps rector’ and the ‘princeps liberator’. The first watches over the health of the republic and, for this purpose, holds ‘auctoritas’, a power related to moral prestige (by contrast with legal power, ‘potestas’). The ‘princeps rector’ has no official title and gives no orders. However, he gives advice, and this advice is listened to, due to his prestige. He is the first citizen, the best of all – the ‘optimus civis’ – thanks to his merits, talents, and virtues. Without ruling, the ‘princeps rector’ directs and takes initiatives required for the good of the State. Let us note that his presence does not imply any reform of republican institutions. On the contrary, according to Cicero’s thinking, it is closely tied to maintaining these institutions, which paradoxically, despite their perfection, are incapable of maintaining themselves. By analogy, we might think that Machiavelli also conceives of the idea that certain citizens of exceptional virtue and wisdom must occasionally intervene in the history of a republic, in order to guarantee obedience to its laws. In any case, and unless other explanatory elements emerge, the presence of ‘princes’ in the republic confirms that the role played in liberty by institutions and laws is essential but insufficient. Machiavelli 1996, p. 37. Benvéniste 1969, pp. 111-112.

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‘iurare’, corresponding to the act of repeating the spoken phrase ‘in verba alicuius qui praeit’, ‘in the terms indicated by he who preceded’,95 has a religious signification. In fact, the conception developed by Machiavelli is supported by the writings of Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Livy on Roman history. Although Polybius devotes only a brief analysis to Roman religion, it is no less important in his eyes, since he presents it as ‘the quality in which the Roman commonwealth is most distinctly superior’.96 He asserts the causal link between the cohesion of the city, the honesty of the Romans, and their faith in their gods: I believe that it is the very thing which among other people is an object of reproach, I mean superstition, which maintains the cohesion of the Roman State.97 In an original way, Polybius also emphasizes the dramatic nature of Roman religious life, something which also spoke to Machiavelli, as shown in the latter’s description in Discourses II, 2 of the staging of a sacrifice and its effects on men’s minds. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, after mentioning the polemic between those who believe that Numa really did maintain a relationship with the gods and those ‘who banish everything that is fabulous from history’, analyses the benefits to Rome of this relationship, true or false.98 In giving a detailed account of the way Numa organized Roman religious life, he recalls Numa’s purpose in doing so: to instil piety in men by teaching them that the gods are the source and safeguard of every benefit, and to give men a sense of justice -- and the result of his endeavour: to bring ‘the State to frugality and moderation’.99 Lastly, Titus Livy points out Numa’s intention: When he had thus obtained the kingship, he prepared to give the new City, founded by force, a new foundation in law, statues, and observan­ ces.100

95 96 97 98 99 100

Benvéniste 1969, pp. 118-119. Polybius 1977, VI, 56, p. 395. Ibid. Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1960, II, 61, p. 487. Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1960, II, 75, p. 535. Livy 1919, I, 19, p. 67.

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To avoid having ‘idleness’ lead to civil disorder, contained up until then by the fear of the enemy, Numa conceived that the first thing to do ‘with a populace which was ignorant and in those days, uncivilized, was to imbue them with the fear of heaven’ which, according to him, would be quite effective.101 According to Livy, Numa achieved his intentions perfectly: the multitude, believing that the gods were watching over the affairs of men, wanted to avoid displeasing them. ‘The nation was governed by its regard for promises and oaths, rather than by the dread of laws and penalties’.102 This brief review of the writings of ancient historians of Rome shows that Machiavelli drew abundantly from sources full of considerations about the effects of religion on the Romans. Nevertheless, he sets himself apart from them by integrating their observations into an analysis of the conditions required for the maintenance of freedom. This observation about his adoption and adaptation of a source for the benefit of a conception of freedom is also true of his reflections on the idea of awe of the gods.103 De Rerum natura, one of the works we are fully certain that Machiavelli read, develops this idea.104 During the medieval and Renaissance periods, it was a theme that was in widespread circulation, from the philosophy of Averroës and the work by Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of the Peace. This vision of Machiavelli’s use of ancient sources must nevertheless be nuanced. It must be noted, in fact, that in these chapters, his attention to the positive effects of religion with respect to the ‘vivere civile’ does not prevent him from pointing out the credulousness of the believers and, moreover, the way this gullibility can be manipulated by the great to the detriment of the people, in a vein reminiscent of the analyses in The Prince. Let us quote one of the two examples of this point: After the Roman people had created tribunes with consular power and they were all plebeians except for one, and when plague and famine occurred that year and certain prodigies came, the nobles used the opportunity in the next creation of tribunes to say that the gods were angry because Rome had used the majesty of its empire badly and that there was no remedy for placating the gods other than to return the elec-

101 102 103 104

Livy 1919, I, 19, p. 69. Livy 1919, I, 21, p. 73. Cutinelli-Rendina 1998, p. 80. Lucretius 2001, V, v. 1161 sq., p. 169 sq.

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tion for tribunes to its place. From this it arose that the plebs, terrified by this religion, created as tribunes all nobles.105 The great manipulate fear to assuage their desire, to the detriment of popular desire.106 As a result, in Machiavelli’s eyes, awe of the gods is something that can be used equivocally. It may serve the purposes of freedom, and it may also become the instrument of a particular desire. The second aspect of Machiavelli’s reflection on the customs associated with ‘vivere libero’ in the Roman republic concerns poverty. Machiavelli writes less about it, essentially approaching it only in Book III, Chapter 25 of the Discourses, where he makes reference to a passage in his earlier writings without explicitly identifying it: ‘We have reasoned elsewhere that the most useful thing that may be ordered in a free way of life is that the citizens to be kept poor’.107 ‘Elsewhere’ is probably Chapter 37 in Book I, in which he condemns the pursuit of riches by the great and the people, and depicts their clash over property as the lever that pitches them into excess. He observes the following: ‘well-ordered Republics have to keep the public rich and their citizens poor’.108 Machiavelli makes the statement in passing, and enlightens us no further, but we understand its meaning more clearly on reading Chapter 25, Book III; the sign of a well-ordered republic is less poverty itself than the habit of living frugally, with little means. True, citizens accustomed to live this way do not desire riches. The great and the people are not driven by personal ambition to engage in armed struggles over property, the way they did when the Gracchus brothers faced so much opposition in passing agrarian laws: Here one sees two very notable things: one, poverty, and the fact that they were content with it and that it was enough to those citizens to get honor from war, and everything useful they left to the public. […] The other is to consider the generosity of spirit of those citizens whom, when put in charge of an army, the greatness of their spirit lifted above every prince. They did not esteem kings, or republics; nothing terrified or frightened them. When they later return to private status, they became frugal, careful of their small competences, obedient to the magistrates, reverent to 105 106

107 108

Machiavelli 1996, p. 39. See also Machiavelli 1998, Chapter 18, where Machiavelli asserts that the appearance of religion is extremely useful to the Prince, for nothing garners greater appreciation from the multitudes. Machiavelli 1996, p. 271. Machiavelli 1996, p. 79.

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their superiors, so that it appears impossible that one and the same spirit underwent such a change.109 In this description, the poverty of the citizens is more than a mere economic fact. It corresponds to an entire lifestyle fostering the survival of freedom. The way Machiavelli brings poverty into his reasoning, with a somewhat acrobatic turn of phrase, deserves to be noticed. In Chapter 37 of Book I, he seems tempted to make poverty one of the elements of the Roman institutional order. But in the absence of a law establishing poverty, Machiavelli cannot proclaim it. Despite that, in Book III of the Discourses, he succeeds in characterising it in this way, pointing out the lack of correlation between honours and riches; in Rome, merit alone, not personal fortune, was considered when offices were awarded. Henceforward, poverty appears to be favoured or even created, by the Roman institutional order: Nor can one believe that any greater order produced this effect other than seeing that the way to any rank whatever and to any honor whatever was not prevented for you because of poverty, and that one went to find virtue in whatever house it inhabited. That mode of life made riches less desirable.110

…

In presenting the effects of religion and poverty in Rome in terms of ‘costumi’, Machiavelli introduces a complexity, compared to the relation of causality envisaged up until now, based on the thesis put forth in Chapter 4 of Book I – ‘laws favorable to liberty’ came from the disunion between the great and the people. This relationship is true as long as the ‘costumi’ of the people are such that they do not pursue riches and, by virtue of their awe of the gods, the people do not seek to transgress the ‘vivere civile’. Without this ethos of freedom, laws favourable to freedom would not be able to emerge from the antagonism between the desire of the people and that of the great.111 109 110 111

Machiavelli 1996, p. 272. Machiavelli 1996, p. 271. Senellart suggested its existence in an analysis of Roman censure: ‘censure is neither the power of strength, which forces, nor is it the will that obliges, but that of the gaze, which registers, classifies, monitors, reprimands, and judges. It is a power distinct from violence and from the law, which consists in the discipline of customs. From Machia­velli to Rousseau, this discipline maintains a close relationship with civic virtue, liberty, obedience, and happiness, and thus it is a central element in the debate opposing the liberty of the

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This ethos cannot be maintained solely by the restraining force of the law: ‘For as good customs have need of laws to maintain themselves, so laws have need of good customs so as to be observed.’112 What happens when these customs are corrupted, and become bad?

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ancients and the liberty of the moderns, in our culture, or what English-speaking thinkers, since Isaiah Berlin, prefer to call positive liberty and negative liberty. The question of censure thus refers to the problem of the formulation of a civic ethos; i.e., an ethos of liberty.’ (Senellart, in Senellart and Sfez, 2001, pp. 226-227). Taranto has also asserted its importance for Machiavelli, by commenting the ‘nature of the binomial good laws/good weapons’ (Taranto, in Senellart and Sfez, 2001, p. 45). Machiavelli 1996, p. 49.

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Chapter 4

Corruption and the Ethos of Freedom Machiavelli points to corruption as the cause of the death of the republican freedom in Rome: if freedom is the product of the disunion between the desires of the great and those of the people, these desires, caught in an insatiable dynamic of greed, destroy it. Hence, as Roberto Esposito pointed out, freedom contains its opposite.1 In this sense, the phenomenon of corruption imparts a tragic cast to the ‘vivere libero’ ideal.2 In fact, the formulation of such an ideal is associated with a vision of the progress of states as an ineluctable process of decay. This vision moreover leads Machiavelli to define a second program, both chronologically and by order of priority: the state which endures. When the city is no longer strong enough to maintain its democratic institutions, it can nevertheless strive to maintain its independence. As a result, the end of ‘vivere libero’ does not signal a halt to political activity; instead, men should be willing to lose their freedom if they can maintain their city’s independence. Nothing is worse than to see the state dissolve into or be conquered by another. As a phenomenon, corruption makes time the quintessential problem of political thought and action. In this respect, Pocock is quite relevant in defining the ‘Machiavellian moment’ as the time when the republic is faced with its ‘own temporal finitude, attempting to remain morally and politically stable in a stream of irrational events conceived as essentially destructive of all system of secular stability’.3 The rediscovery of Polybius and the conception of the natural cycle of government presented in his writings may have contributed to making corruption an essential factor in the perception of time in early 16thcentury Florentine political thought.4 Polybius characterises corruption as the result of the excess or domination of a single principle. A mixed government, although still mortal, can escape the cycle and endure for much longer. The revival of such conceptions is perceptible during the Renaissance, according to a dual perspective: on the one hand, the finite nature of any single, individual virtue is asserted; on the other hand, if the fate of the city is part of an 1 Esposito 1984. 2 The tragic nature of Machiavelli’s work has already been pointed out, for other reasons. For example, G. Barberi-Squarotti has noted it in relation to the categories of ‘necessity’ and ‘fortune’ (Barberi-Squarotti 1966). 3 Pocock, 1975, p. VIII. 4 Pocock 1975, p. 75 sq.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004376014_005

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immutable cycle, it can be foreseen. This Polybian heritage is present in Machiavelli. Undoubtedly, it must be associated with other sources which contributed to forging his cyclical, naturalistic viewpoint: Avicenna, Lucretius, and Platonism, and perhaps even Plato himself, since Ficino’s translation of Politics (De regno, Libro civile) was available in his time, a dialogue in which statesmanship is defined on the basis of a principle of the universe abandoned by the demiurge. However, in the Discourses, Machiavelli suggests three explanations for corruption: the first develops the idea of obliviousness to the public good, the second is based on the idea that cities are mortal bodies, and the third refers to the movements of virtue in the world. The first explanation can be identified initially in Book I, Chapter 2, when Machiavelli refers to the Polybian theory of anacyclosis. Corruption results when the circumstances and conditions of the city’s rise are forgotten. This unmindfulness gradually increases, especially over time: from one generation to the next, the memory of these circumstances and conditions fades away, until it disappears. The rulers, prey to progressive amnesia, finally neglect the ‘commune utilità’ (also called the ‘public utilità’ or the ‘bene commune’).5 In the Discourses, the expression ‘commune utilità’ makes sense only when applied to a republic. Principalities and monarchies do not aim to serve the ‘common good’. And without doubt this common good is not observed if not in Republics, since all that is for that purpose is executed and although it may turn out to harm this or that private individual, those for whom the aforesaid does good are so many that they can go ahead with it against the disposition of the few crushed by it. The contrary happens when there is a prince (...)’ 6 A negative definition of ‘commune utilità’ is the most appropriate. Rather than defining it as the good of the greatest number, we should say that it is not the good of the few.7 The point is to avoid favouring any group or individual; the 5 In European political language, the concept of utility precedes that of interest, see Lazzeri and Renyé, 1998. 6 Machiavelli 1996, p. 130. 7 In Machiavelli 1996, this opposition is signalled several times: commune utilità/loro comodo (I, 2), publica utilità/privati cittadini (I, 8), bene comune and comune patria/la sua propria successione (I, 9), il bene comune/ambizione propria (I, 9), la comune libertà/la potenza loro (I, 18), privato/publico (I, 36), cittadini poveri publico ricco (I, 37), Tenere ricco il publico, poveri il privato (II, 19), non andare contro al comune bene ma contro a pochi ambiziosi della città (III, 12), publico/ambizione privata (I, 22), Utile publico/propria utilità (III, 30).

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advantages derived by the majority as a result are only a secondary effect of this policy. Therefore, in Chapter 2, I of the Discourses, the corruption process is described on the basis of the opposition between public and private good, or personal and private good. Regardless of the regime, it consists of a gradual reversal of the hierarchy between the common good and personal desires. The heirs to the first kings gradually ‘began to degenerate from their ancestors; and leaving aside virtuous works, they thought that princes have nothing else to do but surpass other in sumptuousness and lasciviousness and in every other kind of license’.8 In doing so, they caused a transition of the regime to aristocracy. The children of the governing aristocrats, ‘who, not knowing the variation of fortune (for) never having encountered evil, and unwilling to rest content with civil equality’ indulged in avarice, ambition, rape, and licentiousness, with no respect whatsoever for the ‘vivere civile’.9 Finally, they were overthrown by the multitude, but these people quickly fell into such licentiousness that everyone lived for himself, with no fear of anyone else, and committing a thousand violences every day.10 This explanation of corruption in terms of human forgetting is then supplemented by a second way of approaching the phenomenon, grounded in the idea of the mortality of mixed bodies. Cities are mixed bodies. They have a finite lifespan, and whether they are governed well or poorly, they inevitably progress towards their own death. This vision is scattered here and there in the Discourses, without ever being truly conceptualized. But it nevertheless constitutes a second structure in which to describe and explain corruption, notably in Chapter 1, III. In this case, the state itself is oblivious, not its ruler. Let us observe that here, unlike Polybius, Machiavelli considers the death of cities to be a final and absolute event, not a moment of transition to another political regime: in Machiavellian thought, there is no going backwards, ‘but an irreversible sinking into the abyss of political non-being’.11 Finally, the introduction to Discourses, II, attests to a third way of envisioning corruption. It insists on the variation of the course of human events, and thereby suggests we conceive a sort of perpetual motion of virtue, traveling from one people to another, from one state to the next:

8 9 10 11

Machiavelli 1996, p. 11. Machiavelli 1996, p. 12. Ibid. Taranto, in Sfez and Senellart 2001, p. 43.

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[...] Human things are always in motion, either they ascend or they descend. A city or a province is seen to be ordered by the political way of life by some excellent man and to go on for a time, always increasing toward the best virtue of that orderer. […] And, in thinking of how these things proceed, I judge the world to have always been in the same mode and there to have been as much good as wicked in it. But the wicked and the good vary from province to province, as is seen by one who has knowledge of those ancient kingdoms, which varied from one to another because of the variations of customs, though the world remained the same. 12 Although corruption is not explicitly the subject of this text, it nevertheless arises, due to the travels of the good and the wicked. Here, Machiavelli is occupying a new area, that of the ‘world’. The good that is found in one province at a certain point in time travels to another, by means which, though they are not explained, are no less ineluctable. This point of view differs from the preceding ones not only in terms of the space it is dealing with – the ‘world’ rather than the city – but also by the subject under consideration – ‘good’, not the humans or the city as a living body. But it confirms their implication: corruption is inevitable, and fighting it is doomed to fail. These three visions of corruption are ranked differently in the reflection on the corruption of ‘vivere libero’. We can rank these three visions on the basis of a reading of Chapter 37, I, an account of the decay of republican government. Machiavelli describes the conflict aroused by the Gracchus brothers: So for such causes this law remained as though asleep until the Gracchi; when it was aroused by them, it altogether ruined Roman freedom. For it found the power of its adversaries redoubled, and because of this it inflamed so much hatred between the plebs and the Senate that they came to arms and to bloodshed, beyond every civil mode and custom. So, since the public magistrate could not remedy it, and none of the factions could put hope in them, they had recourse to private remedies, and each one of the parties was thinking of how to make itself a head to defend it. In this scandal and disorder, the plebs came first and gave reputation to Marius, so that it made him consul four times; and he continued in his consulate, with a few intervals, so long that he was able to make himself consul three other times. As the nobility had no remedy against such a plague, it turned to favoring Sulla; and when he had been made head of 12

Machiavelli 1996, pp. 123-124.

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its party, they came to civil wars. After much bloodshed and changing of fortune, the nobility was left on top. Later, these humors were revived at the time of Caesar and Pompey; for after Caesar had made himself head of Marius’ party, and Pompey that of Sulla, in coming to grips Caesar was left on top. He was the first tyrant in Rome, such that never again was that city free.13 According to this account, the end of ‘vivere libero’ in Rome appears to be preceded and caused by the inability of the magistrates to manage the conflicts opposing the great and the people, using the means appointed to them – that is, the law. The ‘ordinary’ way is overtaken by the ‘extraordinary’ one, while certain individuals, nursing personal ambitions, acceded to the magistracies. The ineffectiveness of the actions of the magistracies seems to result from the extreme violence and intensity of the conflicts between the great and the people, quite out of proportion to the resources available to the magistrates. This violence and intensity are themselves caused by the issue at stake – property. They are therefore ultimately related to the insatiability of human greed.14 In this case, Machiavelli considers neither the travels of the good and the wicked, nor the city as a mortal body, but the men who inhabit the city and the growth of their desire. This outlook is also the one prevailing in Discourses, 1, III, in which Machiavelli provides us with a more organized, more highly developed analysis of the corruption of the state and ways in which it may be thwarted. This reflection focuses on the city as a body politic, but it is prolonged with a step-by-step description of the corruption process and how corruption can be opposed. The description puts human oblivion of the fear of punishment in the forefront. This fear alone, Machiavelli says, makes people obey laws. That is why institutional action is aimed at people, and not the city as a corruptible body, or the movements of good and bad.15 13 14 15

Machiavelli 1996, p. 80. Machiavelli 1996, p. 78. Althusser has suggested an interpretation of the relationship between the theory of anacyclosis and the idea of the travels of the good and the wicked. He engages in examining the theory after having asserted that ‘the fundamental problem of the State, which haunts Machiavelli in his recasting of the classical typology, is that of its duration. Machiavelli is interested in only one form of government: that which enables a State to endure’ (Althusser 1999 p. 40). The idea according to which the quantities of good and evil in the world are always constant and travel around enabled Machiavelli to deny the theory of cycles specifically: ‘there is no longer a cycle, but displacement and distribution’ (Althusser 1999, p. 44). Unlike Althusser, we see no contradiction between the concepts of

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Machiavelli is trying to do more than just determine the nature of corruption and to propose a definition of it. In the Discourses, corruption is always seen from the angle of a possible intervention. Yet the object of this intervention can only be the citizens, not the city as such, or virtue. Therefore, the explanation based on the human tendency to forget the common good is the one that ranks highest in the Machiavellian conception of corruption. If this is so, why are two other explanations of corruption presented in the Discourses? The analysis based on the mortal nature of mixed bodies might constitute a general explanatory framework, in which the tendency to forget the past is the effective cause of decay. But it is more probable that this general framework of mortality, like the explanation based on the flow of virtue, enables Machiavelli to limit the scope of action against corruption. When he describes the city as a mixed body, he is stating that it is possible to extend its lifespan using the appropriate ‘ordine’, but he also asserts its mortal, corruptible nature. Action is possible, but at a certain given time, the action will reach its limits and fail. Likewise, the idea of the travels of good in the ‘world’ suggests two things at once: that a city can accomplish great things during its time of virtue, but that it will inevitably encounter a process of corruption, because virtue is bound to leave it. In other words, Machiavelli grants the institutional order and the laws of ‘vivere libero’ some effectiveness against corruption, but he also suggests that this effectiveness is essentially limited. Moreover, the vision of corruption as the ineluctable result of a process of decay undoubtedly plays a role in the departure Machiavelli is undertaking from the Christian, providentialist conception of the history of civilization. In fact, in his time, this vision had an explicit anti-Christian connotation. Let us return to the viewpoint defined by the tendency to forget the common good, since Machiavelli favours it the most. In Chapter 37, Book I, freedom appears to be challenged when the members of the city clash, driven by a need to satisfy their individual appetites, to the detriment of the common good. The advent of a concern for ownership, marked by the pursuit of property and honours, is the major risk incurred by this institutional order. Chapter 40 of Book I, devoted to analysing the creation of the Decemvirate, confirms this perspective.16 Machiavelli contends that the error prejudicial to freedom was to confer unchecked authority, for an indefinite amount of time, on one man. This mistake was aggravated by the fact that the humours nursed overweening

16

anacyclosis and the circulation of good: one theory considers the question of corruption on the scale of the city, the other on the scale of the world. Machiavelli 1996, p. 85 sq.

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desires, and the one man was ‘agitated’, that is, dissatisfied and driven by personal ambitions. Leadership gave him the means to satisfy his ‘private’ desires, and to lure other men away from considering the common good.17 In the city, whenever we identify the pursuit of ‘private’ goals, whether it is conducted by one man in particular or by one or even two humours, it is a case of corruption. Corruption is connected to the conception of desire, usually characterised by Machiavelli as insatiable and excessive, by the concept of omission of the common good.

…

The Machiavellian analysis of the fight against corruption is based primarily on a comparison with medical treatment, which Machiavelli makes explicit in Chapter 1 of Book III of the Discourses: The mode of renewing them is, as we said, to lead them back toward their beginnings. For all the beginnings of sects, republics, and kingdoms must have some goodness in them, by means of which they may regain their first reputation and their first increase. Because in the process of time that goodness is corrupted, unless something intervenes to lead it back to its mark, it of necessity kills that body. Speaking of the bodies of men, these doctors of medicine say ‘Quod quotidie aggregatur aliquid, quod quandoque indiget curatione’ [‘that daily something is added that at some time needs cure’]. Speaking of republics, this return toward the beginning, this return is done through either extrinsic accident or intrinsic prudence.18 This comparison returns to the medical explanation of human physical illness as an excess (or sometimes a deficit) of one humour or another in the body. In humoural theory, disease can be accounted for by an imbalance in the composition of the humours or by the (relative) predominance of one humour over another. This explanation due to excess fits into the continuity of the analysis. To restore a balance to the mixture, a purgative is necessary, in order to rid the body of an excess of such or such a humour – particularly from the standpoint 17 18

Machiavelli 1996, pp. 90-91. Machiavelli 1996, p. 209. The translators indicate the quote is made in Latin, but omit it and indicate its source is unknown. In this chapter, we intend to demonstrate that it is possible to trace it back to Hippocratic medicine, and we ground this view by citing excerpts from the corpus.

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of the Hippocratic classic On the regimen of acute diseases, which presents disease as a change in the body, and cure as the action of balancing it by making an equal and opposite change.19 The idea of a ‘return toward the beginning’ is a means of metaphorically adapting the medical action of the purge to politics and institutions. The return is presented as a sort of alteration [alterazione]; that is, in the Aristotelian sense of the term, as a modification of the qualities of the subject, but not of the subject himself. The return to principles does not in fact modify the city itself, since it merely brings it back to its initial state. Machiavelli also calls this return to principles a renewal [rinnovazione].20 Although the idea of ‘renovatio’ was spread by astrology, and Plato’s Politics may have inspired its formulation in the early 16th century, we must not neglect its Christian source.21 Actually, in this chapter, Machiavelli explicitly refers to the practices of the Dominican and Franciscan religious orders. His insistence on the imitation of Christ’s poverty, echoing his analysis of the poverty of the Roman citizens, is notable in this respect: But as to the Sects, such renewal is also seen to be necessary by the example of our religion, which would be altogether eliminated if it had not been drawn back toward its beginning by Saint Francis and Saint Dominick. For this poverty and with the example of the life of Christ they brought back to the minds of men what had already been eliminated there.22

19 20 21

22

Hippocrates 1959a, Regimen in acute disease, VI/2. Machiavelli 1996, p. 211. See Chabod on this issue: ‘and nevertheless, in this assertion of a return to the sources an attitude emerges. Far from being naturalist, it is the inheritance of another era, present in the unconscious of Machiavelli and his contemporaries and, in its essence, profoundly transformed by them. Actually, trust in renewal, in the return to the principles, in which he agrees that “there is always something good” is exactly analogous to the trust which dominated the whole Christian Middle Ages – an orientation characteristic of the religious mentality in general and of the Christian mentality in particular, for at a certain moment in human history, at its founding, in the word of Christ, it was provided with the eternal tablets of its laws, the principles which framed the entire life of Christian humanity, from beginning to end. The myth of renewal, in the form of a return to the pure, noble moral life of the origins, contemplated as the age of perfection, had been a religious myth, related to orthodoxy, or on the contrary, a product of the zeal of heretical sects, but in either case, an exemplary testimonial to medieval moral life’ (Chabod 1964, pp. 218-219). Machiavelli 1996, pp. 211-212.

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In the Christian frame of reference, renewal corresponds to a return to the moral perfection of the dawn of Christianity, or to the spirit of the law in a specific religious order. The fact that in Machiavelli’s eyes, cities resemble religions by nature, as ‘mixed bodies’ and ‘vivere commune’, and that before him, Savonarola had envisaged the reform of the Florentine city-state based on the idea of renewal, facilitates the application of such an idea to the political city. However, in Machiavelli, it serves the purposes of the free state. He develops his own conception of a return to principles as a return to the moment when the city was founded, and this constitutes his own version of the idea of renewal. His works contain a single description of the time of founding. Life in the city, especially when laws are established to make justice reign, appears to be the only place where human life is preserved: For since the inhabitants were sparse in the beginnings of the world, they lived dispersed for a time like beasts; then, as generations multiplied, they gathered together, and to be able to defend themselves better, they began to look to whoever among them was more robust and of greater heart, and they made him a head, as it were, and obeyed him. From this arose the knowledge of things honest and good, differing from the pernicious and bad. For, seeing that if one individual hurt his benefactor, hatred and compassion among men came from it, and as they blamed the ungrateful and honored those who were grateful, and thought too that those same injuries could be done to them, to escape like evil, they were reduced to making laws and ordering punishments for whoever acted against them: hence came the knowledge of justice.23 This account of the origins suggests that the threat that terrifies men most is associated with their survival: i.e., they fear the destruction of the city, which would force them to return to the state of chaos, when they were dispersed like beasts. We can formulate the hypothesis that the idea of a ‘return to the beginning’ or sources specifically refers to this early time. For the inhabitants of the city, it means they will sink back into the times before the city was formed, when passions were expressed without restraint, when there was a greater risk of violence: a time when, due to these facts, dread was ever-present.24 Let us note that Machiavelli’s works contain other scenes, which play a role similar to this account of the origins: that is, they act as a foil which contributes 23 24

Machiavelli 1996, pp. 11-12. See Esposito 1984, and Badaloni 1969, pp. 689-691.

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to the emergence and survival of a princely or republican power. Like this return to the sources, they are related to traumata – to continue the medical metaphor – which, in their very negativity, serve as an essential foundation of this power. One example is the account of how Cesare Borgia staged the gruesome, spectacular murder of his advisor Remirro d’Orca, and the way it founded the obedience of the people of Romagna: And having seized this opportunity he had him placed one morning in the piazza at Cesena in two pieces, with a piece of wood and a bloody knife beside him. The ferocity of this spectacle left the people at once satisfied and stupefied.25 Let us also think of the description of Italy’s condition in the last chapter of The Prince. According to the context, it reflects the situation in Italy during Machiavelli’s lifetime. But it can also be interpreted more generally as the horizon of all power, princely or republican, that has failed to foresee its own doom: … [Italy] is more enslaved than the Hebrews, more servile than the Persians, more dispersed than the Athenians, without a head, without order, beaten, despoiled, torn, pillaged, and having endured ruin of every sort. […] So, left as if lifeless, she awaits whoever it can that will heal her wounds, and put an end to the sacking of Lombardy, to the taxes on the kingdom and on Tuscany, and cure her of her sores that have festered now for a long time.26 Just as the prospect of a return to the state of dispersal prior to the foundation of the city plays a pivotal role in the ‘return to the beginning’ in a corrupt city, the prospect of foreign invasion and utter ‘ruin’ – military, material, political, etc. – acts as a rampart against a politics anchored in its own present. The history of every city, regardless of its government, thus appears to be bound between two times, the one prior to its foundation and the one following its ruin. It is essential to remember them so that the concern for duration (by opposition to the consideration of the present alone) determines the actions of he who holds power. In the case of corruption of the ‘vivere libero’ in Chapter 1, book III of the Discourses, the return to the beginning is obtained

25 26

Machiavelli 1998, p. 30. Machiavelli 1998, p. 102.

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thanks to the spectre of ruin and conquest by an enemy – the capture of Rome by the Gauls: Thus came this external beating, so that all the orders of the city might be regained and that it might be shown to that people that it was necessary not only to maintain religion and justice, but also to esteem its good citizens and to take more account of their virtue than of those advantages that it appeared to them they lacked through their works.27 This general description of the fight against corruption, reinforced by the medical image of the purge, provides the guiding concept of his analysis. Nevertheless, we cannot confine ourselves to it. On the one hand, Machiavelli conceives different means of intervention depending on the degree of development of corruption. Two passages are especially important in this respect: Chapters 17 and 18, I, and Chapter 1, III of the Discourses. They assert the existence of ‘degrees’ [gradi] of corruption (I, 18) or of ‘times’ [tempi] (III, 1), which demand distinct forms of action, of which it would seem there are three. Here, we again find an idea that is dear to him, that of a qualitative variation of time which requires the adaptation of ways of action. The idea is rendered by the metaphor of adapting form to function: If Rome wanted to maintain itself free in corruption, therefore, it was necessary that it should have made new orders as in the course of its life it had made new laws. For one should order different orders and modes of life in a bad subject and in a good one; nor can there be a similar form in a matter altogether contrary.28 Moreover, even though the taking of Rome by the Gauls re-established obedience to the laws and respect for institutions, the return to founding principles does not always result from an event that arouses the fear of dispersion and the absence of justice. The other path a city may follow for such a return consists in ‘intrinsic prudence’, which encourages its inhabitants to obey the laws and behave in compliance with the institutional order. It remains for us to shed light on what Machiavelli means by ‘intrinsic prudence’. A review of these three times reveals a moment when the ‘return to the beginning’, conceived as a return to the initial state of the regime, is impossible to carry out. At that point, it is no longer a question of renewal, but of innovation. 27 28

Machiavelli 1996, p. 210. Machiavelli 1996, p. 51.

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The action engaged to fight the corruption process must be understood in terms of the dual means of renewal and innovation. The prince, a quintessential figure in innovation, returns to the centre of the analysis. Moreover, this turning point between the return to the initial state and innovation invites us to consider the articulation between The Prince and the Discourses. Chapter 1, III of the Discourses gives us a vision of the beginning of the fight against corruption, in the immediate aftermath of the city’s founding. According to Machiavelli, no more than ten years should elapse between initiatives. After that, men forget the fear of punishment, which makes them obey the laws: Because they were excessive and notable, such things made men draw back toward the mark whenever one of them arose; and when they began to be more rare, they also began to give more space to men to corrupt and to behave with greater danger and more tumult. For one would not wish ten years at most to pass from one to another of such executions; for when this time is past, men begin to vary in their customs and to transgress the laws. Unless something arises by which punishment is brought back to their memory and fear is renewed in their spirits, soon so many delinquents join together that they can no longer be punished without danger.29 Here, fear is shown in a new guise. Until now, it was thought of as one of the passions demonstrated in the conflict between the great and the people. But here, it appears to be used against the great and the people by those in charge of the magistracies, in order to make them respect the laws. This use of fear by those in power minimizes the distinction between ‘ordini espressivi’ and ‘ordini repressivi’, between the institutional order of the mixed republic and that of the monarchy.30 Actually, if the ‘vivere libero’ is defined as an institutional order in which the two humours can be vented, it is nevertheless also necessarily restrictive, in the sense that vivid fear of punishment is required to maintain freedom. In Machiavelli’s eyes, therefore, the fear of punishment is not associated solely with tyranny and monarchy, since here, he cites it as an instrument that is essential to the survival of freedom. During the ten-year interval between executions, the fear of punishment is effective in discouraging both the great and the people from even dreaming of 29 30

Machiavelli 1996, pp. 210-211. Matteucci 1972, pp. 94-95.

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expressing excessive desires. To guarantee respect for the law and the ‘modes’ or customs befitting the republican institutional order, it is necessary only that a man of virtue rises up and sets an example the other citizens emulate. Or a law or institution can be passed, or an existing law can be reformed.31 As an example, let us take the creation of the censors in Rome. Machiavelli writes of it in Chapter 49, I, as something that slowed corruption considerably. He uses the term ‘provvedimento’ to describe it; such a ‘provision’ is not an institutional reform, but a legislative amendment that supplements the existing constitutional apparatus, in order to increase and guarantee its effectiveness.32 It is significant that the Discourses end with a chapter entitled ‘A republic has need of new acts of foresight everyday if one wishes to maintain it free’ reiterating the necessity for frequent renewals of the ‘provvedimenti’ in order to maintain freedom and stave off the effects of the gradual corruption process.33 If the government does not take action within ten years, men forget their fear of punishment. At that time, the second phase of corruption begins. The means applied earlier will no longer be effective: If the executions written above, together with these particular examples, had continued at least every ten years in that city, it follows of necessity that it would never have been corrupt; but as both of these two things began to diminish, corruptions began to multiply. For after Marcus Regulus no like example may be seen there, and although the two Catos emerged in Rome, there was so much distance from him to them, and they remained so alone, that with their good examples they were not able to do any good work …34 In this phase, examples of goodness and ‘provvedimenti’ are powerless to counter the advancement of corruption. Machiavelli reveals two new ‘modi’ of intervention. One is extra-institutional: an outside event may occur, giving the free city an opportunity to return to its initial state (for example, the invasion 31 32

33

34

Machiavelli 1996, p. 209. Machiavelli 1996, p. 100. Livy’s statements are briefer, but adopt the same viewpoint: that censorship, ‘that originated in a small way but afterwards grew to such dimension that it was invested with the regulation of the morals and discipline of the Romans’ (Livy 1922, IV, 8, p. 285). Machiavelli 1996, p. 309: ‘Although these diseases produce bad effects in a Republic, they are not fatal, because there is almost always time to correct them, but there is actually no time in those that regard the state, which ruin the city if they are not corrected by a prudent individual’. Machiavelli 1996, p. 211.

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of Rome by the Gauls). The other consists of a reform of the institutional order itself, not merely the laws, necessitated by the gap between the changing laws and the order, which has remained the same.35 Nevertheless, this reform of the institutions, conceived for the purposes of countering the advancement of corruption, appears to be an arduous task. Machiavelli’s illustration of it ends in its failure.36 It seems that, in his opinion, as soon as a state has allowed corruption to develop to the degree that a reform of the institutional order is necessary, the state will be confronted with the need for ‘extraordinary’ transformation, because this reform is so hard to accomplish. Hence, with Machiavelli, let us move directly to the third phase of corruption, defined by this ‘extraordinary’ necessity. The only means of saving the city are those that Machiavelli has, up to now, recommended avoiding as much as possible: violence and, to risk an extreme expression, lawlessness.37 At this point, the perspective of a ‘return to the beginning’ or renovatio is abandoned, replaced by the question of innovation. Contrary to widespread opinion, innovation is not only discussed in The Prince. Quite the opposite: it constitutes a theme which might enable us to bridge the differences between The Prince and the Discourses, insofar as the prince possesses the qualities appropriate for ‘extraordinary’ situations.38 This third phase of corruption is envisaged through the prism of a specific term: ‘mutazione’. In Machiavelli’s vocabulary, the verb ‘mutare’ and the noun derived from it, ‘mutazione’, are applied to the transition from one regime to another. This transition is also represented, in his work, by the verbs ‘alterare’ and ‘variare’, along with the nouns corresponding to them: ‘alterazione’ and ‘variazione.’ However, although the dominant definition of ‘mutazione’ is that of the regime change, the meaning of these verbs is diluted in a vaguer and more general application of the other two terms. ‘Alterazione’ describes a transformation, usually of the state of flux of the humours in the city, and sometimes a reform or change of regime; ‘variazione’ often serves Machiavelli to indicate the qualitative variation in times 35 36 37

38

Machiavelli 1996, pp. 49-50. Ibid. In our opinion, Binoche has established too sharp a contrast between Machiavelli and Montesquieu. According to Binoche, Montesquieu was the opposite of Machiavelli, because he preferred ‘prevention’ to ‘cure’, whereas Machiavelli would favour extraordinary means and brutal returns to the good principles of the beginnings (Binoche 1998, p. 111). This is only partially true. Both thinkers actually prefer prevention. It is only when corruption has reached an extreme degree that Machiavelli recommends recourse to extreme means. See, on the prince as redeemer, Viroli 2014.

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and fortune, the migrations of good and evil in the world, and only sometimes regime change. The change of regime described by the term ‘mutazione’ implies a significant departure from the preceding form of government. It is a true change of nature, as opposed to institutional reform.39 Other uses of the verb ‘mutare’ or the noun ‘mutazione’ confirm that in using them, Machiavelli fully intends a profound change of nature, not of qualities (he uses them in relation to a change in the way of waging war and, most often, regarding the need for men to change their nature in order to behave in a way that is appropriate to a new quality of the times).40 However, although when applied to statecraft, ‘mutazione’ designates a regime change, it does not correspond to the modern idea of revolution.41 Revolution designates regime change to bring about freedom, whereas in Machiavelli, ‘mutazione’ tends to occur in analyses of corruption; that is, ‘mutazione’ results in a decline of freedom. In other contexts, the word can be used to describe the transition from freedom to tyranny as much as for the opposite. If ‘mutazione’ is comparable to the word ‘revolution’, it is only in the pre-modern sense of the latter term. A return to the sources could be akin to a ‘revolution’ understood as backwards movement to the starting point. The metaphor of form and function that occurs in the Discourses, I, 18 – ‘For one should order different orders and modes of life in a bad subject and in a good one; nor can there be a similar form in a matter altogether’ – takes on its full meaning in relation to the regime change designated by this term ‘mutazione’. The metaphor makes it possible to describe the process of institutional reform made necessary by the evolution of the ethos of the Roman citizens. Because they had become ‘bad’ [cattivi], the institutional order had to be revised. The city had reached such an extreme degree of corruption that ‘rinnovazione’ would no longer suffice. ‘Innovazione’ had become necessary. 42 The use of this metaphor launches a certain polemic which, as is often the case with Machiavellian metaphors, may go unnoticed to readers in the present day. However, it deserves to be explained. By asserting that form must be adapted to matter, Machiavelli is again challenging the thesis of the absolute primacy of 39 40 41

42

See Machiavelli 1996, I, 2, and III, 3. See Machiavelli 1996, III, 9. Writing at the time of the French Revolution, F. Testard, translator of the 1793 Volland edition of Machiavelli, used the French word ‘révolution’ for ‘mutazione’ for the occurrence identified in Chapter I, 2. C. Toussaint Guiraudet did the same thing for the occurrences identified in Chapters I, 49, and III, 7 (Toussaint Guiraudet’s translation is reprinted in the 1980 Berger-Levrault edition of the Discourses, with a preface by C. Lefort). But there is nothing systematic about this choice of translation. Machiavelli, Discourses, I, 18, pp. 228-229.

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form over matter.43 Such a criticism has strong implications for political thinking, considering the approaches it adopts and the purpose it gives itself. If one accepts this challenge, the search for the best regime, in the absolute sense, probably becomes irrelevant. Instead, the subject of political reflection would be the institutional order appropriate to each city, its history, and development, and possible variations on the order, as a function of the quality of the times. The analysis of ‘mutazione’ illustrates this change in topic. The ‘mutazione’ has a leading man: he is evil, and ready to use violence. For an introduction to him, let us turn to Chapter 18 of Book I of the Discourses, in which Machiavelli offers a thought experiment to the reader (placing oneself in the context of an extremely corrupted city) in order to answer the following question: can an extremely corrupt state still be free?44 The answer to this question is that it cannot. In Machiavelli’s opinion, extreme corruption requires the intervention of one man alone, who will reach the pinnacle of power through personal ambition, it would seem: As to innovating these orders at a stroke, when everyone knows that they are not good, I say that the uselessness, which is easily recognized, is difficult to correct. For to do this, it is not enough to use ordinary terms, since the ordinary modes are bad; but it is necessary to go to the extraordinary, such as violence and arms, and before everything else become Prince of that City, able to dispose it in one own’s mode. Because the reordering of a city for a political way of presupposes a good man, and becoming of a Prince of a Republic by violence presupposes a bad man …45 If such a man does not appear, the most likely fate for a corrupted city is to be conquered and subjugated to the orders of another: if a bad man takes over the city’s government, he shall subject it to his royal and potentially tyrannical authority. In this regard, the figure of the evil man appears to be essential to the extraordinary mutation of the city’s regime. Unlike the ‘princeps liberator’ 43

44 45

This thesis, which reaches all the way to Renaissance political thought, has a complex medieval genealogy. It initially was rooted in the reading and commentary of the works of Aristotle; then, in Thomas Aquinas, it developed in opposition to the Aristotelian treatises on biology and physics, considered to be heretical, and banned in universities in the 13th century. Thomas Aquinas also opposed the theses of Averroes, whose medical writings and commentary on Metaphysics suggest the idea of a plasma force within matter itself, the source of the development of form. Machiavelli 1996, p. 49. Machiavelli 1996, p. 51.

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conceived by Cicero, who intervenes to restore the institutions of the republic when they have been corrupted, this evil figure acts on his own initiative, without waiting for the consent or counsel of public powers. He intervenes on the margins of positive law, which he will later re-establish. The cruel and evil man of Chapter 18, Book I certainly shares with the Ciceronian prince the initiative of action in a context where the ‘vivere libero’ is in danger. He nevertheless differs from the Ciceronian figure in the purposes he pursues, since he nurses a personal ambition. Conversely, he resembles the Prince imagined by Machiavelli. If the principality is not the necessary outcome of the corrupted republic, the situation of extreme corruption considered in the Discourses I, 18 actually does require nearly the same ‘qualities’ as the conquest of power – an ability to seize opportunities, to use violence and personal ambition – and it resembles the crisis moment described in The Prince – the crisis of a city and territory invaded by external enemies.46 When the city reaches this third phase, the risk is great that it will lose its freedom in the sense of ‘vivere libero’, leaving only, at best, its freedom in the sense of independence. Once freedom in the form of democratic institutions is lost, freedom as independence from foreign domination must be the goal, even if the system of government must be changed. Hence, in the course of its history, due to the corruption process, the republic confronts the possibility of a change of regime [mutazione], in order to survive as a state. Machiavelli’s political philosophy thus carries a two-pronged project. Depending on the quality of the times and the city’s history, it promotes either republican institutions and self-rule, or whatever regime can endure. As a result, the Machiavellian oeuvre addresses two different subjects of action – the republican government and the city – depending on the time in which his analysis is situated.

…

The conception of corruption as a gradual process is another point of convergence between Machiavelli and the medical theorists of his time. The comparison of corruption to rot requires that leaders be capable of foreseeing and preparing for change: a city that detects corruption early might be able to nip it in the bud. Hence another similarity to medical theory: both the ruler and the physician must learn ‘to observe the invisible through the visible.’47 Although in the absence of any symptoms, it is difficult to detect disease, this 46 47

On this point, we disagree with Baron (Baron, 1961, p. 232). An expression borrowed from the Hippocratic treatise Regimen (Hippocrates 1959b, p. 249).

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sense is nevertheless necessary, for the disease is liable to become incurable if it is not diagnosed well in advance.48 Those who govern also need this special ability to detect the slightest ill: For the Romans did in these cases what all wise princes should do: they not only have to have regard for present troubles but also for the future ones, and they have to avoid this with all their industry because, when one foresees from afar, one can easily find a remedy for them but when you wait until they come close to you, the medicine is not in time because the disease has become incurable. And it happens with this as the physicians say of the consumption, that in the beginning of the illness it is easy to cure and difficult to recognize, but in the progress of time, when it has not been recognized and treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to recognize and difficult to cure. So it happens in affairs of state, because when one recognizes from afar the evils that arise in a state (which is not given but to one who is prudent); they are soon healed; but when they are left to grow because they were not recognized, to the point that everyone recognizes them, there is no longer any remedy for them.49 However, the ability to detect the invisible plays a special role in the fight against the corruption of the free state. By observing the semiology of corruption, this sense can prevent it. Machiavelli obviously thought this was of primordial importance. Like Livy and Aristotle, he too pays attention to the ‘little things’, especially the private domain. Events that occur behind the bedchamber doors, for example, may have an unpredictable impact on politics. Such events, although they appear harmless, are a sign of the need to institute reforms that counteract the excessive expression of the desires of the great and people.50 For example, an event that seemed innocuous – a private lovers’ quarrel – had an upsetting public outcome for the city of Ardea. The plebs sent for the Volscians, who besieged the city, but they were reduced to famine when the nobles sent for the Romans, who overran it. Trivial ‘incidents’ can lead to major upsets – sedition, invasion. Moreover, plots to abduct women seem to constitute a topos in this semiology of corruption. On this subject, Machiavelli recalls two examples from ancient times: the rape of Lucretia, in the Tarquin era, and the rape of Verginia during the Decemvirate. He refers to Aristotle who among the first causes’ he ‘puts down of the ruin of tyrants is having injured 48 49 50

Hippocrates 1959b, p. 231. Machiavelli 1998, p. 12. Machiavelli 1996, p. 272.

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someone on account of women, by raping them or by violating them or by breaking off marriages …’51 So private life must be kept under close surveillance, but citizens who conceal their personal ambition behind actions which appear to be selfless and undertaken for the common benefit must also be watched. This phenomenon is analysed in the Discourses, III, 28, ‘That one should be mindful of the works of citizens because many times underneath a merciful work a beginning of tyranny is concealed’. Machiavelli differentiates between two ways, private and public, of earning a reputation in the city, and encourages all republican governments to suspect those who adopt the private way, for it is always liable to serve personal ambition which is detrimental to freedom.52 In Machiavelli’s time, there were two opposing medical theories about the observation of the invisible behind the visible. Three texts by Galen attest to this controversy, mentioning the opposition between ‘dogmatic’ and ‘empirical’ conceptions of diagnosis. Their titles are: On Sects for Beginners, Exposition of the Empiric Sect, and On Medical Experience.53 Is Machiavelli a ‘dogmatic’ or an ‘empiricist’? According to the ‘dogmatic’ sect of physicians, the causes of most diseases are invisible, because they lie within the body. The only way of discovering them is to infer them from the symptoms. This inference from the visible to the invisible is called ‘indication’ [endeixis]. By contrast, according to the empiricists, we can only know what is visible or evident; experience is the only absolute instrument of knowledge. Empiricism confines itself to what one oneself can observe (autopsia), to what has been observed by others and reported, either verbally or in writing (historia), and to what can be derived from analogy to what is observed, which the empiricists call ‘transition to the similar.’54 However, the empiricists were not anti-rationalists. They also practiced inference – called ‘epilogism’ – focused on a temporarily hidden subject. The only demonstration [apodeixis] they refused was one that was based on inferences drawn from the unobservable. The observation Machiavelli recommends is related mainly to the second type of inference, the empiricist epilogism: the point is not to detect the real 51 52 53

54

Machiavelli 1996, p. 273. See Aristotle 1984, V, 4, 1, p. 5838, and V, 8, 2, p. 5860. Machiavelli 1996, p. 277. In the early 16th century, On Sects for Beginners was included in the canon of 16 works by Galen taught in medical schools. An Outline of Empiricism was translated into Latin by Nicolas de Reggio. Lastly, fragments of On Medical Experience, initially translated into Syriac and Arabic, were available thanks to a Latin translation by a Modeno physician, Augustinus Gadaldinus. See Galen 1985. Pellegrin, in Galen 1998, p. 36.

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causes of disease on the basis of the symptoms – which is the goal of dogmatic endeixis – but to detect the disease from the precursory signs of it, which easily escape notice if one’s senses are not alert to the them. Beyond this special ability to detect the invisible behind the visible, there is, on the whole, a definite proximity between Machiavellian analysis of corruption and the definition of medical practice yielded by the Hippocratic-Galenic tradition. Actually, medicine inspired by the teachings of Hippocrates and Galen is based on the conviction that human intervention on disease is possible and potentially effective. Their medicine stands in opposition to the belief that divine power alone rules the course of things. Moreover, asserting the possibility and potential efficacy of human intervention corresponds to a requirement essential to Machiavellian thinking on civil freedom. Freedom does encounter its limits in facing corruption, as Machiavelli himself acknowledges. However, in medicine, he finds a language which is the most accurate statement of the potential for human action, because the very basis of medical art is the assumption that the supernatural is not omnipotent, and that human action can be effective. Furthermore, the art of medicine proceeds in four steps: first, it elaborates a regimen to prevent disease; second, it applies symptomatology to detect the beginnings of disease; third, it diagnoses illness when it appears; and fourth, it treats the illness. These medical phases correspond to Machiavelli’s vision of the fight against corruption of the free government.55 Finally, medical theory has classified disease states into three broad categories: mala complexio or disorders of temperament (humoural imbalance); mala compositio or congenital defects; and solutio continuatis, ‘breach of continuity’ or trauma. Since ancient Greek times, most diseases have been classified as mala complexio, or humoural imbalance. Physicians treat humoural imbalance when it appears, but they also try to prevent it, by prescribing a regimen of physical exercise and a proper diet, a healthful environment (in terms of air, climate, location); and by taking celestial influences into account. Machiavelli associates the corruption process with a humoural imbalance. The whole city, or body politic, is affected, and requires the same type of treatment, until it reaches the moment of ‘mutazione’.56

…

55 56

Zanzi 1981, p. 136. See Gaille, 2004a and 2004b.

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This analysis of the process whereby a free regime is corrupted shows that Machiavelli unequivocally ranks ‘customs’ [costumi] above laws in the hierarchy he establishes. The ‘knot’ he describes in Discourses, I, 18, – ‘For as good customs have need of laws to maintain themselves, so laws have need of good customs so as to be observed’.57 – is loosened for the benefit of ‘customs’. When he examines how freedom is maintained in part by the habit of poverty and by human awe in the face of the divine, ‘customs’ emerge as being determined by and central to the institutional order, sometimes at the cost of a reform and the institution of a new law. Whereas republican laws are powerless against the process of corruption, despite the attraction of a free regime and the union of the great and the people founded on the equivocal name of freedom, customs are ‘sculpted’ in order to maintain the ‘vivere libero’. So laws are only temporary ‘makers of manners’, as Shakespeare put it.58 In this respect, ‘customs’ would seem to require a paradoxical double definition as both flexible and sturdy. They possess consistency and constancy. Customs are a people’s second nature; they are likely to constitute a bulwark against action, whether the action is conquest or institutional reform.59 However, in the analysis of corruption, they seem to display characteristics that are the opposite of constancy and consistency. Instead of remaining unchanged, they designate an evolving reality, because the corruption process is conceived as the gradual oblivion of the common good. Therefore, in the usage of the term ‘customs’, there is an ambiguity. Machiavelli exploits this ambiguity to assert both the effectiveness of laws on the way of life inside the city, and the limitations of them over the long course of a city’s history. It may seem strange that Machiavelli does not pay closer attention to upbringing and civic education earlier. He devotes only one chapter of the Discourses (III, 43) to the subject, in which he states that upbringing shapes the way of life of peoples and families. It is a fact that he neglects family education to some degree. Perhaps this neglect is symptomatic of a disenchanted vision of the possible effects of this education: within a family, it will contribute above all to transmitting the desire that belongs either to the people or to the great, along with the passions and lifestyles associated with each humour. Conversely, Machiavelli approaches civic education indirectly, through the analysis of laws designed to orient desires, to etch their manifestation into the institutional order, to restrain them or to permit their expression, as well as

57 58 59

Machiavelli 1996, p. 49. Shakespeare 1997, p. 924. See Machiavelli 1998, 3 and 5, and Machiavelli 1998, I, 25.

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those laws which punish or reward the deeds of private citizens or of army captains on the battlefield. The conception of customs emanating from the Discourses ultimately urges us to enrich the concept of ‘civiltà’ with a new dimension, evoked in Chapter 4. We saw that in Machiavelli, the adjective ‘civile’ (or its synonym, ‘politico’) refers to a type of government based on the rule of law. This definition is incomplete, however, for the concept of ‘civile’ also designates a way for the citizen to belong to the city by valuing the common good over the personal or private: Civicism and goodness do indeed interact together, necessarily, and this is how they create the vivere civile. Members of a community are good not only when they obey the arrangement or system – whether we are talking about religion, customs, or laws – but beyond obedience, they are also good when they deliberately and actively repel any attack on civil equality. This sense of the rights and duties of each is the core element of continuity in the many and varied forms and structures of vivere civile and civicism.60 Machiavelli sees public well being not as the sum of many private actions, but as the fruit of an action aimed at constituting the city, from the beginning. By defining the civiltà in these terms, we are probably at the heart of the Machiavellian conception of corruption. In addition to identifying the various phases of corruption and the variety of means of fighting it, civility or civicism, understood as a way of living that promotes the viewpoint of the common good, appears to be the first condition for the maintenance of freedom; it is vital to its survival. 60

Tenenti 1978, pp. 171-172.

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Chapter 5

Rome, Inimitable Paradigm If contemporary history springs straight from life, so too does that history which is called non-contemporary, for it is evident that only an interest in the life of the present can move one to investigate past fact.1 … I am the nursling of older ages like the Greek, and less a child of this age. I must admit so much of virtue in my profession as a classical scholar: for I do not know what meaning classical scholarship may have for our time except in its being ‘unseasonable’, – that is contrary to our time, and yet with an influence on it for the benefit, it may be hoped, for a future time.2 Machiavelli’s conception of freedom is couched in an interpretation of Roman history. Yet, in Machiavelli, the idea of ‘vivere libero’ refers to multiple experiences. Roman history, especially its republican moment, plays a central role which may appear to be exclusive, In the Discourses, the presence of histories of freedom other than Rome’s demonstrates that Machiavelli envisaged other ways for city-states to become and remain free, or to fail to be free: Sparta and Venice, compared to each other; German cities; but also, and perhaps especially, Florence, his own city, whose history is akin to a tormented search for freedom. The particular status of Rome comes to light only when one considers it within the whole set of histories of freedom. Sparta and Venice provide two other examples of enduring republics, although their institutions differed greatly from those of Rome, as the prefatory remarks in Chapter 5 of Book I remind us: in Rome, the safekeeping of freedom was entrusted to the plebs; in Sparta and in Venice, it devolved on the nobility.3 Machiavelli revives the memory of Sparta, primarily inspired by Polybius’s comparison of Sparta and Rome. Chapter 2 of Book I insists on the one hand, on Sparta’s free origin and, on the other hand, on the fact that unlike Rome, it was endowed with its laws from the time of its foundation by Lycurgus. The distribution of magistracies organized by Lycurgus gave birth to a free regime

1 Croce 1921, p. 12. 2 Nietzsche 1910, p. 5. 3 Machiavelli 1996, p. 17.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004376014_006

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modelled on the concept of the mixed constitution, in order to avoid the weaknesses inherent to pure forms of government.4 Chapter I, 6 analyses the reasons why, according to Machiavelli, the free government of Sparta lasted for so long. The distribution of magistracies, making the mutual limitation of ambitions possible, was definitely operative.5 Machiavelli mentions other explanatory factors, without necessarily specifying their effects, in fact: the ‘equal poverty’ instituted by Lycurgus; the small population, and the closing of the borders. He says that they explain the union in which the Spartans lived.6 He also points out that the absence of imperial ambition spared the government the need to form a large people’s army, and thus the need to concede more important prerogatives to the plebs, as Rome was forced to; finally, Sparta’s relative military might, large enough to discourage its neighbours from an easy conquest, and yet not so large as to constitute a threat to them. As for Venice, it is the subject of a lengthy, unique description developed in Chapter 6, I, attesting to the singularity of the genesis and vitality of the Venetian republic. Like Rome and unlike Sparta, Venice did not have a legislator who endowed it with a constitution at the moment of its founding. The republic was created gradually. When laws became necessary to life in the community, the Venetians established a form of government in order to discuss local matters, which corresponded to their way of functioning: the Council, Newcomers to the region were systematically excluded from governmental functions. According to Machiavelli, that is how the ‘stretta’ republic of Venice was born. It flourished as such thanks to laws designed to make its perpetuation possible – their purpose being to restrain the ambition of the ‘People’ – and because newcomers were few. Moreover, Machiavelli does not neglect the fact that, like Sparta, Venice was powerful enough that ‘nobody would believe he could crush it at once’ and in the same time ‘would not be so great as to be formidable to its neighbours’:7 neither an attacker nor a victim. Chapter I, 55 discussing the case of German cities, formulates the conditions for freedom in an entirely new way. The mention of Germany in the Discourses raises a variety of questions. In the first place, let us point out that in the early 16th century, it was not easy to uphold German cities as an ideal of freedom. Actually, Italian humanist culture ‘was based on a clear distinction 4 5 6 7

Machiavelli 1996, p. 13. Machiavelli 1996, p. 21. Ibid. Machiavelli 1996, p. 22.

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between Latin civilization and the supposed barbarism of the countries lying on the other side of the Alps’.8 The prevailing image in the 14th and 15th centuries was of a cruel, barbarous German, wealthy and greedy. Yet Machiavelli proceeds to discuss the German cities just as he had Rome. In both cases, he cited an example familiar to his contemporaries – several texts or translations had circulated in the decades just before he was writing, describing the German example from the viewpoint of customs and institutions.9 However, he subverted the use of these examples, radically reinterpreting their meaning. Moreover, he himself had travelled to Germany on several occasions, as part of his diplomatic duties in Florence. Three reports, written in 1508, 1509, and 1512, stand as testimony to his lengthy reflection on German ‘affairs of state’. Two of them are especially valuable to us – the Report on Germany written on 17 June 1508 and the Description of Germany (1512), for they structure a reflection around certain key themes that we recognize in the analysis of the causes of freedom in German cities, in Chapter 55, I. These reports emphasize the wealth of the German people, attributing this abundance to their frugal way of life: ‘And when I say that the Germans are rich, the truth of it is easily proved. They become rich in great part because they live as if they were poor; for they neither build, nor dress, nor furnish their houses expensively. It is enough for them to have plenty of bread and meat, and to have a stove behind which they take refuge from the cold’.10 In Chapter I, 55 of the Discourses, the analysis of the free government is presented as the logical outcome of a chain of events, in Germany: freedom is primarily defined in relation to citizens’ strict compliance with the laws, which discourage any ambitious citizen or outside enemy from the temptation of capturing power. This state of freedom seems to be connected to the goodness and piety of the Germans.11 The analysis brings in concepts we encountered in the comments on the Roman case – those of corruption and religion – and the fact that the idea of goodness, ‘bontà’, refers to the favour granted to the common good over fulfilment of individual desires is not surprising.12 Machiavelli cites two other causes, the first of which also echoes the case of Rome, 8 9

10 11 12

Costa 1997, p. 17. The Historiarum Florentini populi libri XII (1441) and De bello italico adversus Gothos (a revised version of Procopius’s Guerra gothica), by Leonardo Bruni, Enea Silvio Piccolomini’s Historia Gothorum (1453), abridged from De origine actibusque Getarum by Jordanes, a valuable source for the history of the Germanic peoples, was found in a monastery, and especially, Tacitus’s Germania (Venice, 1470). See Costa 1997, pp. 17-18. Machiavelli, 1882, p. 396. Tacitus 1991, Chapters 9 and 10, pp. 136-137. Machiavelli 1996, p. 110.

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while the second is distinct from it. German virtue is based on a frugal way of life, which endures thanks to the absence of contact with outsiders, and to a hatred for the nobility: This arises from two things: one, not having had great intercourse with neighbors, for neither have the latter gone to their home nor have they gone to someone else’s home, because they have been content with those goods, to live by those foods, to dress with those woolens that the country provides. Hence the cause of every intercourse and of every corruption has been taken away, for they have not been able to pick up either French or Spanish or Italian customs, which nations all together are the corruption of the world. The other cause is that those republics in which a political and uncorrupt way of life is maintained do not endure that any citizen of theirs either be or live in the usage of a gentleman; indeed they maintain among themselves an even equality, and to the lords and gentlemen who are in that province they are very hostile. If by chance some fall into their hands, they kill them as the beginnings of corruption and the cause of every scandal.13 In German cities, freedom appears to be contingent on a dual equality, institutional and economic, and also on isolation and the policy of eliminating noblemen. This combination guarantees that an ethos favourable to freedom thrives. These various accounts of freedom show us that the establishment and maintenance of the republic in each of these states is always tied to a bundle of different causes, and that the form itself of the republic may vary: it was popular in Rome, and aristocratic in Venice and Sparta. Moreover, the difference between the Roman republic and the governments of Sparta and Venice is continually emphasized. The relationship between Rome and the German cities is more complex. Machiavelli points out two similarities between them, these being the comparable virtue and piety of their citizens. The fragility of their ways of life is also similar. Chapter III, 25, describing the poverty of Cincinnatus and of many Roman citizens, thus echoes the description of the German way of life. 13

Machiavelli 1996, p. 111. Tacitus remarks several times on the absence of contact between the German peoples and their neighbours (Tacitus 1991, p. 127 and p. 131). Caesar, by opposing the profligate lifestyle of the Gauls with the rustic parsimony of the Germans, may have been a source of inspiration for Machiavelli (Caesar 1952, VI, 24, pp. 349-351). He also described the German intention to maintain a spirit of equality by instituting a landreform policy (Caesar 1952, VI, 22, p. 347).

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Never­theless, in the accounts of German cities, there is never any mention of disunion, a concept that is central to Machiavelli’s accounting for Roman freedom. Moreover, although the action undertaken to maintain freedom in Germany appears to focus mainly on intervention aimed at preserving things the way they are, sustaining a certain lifestyle, in Rome, magistrates must continually adapt laws and the institutional order to changing customs. Thus, the freedom of the Roman republic cannot be assimilated to that of the German cities in any way whatsoever. Finally, Chapter 55, I demonstrates the gap between the free government of these German cities and that of Venice. It is true that Venetian nobility exists in name only. But the frugality and equality of the German model contrasts sharply with inequalities of income, deriving from trade and business, in the Venetian model. Moreover, in the case of Venice, Machiavelli makes no mention of traits like piety and virtue, comparable to those in the German cities. So, the Discourses present several accounts of freedom, developed unequally, and always referring to a specific causal network. It does not seem that Machiavelli nevertheless sought to elaborate an exhaustive typology of free regimes in ‘the world’, past and present. He limited himself to distinguishing different forms of ‘vivere libero’. His descriptions of them attest to their irreducibility in relation to each other. The fact of freedom, identifiable in many cities and states, never lends itself to an analysis according to the same causal network; the analysis of various conditions for freedom participates fully in the understanding of the phenomenon. On this point, Machiavelli again converges with medicine: his writings resemble the Hippocratic corpus in that both share the conviction that reality is diverse. Disease shows itself in a specific way in each individual, and this is why it must be diagnosed in an individual way.14 Machiavelli proceeds the same way, in his effort to analyse the history of free states and, in particular, to evaluate Florence’s chances of becoming and remaining free.

…

The Florentine case demands special treatment, above all because of its prominence in and meaningfulness to Machiavelli’s writings. Much of Machiavellian thought is elaborated around the issue of the Florentine reforms. By investigating the reform of institutions in Florence, Machiavelli joins a discussion that had begun before him, notably with Savonarola’s preaching, and that continued in his time. The exchange of ideas between Machiavelli and 14

Hippocrates 1959b, p. 229.

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Guicciardini is a key element in this debate, made possible in the early 16th century by a change in the conditions for political reflection. The creation of the Great Council in Florence in 1494 finally gave Florentine merchants and burghers a voice in running the affairs of the city.15 Also in 1494, the rebellion of Pisa and the armed presence of Charles VIII in Italy expanded the debate to military matters. In this debate, the two definitions of freedom – the first in relation to republican institutions and the second in terms of independence – were therefore engaged. Savonarola made the preliminary analysis of the ‘nature’ [natura] of the city a key element in his plans for political reform in Florence, adopting a theme familiar to Florentine political thinkers.16 In this perspective, he refers to two elements: Florence is accustomed to the republican form and, moreover, is torn by multiple civil conflicts. Hence, republican institutions must be appealed to, particularly, the institutions of the people’s republic, so that no one segment of the city, having acquired more power than another, can transform the regime into an oligarchy. It is for this reason that Savonarola backed the creation of the Great Council in Florence, an institution that had already existed for two centuries in Venice. It was in charge of approving or rejecting proposals for legislation brought before it by the Signoria, of electing the principal magistrates of the city and, every six months, of appointing the members of the Council of Eighty.17 Savonarola did not limit himself to the nature of the city. He established a diagnosis of the situation, a state of crisis, in his eyes. Insofar as this crisis was the result of the sins committed by the Florentines, spiritual renewal was required, and both the Florentine people and the Church were concerned. Thus, according to the sermons he delivered in late 1495, three reforms had to be combined: that of the Church, that of the Florentine government, and that of the city’s customs.18 Savonarola sought to institute ‘Christian living’ in the city, and put an end to practices like gambling and sodomy, as well as the pursuit of personal interest, on the part of individuals or of a section of the community. He also asserted that it was necessary to attain universal peace, thanks to which the earthly city would resemble the City of God. The Florentine political debate was not monopolised by Savonarola. The prosperous Florentine families of the early 16th century were in favour of a ‘stretta’ republic, as Guicciardini’s thought illustrates. Like Savonarola, 15 16 17 18

Matucci 1991, pp. 93-97. Savonarola 2006, p. 180. Fournel and Zancarini, in Savonarola 1993, pp. 20-21. Savonarola 1993, p. 73, p. 82, p. 92 and p. 132.

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Guicciardini grants considerable importance to the idea of a free nature in Florence. Regardless of what the concept of liberty actually means to him,19 and despite his admitted wariness in relation to the love of liberty, he presents the Florentine attachment to freedom as a given, a fact that no government can ignore.20 Despite this vision of Florence’s nature, Guicciardini, unlike Savonarola, did not become a fervent partisan of the people’s republic. Certainly, he too argues in favour of a Great Council – the voice of the people must be heard, although they are incapable of rule, or else the republic is liable to become an oligarchy. But Guicciardini is especially emphatic about favouring men who are capable of governing. This is related to an analysis of the various forms of government as a function of the effects each one produces, which must be carefully distinguished from the thinking of the Ancients on the best form of government. In the Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze, the most thorough version of a conception of good government constantly present in Guicciardini’s writings, the effects of popular government are criticized, including from the standpoint of freedom. According to him, those who govern lack both experience and wisdom.21 For Florence, Guicciardini drafts a system of government based on three institutions: the Grand Council, which guarantees political expression to the people; combined with a lifelong ‘Gonfaloniere’ office, similar to that of the Doges in Venice, to guarantee stability in decision-making; and a council of sages consisting of a small number of nobles for important decisions. In the thinking of both Savonarola and Guicciardini, the Venetian model plays an essential role in the Florentine political debate. Indeed, starting in the 15th century, Florentines revered Venice as the model of the ideal republic: a city-state that was free in both senses of the term, stable, and peaceful. Venice was the model the Florentines copied when they elaborated plans for reform, 19

20 21

The definition of the concept of liberty changed in the writings of F. Guicciardini: it went from an essentially civic conception, rooted in the tradition of Italian communities, as attested by his Histoires florentines (1509) to a ‘modern, liberal’ conception associating freedom with the security of the individual and his property (cf. his Ricordi). See on this subject Pons in Guicciardini, Ricordi 1998, p. 83. Guicciardini 1988, pp. 113-116 and p. 195. Guicciardini 1994, p. 153. According to A. Pons, this conception of good government appears in all of F. Guicciardini’s writings, even if the way it is articulated may have changed as a function of historical circumstances, from the Savonarolan republic to the restoration of Medician power. The analysis suggested by J.G.A. Pocock of the Discorso of Logrogno and of the treatise entitled On the Government of Florence after the Restoration of the Medicis corroborates this interpretation (Pocock 1975, p. 122 sq.).

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whether they were advocating for a popular or aristocratic model of government. For example, the Great Council established in Florence in 1494 imitated the Venetian Consiglio Maggiore in every detail, down to the dimensions of the building where the sessions were held. In 1502, the creation of the lifelong office of Gonfaloniere mirrored the function of Venice’s Doge. Thus, over an eight-year period, Venice’s institutional structure served as an official source of inspiration for two reforms with opposing purposes, the first aimed at giving a share of power to the people and the second aimed at limiting it – the Florentine nobles having accepted the creation of the office of Gonfaloniere because they saw it as the first step towards regaining their domination of the process of deliberation and decision-making. However, some precaution must be taken in considering this idealization. Although it was possible to have an overall vision of the Venetian governmental system, it was difficult to know exactly how it functioned. The laws and institutions the Venetians had adopted over the centuries had been archived, but the records were difficult to consult. Moreover, the idea of the existence of some universal political norm that every city should strive to attain was counterbalanced, in Florence, by the conviction that each city’s institutions were specific to its history, and therefore these systems could not be copied identically from one city to another.22 Lastly, the idealization of Venice’s institutions belongs to a context of historiographic and political competition between Italy’s major cities at the time.23 Thus, Venetian nobles commissioned thinkers to write political treatises about their city, and especially encouraged the vision of Venice as a mixed government, combining a monarchy with an aristocracy and a democracy. The Doge embodied the king; the Senate, the aristocracy; and the Consiglio Maggiore played the role of democracy. The writings of Pier Paolo Vergerio, and especially those of George of Trebizonde, a Greek erudite invited to Venice by Francesco Barbaro, attest to this movement. Venice’s affirmation as the best form of government assumed three principal forms, all of them inspired by the interpretation of the works of Plato and Aristotle: Venice was considered as the embodiment of the ideal of the mixed government, defined as a blend of three pure forms of government, or as a mixture of democracy and oligarchy, but also as the best regime because of the prevailing role of the aristocracy in the regime.

22 23

See Gilbert 1968; Fontana and Saro 1997. Gilbert 1968, pp. 467-468.

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After the Medicis’ return to power in 1512, the Venetian system no longer inspired reforms in Florence. However, it did remain present in political debates. Guicciardini’s Discorso of Logrogno (1512) and Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze upheld Venice as the historical embodiment of the ideal of mixed government. Bernardo, Guicciardini’s main character, states that the Venetian government is not only the best and most beautiful government of our time, but also perhaps the best of all governments in ancient times, because it combines all forms of government in one: rule by one, by some, and by many, and that it is the temperament of all the governments, in such a way that it reaps the benefits innate to each form of government, and avoids most of the ills.24 Bernardo’s speech reflects the two main characteristics of the Venetian model that appealed to partisans of the ‘stretta’ republic: the Venetian mixed constitution and the predominant role of the Senate in its institutions. Situating Machiavelli in the Florentine political debate, marked by Savonarola’s plans for the rule of the people, associated with a reform of customs to make them more Christian, and by the idealization of the Venetian regime by the Florentine elite, is the key to understanding his account of Florentine freedom. Speaking generally, he distinguishes between cities where it is possible to establish or maintain freedom easily from those in which such an undertaking appears to be especially difficult.25 The criterion he uses for this distinction is the relationship of equality or inequality characterising each city-state. Chapter 55, Book I defines two extremes, on a scale of the historical realization of ‘vivere libero’: the perfectly equal city, most favourable to the establishment of a republic, and the city with the least equality, in which a republic is almost unthinkable. Machiavelli illustrates them using examples from his own time. The first, the city judged to be perfectly egalitarian, takes us outside Italian territory, all the way to Germany. Conversely, there are spaces that are totally corrupted, like the Kingdom of Naples, the region of Rome, Romagna, and Lombardy.26 Every intermediate situation imaginable exists between these two poles. For example, France and Spain are partly corrupted. Tuscany constitutes a special case: the inequality characterising it is not decisive grounds for an argument in favour of establishing a monarchy.27

24 25 26 27

Guicciardini 1994, p. 102. Machiavelli 1996, p. 112. Machiavelli 1996, p. 111. Machiavelli 1996, p. 112.

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In this chapter, Machiavelli mentions Florence among the Tuscan cities that ‘with spirit and with order would maintain or would like to maintain their freedom’.28 Returning to the time of Florence’s foundation sheds some light on the nature of the city’s desire. Born under Roman domination, it was enduringly subjugated (Discourses, I, 1). Such a declaration lends itself to controversy. Actually, Machiavelli takes no notice of the idea spread by Leonardo Bruni, according to which Florence had Etruscan origins. Bruni was the first historian of Florence to revive the memory of these origins, by using ancient sources known to historians before him – Livy, Pliny the Younger, Virgil, Servius, author of the commentary on Virgil, and Horace. In doing so, Bruni spawned a new vision of Italian history, in which Rome appears as a city-state that initially competed with other cities that were independent, prosperous, powerful, and culturally influential. This revision, well known in the 15th and 16th centuries thanks to the spread of Bruni’s Life of Petrarch, written in Italian, was effective in two ways. It gave the Florentines a positive image of the past, stripping the idea of Roma aeterna the prevalent role that had been granted to it up to then in Italian history. This new interpretation made it possible to consider a history of Tuscan cities independently from the history of Rome. It is so significant in this respect that Machiavelli, in the Discourses, reiterates how the power and glory of the Etruscans have fallen into oblivion.29 By offering this vision of Florence’s roots – born under Roman domination – Machiavelli is therefore insisting a contrario on the fact that his city was initially enslaved. Conversely, like Bruni, he judges that Rome was an obstacle to Florence’s freedom, and that the political project Dante voiced – to unify Italy under Roman authority – should not be pursued.30 Chapter 1, I of the Discourses is the beginning of an analysis of the effects of submission to Rome: Because these cities do not have a free origin, it rarely occurs that they make great strides and can be numbered among the capitals of kingdoms. The building of Florence was like these, because – whether built by the soldiers of Sulla or per chance by inhabitants of the mountains of 28 29 30

Machiavelli 1996, p. 112. Machiavelli 1996, p. 135. See Dante 1996. In On Monarchy, Dante first undertakes a demonstration that the authority of a single prince must be sought by all of humanity (see especially I, XV). Book II is devoted to the second point of his demonstration – the Roman people are those entitled to rule the Monarchy – a statement he supports with a series of so-called ‘rational’ arguments and reasons based on Christian faith.

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Fiesole, who, trusting in the long peace that was born in the world under Octavian, came down to inhabit the plain by the Arno – it was built under the Roman empire. Nor, in its beginnings, could it make any gains, other than those conceded to it by courtesy of the Prince.’31 Founded by the empire, Florence got used to obeying. Yet, although in this chapter Machiavelli does not rule out the possibility of freedom for cities of servile origin, he sees a habit of obedience as a major obstacle to the establishment of a free government. 32 Thus, the thesis in the Discourses on the history of Florence essentially confines itself to the idea of a bad start. Whereas Rome possessed institutions which, although initially defective, were likely to evolve towards freedom, Florence was subjected to the negative effects of its birth, as Machiavelli against points out in Chapter 49, I: Then, when the opportunity came for taking a breath, it began to make its own orders, which could not have been good, since they were mixed with the ancients that were bad. So it has gone on managing itself, for the two hundred years of true memory that it has without ever having had a state for which it could truly be called a republic.33 The system of government in Florence is characterised by the absence of laws essential to maintaining freedom. As we have seen earlier, Chapters 7 and 8 of book I emphasize the way Rome was wise enough to set up the agencies needed to assuage the humours, in order to avoid ungrounded accusations of calumny, and that in Florence ‘it has always been badly ordered’. In Chapter 49, I, Florence is still compared unfavourably to Rome, in relation to the public office in charge of judging a citizen’s right to life or death.34 Nevertheless, the aspiration to freedom survived in Florence, despite the conditions of its birth, just as it did in Siena and Lucca, because the city did have this ‘opportunity’ for ‘taking a breath’ (Discourses, I, 49), in the course of which the desire for freedom emerged and grew, leaving an indelible mark on the Florentine memory, as the thesis set forth in Chapter 5 of The Prince encourages us to assume: freedom, its name, and its benefits do not allow themselves to be forgotten. Since Florence was never destroyed by a natural disaster or some other annihilation, the memory was still vivid and powerful. Note that 31 32 33 34

Machiavelli 1996, p. 8. Machiavelli 1996, I, 16, and Machiavelli 1998, 5. Machiavelli 1996, pp. 100-101. Machiavelli 1996, p. 101.

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the Florentine aspiration to freedom is ambiguously defined here: it is between a desire for independence and the will to establish a republican regime. Machiavelli is playing with this ambiguity to substitute the second idea for the first. He omits to mention the conflict between the great and the people, asserting a desire with no particular subject, suggesting to the reader that the city as a whole wanted freedom, or rather, wanted the same freedom – whereas, as we have seen, both humours desire freedom, each in its own way, and that freedom as statehood does not imply republican institutions. Therefore, it is on the basis of this aspiration for freedom, and not the idea of the city’s freedom by nature, that Machiavelli wonders about the possibility of establishing and maintaining a free government in Florence. He rules out an imitation of Sparta: having been founded under the Roman Empire, Florence was not born with a legislator who endowed it with the institutions necessary for ‘vivere libero’. Might the city imitate Rome? The Florentine Histories can be read as a negative response to this question. In the very introduction to his history, Machiavelli points out the characteristic which sets the history of Florence apart from that of other cities – in other words, its divisiveness: But in Florence first there were factions among the nobles, then factional struggles between the nobles and the middle class and the masses. Many times it happened that one of the parties, having conquered the others, was itself divided into two factions. From these dissensions resulted as many deaths, as many exiles, as many ruined families as ever were known in any other city of which we have record.35 Paradoxically, Machiavelli sees the divisions he enumerates here as a sign of the city’s power. These conflicts should have led to collapse. However, on the contrary, the city thrived, so strongly that if Florence had known how to institute a stable government, it would have developed as a great power, in Machiavelli’s opinion.36 At the conclusion of Book I, devoted to the history of Italy, Machiavelli paints a first portrait of Florence which nevertheless attests to its fragility: the city rules the greater part of Tuscany, but it is actually in the hands of the condottieri.37 In Book II, he broaches the question of Florence’s origins, without telling us much more than he has already said in the Discourses. His primary topic in this book, except for one chapter devoted to the origin of the city and its 35 36 37

Machiavelli 1989, 3, pp. 1031-1032. Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1032. Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1079.

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development on the banks of the Arno, is the divisions which began to appear in the city in 1215. Book III is essentially a continuation of the previous one. Its opening chapter puts forward an initial general analysis of disunion in Florence, based on a comparison with Rome. By confining his criticism to the rifts in Florence while praising the Roman ‘tumults’, Machiavelli dissents radically from the unanimously negative verdict of his contemporaries regarding civil conflict, ‘a virtual obsession’, according to G. Sasso.38 Mainly, he insists on the distinction between the history of Rome and that of Florence, categorically stating that the road to freedom followed by the Romans was impossible to the Florentines. Not only was the desire of the Florentine people unfair and offensive, whereas that of the Roman people was reasonable, but when this desire confronted the ambition of the nobility, disaster resulted, compounded by the fact that the city had not initially been endowed with the proper institutions.39 If Florence is unable to follow the same path as Rome, perhaps it could adopt the Venetian way? The alternative is implicitly rejected: in Venice, the government was created at the time when the community grew too large to function without laws, and the members of the Venetian Council simply barred access to power when they decided there were enough of them to govern. Thus, it is too late for Florence to imitate Venice. Would Florence therefore be denied any way to become and remain free? In Chapter I, 55 of the Discourses and in Chapter IV, 1 of the Florentine Histories, Machiavelli nevertheless gives us a glimpse of a specifically Florentine model, uncertain as it is, towards the establishment of a democratic government, It is based on the intervention of a prudent man, who is good yet powerful, apprised of ancient customs, capable of introducing a republican order.40 Book VII of the Florentine Histories is fairly specific in its recommendations for the type of reform such a man might carry out: given the level of antagonism between the desires of the people and those of the great, it is vain to think of eliminating it. However, by avoiding the formation of ‘parties’, the city will also avoid the destructive armed conflicts to which they give rise. Thus, Machiavelli prescribes a course of action already formulated in the Discourses on the subject of Roman history: the citizens must be prevented from acquiring a reputation by private means which are unrelated to the common good.41 Although the Florentine aspiration to freedom and equality noted in Chapter I, 55 of the Discourses constitutes a starting point for Machiavelli’s 38 39 40 41

Sasso 1980, p. 455. Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1187. Machiavelli 1996, 3, p. 112 and Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1187. Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1137.

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reflection on a Florentine path to freedom, it would be unwise to conclude that this aspiration alone could achieve it, especially if the free government was to endure. In this respect, we know how important Machiavelli considered the piety and poverty of the citizens, in maintaining the Roman republic: they constitute an ethos of freedom. Moreover, through awe or fear of the gods, piety is an essential factor in obedience to the laws. As for poverty, it engenders a way of life making it possible to escape from the implacable logic of insatiable human greed, if not perpetually, at least for a long time. It is notable that the Discourses seek the presence of a similar ethos of freedom in Florence, explicitly with respect to religion and implicitly – but undoubtedly perceptibly, to Machiavelli’s contemporaries – with respect to poverty. Florentine piety is subject to a complex evaluation. To understand it, one must return to the general context of the history of religions defined in the Discourses, II, 2, where Machiavelli compares ancient paganism and Christianity.42 In examining what might have compelled ancient peoples to be so attached to their freedom, Machiavelli notes that in the history of the world religions, there has been a great change, a radical departure which has had an impact on freedom: Thinking then whence it can arise that in those ancient times people were more lovers of freedom than in these, I believe it arises from the same cause that makes men less strong now, which I believe is the difference between our education and the ancient, founded on the difference between our religion and the ancient. For our religion, for having shown the truth and the true way, makes us esteem less the honor of the world whereas the Gentiles, esteeming it very much and having placed the highest good in it, were more ferocious in their actions. (…) Our Religion has glorified humble and contemplative more than active men. It has then placed the highest good in humility, abjectness, and contempt of things human; the other placed it in greatness of spirit, strength of body, and all other things capable of making men very strong. And if our religion asks that you have strength in yourself, it wishes you to be capable 42

According to Cutinelli-Rendina, Machiavelli’s true originality lies in this confrontation between Roman paganism and Christianity, at a time when the history of the Church had already been written at least in part from a geopolitical point of view (see as an example the Historiae florentini populi by P. Bracciolini) and when Christianity had already been criticized from both the moral standpoint – its priests and bishops were corrupt – and the political one – it was allegedly responsible for civil discord (see as examples the De bello italico by B. Rucellai, Declamatio by L. Valla, and the Defensor pacis by Marsilius of Padua) (Cutinelli-Rendina 1998, pp. 201-202).

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more of suffering than doing something strong. This mode of life thus seems to have rendered the world weak and given it in prey to criminal men, that can manage securely, seeing that the collectivity of men, so as to go to paradise, think more of enduring their beatings than of avenging them.43 Machiavelli does not make ancient religion the basis for a love of freedom. His argument makes a subtle distinction, because the slightest attachment to freedom in modern times is less the result of a change in religion than of a special interpretation of the commandments of Christianity, according to him. Understood correctly, Christianity would be apt to produce effects similar to those of paganism.44 True, the consequences of this interpretation are the same as those that would result from a religion that really did weaken a culture: men would be less courageous, and disinclined to defend their country. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to ignore the impact of this statement as a means of lessening the opposition between past and present.45 Moreover, in the Florentine Histories, Machiavelli specifically challenges the dignitaries of the Roman Curia who, after having been men of pure ethics, have gradually lost all of their goodness.46 Let us sum up Machiavelli’s argument with respect to religion: Florentine religious belief is detrimental to the development of an attachment to freedom comparable to that of the Romans. Nevertheless, the state of affairs might change: a new interpretation of Christian faith, along with a purification of its officers’ ethics, might bring about the birth of such an attachment. In this sense, the subject of the Discourses II, 2 and the Florentine Histories is dual: Machiavelli accounts for the barriers preventing Florence from following the Roman path to ‘vivere libero’, but at the same time, he also indicates the (specific) present conditions which are apt to lift these barriers to freedom. But this series of arguments especially concern freedom as independence. The ideas must be associated with Chapter I, 11, of the Discourses, in which Machiavelli makes a distinction between the piety of ‘coarse men’, ‘men of the mountains’, and those ‘used to dwelling in cities’. It is easier for the founder or reformer to work with the former than with the latter. However, once again, Machiavelli’s argumentation is subtle: the reformer’s efforts to persuade ‘civilized men’ will be more difficult, but not impossible. This nuance permits him 43 44 45 46

Machiavelli 1996, p. 131. Machiavelli 1996, p. 132. Ibid. Machiavelli 1989, 3, pp. 1045-1046.

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to allow for the possibility of reforming Florence. Hence, Machiavelli refers to the success of Savonarola’s preaching to point out that the Florentines are not insensitive to God: Although coarse men may be more easily persuaded to a new order or opinion, this does make it impossible also to persuade to it civilized men who presume they are not coarse. To the people of Florence it does not appear that they are either ignorant or coarse; nonetheless they were persuaded by Friar Girolamo Savonarola that he spoke with God. I do not wish to judge if it is true or not, because one should speak with reverence of such a man; but I do say that an infinite number believed him without having seen anything extraordinary to make them believe him. For his life, learning and the subject he took up were sufficient to make them lend faith. No one, therefore, should be terrified that he cannot carry out what has been carried out by others for as we said in our preface, men are born, live and die always in one and the same order.47 Therefore, the piety of the Florentines would seem to be strong enough, even though it suffers from comparison with that of the ancients or of rustic men, to uphold a reform of the governmental order with the goal of freedom. It is clear to us that in Chapter II, 2 as well as in Chapter I, 11, Machiavelli points out the obstacles to the effort to enjoy ‘vivere libero’ in Florence, but he also constantly allows for the possibility of success, by reinterpreting the commandments of the Christian religion, without despairing of the piety of the Florentine people. What about the matter of poverty in Florence? The description of the frugal German way of life and the insistence, in Chapter III, 25 of the Discourses, on the poverty of Cincinnatus and the key part it played in preserving freedom constitute, for Machiavelli’s time (even though it is not quite as obvious to us), a statement of position in a debate on the political impact of individual wealth. The ideal of poverty, after having been a prominent issue in political thinking, was challenged in 15th-century Florence, especially by Leonardo Bruni, Palmieri, and Alberti, on the basis of Aristotle’s works and the rediscovery of Xenophon’s Œconomicus.48 To understand the importance of this ideal in Florentine 47

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Machiavelli 1996, p. 36. The complexity of Machiavelli’s relationship with Savonarola reveals the political role Machiavelli would like to see Christianity play in Florence: Savonarola may be the disarmed prophet, and an ambitious liar (Machiavelli to Riccardo Becchi, 9 March 1498, 1989, 2, pp. 886-889), but he is also the man who was able to arouse the faith of the Florentines and give it political direction. See Baron 1988, p. 226.

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political thought, it is necessary to recall the decisive role played by the rules of the monastic orders, especially the Franciscans, in spreading the ideal of poverty.49 Reference to the Stoics of ancient times serves as a second justification for this ideal, as attested in The Book of the Treasure by the Florentine Brunetto Latini, a compendium of Scholastic wisdom written around 1265. It copies passages from the works of Cicero, Seneca, Juvenal, and even Horace almost word for word. If, with the treatise De paupertate Evangelica (1341), written by a member of the court of King Robert of Naples, we find the proof that the idea had spread beyond religious orders, as H. Baron reminds us, or, to cite another example, in Dante, it is especially in Petrarch’s writings from the period of exile near Avignon that we read the most acerbic criticism of divitiae. This ideal is central to 14th-century reflection on moral and intellectual virtues, at a time when Florence was becoming one of Italy’s most prosperous trading cities. However, when writing about Rome or the German states, Machiavelli describes poverty from the viewpoint of its effects on the citizens’ ethos. Consequently, our interest is mainly in reaching an understanding of how the ideal of poverty was integrated into political reflection.50 In this respect, the book De regimine principum, begun by Thomas Aquinas and completed by Bartolomeo of Lucca, seems to have been an essential reference. It engages in a political analysis of the ideal, based on Roman history (the examples are borrowed from the works of Saint Augustine and Valerius Maximus). The citizens’ poverty is depicted as an essential factor in Rome’s imperial expansion, through the affirmation that Christ, who lived in poverty and humbleness, is the true ruler of the world.51 Boccaccio follows Bartolomeo of Lucca in his commitment to thinking about Roman history in light of this ideal. Like Bartolomeo, he borrows his examples from Valerius Maximus, describing the poverty of Scipio the African, the modesty of Cato, the farming work of Cincinnatus, and the simple life of Manlius Curius Dentatus, to show that the glory of Rome rested upon its people’s decision to live in poverty and simplicity.52 49

50 51 52

Baron 1988, Chapters 7-10, Opus cit. R. Esposito also describes this debate. According to him, Machiavelli’s position was close to that of the monastic tradition, inspired by the ideal of poverty, advocated by Franciscan thought and, in political reflection, by such authors as B. Latini, Dante, and Sacchetti. Humanist chancellors and historians, like Bruni and Bracciolini, broke from the tradition, by reinterpreting the idea of virtue in relation to the social power conferred by the accumulation of wealth (Esposito 1994, p. 556). See also Gaille 2007b. Esposito 1984. Baron 1988, pp. 202-203. Boccacio, 1965.

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As for Coluccio Salutati, his treatise De seculo et Religione develops an analysis of the political role of poverty, also drawing upon Roman examples: Romulus, Numa, and again Cincinnatus. To his way of thinking, property ownership engenders the desire to own more and more, leading men to cheat, lie, and betray. This is the context to which Machiavelli belongs. It arose within the Franciscan order, regarding individuals and moral virtues; it was then examined from a political point of view, regarding Roman strength. However, within the political reflection on the effects of poverty, Machiavelli is most interested in the relationship of poverty to freedom, more than the causal link between poverty and Roman power. He may have inherited the Franciscan vision of poverty, but he adopts only a single aspect of it, pointed out by Coluccio Salutati: property produces a thirst for more property that is never assuaged – a fact which serves his analysis of the conditions for freedom. Florence does not fulfil the requirement reiterated three times in the Discourses, for a rich public treasury and poor citizens (I, 37; III, 16; and III, 25). Although Machiavelli discusses the question of poverty in a more uneven and abbreviated way than he discusses that of religion, it is no less important to him. His analysis also enables us to understand why Florence has so far failed in founding a long-lasting republic, while suggesting that the goal is not impossible to achieve, by imitating the Roman way of life and distribution of wealth. Therefore, Machiavelli does not from the outset suggest a plan for the reform of institutions, based on the idea of a free ‘nature’ of Florence. In his view, the Florentine situation is characterised by the following paradox: although Florence has never succeeded in establishing a free, enduring republic, a lively aspiration for freedom is nevertheless observable. To account for this dual phenomenon, he proceeds with a historical inquiry, tracing the course of the city’s history from the present back to its origins, which enables him to approach the question of the change of religion, in particular. Only after the inquiry is complete does he determine a specific path that Florence might follow, to institute lasting rule by the people – the intervention of a prudent, good, and powerful man. But the path is extremely uncertain (such men are rare), and scattered with obstacles related to the ethos of freedom – and it requires awe of God and frugal way of life. Like each of the other cases – Sparta, Venice, the German states, and Rome – Florence ultimately emerges from the analysis as a specific case in the process of attaining freedom.

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What makes Rome a paradigm in Machiavellian thought? The Roman republic is a paradigm of freedom above all due to the particular quality of its freedom. As we have seen, Machiavelli qualifies the governments of Rome, Sparta, and Venice as ‘free’. In his eyes, there is a qualitative difference between their freedoms. In Sparta, the desire of the people to be free of domination is fulfilled, because the king’s surveillance prevents the expression of the greats’ desire to dominate. Protected by the monarch, the people have no need to protect themselves by conquering a share of the magistracies, the way the Roman plebs did.53 Machiavelli is less explicit on how Venice satisfies the desire of the people to be free of domination, but he does emphasize the union that reigns among the Venetians and the representation of the Venetian regime as a mixed constitution, which makes it a model of equilibrium; each party has its own prerogatives, and no one part tries to get an advantage over the others. In Rome, on the contrary, the desire of the people to be free of domination can only be fulfilled by constantly opposing the greats’ desire to dominate. Yet the Discourses, I, 5 indicates that in Machiavelli’s eyes, the effective expression of the desire to be free – i.e., active and dynamic opposition demonstrated by the Roman plebe against the pretentions of the great – confers a unique quality on the Roman ‘vivere libero’. His line of reasoning progresses through two phases. First, he articulates his position (favourable to Rome), but without definitively concluding in its favour, asserting that everything depends on the political purpose chosen – to preserve the state, or to expand it by conquest. Next, Machiavelli puts aside the problem of the choice (maintaining or expanding the state, a question to which he will return in Chapter I, 6) and turns to a general interest in the nature of desires. He then develops the idea that the desire of the great is by nature detrimental to freedom: Yet nonetheless they [the tumults] are most often caused by him who possesses, because the fear of losing generates in him the same wishes that are in those who desire to acquire; for it does not appear to men that they possess securely what a man has unless he acquires something else new. There is this besides: that since they possess much, they are able to make an alteration with greater power and greater motion. And there is still this besides: that their incorrect and ambitious behaviors inflame in the breasts of whoever does not possess the wish to possess so as to avenge themselves against them by despoiling them or to be able to enter 53

Machiavelli 1996, p. 21.

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themselves into those riches and those honors that they see being badly used others.54 From this perspective, the Roman ‘vivere libero’ has a unique and exemplary nature, because it is based on the expression of the desire that is comparatively more favourable to freedom. The ambiguity of the concept of freedom makes it possible, in these chapters, to introduce a comparison between Sparta, Venice, and Rome: all three are qualified as ‘free’, but an obvious difference exists between the path taken by Rome and the one followed by the SpartaVenice pair. Because Roman freedom is supported by the active expression of the people’s desire, it is superior to the freedom of the two other cities. The ability of the Roman republic to surmount the vicissitudes of history is another quality that gives it a paradigmatic nature. In Chapter I, 6 of the Discourses, Machiavelli evokes a historical context defined by the instability of the course of things, which leads him to favour the institutional order of the Roman republic in comparison to that of Sparta and Venice. Indeed, the Roman republic has a large people’s army, enabling it always to defend itself from enemy attacks; moreover, sustained military activity keeps the ethos of the Romans from ‘softening’, while the imperial program creates national bonds which minimize the effects of the disunion between the great and the people, at least from time to time.55 The assertion of the unstable course of things is a reason to consider the question presented in Chapter I, 5 as offering two options (does the free state want to conquer new territories, or remain within its borders?) in a radically new light. A large army made up of its own people, and as a consequence, popular, does prove to be necessary in such a historical context: hence the institutional order of the Roman republic appears to be the only viable one over the long term of history. Finally, the history of the people’s republic constitutes the paradigm of a philosophy of freedom in that it offers an exemplary illustration not only of the emergence and preservation of freedom, but also of the process of corruption and the ‘end’ of freedom: it is a negative paradigm, as much as a positive one. Chapters I, 4 and I, 37 of the Discourses compose a diptych, in this respect, portraying the conditions whereby freedom emerges and the causes of its decline. To Machiavelli, it is just as important to think out the causes for a transition from republic to monarchy or to tyranny as it is to pinpoint the conditions which bring forth and maintain freedom, because the history of freedom is in 54 55

Machiavelli 1996, p. 19. Machiavelli 1996, I, 6. See Hornqvist 2004 about the relationship between the maintaining of (internal) freedom and the conquest of an empire, in Rome’s case, and its influence on Florentine political history.

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his eyes both that of its assertion and that of its decline. Rome offers him both of these themes, from the creation of the tribunes of the plebs to the rise to power of Caesar, ‘first tyrant of Rome’.56 An institutional order that can ride out the ups and downs of history, the particular quality of freedom founded on the expression of popular desire, the corruption process: these three elements make Rome a paradigm in the senses of both model and exemplary case of a reflection on the conditions for ‘vivere libero’. As a result, from this point of view, Rome serves two purposes. Its historical experience is distinct from that of Sparta and Venice, but also from that of the German cities, whose confinement within themselves and apparent identity over the course of time disqualify them from serving as illustrations for reflecting on freedom, with its phase of expansion but also its phase of retraction. If the Roman republic is the paradigm of freedom, in the sense of a model, should it not be imitated by the other cities? In the opening remarks of the Discourses, Machiavelli invites his contemporaries to engage in the imitation process.57 At the start of Book II, he even foresees the criticism that will be levelled at him, for excessively praising ancient history; he shows that he is aware of the opposition between the virtue of the past and the vice of the present. But he also makes this opposition a motive for imitating the Ancients.58 This insistence in the Discourses on the legitimacy of imitation is not innocuous. It is a reference to the status conquered by history – its study and writing – in the Renaissance. History was then the subject of an interest oriented towards practical matters, and was conceived as the field where the past could be analysed in order to serve as a guide to the present.59 This dual function of history – to recall exemplary actions and also to make it possible to interpret the present time – seems to meet with Machiavelli’s approval, to the detriment, according to F. Guicciardini, of necessary distinctions between epochs which make imitation impossible. However, it would be a mistake to reduce the Discourses to a call to imitate the Romans, as the various histories of freedom attest. Guicciardini’s implicit criticism of the work – that every word endorses the Romans – is unjustified.60

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56 57 58 59 60

Machiavelli 1996, p. 80. Machiavelli 1996, p. 6 Machiavelli 1996, p. 125. Gilbert 1965, pp. 224-225. Guicciardini 1998, p. 152.

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Machiavelli’s writings contain a paradox: the Roman republic is the model of freedom, but this paradigm is inimitable, and it is conceptualized as such. Machiavelli dramatizes the history of free cities, and tells stories of freedom that cannot be reduced to a single formula, thereby prefiguring the approach of the comparative ethnographer, committed to establishing differences rather than generalizing a fact. Moreover, from past to present, from Rome to Florence, he defines the conditions of the action in the Discourses and the Florentine Histories as a function of their differences, not their similarities – notably, the two different religions (or rather a pagan religion and a misinterpreted Christian one – and a distinct procedure for distributing the wealth which engenders dissimilar ‘customs.’61 Thus, we cannot qualify his Roman history as a ‘monumental history’ in the sense given by Nietzsche to this term. Nietzsche distinguishes between three interests that compel a living being to refer to history. His categories are equivocal: each of the three conceptions of history arising from these interests will ‘grow’ – in relation to its use in life – ‘on one ground and one climate’.62 The first of them consists of a purpose sought. ‘Monumental history’ is a storehouse of ‘examples, teachers, and comforters’63 unfindable in the present. Nietzsche defines this relationship to history as that which permits us to think that the ‘great things existed and were therefore possible, and so may be possible again’.64 Such a relationship is based on the following principle: The great moments in the individual battle form a chain, a high road for humanity through the ages, and the highest points of those vanished moments are yet great and living for men; and this is the fundamental idea of the belief in humanity, that finds a voice in the demand for a monumental history.65 As a result, monumental history demands that we erase a multitude of differences between past and present, to establish ‘analogies’ between the two. He 61

62 63 64 65

For Machiavelli’s contemporaries, the unbridgeable distance between Rome and Florence Machiavelli establishes is not surprising. The idea of a continuity with the ancient world, alluring in the Middle Ages, had been questioned at least since the publication of Historiarum ab inclinatione Romanorum imperii decades by Flavio Biondo, written between 1438 and 1453 (See Buck 1980, p. 34). Nietzsche 1910, p. 23. Nietzsche 1910, p. 16. Nietzsche 1910, p. 19. Nietzsche 1910, p. 17.

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wants us to generalize and identify, by attenuating the diversity of motives and causes, and to insist on the effects rather than the causes.66 The history of Rome written by Machiavelli is not ‘monumental’, for it does not bear the characteristic tendency Nietzsche described as an emphasis on effects rather than causes. On the contrary: the causes are exactly what Machiavelli seeks, as a means of accounting for the differences between the histories of cities and the histories of republics, especially between those of Rome and Florence. To put it in Marx’s words, Florence must not ‘present the new scene’ of the history of freedom costumed with ‘time-honoured disguise’ and with ‘borrowed language’ from Rome.67 We must return to the question of the imitation of Rome Machiavelli suggests as a model for contemporary cities. The crux of the matter is in knowing what Machiavelli means by ‘imitation’: making an identical copy?68 In the introduction to the Discourses, I, Machiavelli asserts that imitation is possible, as ‘heaven, sun, elements, men’ have not varied in ‘motion, order, and power from what they were in Antiquity’.69 This statement enables us to deduce his idea of a uniformity of time in history. However, various statements in other parts of the Discourses argue against this idea.70 So the work would contain two antithetical themes – the potential for imitation, based on the identity of time, and the questioning about this identity. However, it is not clear that the foreword to Book I of the Discourses can be made into the foundation of a theory of imitation.71 Chapter 6 of The Prince and, especially, other chapters of the Discourses seem more apt to fulfil such a function. The foreword to Book II affirms the historic becoming denied in the foreword to Book I, and Chapters I, 39 and III, 43 moderate the identity previously asserted, between past and present; they are oriented more towards the idea of similarity between the eras, making it possible to draw analogies. In that case, imitation is possible, in the sense that the past becomes a pool of examples, good or bad, and comprising a space for reflection in view of the present, rather than a model for it: Viewed in this way, ancient history ceases to be a paragon of all successful political action without ceasing to be the source of it. An astute politician 66 67 68 69 70 71

Nietzsche 1910, p. 20. Marx 1972, p. 10. See Del Lucchese, 2004, on this issue. Machiavelli 1996, p. 6. See Sasso 1980 on this issue, pp. 543-551. Machiavelli 1996, I, 39, II, Preface, and III, 43. Larivaille, 1982, p. 26; Gaille, in Gaille and Ménissier 2006, pp. 259-292.

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may not find models for behavior among the Greeks and Romans, but we do find a vast cross-section of human situations and behavior, a catalogue of actions and remedies, positive and negative, clarifying the analysis of the present and future, so that we can select the most appropriate rule for our purposes.72 However, although it is true that Machiavelli cites both good and bad examples from the past, the fact is that he often exhorts readers to imitate goodness or virtue. When he addresses such advice to us, he apparently intends something other than identical reproduction. Let us read one of the most striking examples, in the opening lines of The Prince, 6: No one should marvel if, in speaking as I will do of principalities that are altogether new both in prince and in state, I bring up the greatest examples. For since men almost always walk on paths beaten by others and proceed in their actions by imitation, unable either to stay on the paths of others altogether or to attain the virtue of those whom you imitate, a prudent man should always enter upon the paths beaten by great men, and imitate those who have been most excellent, so that if his own virtue does not reach that far, it is at least in the odor of it. He should do as prudent archers do when the place they plan to hit appears too distant, and knowing how far the strength of their bow carries they set their aim much higher than the place intended, not to reach such height with their arrow, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to reach their plan.73 To understand this passage, we must first consider its context. It is the start of a chapter devoted to the acquisition of principalities ‘by one’s own arms and virtue’, in which Machiavelli describes founders and conquerors of extraordinary virtue: Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus ‘and the like’. He observes the phenomenon of imitation and also insists on the imperfection innate to imitation: the imitator must exaggerate his aim, for he knows in advance that at best, his copy will be imperfect. But what exactly is he trying to imitate? The chapter title, like the description of the actions of ‘the greatest examples,’ show that the model is virtue: And as one examines their actions and lives, one does not see that they had anything else from fortune than the opportunity, which gave them 72 73

Larivaille 1982, p. 31. Machiavelli 1998, pp. 21-22.

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the matter enabling them to introduce any form they pleased. Without that opportunity their virtue would have been eliminated, and without that virtue the opportunity would have come in vain.74 Virtue, by nature is inimitable. It cannot be copied from a model. Hence, rather than considering the concept of imitation, we shall examine the idea of creation to define Machiavelli’s goal. Let us associate his thinking with a creative imitation, in the sense imagined by Ph. Lacoue-Labarthe, who coined the expression in La Fiction du politique.75 Lacoue-Labarthe notes that, since the Renaissance, Europe has been ‘prey to Antiquity, insofar as imitating the Ancients seems to settle the “construction of the Modern” there.’76 In this perspective, the reference to Greece is problematic by essence, insofar as it is a sign of an intention to imitate the inimitable; e.g. national genius in the process of formation. Despite all of this, the concept enables us to think something essential – from which we derive the idea of creative imitation: that is, an imitation detached from the concept of identity and associated with the concept of identification. This process does not assume a subject. On the contrary, ‘Imitate me to be who you are’: the imitator is nothing, and has every aptitude. He becomes ‘himself’ by appropriating a model. With the term ‘imitation’, Machiavelli is designating a recreation of virtue: we imitate ‘the greatest examples’ by being virtuous ourselves. Past and present contexts differ; their common ground nevertheless being the indispensable ‘opportunity’. Given this opportunity, two virtuous actions can unfold, and one imitates the other in that they manifest the same quality of virtue, not because one produces an identical copy of a gesture or action. This perspective also enables us to understand the appeal for imitation voiced in the Foreword to the Discourses, I. The fields of action described here – governing a realm, forming an army, commanding it, etc. – all require, in Machiavelli’s eyes, extraordinary virtue. The imitation involved can therefore only be the type that is (re)creation, and not reproduction: the point is to be just as virtuous as the founders, the lawgivers, the conquerors, and the captains of the past. It is in this sense that Machiavelli can urge us to imitate the Ancients, without engaging in Rome’s ‘monumental’ history. His voice is reminiscent of Petrarch’s, when the latter asserts that he is content with something that is close, but not identical, that he intends to fol-

74 75 76

Machiavelli 1998, p. 23. Lacoue-Labarthe 1987. Lacoue-Labarthe 1987, p. 117.

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low those who came before in an original way, not a slavish one.77 For both thinkers, imitatio is aemulatio. Machiavelli’s history of Rome nevertheless fulfils a function corresponding to another Nietzschean category of history, that of ‘critical’ history.78 Critical history is born when a man, pressed by life, subjects his past to criticism: Man must have the strength to break up the past; and apply it too, in order to live. He must bring the past to the bar of judgment, interrogate it remorselessly, and finally condemn it. Every past is worth condemning: this is the rule in mortal affairs, which always contain a large measure of human power and human weakness. It is not the justice that sits in judgment here; nor mercy that proclaims the verdict; but only life, the dim, driving force that insatiably desires – itself.79 In the Discourses and Florentine Histories, we do find the intention defining the idea of ‘critical’ history: in the name of ‘life’, Machiavelli has ‘interrogated’ his city, designated where it has gone astray, and suggested a way to accomplish the goal of ‘vivere libero’. Machiavelli’s exploration of Florentine history leads him to distinguish the city’s past as it was from the past it might have had, and this distinction enables him to draw a precise map of the tortuous path of the city towards freedom. Note that in this work of differentiation, the history of Rome plays an essential role. Actually, in the commentary on Livy and in the history of Florence, the comparison of Florence’s history to that of Rome makes it possible for Machiavelli to demonstrate why Florence, despite the recurrent outbreaks of civil conflict in its history (starting in 1215), has been unable to establish an enduring republic. This comparison brings out what has been missing, and is still missing, for Florence to become and remain free Florence. Machiavelli can thus indicate several differences accounting for the fact that Florentine aspirations to freedom have not given birth to a lasting republic: one city was born free, and remained so; the other, enslaved; the ethos of freedom, based on the fear of the gods and poverty in Rome, is lacking in Florence, although it is not totally impossible to cultivate it there; the Florentine ‘tumults’ have destruc-

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Petrarca 1942, p. 108. E. Benner, referring to Xenophon’s Lacedaemonians, reaches an interpretation quite similar to the one developed here within a Nietzschean frame of thought (Benner, 2009, p. 107 sq.). Nietzsche 1910, p. 28.

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tive implications, unlike the tumults of Rome, because of the ‘corrupt’ nature of the desires of the Florentine great and people. In the confrontation of the two histories, Roman and Florentine, we find the dual paradigmatic dimension we defined previously. As an (inimitable) model of a free government, Rome sheds light on the fact that civil conflict, far from being a source of destruction and decline for the city-state, can be the very source of its freedom. It is the civil conflict, specifically Florentine, which is revealed to exert a harmful effect on the city’s future, compared to the Roman ‘tumults’. 80 In the same way, the comparative analysis of the histories of the two cities – from Rome’s ‘free’ origin to the end of freedom, and from its birth under the Roman empire to the age of the rule of the Medicis, for Florence – and their respective customs, makes it possible to articulate the causes of Florence’s inability to establish a sustainable form of free government. As a result, in the elaboration of a critical history of Florence, Rome serves an heuristic purpose. In this perspective, it is impossible to reduce the confrontation between Rome and Florence to a simple ‘rhetorical artifice’. On the contrary, this confrontation is the very laboratory where Florence’s history is analysed, and where its failure to attain free government over the long term is explained. Nor is it tenable to define Machiavellian writing solely on the basis of the danger of censure: in order to avoid this obstacle, Machiavelli would have taken care to mask his descriptions of Florence in his tale of Roman history in the Discourses. Such an interpretation does not clearly demonstrate that the gap between the histories of Rome and Florence is an integral component of analysing Florence’s future. Confronting Rome and Florence instead prefigures one of the essential principles of ethnology, as defined by Claude Lévi-Strauss, who cites Rousseau: Let us suppose that these new Hercules, returning from these memorable races, then take their sweet time writing the natural, political, and moral history of what they saw; we ourselves would see a new world emerge from beneath their quill, and would thereby learn to know our own.81 80

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Cl. Lefort pointed out this aspect: ‘what Florence can learn from Rome, Machiavelli implies, dissenting from the humanist discourse, is what the Romans themselves had no theoretical knowledge of, since their institutions had been improvised to deal with events: i.e., the benefit of tumults in a Republic, of a political ‘hubbub’ which counteracts the ambitions of the ruling classes and drives it to seek security in concessions to the legitimate aspirations of the majority’ (Lefort 1992, p. 155). Lévi-Strauss 1973, p. 46 (For the quote, see Rousseau 1964, pp. 213-214).

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Just as travel to foreign lands teaches us as much about our home as about our destination, Machiavelli’s journey through history to ancient Rome both enables us to discover Rome and teaches us about Florence. The form of the Discourses plays an important role in the way Rome is placed in perspective with Florence. On the one hand, it is defined as a framework familiar to Machiavelli’s readers. Indeed, although the choice of Livy was an original one, in a philo-Hellenic Florence,82 the Roman historian, as soon as he was rediscovered by Petrarch, became one of the Ancients who was most widely acknowledged and imitated by Renaissance Florentine historians and commentators.83 Moreover, the Rome-Florence couple – whether Florence is considered the daughter of Rome, or as a second Rome – had been familiar to the Florentines since the publication of the pre-humanist chronicles and histories. But it is also characterised by its originality and novelty. Hence, the term ‘discorso’, as used in the first half of the 16th century, connotes the moment of reasoning, the flow of reflection. It usually designates a commentary on facts, and not on text.84 By applying this term in relation to Titus Livy’s History of Rome, instead of the more usual terms ‘gloss’ [chiosa] or ‘commentary’ [comento], Machiavelli is suggesting a new way of writing and reflecting, which mingles the historical account and the reflection on history. The term ‘narratio’ [narration], which we encounter in the Dedication, probably also attests to this mixture.85 It is congruent with the meaning given to ‘narratio’ in the De Oratore by Cicero, in the De Inventione attributed to him, and in the Fiore di rettorica, and it refers to the moment of transition to ‘oratio’: that is, to the construction of reasoning.86 Thanks to this new form of writing, Machiavelli can create a tableau of Roman history that also enlightens us on the history of Florence. 82

83 84 85 86

See on this subject Gilbert 1965, pp. 204-205; Matucci 1991, p. 61, regarding the role played by Coluccio Salutati for the posterity of Livy; Lefort 1992, p. 150, for the even more important role of Leonardo Bruni. Godman 1998, p. 263. Matucci 1991, p. 164. Machiavelli 1996, p. 3. Matucci 1991, p. 166. Various scholars have analysed the ways in which Machiavelli deviates from Livy’s text, in order to put forth the specificity of his ‘discorso.’ In addition to the book by A. Matucci, see Whitfield in Dorey 1971, pp. 136-156.

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Machiavelli as a Mirror for Contemporary Democracy, or How to Ruminate on His Writings Machiavelli has been put to numerous political uses since his work was published in the 16th century. These interpretations were partial and partisan from the mid-16th to late 19th centuries, fascinated by The Prince. With the 20th and turn-of-the-21st centuries, erudite criticism and philological and historical research significantly developed. Nowadays, the relevancy of his thought to the contemporary world is still investigated with much interest.1 Many Machiavelli scholars agree in condemning what Quentin Skinner recalls to be some kind of ‘antiquarian interest’ he was himself charged with lapsing into: that is, the practice of engaging in intellectual history for its own sake, and not for the purpose of providing the reader with the tools necessary for applying a different perspective to contemporary political questions. To counter this accusation, Skinner intends to elaborate an interpretation of Machiavelli that is pertinent to current political discussion: If the study of intellectual history is to have the kind of use I am claiming for it, there must be some deeper level at which our present values and the seemingly alien assumptions of our forebears to some degree match up. Nor am I suggesting that intellectual historians should turn themselves into moralists. (...) Intellectual historians can hope to provide their readers with information relevant to the making of judgments about their current values and beliefs, and then leave them to ruminate.2 It is striking to observe that in thinking about political freedom, scholars as diverse as Skinner (criticizing the lack of consequence of political liberalism), Negri (opposing an exclusively legalistic conception of democracy), and Miguel Abensour (defining ‘the Machiavellian moment’ as an ‘anti-State’ thought) all claim to be inspired by Machiavelli. As a result, the Florentine seems to be chameleon-like, just like the Prince who is by turns cruel or merciful, greedy or generous, etc. Machiavelli thus holds up a mirror to democracy. What reflection do we see? 1 Senellart and Sfez 2001, pp. 1-2. 2 Skinner 1998, p. 118.

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This issue cannot be raised unless one takes note of the political and historical contexts in which it is formulated. The ‘French Machiavellian moment’, underscoring the importance of civil conflict, 3 is elaborated on the basis of interpretations of Machiavelli by Claude Lefort, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Raymond Aron. It is fuelled by political concerns that differ from Pocock’s Machiavellian moment. David Johnston, Nadia Urbinati, and Camila Vergara observe about the latter that ‘Rubinstein’s reconstruction of the way in which existing procedures allowed the Medici to achieve power’ paved the way for an increased interest in Machiavelli’s thinking about institutional arrangements, and in his effort to design ‘buoni ordini’. In the American context of ‘the debate in the 1960s on civil rights and the limits of the liberal state’, Machiavelli and humanism could thus become ‘a source of inspiration in the search for a vision of liberty that was not identified with individual freedom from interference but claimed to be the core identity of the citizen’.4 Following Filippo Del Lucchese’s reading of Machiavelli embedded in a philosophical tradition that associates Machiavelli and Spinoza will lead us to see yet another reflection, focused on the idea of constituent power.5 Each approach has its legitimacy, and the political concerns that give birth to them are not to be discussed. However, in this chapter, we intend to demonstrate that, looking in Machiavelli’s mirror, we must first step back in order to understand how and to what extent Machiavelli’s ideas may be appropriated, five centuries after the composition of The Prince, the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy, and the Florentine Histories. As a matter of fact, if Machiavelli’s political project is first and foremost a response to the incapacity of humanistic thought to assess the role of civil conflict, as Gabriele Pedullà asserts, we are very far from contemporary democracy.6

…

The interpretation we have suggested of Machiavelli’s thought – from his vision of the body politic to the Roman paradigm of freedom – will guide us. In our opinion, it provides a basis for determining the extent to which Machiavelli can be relevant to contemporary thinking on freedom. 3 Audier, 2005. However, Audier himself considers that, in contemporary democracy, the main concern should be to discover ways to overcome disagreement. See also Roman 2017, p. 13 on this issue. 4 Johnston, Urbinati and Vergara 2017, p. 17. 5 Del Lucchese, 2004 and 2017. 6 Pedullà, 2011, p. 41.

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First of all, we may observe that some features associated with Roman freedom do not fit neatly into our conception of democracy. Because Machiavelli thinks so highly of Roman piety and poverty, some readers are likely to believe that his ideas are irrelevant to this type of reflection. If you will recall, he praises the rich public treasury and poor citizens of Rome, with their frugality and simplicity. Although the theme is barely developed in the texts, it is nevertheless a recurrent presence in his considerations. Is it possible today to promote a model of political freedom which imposes a frugal way of life on the citizenry? We have no obvious answer to this question. Moreover, Machiavelli’s free republic is founded on the fear and awe of the gods. Its institutional order cannot be described as secular: the religion of the Romans, the pillar of good citizenship, may have been a fiction, but it was a necessary fiction; a belief that supports life and freedom.7 Later philosophers like Spinoza and Rousseau, like Machiavelli, could not conceive of the rule of law, especially within the context of a free republic, in the absence of such a fiction.8 Is it imaginable, in our time, to recreate a relationship to the divine, which would have the same effects as the religion of the Romans? Again, an obvious answer eludes us. Moreover, Machiavellian freedom has a cost in terms of its tight bond to plans for imperial conquest. The wars Rome waged were closely associated with its freedom. If, in ‘tumult’, the plebs demonstrate their refusal to be dominated by the nobles, it is because they are animated by the desire not to be dominated. The insolence of the nobles alone constitutes a motivation for rebellion, but the plebs also protested because the Roman government required that they enlist in the army. Should the plebs take on military duties without due governmental representation? Machiavelli sees a contradiction there, ‘for men cannot be given trouble without a reward’.9 In some of his analyses, particularly in the essential Chapter I, 4 of the Discourses, it is this contradiction – denial of a political voice, mandatory military conscription – which appears to be decisive in explaining the ‘tumults’ of the plebs.10 7

8 9 10

E. Cutinelli-Rendina points out that on this subject, Machiavelli’s conception differs from that developed by humanist chancellors regarding the relationship between the Church and the government of the City. In their eyes, the latter’s sphere of competence had to be preserved from the Church’s interference (Cutinelli-Rendina 1998, pp. 202-203). See Spinoza 1999, Chapter 17; Rousseau 1964, IV, 8. Machiavelli 1996, p. 121. Machiavelli 1996, pp. 21-23: ‘If Rome wished to remove the causes of tumults, it removed too the causes of expansion. (…) I believe that it is necessary (…) to tolerate the enmities that arise between the people and the Senate, taking them as an inconvenience necessary to attain the Roman greatness’.

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Let us put aside imperial ambitions. The desire of the great to dominate will be expressed just as strongly, and will suffice to trigger a reaction from the plebs. Nevertheless, Machiavelli rejects this option. In the Discourses, I, 6, he attempts to determine the most desirable republican institutional order, by comparing Sparta and Venice on the one hand, and Rome on the other. If a city assigns itself the goal of becoming an empire, it must adopt the Roman order, the only one making it possible to have a popular and therefore large army, required for military victory. Machiavelli is convinced that armies of mercenaries and resorting to alliances are not reliable means, from the military viewpoint.11 But if the city – regardless of its regime – does not assign such a goal to itself, must it nevertheless ‘tolerate’ dissension between the great and the people? Actually, Machiavelli asserts, republics do not really have a choice of whether to form their own large citizen armies. The unstable course of history itself compels them to form such armies to fight off the attacks that will inevitably occur. Moreover, long periods of peace are not desirable, because they have a negative impact on citizens’ morals: Without doubt I believe that if the things could be held balanced in this mode, it would be the true political way of life and the true quiet of a city. But since all things of men are in motion and cannot stay steady, they must either rise or fall; and to many things that reason does not bring you, necessity brings you. So when a republic that has been ordered so as to be capable of maintaining itself does not expand, and necessity leads it to expand, this would come to take away its foundations and make it come to ruin sooner. So, on the other hand, if heaven were so kind that it did not have to make war, from that would arrive the idleness to make it either effeminate or divided; these two things together, or each by itself, would be the cause of its ruin. Therefore, since one cannot, as I believe, balance this thing, nor maintain this middle way exactly, in ordering a republic there is need to think of the more honorable part and to order it so that if indeed necessity brings it to expand it can conserve what it has seized.12 The three reasons put forward here to encourage republics to endow themselves with their own large armies and, as a result, to tolerate public demonstrations of the conflict between the great and the people, can be summed up as follows: the probability of enemy attack; the fantasy of citizens incapable of 11 12

Machiavelli 1998, Chapters 12 and 13. Machiavelli 1996, p. 23.

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defending themselves; the intensification of civil conflict due to the absence of a unifying theme, even temporary and specious, between the people and the great. Therefore, Machiavelli’s ideal republic is warlike, and Roman freedom imperialistic and aggressive. In addition to this characterisation of Machiavelli’s ideal republic, another issue must be considered when one intends to consider contemporary democracy through Machiavelli’s mirror: that of his conception of human history. If, in our day, freedom is no longer considered within the framework of a philosophy of history, and although the history of nations is no longer envisioned as that of an ineluctable advancement towards freedom; in short, although the era of the great epics is behind us, the Machiavellian conception of freedom bears an undeniable resemblance to contemporary political thought. Like today’s thinkers, Machiavelli sees no historical necessity in freedom. His accounts of freedom attest to a series of events which seem to be driven by chance. Certain free cities are founded under the imperial domination of another city, while others are born independent and may or may not remain so; some are endowed in infancy with a constitution by a founding father who is a lawmaker, while others gradually elaborate laws, over time; these city-states become republics, monarchies, principalities, or tyrannies. Finally, only some of them develop a policy of conquest. Nothing in Machiavelli’s accounts of the histories of Rome, Sparta, Venice, Florence, or the German cities would therefore indicate the conditions making the advent, maintenance, or decline of freedom a necessity.13 Thus, the contribution of a Kantian type of historical interpretation, the goal of which would be to detect a trend towards freedom behind the apparently random course of history, must be ruled out. Similarly, the desire of the people, generally defined by Machiavelli as the desire not to be dominated, takes on a variety of forms. It may effectively be a desire to be free of domination, or even free – as was the case in Rome – or a desire for the protection of a king or prince. There are states where the proportion of lords and nobles is so large that the desire not to be dominated cannot be asserted; there are principalities in which the desire of the people, influenced by custom, can be expressed only as a desire for protection. The desire of the people is therefore not necessarily demonstrated in ‘tumults’, which, when they occur, do not always engender republican institutions. These differences between the cities and states Machiavelli analyses are all attributed to the randomness that rules the emergence of cities. Above all, this desire does not signify that men would be free by nature, and would have a rational preference for freedom over oppression, an idea of which 13

Machiavelli 1996, II, 2.

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the people would be fully aware and which would constitute a goal to achieve. It is interesting to note that this interpretation was developed in the 1550s, by Étienne de La Boétie, soon after the publication of Machiavelli’s works. According to de la Boétie, custom prevents men from detecting their true nature: in particular, those born under the yoke of serfdom think it is their natural condition.14 To counter the effects of custom, it is right to enlighten men about their true nature, by appealing to their reason: Yet surely if there is anything in this world clear and obvious, to which one cannot close one’s eyes, it is the fact that nature, handmaiden of God, governess of men, has cast us all in the same mold in order that we may behold in one another companions, or rather brothers. (…) there can be no further doubt that we are all naturally free, inasmuch as we are all comrades. Accordingly it should not enter the mind of anyone that nature has placed some of us in slavery, since she has actually created us all in one likeness.15 There is nothing like this in Machiavelli. True, he does provide us with an analysis of the reasons men appreciate freedom.16 But the weight of these reasons is only relative, because Machiavelli is convinced that men’s attachment to freedom varies in intensity depending on the times: according to him, men in his own time loved freedom less than men in ancient times did. In any case, Machiavelli does not invoke these reasons as the source of some irrepressible human desire for freedom. Moreover, it is tempting to agree with Antonio Gramsci that Machiavelli ‘articulated a conception of the world that could also be called a “philosophy of praxis” or “neo-humanism”, in that it does not recognize transcendental or immanent (in the metaphysical sense) elements, but is based entirely on the concrete action of man who out of historical necessity, works and transform reality.’17 14 15 16 17

La Boétie 2008, p. 54. La Boétie 2008, p. 50. Machiavelli 1996, II, 2. Gramsci 1996, V, 127, p. 378. Machiavelli’s detachment from religion is mentioned several times in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, to point out either the ways in which religion is made a tool, the autonomy of Machiavellian thought from moralism and religion, or the absence of transcendental elements in the vision of history projected by his works (see for example Notebook IV, 13). B. Croce applies this point of view to all Renaissance historiography, characterised, in his eyes, by a denial of Christian transcendence. Machiavelli plays a

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This ‘philosophy of praxis’ would be another aspect of Machiavellian thought facilitating its appropriation by contemporary political philosophy. But if so, where do we put Machiavelli’s frequent references to God, the stars, and Fortune? They, too, often figure in his history. The history Machiavelli writes is certainly foreign to the Christian view of world history. Machiavelli’s distinctness is all the more striking when we recall the context in which he was elaborating his works. In Florence, it was marked by vivid memories of Savonarola’s projects for reform, and in general, by the idea of divine Providence18 and the expectation of the end times, which prevailed in Christian history until the mid-16th century.19 Machiavelli interprets from a ‘temporal’ point of view events or phenomena initially related to biblical history. In this respect his treatment of ecclesiastical principalities (The Prince, 11) is exemplary. In this chapter, the last in a series describing various types of principalities, Machiavelli first seems to grant a particular status to ecclesiastical states. He disqualifies himself from examining them, due to the

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central role in Croce’s analysis (Croce 1921, p. 224). Such an interpretation of Machiavelli was already proposed by Marx, see Beiner 2011, p. 28 and Zancarini 2007, pp. 74-76. It is notably on this point that G. Vico (1668-1744) criticizes Machiavellian thought. Vico faults Machiavelli for failing to decipher the true course of human political history, which becomes clear only if one distinguishes rights from law. In human history, the first natural right is divine. The age of divine right was characterised by human sacrifices and families ruled by a patriarch. The next right is a heroic natural law, which to some degree preserves the savagery and ferocity of the previous age, but gives it an institutional form. This right corresponds to the establishment of the first cities and the emergence of an aristocracy. The first real desire for law was born when the clients of the patriarchs became aware of their servitude, and it became unbearable to them. Next comes the third phase, when men conquer equality, a time when this desire for law has spread to the majority. Vico reads this third phase in the plebeians’ conquest of political recognition in Rome. The transition from one phase to the next of natural right is determined by Providence, which provided man with such a desire for the law, a sort of civic conatus. The innate spirit prevents him from being indifferent to the suffering imposed on him and gives him the means to demand the equality in fact provided for by natural right itself. In this sense, Providence determines the conditions for a natural right to insurrection, since the conatus tends towards a freedom-seeking rebellion from which common law would emerge. According to Vico, Machiavelli’s conception of a history unguided by Providence derives from his confusion of opportunity with cause. Machiavelli, like Epicure, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Bayle, would see personal interest as the reason for human action, whereas according to Vico, this interest is only the opportunity which leads men to form communities. The true cause is the providential plan for men to achieve a common law in their history (Vico 2001, pp. 538-639). Koselleck 1990, p. 21.

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divine support that guarantees their longevity: ‘as they subsist by superior causes, to which the human mind does not reach’.20 However, this principle quickly gives way to a challenge, when Machiavelli asserts an interest in the recent and spectacular acquisition of ‘temporal power’ by the papacy. The explanation he gives of this acquisition is similar to the one he provides in discussing other principalities, republics, or empires, in the preceding chapters of the book. It is based on the consideration of balances of power between the city-states, their respective material and military strengths, their diplomatic ties, and the virtue of the popes. Contrary to his earlier demurral, therefore, Machiavelli judges ecclesiastical principalities by the same criteria he applies to the others: to account for their situation, there is absolutely no need to call on divine power. He also adopts such a point of view in the Florentine Histories, I, regarding the history of the papacy ‘from the decline of the Empire until 1434.’ The history of Florence is integrated in the history of Italy and interpreted in light of it; within this larger history, the geopolitical role of the papacy is even presented as a primary explanatory factor.21 Likewise, in The Prince, 6, he develops a two-phase argument making Moses a founding father to be evaluated like all the others. Initially, Machiavelli excludes him from consideration, on the grounds that because he was acting on orders from God, one must not question his deeds.22 Then, he formulates a viewpoint from which it becomes possible to investigate Moses as a historical figure like other leaders founding nations. Machiavelli thus succeeds in ‘desingularizing’ Moses despite his special relationship to God: But let us consider Cyrus and the others who acquired or founded kingdoms: you will find them all admirable; and if their particular actions and orders are considered, they will appear no different from those of Moses, who had so great a teacher. And as one examines their actions and lives, one does not see that they had anything else than the opportunity, which gave them the matter enabling them to introduce any form they pleased. Without that opportunity their virtue of spirit would have been eliminated, and without that virtue the opportunity would have come in vain. It was necessary then for Moses to find the people of Israel in Egypt, enslaved and oppressed by the Egyptians so that they would be disposed to follow him so as to get out of their servitude. It was fitting that Romulus not be received in Alba, that he should have been exposed at birth, if 20 21 22

Machiavelli 1998, p. 45. See Cutinelli-Rendina 1998, p. 303. Machiavelli 1998, p. 22.

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he was to become king of Rome and founder of that fatherland. Cyrus needed to find the Persians malcontent with the empire of the Medes, and the Medes soft and effeminate because of a long peace. Theseus could not have demonstrated his virtue had he not found the Athenians dispersed.23 In the Discourses, the same reversal of perspective characterises the discussion of Moses: his relationship to God is not mentioned, either in the chapters which might have been written before The Prince or in those written later. Moses’ action and the difficulties he encounters are not specific to him; they resemble those of all the other founders.24 The Papacy, Moses, and finally religion: all are subjected to the same treatment. Indeed, the Discourses, II, 5, consider religions as part of history and thereby engage in a lively polemic that had been kindled in the Middle Ages. Machiavelli is challenging an argument developed against the eternity of the world, an anti-Christian thesis.25 Since the time of Saint Augustine, the idea that the universe was relatively new had been integral to the Christian representation of the world, by opposition to the peripatetic image of a world that has always existed, subject to a cyclical temporality. This view of the world as eternal and cyclical would deny the Book of Genesis, the historical existence of Adam and make the scenario of fall and redemption impossible.26 Strictly speaking, Chapter II, 5 mentions the issue of a created world versus an eternal one only briefly and indirectly. Instead, the chapter is devoted to examining the various things that cause men to lose the memory of the past. However, anyone informed of the other debate (and most of Machiavelli’s contemporaries were) is apt to understand the anti-Christian impact of his reasoning. He does assert that men lose the memory of the times which preceded them, and that as a result, it is impossible to rule on the question of the eternity of the world. In this analysis of memory, in fact, religions are moreover presented as historical phenomena which appear and disappear over the course of time – a presentation which will be reflected in Chapter III, 1, when the religions are described as mixed bodies: 23 24 25

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Machiavelli 1998, pp. 22-23. Machiavelli 1996, I, 1, 9, II, 8, and III, 30. For a detailed study of this chapter and its ancient, medieval, and Renaissance sources regarding the eternity of the world, one should refer to the essay by G. Sasso (Sasso 1987, pp. 176-399). Bianchi 1997, pp. 278-279.

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For when a new sect – that is a new religion – emerges, its first concern is to extinguish the old to give itself reputation (…) And because these sects vary two or three times in five or in six thousand years, the memory of things done prior to that time is lost, and if, however, some sign of them remains, it is considered as something fabulous and is not lent faith to …27 Thus, the vision of world history to which Machiavelli subscribes differs from the one offered by Christianity, and even overtly disputes it. Nevertheless, God’s existence and its role in human history are not denied. Chapter 26 of The Prince frequently uses the term ‘redemption’ to describe the fate of Italy, which must be liberated from foreign invaders. It also uses biblical text as an argument: Here there is the greatest readiness, and where there is great readiness, there cannot be great difficulty, provided that your house keeps its aims on the orders of those whom I have put forth. Besides this, here may be seen extraordinary things without examples, brought about by God: the sea has opened; a cloud has escorted you along the way; the stone has poured forth water; here manna has rained; everything has concurred in your greatness. The remainder you must do yourself. God does not want to do everything so as not to take free will from us and that part of the glory that falls to us.28 Initially, we might be tempted to interpret these statements as the mark of a certain lack of religious reverence: as if Machiavelli were satirizing religious vocabulary by applying it to his thinking on freedom in Italy, ironically and impudently grafting Christian vocabulary onto something entirely unrelated to religion. But such an interpretation is still superficial. The chapter carries a strong emotional charge – commentators are unanimous in pointing out the change of tone from what preceded it. From this point of view, it is likely that Machiavelli employed this type of language to take advantage of the influence of prophetic speeches in Florence, which were essential to the political history of the city between 1470 and 1525.29 Beyond this rhetorical dimension, it should be pointed out that in relating biblical tales, Machiavelli advances a non-deterministic means of divine intervention. God is present, but does not control human actions. Thus, to understand this chapter, we must seek a deeper inter27 28 29

Machiavelli 1996, p. 380. We find a similar passage in Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1040. Machiavelli 1998, p. 103. Weinstein 1973.

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pretation than today’s customary opposition between a secular vision of history and a religious one. An analysis of free will, understood as the human faculty to determine one’s actions, a tenet of scholastic thought, will sharpen our understanding. It appears in Chapter 25, as an introduction to a description of the relationship between fortune and prowess: It is not unknown to me that many have held and hold the opinion that worldly things are so governed by fortune and by God, that men cannot correct them with their prudence, indeed that they have no remedy at all; and on account of this they might judge that one need not sweat much over things but let oneself be governed by chance. This opinion has been believed more in our times because of the great variability of things which have been seen and are seen every day, beyond every human conjecture. When I have thought about this sometimes, I have been in some part inclined to their opinion. Nonetheless, so our free will not be eliminated, I judge that it might be true fortune is arbiter of half of our action, but also that she leaves the other half, or close to it, for us to govern. 30 In this passage, the advocacy of the concept of free will does not result in a negation of God. Lorenzo Valla’s De libero arbitrio informs us that Christian thought itself leaves room for free will, and there is no contradiction to be seen in an assertion like Machiavelli’s, where God and free human will coexist.31 It is unthinkable for us to call Machiavelli an atheist. Instead, let us attempt to understand the role he attributes to divine intervention in human affairs. It is notable that in the examples he gives, he limits the scope of such action to an area that has no impact on the history of freedom. For example, in Chapter 26, God’s miracles are all related to nature. In Chapter VI, 34, of the Florentine Histories, God’s omnipotence is demonstrated, but it involves a natural phenomenon – a devastating tornado.32 So Machiavelli never denies the existence of God or His ability to sway the course of human history. ‘The Machiavellian 30 31

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Machiavelli 1998, p. 98. Valla 1983, p. 28. In this dialogue, free will turns out to be the keystone of the Christian system of divine rewards and punishments. Lorenzo Valla urges theologians to reject philosophy that endangers religion, citing Boethius’s treatment of this question as an example. Valla also suggests distinguishing between divine foresight and divine will, in order to show that God foresees human actions, although God’s knowledge has no effect on them. Marco Lombardo’s speech in the Divine Comedy is also a strong evocation of human free will (Dante 1996, Purgatory, XVI, vv. 67-83, pp. 806-807.) Machiavelli 1989, 3, pp. 1329-131.

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moment’ is not a contradiction of written history from the Christian point of view. Conversely, the emergence, survival, and decline of freedom are described and analysed without reference to divine action. Such an intention on Machiavelli’s part is characteristic of the Hippocratic Corpus, which also departs from the forms of explanation based on divine intervention. Nothing in the Corpus refutes the existence of the divine. Nor does anything in it negate the possibility of human intervention. Divine actions are described in an indirect way. This indirect voice can be heard even in regard to phenomena conceived as coming from divine or supernatural sources.33 Thus, just as The Prince, 11, and Florentine Histories, I, approach the history of the papacy from a ‘temporal’ viewpoint, the Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease recommends that epilepsy, hitherto considered sacred, divine, or holy, be treated like any other pathological disorder.34 In our search for further evidence that according to Machiavelli, human players alone act out the history of freedom, we have ruled out the divine. Now we must investigate any possible intervention by supra-lunar entities in the course of human events.35 The expression ‘il cielo’ (plural form: ‘i cieli’- ‘the heavens’) – employed, for example, with regard to the first Roman institutions, judged insufficient by ‘i cieli’36 – is devoid of any providentialist connotations. It must not be associated with religion, for it belongs to the vocabulary of the astrologists, who seek proof of the assertion that the stars determine our fate.37 Machiavelli moreover mentions the phenomenon of prophetic ‘signs’: he affirms that ‘no great accident in a city or a province ever comes unless it has been foretold either by diviners or by revelations or by prodigies or by other heavenly signs,’ and also recalls that ‘everyone know, beyond this, that before the death of Lorenzo de Medici the Elder, the cathedral was struck in its highest part by a heavenly dart, with very great destruction for that building’.38 33 34 35

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Pellegrin, in Galen 1998, p. 9. Hippocrates 1959a The Sacred Disease. Few Machiavelli scholars have studied this aspect, aside from A. Parel (Parel 1992) and A. Tenenti (Tenenti 1978). We must therefore refer to sources that are not related directly to Machiavelli in order to understand to what degree astrology played a part in Renaissance political thought. The textual research and analyses by E. Garin are fundamental in this respect (Garin 1976 and 1979). Garin also edited De hominis dignitate…, by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1942), as well as his Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem (1946). Additional references include the works by Di Napoli (1973), Kristeller (1963) and more recently Zambelli (2000). Machiavelli 1996, I, 11. Tenenti 1978, pp. 212-214. See also Strauss 1978, pp. 230-245. Machiavelli 1996, p. 133. See also Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1391.

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Finally, this statement, mentioned in connection with our analysis of Machiavelli’s concept of imitation, describes the structure of the universe in a way that is somewhat mysterious to us: From this it arises that the infinite number who read them take pleasure in hearing of the variety of accidents contained in them without thinking of imitating them, judging that imitation is not only difficult but impossible – as if heaven, sun, elements, men had varied in motion, order, and power from what they were in Antiquity. 39 In both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, astrology consisted of two distinct operations: on the one hand, the study of the movements and appearances of the heavenly bodies, particularly the sun and moon, their influence upon each other and upon the Earth (called astronomy or theoretical astrology) and, on the other, foreseeing sub-lunar events as a function of the findings of the other operations (called judicial, divinatory, or practical astrology). The latter form began to spread in Europe when Western Christendom received Greco-Arab astronomy, which maintained close ties to astrology.40 To understand the influence of the astrological representation of the world, we must also consider the translation and diffusion of Aristotelian treatises in the 13th century, especially Physics, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption, and Meteorology. Along with translations of apocryphal Greek and Arab writings and commentaries, they were the substrate of an ‘image of the world’ similar to the astrological one. This image represents a great system of spheres, in the centre of which our Earth stands, immobile. The lunar sphere is divided into two qualitatively distinct and hierarchically ranked regions: the sub-lunar region consists of earth and water – heavy elements – and of air and fire – light elements; in the supra-lunar sphere, the sun, among other stars, as a result of its annual ecliptic rotation, causes periodic transformations which draw these elements out of their natural place; mixed bodies are unstable compounds, subject to the four types of movement (depending on substance, quality, quantity, and location).41 Even in Machiavelli’s time, such a vision still predominated, in collective representations, both popular and scholarly. 39 40

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Machiavelli 1996, p. 6. Especially through the Introductiorium maius d’Albumasar, translated by John of Seville in 1133, Ptolemy’s Quatripartum (or Tetrabiblos) translated into Latin in 1138 by Plato of Tivoli; and various other brochures and compendia (al-Kindi, alBattani, Alfargani, Mashallah). See Bianchi, 1997, p. 10. Bianchi, 1997, p. 271.

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However, in the early 16th century, there was very little consensus about astrology, which aroused two different debates. One involved its very validity; the other, the relatively deterministic nature of its assertions. Divinatory or judicial astrology claimed it could foresee human actions and account for them, as well as the future of cities, religions, civilizations, and peoples, as a function of the nature and movement of the supra-lunar bodies. Astrology was criticized from many different viewpoints which, however, generally aimed for the same purpose: a guarantee of human free will (the expression ‘libero arbitrio’ was much more common than that of ‘libertà’ in discussions of this matter). This criticism was not specific to Machiavelli’s times, nor was it necessarily political in nature.42 42

Petrarch, who refused the need for natural laws and perceived the bond between them and Aristotelian natural physics taught in the universities. Petrarch elaborated an argument against scholastics in general and against the Sorbonne in particular, and undertook a refutation of the whole of Greek science, arguing for the Latin heritage. In doing so, he was led to reject Greco-Arab astronomy. As for Coluccio Salutati, he asserts in a letter written to the Florentine astrologer Jacopo Allegretti da Forlì that the negation of free will is the same as denying both the human and the divine (‘lascia al genere umano il libero arbitrio; se cercherai di toglierlo, sopprimera insieme l’umano e il divino’), cited by E. Garin (Garin 1976, p. 37). See also his 1396 treatise, De fato et fortuna (Salutati 1985). Closer to Machiavelli, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola defends the idea of free will in several of his works (Mirandola 1994, pp. 187-188). In the Oratio written in 1486, he has God address Adam, saying that Adam himself will determine his own limitations, whereas for all other creatures, these limitations are established by nature: ‘Ô Adam, we have given you neither a specific dwelling, nor a precise physiognomy, nor a special gift of any kind, so that you have and possess at your own whim, according to your own wishes, the dwelling, physiognomy, and gifts that you will have chosen yourself. The nature established for the others is contained within limitations we have traced in advance; you, uncontained either by narrow spaces of any sort, will set in advance, at your own discretion, with the power I have given you’ (Mirandola 1942). In the Disputationes adversus astrologus (published by his nephew in 1496), he deploys an attack that surrounds the issue from every side, going from the authority of the Ancients to the astronomical knowledge about the relationship between the heavens and human life, with a reminder, in passing, of the influence of customs and laws on the choices men make. Book I distinguishes astronomy, to which he grants the status of science, from divinatory astrology, against which, in Book II, he fires his entire arsenal of criticism. Book III grants the heavens, as a perfect natural body, characterised by perfect motion (a circular one), the power to move all of the creatures of the universe, and presents the sun as the source of life and vigour and moon as the cause of the sea’s tides. Conversely, in his estimation, the stars are not endowed with any particular influence on earthly life. Finally, book IV, by asserting that men descend from God by the intermediary of the angels, and not stars, and that the customs and laws of their cities are decisive for human choices, removes any grounds for astrology. Two years after its

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Machiavelli mainly took part in the second debate, relative to the degree of determinism associated with astrology. Thinkers who asserted radical astral determinism (judicial astrology) argued with those who, while acknowledging the influence of the planets and stars on the course of human events, considered that this influence did not restrain the free will of men. The first accepted the theoretical inheritance of the astrologer Albumasar, whose writings, translated into Latin by the early 12th century and first printed in 1489 in Augsburg, exerted an authoritative influence in the Latin and Byzantine worlds. Albumasar defends the thesis that major events in human history are caused by relationships (in Latin, ‘copulatio’ or ‘coniunctio’) between the planets, particularly between the sun and moon.43 Conversely, we encounter thinkers who consider the stars to be a distant, general cause, without any decisive effect on human choices and actions. They admit that celestial signs herald earthly events, but not that the movement of the heavenly bodies causes these events. The assertion in the preface to Discourses I – ‘as if heaven, sun, elements, men had varied in motion, order, and power from what they were in Antiquity’ – seems to indicate that Machiavelli had accepted the ‘world image’ conveyed by the cosmology inspired by Aristotelian principles. At least, the statement provides a foundation for an argument aimed at proving the legitimacy of a history useful to men as more than mere entertainment. The mention of the identity of the motions, power, and order of the supra-lunar and sub-lunar elements functions effectively, in this passage, to reject the thesis of a difference in nature between the conditions of past actions and those of present actions. Nevertheless, this passage does not show us how heaven, the sun, the elements, and the moon intervene in this history, in Machiavelli’s eyes: as a primary cause or, on the contrary, as a distant and non-decisive one? Machiavelli, in his writing, rarely provides any indication as to how these forces intervene. Let us return to one in particular: in Discourses I, 11, the

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publication in Latin, he received a rebuttal from Lucio Bellanti (Defensio Astrologiae contra Ioannem Picum Mirandulam). Along with the translation of the Disputationes by Savonarola, De vita by Marsilius Ficino, the commentaries on Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos by Giovanni Pontano and Agostino Nifo, all of these writings attest to the liveliness of the debate on astrology in the early 16th century. Savonarola compiled the Disputationes, then translated them into the vulgate in his Contra Astrologiam Divinatricem (1497). He does not express the Christian viewpoint on astrology. Although the Augustinian tradition is extremely critical of astrology, Thomas Aquinas offers a more moderate vision (Bianchi 1997, p. 274; Halbronn 1986). Garin 1976, p. 17 and pp. 22-23. In the early 14th century (c. 1314), Pietro d’Abano published the Conciliator controversarm quae inter philosophos and medicos versantur, a book which adopted the principal ideas of Albumasar.

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‘heavens’ supposedly ‘inspired’ the Roman senate to elect Numa Pompilius, so that he could finish the work of founding that Romulus had begun. It seems as though we have pinpointed an exemplary case of an earthly event – the election of Numa – being explained with reference to a supra-lunar cause – the heavens – having ‘inspired’ a senate decision. Nevertheless, things are more ambiguous than they seem. First of all, Machiavelli does not say that the heavens ‘inspired’ Numa’s action itself; they merely affected the senate decision. Thus, the edification of a ‘civiltà’ seems to be a matter of human action alone, namely Numa’s action. Moreover, Machiavelli merely mentions the celestial inspiration. Most of Chapter I, 11 concerns the description and analysis of  Numa’s deeds; actually concluding that these deeds were essential to Rome, without any further reference to the role of the ‘heavens’.44 In this chapter, Machiavelli is satisfied to adopt the position he describes on the interpretation of celestial signs: Yet it could be, as some Philosophers would have it that since this air is full of intelligences that foresee future things by their natural virtues, and they have compassion for men, they warn them with like signs so that they can prepare themselves for defense.45 Concerning himself, he says that he lacks the skills necessary to distinguish natural things from supernatural ones. He therefore excludes the question of supernatural causality from his area of analysis.46 Moreover, the examples of celestial signs he cites in this chapter have absolutely no connection to freedom, its emergence, survival, or decline. They refer to a series of events: the arrival of French king Charles VIII in Italy, the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the ouster of Piero Soderini, and the Gaulish invasion of Rome. It remains to evaluate the role of fortune in the history of freedom. The concept of fortune appears to be polysemic: its many characteristics are never unified as a whole, and as a result, the idea is always mysterious. It is never elucidated, either in practice or in theory.47 In The Prince, the work where fortune is most often a theme, it is sometimes personified by a woman, who must be confronted, conquered, and forced to submit, or even ‘held down’ in the sexual sense of the term; at others, it is reified in the shape of a stormy, devastating torrent.48 In any case, it is always something that arises suddenly, un44 45 46 47 48

Machiavelli 1996, p. 34. Machiavelli 1996, p. 114. Machiavelli 1966, p. 114. Chabod 1964, p. 252 sq. Machiavelli 1998, p. 101.

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foreseen. When it brings bad luck, its harmful effects are compounded if its victims have behaved rashly, without thinking of the future: It happens similarly with Fortune, which demonstrates her power where virtue has not been put in order to resist her and therefore turns her impetus where she knows that dams and dikes have not been made to contain her.49 ‘Fortune’ sometimes refers to an event for which men are no match – as in the case of the illness and death of Cesare Borgia. Nevertheless, it does not always appear in the form of an all-powerful force. Insofar as Machiavelli examines virtue, and the ability of each man to change his nature, two qualities which enable a person to adapt to fortune, and the changing qualities of the times, he mentions several situations where men are likely to intervene, and circumstances from which, if prepared, they might emerge victorious or at least unhurt – for example, the invasion of Italy by foreign armies (The Prince, 24). As such, in Machiavelli, fortune therefore cannot be considered as a source of historical determinism, as strictly defined.50 How does it intervene in the history of freedom? Fortune is not mentioned in the analysis of the ‘tumults’ which gave rise to laws favourable to freedom. Is it present in the description of corruption leading inexorably to the decline of ‘vivere libero’ ? J.G.A. Pocock has suggested an interpretation of the relationship between fortune and virtue, according to which corruption, far from being merely ‘an extension of la fortuna’,51 instigates a ‘sociological’ and ‘moral’ analysis.52 Fortune would nevertheless maintain its role as the element that reactivates the virtue of citizens, without whom no free city can survive. When corruption reaches a crisis point, only ‘an unpredictable force’ is likely to

49 50

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Machiavelli 1998, pp. 98-99. Machiavelli, The Prince, 25, p. 100: ‘For if one governs himself with caution and prudence, and the times and affairs turn in such a way that his government is good, he comes out happy, but if the times and affairs change, he is ruined because he does not change his mode of proceeding. Nor may a man be found so prudent as to know how to accommodate himself to this, whether because he cannot deviate from what nature inclines him to or also because, when one has always flourished by walking on one path, he cannot be persuaded to depart from it. And so the cautious man, when it is time to come to impetuosity, does not know how to do it, hence comes to ruin: for if he would change his nature with the times and with the affairs, his fortune would not change.’ Pocock 1975, p. 207. Pocock 1975, p. 208.

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‘mobilize’ citizen energies.53 Keeping in mind the analysis of the relationship between fortuna and virtú suggested in The Prince, 6, – ‘Without that opportunity their virtue of spirit would have been eliminated, and without that virtue the opportunity would have come in vain’54 – we must nevertheless assume that the remobilization of energy in the face of corruption is possible only if the citizens are still virtuous. Yet being virtuous is incompatible with the context of extreme corruption where Pocock situates this intervention by fortune. Actually, in this chapter Machiavelli is discussing events [accidente] and not fortune. Moreover, an analysis of the Discourses III, 1, illustrating the remobilization, suggests that the rebirth of virtue is only an indirect effect of this ‘accident’. Actually, the event reactivates the fear and awe which are the basis of civility. So there are occurrences of unpredictable and unnecessary events which help to purify the customs of the citizens, but they cannot be associated with the intervention of fortune in the history of freedom. Machiavelli treats fortune much the same way he treats God and the stars: he asserts its existence and underscores its role, but limits its action to a field outside the history of freedom. When the history of liberty is involved, Machiavelli’s analyses centre on human action.55 Thus, Gramsci’s observation – Machiavellian history as the history of men – is confirmed. The Machiavellian analysis of the conditions for the emergence, rise, and decline of freedom belongs to a historiographical framework which makes it intelligible, but certainly not transferable at once to contemporary political thought.56

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Pocock 1975, p. 218. Machiavelli 1996, III, 1. Machiavelli 1998, p. 23. Machiavelli’s conception of religion is a complex issue. A “secularised” interpretation is certainly erroneous (Tenenti 1969; Sullivan, 1996; Fontana 1999; Gaille 2005d; Ménissier, 2010 on the figure of the prophet; Beiner 2011 especially on his comparison between Mohammed and Moses; Vatter 2013, on messianism). Though I fully agree with Viroli on the necessity to enquire about Machiavelli’s God (Viroli 2010), I do not follow Viroli’s rejection of the instrumental interpretation of religion in Machiavelli’s thought, mainly because I think that the alternative between an endorsement of religion and an instrumental approach is not relevant for Machiavelli’s political thinking, based on the idea of ‘effectual truth’. The interpretation I propose here remains anchored in this idea and thus focuses on the attention paid by Machiavelli to the political effectiveness of religion. Gaille 2015.

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Considering these three reasons, one can only appreciate all the more Skinner’s caution in suggesting we read Machiavelli as a simple ‘warning’, rather than as a paradigm, of freedom. This warning is addressed to liberals: in Skinner’s estimation, they are resting on a negative conception of freedom, and they should reject it for the participative vision which, in Skinner’s eyes, is ideally attested in Machiavelli’s works. Skinner’s position in relation to the political philosophy of John Rawls makes it possible for us to specify the meaning of his criticism of the liberal conception of freedom. He does not dispute the liberal ranking between justice and the common good; rather, he adopts it for himself, but he does contest the definition of the conditions necessary for each of the citizens to engage in the pursuit of the goals they set for themselves.57 In other words, Skinner does not challenge either the primacy of the just over the good, or the liberal criticism of the idea that there is some supreme good for which all citizens must strive. He takes issue with the conception of freedom that is supposed to guarantee every citizen in a liberal democracy the right to engage in the pursuit of his own goals. The first step in Skinner’s challenge to the liberal conception of freedom is similar to the one taken by Pocock in The Machiavellian Moment: to unearth and present a current of thought which has been neglected or perhaps even hidden by contemporary political philosophy: classical republicanism. Skinner wields it as a regular weapon in a discussion on political freedom. His critique of liberalism is supported by the fact that, in the republican movement of the Italian Renaissance, the conditions for freedom are always examined within the framework of the liberty of city-states, rather than of individual freedoms. As we have seen, a city can be said to be free when it is independent and/or when its citizens concur in determining the goals they will pursue, within a republican government.58 Skinner makes this conception the backbone of his argument, with Machiavelli as one of the leading proponents of this school of thought.59 57 58 59

Q. Skinner 1995, p. 215. Skinner 1978 and 1998. Skinner 1995, p. 216: ‘the strand of thought I have in mind is that of classical republicanism. Within this tradition, the discussion of political liberty is generally embedded in an analysis of what it means to live ‘in a free State’. This approach was largely derived from Roman moral philosophy, and especially from those writers whose greatest admiration had been reserved for the doomed Roman Republic: Titus Livy, Sallust, and above all, Cicero. Within modern political theory, their line of argument was at first taken up in Renaissance Italy as a means of defending the traditional liberties of the city-republics both against the signori and the powers of the Church. Among the many writers who

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Machiavellian republicanism interests him in part because of the obsessions by which it is haunted – the internal and external threats faced by the free city-state – and also because of the pluralist vision of the goals pursued by its citizens (Machiavelli makes no reference to a supreme good), connected with a theory of active citizen participation in civic life. The pluralist vision of citizen goals makes it possible to associate Machiavelli with the primacy of the just over the good (which Skinner champions, alongside the liberals). The threats to the city, particularly the mention of internal dangers, make it possible to formulate a criticism with respect to a negative conception of liberty. In Skinner’s eyes, Machiavelli demonstrates that the personal ambition of certain citizens is the gravest peril to liberty and to the life of a republic.60 In this perspective, vigilance is the first quality required of the citizens, for the preservation of their city’s freedom. They must be willing to be soldiers to defend their freedom from outside attack, but they must also take precautions against the libido dominandi of certain citizens: Politics is a profession; unless politicians are persons of exceptional altruism, they will always face the temptation of making decisions in line with their own interests and those of powerful pressure-groups instead of in the interests of the community at large. Given this predicament, the republican argument conveys a warning which, while we may wish to dismiss it as unduly pessimistic, we can hardly afford at the present juncture to ignore: that unless we act to prevent this kind of political corruption by giving our civic duties priority over individual rights, we must expect to find our individual rights themselves undermined.61 It is because of this temptation to which political professionals are subject that in Skinner’s eyes, the republican call for civic duty and active participation in government must be heard, rather than the liberal conception of liberty.62 Skinner criticizes the liberal conception of liberty in that it denies the legitimacy of the call to civic duty. Nevertheless, he seems to have overlooked the implications of the Machiavellian theory of civil conflict for the very idea of civic participation. He did not ignore the importance of this theory in his thought. In his eyes, combined with the detachment from virtue and from the

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espoused the cause of the vivere libero at this formative stage, undoubtedly the greatest was Machiavelli in his Discourses on the first ten books of Livy’s History of Rome’. Skinner 1995, p. 218. Skinner 1995, p. 223. Skinner 1995, p. 222.

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demands of Christian faith, it constitutes the source of Machiavelli’s deviation from the tradition of civic humanism. But he gives too irenic an interpretation to civil conflict: according to him, the ‘tumults’ are the result of ‘an intense political commitment’, and ‘thus a manifestation of the highest civic virtù’.63 The generality of this statement conceals a number of imprecisions. First of all, the tumults in favour of liberty are the work of the people and not the great. Mainly, Machiavelli never says that the manifestation of the desire not to be dominated is a form of civic commitment. It seems difficult to interpret such a manifestation in this sense, because in Rome, at least, it seems to arise from a situation experienced as a double bind: the plebs are required to serve in the military, but are not given any form of representation in the government. Finally, Skinner pictures civic participation as the active, vigilant accomplishment of civic duties, whereas the Discourses and Florentine Histories suggest that we conceive of citizen participation both inside institutional forms and outside them. In fact, these extra-institutional forms are the quintessence of popular participation, since there is always a gap between what the people claim and what they enjoy. This is due to the dynamic nature of their desire and the opposition of the great. In Machiavelli, liberty is not something that is readily granted.64 Rome becomes and remains a republic because the plebs rebel against the established order and force the senate to pass reforms in exchange for their participation in war. In this sense, the plebs’ action is akin to ‘forcible entry’ to the established institutional order. The great, who initially held all of the magistracies, do not gracefully concede to the plebs’ demands for power. The emergence and maintenance of liberty therefore appear to be associated with repeated violations of the established order. Chapter I, 4, of the Discourses provides us with exemplary testimony as to modes considered as ‘extraordinary’.65 Because the people were deprived of any institutional status whatsoever from the very beginning, the only way they could demand a share of the magistracies was by protest, struggle, a stroke of violence. Even when the plebs had acquired some rights, they continued to engage in the same behaviour, since they always demanded more than they already had. Thus, advocating participative democracy on the basis of the Machiavellian conception of liberty must take this extra-institutional dimension of civic action into account: participating sometimes involves forcing the institutions.66 63 64 65 66

Skinner 1978, p. 181. See also on this issue Senellart 1995, p. 287. Lefort 1992, p. 170. Machiavelli 1996, P. 16. Gaille 2015.

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Beyond these exegetic considerations, the possibility of bringing Machiavelli into a contemporary debate on liberty from a liberal-democratic perspective must be questioned. Skinner’s critique of liberalism is partial, as we noted earlier: it does not start with the primacy of the just over the good. On the contrary, Skinner accepts the idea that each citizen pursues different goals, and that it is impossible to reduce these goals to any smaller number or ranking. However, it is a far-from-easy task to graft a reference to Machiavelli onto this liberal, pluralistic framework. The idea of different life choices, fundamental to this political liberalism, is certainly not absent from Machiavelli’s thought. For example, he points out that the people wish to be free ‘to live in safety’, whereas the great want it ‘to command’. But his writings contain no further investigation of the idea, referring at most to two life choices, rather than to a multitude of pursuits corresponding to the individual desires of each citizen. Moreover, the theme is relegated to the background by the analysis of the desires to control or oppress, or not to be controlled or oppressed. Machiavelli conceives that these desires do not express the ultimate goals pursued by the great and the people, but he barely takes an interest in any others, because his examination of the great/ people relationship enables him to address the question of the distribution of magistracies directly. To make Machiavelli into a philosopher of the pluralism of pursuits blurs the specificity of Machiavellian civil conflict, waged between a desire to dominate and a desire not to be dominated. Liberal democracy does not start with the assumption of a homogeneous social body, of course. Nevertheless, heterogeneity is based on life choices, not power relationships. This essential difference makes it difficult to envisage grafting Machiavellian thought onto political liberalism, even corrected by republicanism.67

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The same criticism could be levelled at N. Matteucci. His reflection on political liberalism stems from the idea that one of the experiences central to modernity is the recognition that certain moral conflicts are insurmountable by nature (Matteucci 1972). He first states his conception as deriving from his interpretation of B. Croce. N. Matteucci refers specifically to the essay Principio, ideale, teoria. A proposito della teoria filosofica della libertà and à la Storia d’Europa nel secolo decimonono, Bari, 1948. The heritage Matteucci claims consists in the assertion and legitimation of the differences between individuals, and the refusal to deny and eliminate these differences, even if they are antagonistic. Matteucci nevertheless identifies three flaws in Croce’s work. The first is to have elaborated an ethics of liberty alone, without any concern for the actual institutional mechanisms that would guarantee that liberty. The second is to have conceived liberalism within a Hegelian philosophy of history. Lastly, Croce’s viewpoint blinds thinkers to the philosophy and defense

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However, Machiavelli is an identifiable presence today in other realms of political thought. It is especially remarkable that at several points in the Marxist theoretical constellation, his name looms insistently. The Marxists’ frequent mention of Machiavelli is somewhat similar in tone to Skinner’s interpretation of his influence on liberal republicanism: Machiavelli is undoubtedly relevant today, but in an indirect way. Skinner noted that Machiavelli’s thought contained a warning. In the Marxist constellation, his ideas generally emerge as the first link in a tradition that was developed fully by those who came after him. Marx’s ‘Machiavellian moment,’ defined by Abensour, illustrates this perspective. In relationship to the author of the Discourses, Marx is presented as a thinker opposed to the State.68 As early as 1843, Marx criticized the enthusiasm for the State in his investigation of the essence of ‘politics’ and his interpretation of the Paris Commune.69 These essays suggest that the State, insofar as it provides a political setting where the expression of conflict may emerge, should be thought of as the ideal ground for interpretative work driven by emancipative interest. This criticism modifies the idea of democracy by designating the time suitable ‘for the political’, i.e. when the people ‘self-determine’. The assertion of this new ‘Machiavellian moment’ is twinned with a denunciation of the identification of democracy as the rule of law and the suspicion that the entity of the State always tends to cut itself off from the citizens. Democracy is not the refusal of ‘the form’, but of a form that would claim to be all-powerful and achieved: ‘A disorder that is not destined to be another order, democracy has an irreducible meaning as a refusal of synthesis.’70

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of liberalism within the historical framework constituted by the state of ‘post-industrial’ societies, which are ‘multi-dimensional’ societies. The Machiavellian philosophy of civil conflict intervenes in the transposition of Crocean philosophy to the political sphere. N. Matteucci is particularly interested in the articulation Machiavelli establishes between the analysis of an irreducible civil conflict and that of the republican institutional order, which regulates the conflict in a sense that promotes liberty. In Matteucci’s eyes, this articulation provides the basis for a model for thinking of the way liberalism in the contemporary era can deal with the irreducible difference between individual’s life choices. The specificity of the Machiavellian theory of civil conflict disappears in such an analysis, as well. Abensour 2011. Abensour 2011, p. 15. Abensour 2011, p. 101.

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A philosophy of democracy that is truly safe from this pretentious assumption of omnipotence must therefore grant a place to the libertarian idea.71 According to Abensour, ‘the tug-of-war’ between democracy and State is a new finding in relation to Machiavellian thought, centred on the conflict between the great and the people. He does not conceive of the democracy-State opposition as a modern version of the old great-people conflict, nor does he see it conceived in nucleo in Machiavelli’s works. It constitutes a distinct conflict insofar as it occurs not only because the great, in his reading, make off with the State, but it also results from the fact that the State represents a constant threat of degeneracy for democracy. Nevertheless, the reference to Machiavelli is based on the idea that it is possible to graft his thought onto the conflict opposing democracy and State. Via this reference, Machiavelli appears above all to be a thinker of the breaking of the institutional order for the purposes of upholding liberty. Rightly, Abensour defines ‘a Machiavellian moment’ for Marx, as detached from the theoretician of the economics of production and revolution. True, a review of this dimension of Marx’s work makes this theoretical distance between him and Machiavelli as thinkers on civil conflict evident, despite their shared tendency to reduce all conflict to binary terms. It is out of the question to consider Machiavelli’s ‘people’ as the forerunners to the concept of the proletariat. The nature of Machiavelli’s popular humour, combined with the specific historical conjunctions he identifies, means that there is nothing systematically pro-liberty about the action of the people. When the people do advance in this direction, it is only temporarily. By contrast, the consubstantial role of Marx’s proletariat is to emancipate society as a whole, by fighting the class domination of which they are the victims. Moreover, although the concept of the proletariat is not strictly economic, it is nevertheless true that the economic dimension is essential to it.72 In a different way, in Machiavelli, the economic position of the ‘people’ is much less categorical, and the part it plays in his analysis of civil conflict is unclear. Machiavelli differs not only by the fact that he does not define the antagonism of the humours as a function of the distribution of wealth, but also in that when he considers this antagonism, he is primarily interested in its effects: that is, in the spirit of civic equality or inequality resulting from a means of distributing the wealth in a city (Discourses I, 55). He thereby introduces an 71

72

Abensour 2011, p. 105. He also refers to the way C. Lefort uses the adjective ‘savage’ to describe democracy, preferring for himself the term ‘anarchy’ to designate what every definition of democracy should include, in his opinion. Marx and Engels 1970. See on this issue Balibar 1993 and Agamben 2000.

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element that does not appear in Marx. Moreover, not every unequal distribution of wealth (defined as goods and trade, as opposed to real estate and lands) is contrary to liberty. Certain, in the Discourses I, 37, the distribution of land seems to be at the core of the conflict between great and people, so that ‘wealth’ goads them into a more bitter struggle than usual. However, Machiavelli only outlines the economic dimension of the civil conflict in this Chapter I, 37.73 The analysis he develops in relation to agrarian law ultimately commits him to another course. He does not try to explain why men, particularly great, are more attached to wealth than to honour. If the episode of the Gracchus brothers heralds the end of Roman freedom, Machiavelli puts forth three other explanatory factors first: the fact that the plebs prefer to obtain land in Rome, instead of in distant colonies; the retroactivity of the agrarian-reform law; and the extreme nature of the ‘disorder’ it caused. It is fairly difficult to see which factor, if any, was decisive in the decline of liberty, to Machiavelli’s way of thinking (whether it was the goal desire chose – satisfying personal ambition instead of acting according to need – or the object of the desire – sharing the wealth instead of guaranteeing the absence of domination).74 Lastly, Machiavelli and Marx also hold totally unrelated conceptions of history. Historical teleology is totally foreign to Machiavellian thought, whereas in 73

74

Let us note in passing that the perception of Machiavelli’s ambiguous relationship to economics and the prominence given to feelings (of injustice, equality, inequality, etc.) in his theory of civil conflict would have enabled Honneth to rank him differently in his theory of recognition (Honneth 1996). He mentions Machiavelli only as the thinker of a life in society based on the struggle for survival. According to Honneth, reflections on struggles for recognition were able to develop only when Hegel turned away from this conception to adopt a moral perspective. However, Machiavelli judges that the Ciompi revolted not because of the low pay they were receiving, but because of the feeling they were not properly compensated for their labour (Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1159). In addition to this example, generally speaking, the people’s struggle against the great has at least one point in common with the struggle for recognition Honneth theorized: its issues are bound up with the experience of scorn. Machiavelli repeatedly mentions the greats’ arrogance and insolence, and the younger generation’s acts of provocation against the people are constant reminders that the greats’ pretention to domination is expressed by a social relationship confronting the people with the greats’ feeling of superiority, before it ever progresses towards questions such as the distribution of magistracies. One therefore cannot find in his writings anything but a mere embryo of the concept of a necessary relationship between the way property is distributed and the form of government. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that this relationship would be theorised by J. Harrington, who considers himself an heir to Machiavelli. Harrington’s ‘System of Politics’ describes such a relationship for the three regimes identified in antiquity – monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy (Harrington 1977, p. 836).

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at least some of his writings, Marx holds that the conditions for the end of class struggle are written into its historical growth. According to Marx, capitalism is the system of production most likely to bring about a revolution, in that it extends, simplifies, and radicalizes the conflict: ‘what the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces above all, are its own grave-diggers’.75 Beyond that, Abensour himself points out the limits of a ‘Machiavellian moment’ based on Marx’s interest in ‘politics’. Marx’s thinking on democracy is constantly strained by the tension between the perspective of a society that is never reconciled with itself and the perspective of unity. Marx does not evaluate civil conflict as being positive. On the contrary, he sees it as the evident sign of the existence of oppression within the society, to be ended by the revolution he eagerly awaits. This second perspective also distances Marx from Machiavelli, who not only judges the division and conflict between humours to be an inevitable fact of social life, but moreover associates it with liberty. Whether we study the theoretician of production relationships and of Communist revolution, or the proponent of democracy against the State, there is no certainty that Marx can be considered an enlightening interpreter of Machiavellian thought. Yet Machiavelli does appear in another ramification of Marxist thought. By making the Machiavellian ‘people’ a figure for the ‘masses’ in his reflection on democracy, Negri is at extreme odds with Skinner’s liberal-republican framework. Unlike Skinner, Negri considers the extra-institutional dimension of  Machiavellian thinking on political participation. While taking Marx as a reference, Negri elaborates a structure for reflecting on democracy perceptibly different from Marx’s. His purpose – to understand the essence of democratic politics – leads him to a critique of the judicial vision of democracy. The set of constitutional norms is only incidental to democracy. On the contrary, its essence resides in its principal incompletion; it is a process that is in perpetual construction, driven by a dynamic initiated and maintained by ‘the multitude’. Democracy is conceived as a movement opposed to ‘attempts to conclude’ on the part of the sovereign power. Machiavelli intervenes in this reflection as the father of a school of thought developed later by Spinoza and Marx, thanks to which democracy can be thought of on the basis of the idea of ‘constituent power’: A great current of modern political thought, from Machiavelli to Spinoza to Marx, has developed around this open alternative, which is the ground of democratic thought. In this tradition, the absence of preconstituted 75

Marx 1970, p. 47.

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and finalized principles is combined with the subjective strength of the multitude, thus constituting the social in the aleatory materiality of a universal relationship in the possibility of freedom.76 According to Negri, Machiavelli gave rise to this school of thought in three of his works, The Prince, the Discourses, and especially Florentine Histories. Negri holds that Machiavelli initially conceives the constituent principle through his analysis of the new prince’s modalities and conditions for action. But because he is writing within the context of principalities, this conception is not an appropriate foundation for thinking on democracy which, conversely, Machiavelli does approach with the Discourses.77 Nevertheless, it is in The Florentine Histories that he really formulates his conception, through his description of Florentine dissensions. After having discovered in the Discourses that the multitude is the only adequate subject of the constituent power, he bases the dynamic of this constituent power on universal disunion, on a class struggle that is unending by definition.78 Negri therefore ranks Machiavelli’s works both chronologically and genetically: The Prince gives birth to the constituent principle; the Discourses situates this principle within the perspective of thinking on democracy and finally, Florentine Histories reveals the foundation of it, which is none other than a permanent, universal class struggle. There are two elements characterising the constituent power to which the judicial and constitutionalist viewpoints try to deny any legitimacy in thinking about democracy: the expression of the democratic will of the ‘multitude’ is turned towards the future, whereas the legal doctrines, particularly the constitutionalist ones, would look towards the past. The concept of ‘multitude’ does not designate a compact whole, but a ‘set of singularities’; it is ‘open multiplicity’.79 The time of the constituent power reveals ‘a tension of the multitude to become the absolute subject of the processes of strength’.80 It begins and ends as a function of this dynamic, and according to an unending process. In this tension, the ‘multitude’ seeks to create an adequation between the institutional order and the state of social forces in constant motion.81 This description of the ‘multitude’ reflects its most ancient characterisation as a negative force. The opposition between the people, the substrate of the 76 77 78 79 80 81

Negri 1999, p. 13. Negri 1990, p. 60. Negri 1999, p. 82. Negri 1999, p. 13. Negri 1999, p. 303. Negri 1999, p. 304.

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judicial and political order, and the lawless mob, goes back to Rome, at least. It is explicitly thematized by Thomas Hobbes, according to whom, ‘the people is one’ – it accomplishes actions as such, expresses a single will, etc. – whereas ‘the multitude’ is likened to an aggregation of individual and diverse individual wills.82 However, the perspective Negri adopts on the ‘multitude’ is opposed to Hobbes’s conclusions: whereas the author of The Leviathan appreciates the figure of the people by contrast to the multitude, Negri’s conception of the constituent power points out the fragmented, un-unifiable nature of the multitude and considers it as the vector of democracy. Although we cannot criticize Negri for omitting to mention the extra-institutional nature of the people’s action, we can, on the other hand, question the possibility of making Machiavelli’s people stand for the multitude. Machiavelli’s definition of the people as a humour, as a desire not to be dominated, disqualifies them from being a mass of disparate wills, an ‘open multiplicity’. In the dynamic of an opposition to the great, the people are characterized by a unity of desire – quite the contrary of Negri’s multitude. Moreover, although Negri calls this ‘multitude’ a vector of democracy, in Machiavelli the people play a part in promoting liberty only as long as their desire to be free of domination lasts. As soon as they become like the great, desiring riches and honours, they lose this political virtue.83 In the writings of Machiavelli, Spinoza, and Marx, Negri seeks a vision of the people that departs from the dominant characterisation of ‘the multitude’ in the history of political thought: The multitude has to become each time either a nature that is mechanical and deprived of spirit, a nature closer to that of brutes than men, or a thing in itself, unachievable and therefore mystifiable, or a savage world of irrational passions that only the Vernunft will be able to unravel and control.84

82 83

84

Hobbes 1984, p. 91. See Morfino, 2005 for a criticism of Negri’s ‘Machiavelli-Spinoza-Marx’ approach from another standpoint, that is a conception of politics as ‘intervento strategico nella congiuntura, in un orizzonte dominato da una temporalità plurale il cui nome proprio si rivelerà essere, sorprendentemente, multitudo’, p. 14. See also Del Lucchese 2004, on Machiavelli and Spinoza’s contribution to modern political philosophy. Negri 1999, p. 324.

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He can certainly perceive a different vision in Machiavelli, but it is nevertheless still quite ambiguous.85 The argument that Machiavelli can be relevant to contemporary thinking on liberty is therefore flawed, in terms of the frameworks of both the liberalrepublican and post-Marxist political philosophers. But it is useful to visit these worlds nevertheless. There is much to be learned: seen through the Machiavellian prism, the modern forms of thought appear to be truncated and incomplete. The extra-institutional dimension is missing from the liberal-republican perspective, whereas inversely, the institutional dimension is missing from the Marxist and post-Marxist schools of thought.

…

85

The interpretation of Machiavelli developed in Le Pouvoir constituant does not recur in the book Negri co-wrote with Hardt, Empire (Hardt and Negri, 2000). In this reflection, Machiavelli is nevertheless cited several times. The first reference is to The Prince. Recalling L. Althusser’s analysis of the work, Hardt and Negri assert that the ‘manifestoes’ of Machiavelli and Marx-Engels define politics as ‘the movement of the multitude’ and the goal of the political as ‘the self-production of the subject’ (Hardt and Negri, 2000, p. 63). But in their eyes, the Machiavellian thought in The Prince does not make it possible to conceive a self-production process. This statement agrees with the interpretation suggested by Negri in Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State (Negri 1999). Later, when Hardt and Negri discuss the American Revolution, they mention the Machiavellian conception of constituent power as perceived by Negri in the Discourses. However, they do not exploit this reference to think the action of the ‘multitude’ in any manner except for ambiguously or allusively – for example in the statement according to which ‘the political is not what we are taught it is today by the cynical Machiavellianism of politicians; it is rather, as the democratic Machiavelli tells us, the power of generation, desire, and love’ (Hardt and Negri 2000, p. 188). They consider this idea merely utopian, and confine themselves essentially to the figure of Machiavelli as the author of The Prince. Certainly, in Empire, there is a reference to Machiavelli that might nudge him over to the side of the vision of ‘multitude’ offered by Hardt and Negri: ‘this common name, the poor, is also the foundation of every possibility of humanity. As Niccolò Machiavelli pointed out, in the ‘return to the beginnings’ that characterises the revolutionary phase of religions and ideologies of modernity, the poor is almost always seen to have a prophetic capacity: not only is the poor in the world, but the poor itself is the very possibility of the world’ (Hard and Negri 2000, pp. 156-157) However, this reference is based on a frivolous exegesis of Chapters I, 58 and III, 1 of the Discourses. Moreover, it is alongside the reference to The Prince, without being compared to it either favourably or unfavourably, as far as its relevance is concerned. As a result, Machiavelli’s rating as a thinker of the ‘multitude’ remains uncertain, in this book.

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The most salient characteristic of the Machiavellian republic is the fact that it definitively gives up on seeking institutions that might settle the issue of the conflict of desires.86 Beyond the difference between contemporary democracy and the Machiavellian vision of republican government, elaborated in his thinking about ancient Rome, this virtual embracing of the conflict of desires has obvious relevance to the student of the history of states ruled by law: the liberty Machiavelli envisages is ‘imperfect’ in essence, like the liberty in contemporary democracies, in the sense Hermann Van Gunsteren gives to the word ‘imperfect’. In both cases, liberty is continually in the process of becoming.87 However, it seems wrong to us to account for the impossibility of perfection by seeing the people’s humour as a desire for anarchy, the only counter-power to a political order that is always liable to be corrupted into an authoritarian rule, regardless of the type of government it was at the start.88 The explanation is elsewhere. Republican government does not put an end to command; driven by the dynamic pressure of popular desire, it merely substitutes the impersonal order of the law for the particular will of one man, or a few. This popular desire does not aim at liberty as anarchy, even though such appetites tend to be insatiable, and are much more readily excessive than moderate. This popular desire seeks a law, as Machiavelli explicitly states: ‘since the people wish to live according to the law and the powerful to control the laws, it is not possible for them to agree’. 89 As a consequence, more fundamentally, the analysis of the relationship between civil conflict and liberty in Machiavelli’s writings makes him appear to 86

87 88

89

Lefort 1992, p. 175: ‘the best republic – by which we mean one whose institutions are not doomed to rigidify, for the greater good of preserving an oligarchy, but ‘the most lively’ republic – provides no solution to the political problem. Instead, it is differentiated by a tacit abandonment of the idea of a solution, by the way it accommodates division and, under the influence of division, change; and, by the same token, the chances it gives to action’. Gunsteren 1998. Vatter presents this interpretation in an exegesis which is moreover reminiscent of Machiavelli: ‘The single most important factor that blocks Machiavelli’s thesis of the historical construction of political form from view is the misunderstanding of his concept of political freedom. Machiavelli expounds a conception of political freedom that is antifoundational and anti-authoritarian. The historicity of the political form is but a consequence of such a conception of freedom. For Machiavelli, political freedom is defined by its power or capacity to transcend the domain of political form: freedom cannot be realized, without thereby losing itself, by the sovereign rule of laws, or by the well-founded order’ (Vatter 2000, p. 83). Machiavelli 1989, 3, p. 1094.

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be at once a theorist of the breaking with the established order as well as a theorist of the order itself. There lies all the difficulty, but also the interest, of his work: Machiavelli is just as adamant about instituting the conflict as he is about investing the institutions with popular ‘tumults.’ Machiavelli endorses the established order – against the ‘ruin’ of a state, and corruption – and he also advocates the radical departure from the established order – the rebellion against the tendency of the desire for domination to rigidify institutions to its own advantage. According to Carlo Galli’s pleasing expression, he is a thinker of ‘hot institutions’: those of which the Roman tribunate is the paradigmatic example. Machiavelli’s thought thus shows us a narrow, tortuous political path to liberty. Liberty is incompatible with a rigid, sovereign order, because the city is a body that is always seething with ‘humours,’ the vital energies agitating and animating it. Because of the confrontation of the humours, the city’s institutional order must continually be reviewed and amended. But anarchy is not the goal either, for only the rule of law, and the equality between citizens it establishes (equality such that no one dominates) make the idea of liberty effective.90 The two aspects must be held together. This is the conclusion we can state, after a survey of contemporary interpretations – liberal, republican, and Marxist, each of which, by its flaws, marks our distance from it – of  Machiavelli’s work.

…

This conclusion suggests one way of thinking together about difference and consensus, about conflict and the common good; in short, a way of considering our initial question, how to live together as citizens, a unique question in comparison to the paradigms dominating contemporary political philosophy. It thereby encourages us to go beyond them. Indeed, on the one hand, the monistic-representative Hobbesian paradigm of the Leviathan; that is, the idea that the multiple wishes of the citizens are represented through the words and

90

J. McCormick proposes a use of Machiavelli’s thinking for contemporary democracy that is consistent with this view. Indeed, he considers that ‘Machiavelli prompts us to rethink fundamentally the institutional and cultural requirements of political participation and elite accountability within popular government’ (McCormick 2011, p. viii). He focuses on the means Machiavelli designed to check ‘the resources of wealthy citizens and the wide discretion enjoyed by officeholders’, the ‘principal threats to liberty’ (McCormick 2011, pp. viii-ix) and advocates for a ‘properly institutionalized class conflict’ (McCormick 2011, p. viii).

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deeds of a ‘one person’, the sovereign,91 does not enable us to envisage the antagonistic relationship between the great and the people – blanketed by the idea of the people as one – or the fact that the institutions of the Machiavellian republic are participative, not representative. If we take the initiative of raising this monistic-representative veil, it becomes possible to conceive of a philosophy of political liberty that is simultaneously a philosophy of institutional order and of the constant, irrepressible seething of this order. To do so, however, we must be willing to raise the other veil – the one woven in reaction to the ‘monistic-representative’ paradigm, rejecting a single, indivisible sovereignty. Behind it, we can make out the outline of the ‘minority’ of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, or that of the ‘plebs’ in the writings of Foucault. Both of them embody instances which bring the dominant power to a halt. Deleuze and Guattari conceive of the ‘minority’ as ‘the becoming of everybody, one’s potential becoming to the extent one deviates from the model’.92 In the struggles of a minority, something other than the grievance per se is at stake; the minority, by struggling to obtain such or such a right, is also demanding the right to ask its own questions, and to formulate them in its own minority language and not that of the majority. As for the plebs, Foucault designates it as the entity marking the limits of all relationships to power.93 These authors centre their reflection on a subjectivation process, or even on a subject who, starting from a position of submission, breaks away from the logic of domination. In fact, as we have seen, Machiavelli’s work suggests that the two traditional meanings of the term ‘people’ in European languages (the people as a sovereign political subject and the people as an anonymous mass of outcasts) are insufficient. A third definition must be added: the people as the force which brings about liberty, by becoming its very subject. In Machiavelli’s writings, the term ‘people’ refers to those who, within the city, receive an orientation and motivation from the desire not to be dominated, and thereby make the transition from the status of anonymous crowd of disparate individuals to the rank of full-fledged member of the body politic, and through this transition, create the conditions for ‘vivere libero’. However, although the people force institutions, in Machiavellian thought, although their participatory modus is essentially extra-institutional, they 91

92 93

Galli, in Caporali 1998, p. 126. See Hobbes 1998, II, Chapter 17, p. 114. On the relationship between Hobbes and Machiavelli, see Borrelli 2009, particularly to understand how Machiavelli’s thinking reveals what remains hidden in Hobbes’ theory of the Leviathan and sovereign order. Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p. 105. Foucault 2001a, p. 421.

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nevertheless demand laws. Machiavelli attempted to make a connection between ‘tumults’ and the construction of a free institutional order. In this respect, it is no accident if Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault refrain from referring to Machiavelli in conceiving the conditions for breaking out of the logic of domination. In their eyes, this breakout must take place beyond the margins of the sphere controlled by the State. Two veils, one of them monistic-representative; the other, of a conception of liberty on the margins of power: in the palimpsest constituted by European political philosophy, Machiavelli’s ideas on liberty belong to a stratum that has already been covered by the writings of later thinkers. We have attempted to rediscover the original text, in order to show that there is nothing substantial about the incompatibility between a theory of the institutional order and a theory of breaking free of this order. In the Machiavellian paradigm of freedom, before corruption undermines the Roman republic, the transition from tumults to laws and from laws to tumults occurs quite naturally. It forms the backbone of an unending history, that of the ongoing creation of the ‘hot institutions’ of freedom.94 94

In regard of this history, Roman proposes a stimulating reflection on the collective memory democracy should be associated with, a memory that does not elide civil conflict (Roman 2017, Chapter 10).

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166

Index of Names

Index Of Names

Index of Names Abensour, Miguel 120, 142-145, 161 Acciaioli, Alamano 16 Adverse, Helton 21n, 161 Aëtius 36-37 Albumasar 132n, 134 Alcmaeon of Croton 35-39 Althusser, Louis 60n, 74n, 148n, 161, 164 Anselmi, Gianmario xxin, 158, 161 Arendt, Hannah xxin, 62, 153 Aristotle 9-10, 21n, 35n, 37, 48, 57n, 85n, 87-88, 99, 107, 153 Averroës 35n, 66, 85n Avicenna 71 Barberi-Squarotti, Giorgio 70n, 161 Baron, Hans xxin, 31, 86n, 107n-108, 158 Barthas, Jérémie 15n, 161 Beiner, Ronald 126n, 137, 158 Benvéniste, Émile xn, 64-65, 153 Berlin, Isaiah xiii, 69n, 158 Bianchi, Luca 128n, 132n, 134n, 158 Blythe, James M. 43n, 49, 57n, 158 Borgia, Cesare 20, 24 , 79, 136 Bracciolini, Poggio 16, 105n, 108n Brown, Alison 27n, 154, 158 Bruni, Leonardo 16, 31, 48, 94n, 101, 107, 108, 119n Buck, August 113n, 158 Cabrini, Annamaria xxin, 161 Cambiano, Giuseppe 35n-36n, 39n, 158 Canguilhem, Georges 11n, 153 Carsana, Chiara  43n, 159 Cassirer, Ernst 158 Caesar 74, 95n, 112, 153 Cavarero, Adriana 159 Chabod, Federico 77n, 135n, 161 Chiappelli, Fredi 34n Cincinnatus 95, 107-109 Cicero 42, 46-49, 52, 63n-64n, 86, 108, 119, 138n, 153 Cochrane, Eric xxin, 159 Costa, Gustavo 94n, 162 Croce, Benedetto 92n, 125n-126n, 141n-142n, 153

Cutinelli-Rendina, Emanuele 61n, 66n, 105n, 122n, 127n, 162 Cyrus xix, 115, 127-128 Dante, Alighieri 12n, 31, 101, 108, 130n, 153, 162 Deleuze, Gilles 151-152, 153 Del Lucchese, Filippo 15n, 19n, 27n, 114n, 121, 147, 162, 165 Di Napoli, Giovanni 159 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 7n, 42, 47-49, 52, 65, 153 Empedocles 35n Esposito, Roberto 28n, 70, 78n, 108n, 154, 159, 162 Ficino, Marsilio 71, 134n, 154, 160 Fontana, Alessandro 99, 159 Fontana, Benedetto 137n, 162 Foucault, Michel xiin, 18n, 59n, 60n, 151-152, 154, 157 Fournel, Jean-Louis 97n, 154, 157, 162, 165 Fritz, Kurt (von) 43n, 159 Frosini, Fabio 165 Gaille, Marie 18n, 31n, 41-42n, 89n, 108n, 114n, 137n, 140n, 159, 162 Galen xxi, 27, 34-38, 88-89, 131n,154 Galli, Carlo 150-151n, 153 Garin, Eugenio xxin, 131n, 133n-134n, 156, 159 Geuna, Marco 61n, 163 Guelphs and Ghibellines 12 Gilbert, Felix xxin, 99n, 112n, 119n, 156, 159, 163 Gracchus brothers 24, 67, 73, 144 Gramsci, Antonio 125, 137, 154 Guattari, Félix 151-153 Guicciardini, Francesco xviiin, xxiin, 8-11, 27, 97-98, 100, 112, 154, 161-163, 165 Gusteren, Hermann, van 149, 154 Harrington, James 144n, 154 Hippocrates 34n-35n, 37n, 77n, 86n-87n, 89, 96n, 131n, 156

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004376014_009

Index Of Names Hobbes, Thomas 28, 126n, 147, 150-151n, 155, 161, 164 Honneth, Axel 144n, 155 Hornqvist, Mikael 111n, 163 Hume, David 23, 155, 164 Johnston, David 121, 163 Kant, Emmanuel xx, 22n, 124, 153, 155 La Boétie, Etienne 125, 155 Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe 116, 155 Laertius, Diogenes 35n Larivaille, Paul xvin, 114n-115n, 163 Lazzeri, Christian 71n, 160 Lefort, Claude xiv, 42n, 84n, 118n-119n, 121, 140n, 143n, 149n, 163 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1, 118, 155 Livy 7n, 8, 10n, 26-27, 29-30, 52n, 55, 57n, 64-66, 82n, 87, 101, 117, 119, 121, 138n-139n, 155, 156, 158, 164 Loraux, Nicole 16n, 155 Lucretius 27, 66n, 71, 155, 158 Lycurgus 6, 43, 45, 50, 63, 92, 93 Macherey, Pierre 22-23n, 155 Marchione di Coppo Stefani 16 Marsilius of Padua 9n, 41, 49, 66, 105n, 134n, 156 Marx, Karl xiv-xv, 13, 114, 126n, 142-145, 147-148, 150, 153, 156, 161, 164 Martelli, Mario xvin, 163 Matteucci, Niccolò xiv, 81n, 141n-142n, 163 Matucci, Andrea xxin, 97n, 119n, 163 McCormick, John 150n, 163 Medici (family) xvii-xviii, 98n, 100, 118, 121, 131, 159 Menenius Aggripa 10n Ménissier, Thierry 114n, 137n, 162-163 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice xiiin, 121, 163 Morfino, Vittorio 147n, 163-65 Moses 115, 127-128, 137n Montesquieu x, 83n, 156, 158 Negri, Antonio xiv, 120, 145-148n, 155, 163 Nietzsche, Friedrich xiin, xix, 92n, 113-114, 117, 156 Numa 41n, 61-63, 65-66, 109, 135

167 Palmieri, Matteo 156 Parel, Anthony 41n, 131n, 163 Pedullà, Gabriele 121, 164 Petrarca xviin, 31, 101, 108, 116-117n, 119, 133n, 156, 158 Petrarch see Petrarca Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 131n, 133n, 156 Plato 1, 27-28n, 37, 43-44n, 71, 77, 99, 132n, 156-157, 137-138 Pocock, John G. A. xiii, 34n, 70, 98n, 121, 136-138, 154, 164 Polybius 42-52, 65, 70, 72, 92, 157, 159-160 Remirro d’Orca 79 Roman, Sébastien x, 121n, 152n, 164 Romulus 41n, 61-62, 109, 115, 127, 135 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 68n, 118, 122, 157 Rubinstein, Nicolaï xxin, 56n, 121, 159-160, 164 Salutati, Coluccio 109, 119n, 133n, 157 Saro, Georges 99n, 159 Sasso, Gennaro 34n, 49n, 104, 114n, 128n, 164 Savonarola xxii, 56, 78, 96-98, 100, 107, 126, 134n, 157, 159, 161-162, 165 Scipio xix, 46-47, 108 Senellart, Michel 28n, 57n, 68n-69n, 72n, 120n, 140n, 160, 164 Sfez, Gérald xviiin, 34n, 42n, 69n, 72n, 120n, 164 Skinner, Quentin xiii, 28n, 34n, 120, 138-139, 140-142, 145, 160, 164 Soderini, Piero 135, 159 Solo 43, 63 Sullivan, Vickie B. 137n, 164 Spinoza xiv, 19, 121-122, 126n, 145, 147, 157, 162-164 Strauss, Leo 131, 156, 164 Tacitus 94n-95n, 157 Taranto, Domenico 69, 72n Tenenti, Alberto 56n, 91n, 131n, 137n, 161 Terray, Emmanuel 34n, 40n, 157 Thomas Aquinas 9n, 49, 85n, 108, 134n, 157 Thucydides 27, 43, 158 Titus-Livy see Livy

168 Urbinati, Nadia 121, 163 Valerius Maximus 108 Valla, Lorenzo xviin, 27, 105n, 130, 158 Vatter, Miguel 137n, 149n, 164 Vergara, Camila 121, 163 Vettori, Francesco xvii Vico, Gianbattista 126n, 162 Vincieri, Paolo 20n, 164

Index Of Names Viroli, Maurizio 28n, 83n, 137n, 165 Visentin, Stefano 165 Vlastos, George 39, 161 Whitfield, John H. 119n, 164 Xenophon xix, 107, 117n Zancarini, Jean-Claude 97n, 126n, 154, 157, 162, 165 Zanzi, Luigi 34n, 89n, 165

of Subjects Index OfIndex Subjects

169

Index of Subjects Alteration 10, 77 Ambition xi,  xxn, 2-3, 19-20, 26, 29, 51, 54, 56n, 67, 72, 74, 85-88, 93, 118n, 139, 144 Anacyclosis 50n, 71, 74-75n Anarchy 143n, 149-150 Astrology 77, 131n-134 Balance xii, 2, 33-42, 45-48, 53, 76, 89, 127 Body politic x, xv, 9-11, 15, 34-36, 41 Censorship 41n, 82   Citizenship x, xii, xvi, 7, 27, 122 Civil concord 28, 30, 39, 47-48, Civiltà xix, 56-57, 91, 135 Common good 26, 31, 71-72, 75-76, 90-91, 94, 104, 138, 150 Class struggle xiv, 13, 145-146 Commune utilità 71 Constituent power xiv, 121, 145-147 Constitution 3, 37, 40-41, 43-49, 54, 56, 63n, 93, 100, 110, 124 Corruption xxn, 8, 10, 47, 51, 55, 60, 70-91, 95, 111-112, 136-139, 150, 152 Cruelty xv, 3 Custom 2, 21, 40-41, 56, 60, 64, 67-69, 73, 81-82, 90-91, 94-97, 100, 125, 133n, 137 Democracy x, xiv, 43-49, 99, 120-152   Dictatorship 57 Discontent xi, 20, 27, 47, 56 Domination xiv, xx, 2, 6, 18, 26, 32, 60, 86, 110, 124, 143-144, 147, 150-152 Dynamis 36, 39 Education : 21, 90-91, 105 Envy xi, 19-20 Ethos 58, 68-69, 84, 95, 105, 108-111, 117 Example xx, xxi, 82, 113-116 Extraordinary action/mode 85, 140 circumstances/times/situations 57-58, 63, 74, 83   things/events 129 transformation  83 virtue 115, 116

Evil xv, 26, 74n, 84-86 Faction 24-25, 73, 103 Fear xi-xii, 7, 18-20, 23, 27, 31, 33, 51, 55, 62, 66-67, 72, 74, 78, 80-82, 105, 110, 117, 122, 137 Freedom xii-xviii, xxi, 4, 6, 18, 24, 28-33, 38, 41-42, 45, 47n, 53-69, 70, 73, 75, 81-82, 86, 88-89, 91-98, 100-119, 121-122, 124-126n, 131, 135-139, 146, 149n, 152 Free will 129-133 Form vs Matter 84-85 Fortune  27, 42, 44, 68, 70n, 83-84, 115, 126, 130, 135-137  Goodness 63-64, 76, 82, 91, 94, 106 Great xi-xiv, xviii, 2-6, 9, 12-23, 25-26, 32-33, 38, 42, 51-53, 59-60, 66-67, 110-111, 118, 123-124   Hatred 11, 16, 19-20, 73 Humour/Humoural (theory, vocabulary) xixii, xix-xxn, 2-4, 11-15, 20-21, 25-26, 33-42, 51-56, 60-61, 75-76, 89, 143, 145, 147, 150 History  xi, xii, xvii-xviii, xx, 1, 92, 112-117, 119-120, 124-136, 144, 152 Imagination 20 Imbalance 35, 38, 76, 89 Imitation 112, 114-116, 132 Independence 11, 28, 55, 70, 86, 97, 103, 106 Innovation 80-81 Interest 71n Isomoria 39 Isonomia 35-36, 39-40 Krasis 36, 39 Law xiii-xiv, 4, 6, 12, 25-34, 40-41, 52-58, 61-69, 73-74, 78-83, 90-96, 102-105, 116, 122, 124, 126n, 133n, 142 , 144, 149-152 Liberalism xiv, 120, 138, 141-142n, 160, 163 Libero arbritrio 133

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004376014_010

170 Liberty  2, 28n, 33, 53, 58, 59-60, 64n, 68n-69n, 98, 121, 137-152 Medicine xi-xii, 34-40, 76, 87, 89, 96 Mixed body xi, 10, 72, 75, 78, 128   Monarchy 5, 35, 39, 45, 49-50, 57n, 81, 99-100, 111, 144n Multitude xx, 2, 4, 6, 8, 21, 49, 66-67n, 72, 141, 145-148n Mutation  85 Mutazione 83-86, 89, Opposition xi, 6, 17, 21-23, 36, 42, 52, 72 , 143 Ordinary (circumstances, times, institutions, ways) 58, 63, 74, 85  Ordine xx, 40-41, 75 Paradigm see Example Passion xi, 14-15, 19-21, 26-27, 44, 56, 58, 90, 147 Poverty 15, 58, 60, 67-68, 77, 90, 93, 95, 105, 107-109, 117, 122 People xi-xiv, xviii, 2-9, 12-33, 38, 42, 46-67, 74, 90, 93, 97-100, 103-104, 107, 109-111, 118, 122n-125 127, 133, 140-151 Plebe 13

Index Of Subjects Plebs 4, 6-7, 10, 14, 19-21, 26, 29-30, 42, 46, 49-52, 54, 61, 64, 66-67, 73, 87, 92-93, 110, 112, 122-123, 126, 140, 144, 151 Politico 56-57n, 91 Politics xiv, 13, 16, 21n, 34, 36, 42, 77, 87, 139, 142, 145, 147n, 148n Private  1-2, 12, 19, 29, 31-33, 55, 67, 71-73, 76, 87-88, 91, 104 Property 20, 28, 67, 74-75, 98, 109, 144n Recognition 126n, 141n, 144n Religion 58, 60-68, 78, 81, 91, 94, 105-107, 109, 113, 122, 125n, 128-129, 131, 133, 137, 148  Renovatio 77, 83 Republicanism xiii, 138-139, 141-142 Truth xiv, xviii-xix, 8, 51 Tyranny 30, 45, 49, 56, 57, 81, 84, 88, 111 Virtue 2-3, 7-8, 31, 45, 48-49, 52, 54, 58, 64n, 68, 70-75, 80, 82, 92, 95-96, 108-109, 112, 115-116, 127-128, 135-136, 139, 147 Vivere civile 56, 60, 62-64, 66, 68, 72, 91 War xii, 1-2, 7n, 12, 17, 24, 27, 29, 33, 36, 63, 74, 84, 122-124, 140