Machiavelli: his political realism should by now be 'absorbed' in social science
Harvey Mansfield and Anthony Giddens contemplate the legacies
Harvey Mansfield wrote and translated:
‘Introduction’ to Machiavelli’s The Prince
… The prevailing view of the scholars offers excuses for Machiavelli: he was a republican, a patriot, or a scientist, and therefore, in explicit contradiction to the reaction of most people to Machiavelli as soon as they hear of his doctrines, Machiavelli was not “Machiavellian”. The reader can form his own judgment of these excuses for Machiavelli. I do not recommend them, chiefly because they make Machiavelli less interesting. They transform him into a herald of the future who had the luck to sound the tunes we hear so often today—democracy, nationalism or self-determination, and science. Instead of challenging our favorite beliefs and forcing us to think, Machiavelli is enlisted into a chorus of self-congratulation. There is, of course, evidence for the excuses supplied on behalf of Machiavelli, and that evidence consists of the excuses offered by Machiavelli himself. If someone were to accuse him of being an apologist for tyranny, he can indeed point to a passage in the Discourses on Livy (II 2) where he says (rather carefully) that the common good is not observed unless in republics; but if someone else were to accuse him of supporting republicanism, he could point to the same chapter, where he says that the hardest slavery of all is to be conquered by a republic. And, while he shows his Italian patriotism in Chapter 26 of The Prince by exhorting someone to seize Italy in order to free it from the barbarians, he also shows his fair-mindedness by advising a French king in Chapter 3 how he might better invade Italy the next time …
… What is at issue in the question of whether Machiavelli was “Machiavellian”? To see that a matter of the highest importance is involved we must not rest satisfied with either scholarly excuses or moral frowns. For the matter at issue is the character of the rules by which we reward human beings with fame or condemn them with infamy, the very status of morality. Machiavelli does not make it clear at first that this grave question is his subject. In the Dedicatory Letter he approaches Lorenzo de’ Medici with hat in one hand and The Prince in the other. Since, he says, one must be a prince to know the nature of peoples and a man of the people to know the nature of princes, he seems to offer Lorenzo the knowledge of princes he does not have but needs. In accordance with this half-serious promise, Machiavelli speaks about the kinds of principalities in the first part of The Prince and, as we learn of the necessity of conquest, about the kinds of armies in the second part.
But at the same time (to make a long story short), we learn that the prince must or may lay his foundations on the people (Chapter 9 BELOW) and that while his only object should be the art of war, he must in time of peace pay attention to moral qualities in such manner as to be able to use them in time of war.
Thus are we prepared for Machiavelli’s clarion call … where he proclaims that he “departs from the orders of others” and says why. For moral qualities are qualities “held good” by the people; so, if the prince must conquer, and wants, like the Medici, to lay his foundation on the people, who are the keepers of morality, then a new morality consistent with the necessity of conquest must be found, and the prince has to be taught anew about the nature of peoples by Machiavelli. In departing from the orders of others, it appears more fitting to Machiavelli “to go directly to the effectual truth of the thing than to the imagination of it”.
Many have imagined republics and principalities, but one cannot “let go of what is done for what should be done”, because a man who “makes a profession of good in all regards” comes to ruin among so many who are not good. The prince must learn to be able not to be good, and use this ability or not according to necessity.
This concise statement is most efficacious. It contains a fundamental assault on all morality and political science, both Christian and classical, as understood in Machiavelli’s time. Morality had meant not only doing the right action, but also doing it for the right reason or for the love of God. Thus, to be good was thought to require “a profession of good” in which the motive for doing good was explained; otherwise, morality would go no deeper than outward conformity to law, or even to superior force, and could not be distinguished from it. But professions of good could not accompany moral actions in isolation from each other; they would have to be elaborated so that moral actions would be consistent with each other and the life of a moral person would form a whole. Such elaboration requires an effort of imagination, since the consistency we see tells us only of the presence of outward conformity, and the elaboration extends over a society, because it is difficult to live a moral life by oneself; hence morality requires the construction of an imagined republic or principality, such as Plato’s Republic or St. Augustine’s City of God.
When Machiavelli denies that imagined republics and principalities “exist in truth”, and declares that the truth in these or all matters is the effectual truth, he says that no moral rules exist, not made by men, which men must abide by. The rules or laws that exist are those made by governments or other powers acting under necessity, and they must be obeyed out of the same necessity. Whatever is necessary may be called just and reasonable, but justice is no more reasonable than what a person’s prudence tells him he must acquire for himself, or must submit to, because men cannot afford justice in any sense that transcends their own preservation. Machiavelli did not attempt (as did Hobbes) to formulate a new definition of justice based on self-preservation. Instead, he showed what he meant by not including justice among the eleven pairs of moral qualities that he lists in Chapter 15 [BELOW]…
… In Chapter 15 eleven virtues (the same number as Aristotle’s, though not all of them the same virtues) are paired with eleven vices. [BELOW]…
[Translations by Harvey Mansfield]
In Chapter 9 of the The Prince Machiavelli wrote:
One who becomes prince through the support of the people should keep them friendly to him, which should be easy for him because they ask of him only that they not be oppressed. But one who becomes prince against the people with the support of the great must before everything else seek to gain the people to himself, which should be easy for him when he takes up its protection. And since men who receive good from someone from whom they believed they would receive evil are more obligated to their benefactor, the people immediately wish him well more than if he had been brought to the principality with their support.
In Chapter 15 of The Prince Machiavelli wrote:
Thus, leaving out what is imagined about a prince and discussing what is true, I say that all men, whenever one speaks of them, and especially princes, since they are placed higher, are noted for some of the qualities that bring them either blame or praise. And this is why someone is considered liberal, someone mean (using a Tuscan term because avaro [avaricious] in our language is still one who desires to have something by rapine, misero [mean] we call one who refrains too much from using what is his); someone is considered a giver, someone rapacious; someone cruel, someone merciful; the one a breaker of faith, the other faithful; the one effeminate and pusillanimous, the other fierce and spirited; the one humane, the other proud; the one lascivious, the other chaste; the one honest, the other astute; the one hard, the other agreeable; the one grave, the other light; the one religious, the other unbelieving, and the like. And I know that everyone will confess that it would be a very praiseworthy thing to find in a prince all of the above-mentioned qualities that are held good. But because he cannot have them, nor wholly observe them, since human conditions do not permit it, it is necessary for him to be so prudent as to know how to avoid the infamy of those vices that would take his state from him and to be on guard against those that do not, if that is possible; but if one cannot, one can let them go on with less hesitation. And furthermore one should not care about incurring the fame of those vices without which it is difficult to save one’s state; for if one considers everything well, one will find something appears to be virtue, which if pursued would be one’s ruin, and something else appears to be vice, which if pursued results in one’s security and well-being.
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469–1527.
Anthony Giddens wrote:
Chapter 6 of The Constitution of Society
[Section] Generalizations in Social Science
At first sight nothing looks more obvious than that the transformative impact of the natural sciences has been incomparably greater than that of the social sciences. Natural science has its paradigms, its agreed-upon findings , knowledge of high generality expressed with mathematical precision. In the natural sciences the 'founders' are forgotten or regarded as the originators of ideas that have only antiquarian interest. The fusion of science and technology has generated forms of material transformation on the most extraordinary scale. Social science, on the other hand , is apparently chronically riven with disagreements, unable to forget its 'founders', whose writings are regarded as having an importance of a lasting kind. Governments today might on occasion look to the social sciences as a source of information for policy decisions; but this seems of trivial and marginal consequence when compared with the global impact of natural science. The greater social prestige which natural science enjoys as compared with the social sciences seems well in line with their differential accomplishments and material influence.
But is this conventional view of social science as the poor relation correct? One can at least say it becomes much less easy to sustain if we take into account the significance of the double hermeneutic. The social sciences, to repeat, are not insulated from 'their world' in the way in which the natural sciences are insulated from 'theirs'. This certainly compromises the achievement of a discrete corpus of knowledge of the type sought by those who take natural science as a model. However, at the same time it means that the social sciences enter into the very constitution of 'their world' in a manner which is foreclosed to natural science.
Consider the following:
A man who is made a prince by favour of the people must work to retain their friendship; and this is easy for him because the people ask only not to be oppressed. But a man who has become prince against the will of the people and by the favour of the nobles should, before anything else, try to win the people over; this too is easy if he takes them under his protection. When men receive favours from someone they expected to do them ill, they are under a great obligation to their benefactor; just so the people can in an instant become more amicably disposed towards the prince than if he had seized power by their favour. [footnote reference Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), p. 69.]
[MGH: see alternative translation by Harvey Mansfield ABOVE - ‘Chapter 9’]
Machiavelli's theorem is not just an observation about power and popular support in politics. It was intended to be, and has been accepted as, a contribution to the actual mechanics of government. It can be said , without exaggeration, that the practice of government has never been quite the same since Machiavelli’s writings became well known.
Their influence is not at all easy to trace. 'Machiavellian' has become a pejorative term partly for reasons which have nothing much to do with the actual content of what Machiavelli wrote - for example , because of the reputed behaviour of rulers who put their own construction upon what he had to say. Principles which can be applied by princes can also be applied by those who are subject to their reign and by others opposed to them. The practical consequences of tracts such as Machiavelli's are likely to be tortuous and ramified. They are very far from the situation in which the findings of the social sciences are collated and assessed in one sphere (the ‘internal critique' of professional specialists) and simply 'applied' in another (the world of practical action). But they are more typical of the fate of social scientific knowledge than is the latter picture.
Now , the question of whether it is justified to call Machiavelli a 'social scientist' might be disputed on the grounds that his writings precede the era in which reflection upon the nature of social institutions became systematized …
… But the social sciences do not stand [as the natural sciences do] only in a 'technological' relation to their 'subject matter', and their incorporation into lay action is only marginally a ‘technological’ one. Many possible permutations of knowledge and power stem from this. To demonstrate such to be the case we might go back to the example of Machiavelli's observations about the nature of politics. The following are possible involvements and ramifications of Machiavelli 's writings:
Machiavelli may in substantial part have given only a particular form of expression to what many rulers, and no doubt others too, knew already — they might very well even have known some of these things discursively, although it is unlikely that they would have been able to express them as pithily as Machiavelli did.
That Machiavelli wrote the texts he did introduced a new factor, once they became available, which did not exist previously when the same things were known, if they were known.
'Machiavellian' became a term of abuse among those who heard of the ideas that Machiavelli espoused without necessarily having any first-hand knowledge of the texts. Machiavelli was widely thought in England to be a purveyor of depravities before the first English translation of The Prince was published in 1640.
The sort of discourse which Machiavelli made use of in his writings was one element or aspect of fundamental changes in the legal and constitutional orders of modern states. To think about 'politics' in a particular and substantively novel way was essential to what 'politics' became.
A ruler who was thought to be a follower of Machiavelli, and to try to govern according to Machiavellian precepts, might find them harder to apply than one who was not known to be such. A ruler's subjects, for example, who knew of the precept that a populace tends to be particularly receptive to favours given by one who is expected to be oppressive might be suspicious of just those favours.
Machiavelli was well aware of most of the preceding points and warned of some of their implications explicitly in The Prince. Several of these points therefore become even more complex in so far as awareness of them itself becomes part of political activity.
But why should Machiavelli 's formulations remain significant today, and be seriously discussed as relevant to existing societies if they have been in varying ways absorbed into those societies? Why cannot those working in the social sciences forget their 'founders', as natural scientists do? The answer might have to do precisely with the constitutive character of the ideas which a thinker like Machiavelli both formulates and represents. Machiavelli provides us with the means of considered reflection upon concepts and practices which have become part of the nature of sovereignty, political power, etc., in modern societies. In studying his writings we get a sense of what it is that is distinctive of the modern state because Machiavelli wrote at a relatively early period in its development. No doubt also Machiavelli uncovers, or gives a specific discursive form to, principles of government which have very generalized application to states of all kinds.
However, the main reason why Machiavelli's writings do not 'date' is that they are a series of (stylistically brilliant) reflections about phenomena which they have helped to constitute. They are formulations of modes of thought and action which are relevant to modern societies not only in their origins but also in their more permanent organizational form . An archaic natural scientific theory is of no particular interest once better ones have come along. Theories which become part of their 'subject matter' (while perhaps in other ways resisting such incorporation) necessarily retain a relevance which antiquarian natural science theories do not have. …
… The 'gaps' which can be made to appear between the specialist conceptual apparatus and findings of the social sciences and the knowledgeable practices incorporated into social life are very much less clear than in natural science. Viewed from a 'technological' standpoint, the practical contributions of the social sciences seem, and are, restricted. However, seen in terms of being filtered into the world they analyze, the practical ramifications of the social sciences have been, and are, very profound indeed. [END]
The Sources:
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, translated with an introduction by Harvey C. Mansfield, University of Chicago Press 1985, 1998
Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration, Polity Press 1984
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.