Autor: Manent, Pierre

Buch: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Titel: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Stichwort: Machiavelli 1; um 1300: Versuch d. Emazipation v. Kirche (Dante, Marsilius); Aristoteles ungeeignet für Lösung d. theologisch-politischen Problems; Machiavelli: politische Moderne findet erstmals ihren Ausdruck

Kurzinhalt: The principles of classical antiquity were not sufficient for gaining the secular world's independence from the Church. Aristotle interpreted human life in terms of goods and ends, all organized in a hierarchy. Thus

Textausschnitt: CHAPTER II
Machiavelli and the Fecundity of Evil

10a In the beginning, Europe was dominated by the idea of Christian salvation. It was not easy to escape the Church's hold, since it was supported not only by the external power of a dominating institution, but also and especially, by a spiritual conviction. People might very well have wanted to revolt against this great power authorized by Christ. But how could they have conceived what they vaguely desired? How could they have conceived of the secular rights of "nature" that they wanted to set against the Church? It seems obvious to us today because the undertaking triumphed. But in the thirteenth or fifteenth century things were not so clear. (Fs)

10b The first major attempt to emancipate man's political nature took place around 1300 in Italy. It was at this time that the rediscovery of Aristotle's works, thanks to their translation into Latin, had its full effect. This great intellectual event was also a great political event. Up to that time, ancient thought had hardly been known in Western Christendom except for the fragments preserved by the Church Fathers, Saint Augustine in particular. Whether approved or criticized, ancient thought had been used for Christian ends. By the fourteenth century it could speak for itself, in its own words, or at least in remarkably faithful translations. That meant that the natural, or secular, world found itself potentially emancipated from Christian categories, and in control of its own destiny. The Church's exclusive intellectual reign was over. It was at this time, in Italy, that opposition to the papacy's political power found its first classic expressions, in the works of Dante and Marsilius of Padua.1 It was in this place and at this time that European thought fell into step with the political situation. (Fs) (notabene)

11a This first effort was short-lived. The subsequent development of European politics did not follow the principles proposed by Dante or Marsilius. There was certainly a contextual reason for this: Dante and Marsilius placed their political hopes in a regeneration of the Empire. We have seen that this solution was not viable. But there was also a fundamental intellectual reason for their failure: their Aristotelianism, thanks to which they could assert the consistency, richness, and nobility of the natural world, did not allow them to guarantee the independence of politics from the Church's claims. Why was this? Why did the secular world's emancipation from the Church not follow the principles of rediscovered classical antiquity? Why was political modernity not simply a prolonged and expanded Renaissance? Why did it later break with Aristotle and Cicero, its first allies, as well as with the Church? (Fs) (notabene)

11b The principles of classical antiquity were not sufficient for gaining the secular world's independence from the Church. Aristotle interpreted human life in terms of goods and ends, all organized in a hierarchy. Thus his teaching made it possible for Dante and Marsilius to describe with great subtlety the structure of secular life, to show its goodness and dignity. But by presenting human life as a hierarchy of goods and ends, Aristotle's teaching was vulnerable to the Christian claim that the good brought by the Church is greater, the end it reveals is higher, than any merely natural good or end. Consequently, Aristotle's philosophy could be used both to express the Church's claim to earthly sovereignty and to express the world's protest against the Church. This is why the greatest Aristotelian after Aristotle was a doctor and saint of the Church: Thomas Aquinas. Thomas believed that Aristotle's philosophy contained everything accessible to natural reason. The Christian revelation added other, higher truths to these natural ones, but without invalidating them: "Grace perfects nature, it does not destroy it."2 (Fs) (notabene)

11c Aristotle's philosophy could thus be used in two conflicting ways: to oppose the Church or to strengthen the Church. The fact that it lent itself to both of these uses sufficed for demonstrating that it could not be the basis for a new political definition of relationships between the secular city-state and the Church. It was too heavy a weapon, which fell naturally from the hands of the one using it into those of his adversary. In the end, the Church knew best how to hold on to it, and it consecrated Thomas as its Doctor communis, "universal teacher." But the Thomist doctrine did not give an answer to the politically most urgent question. If I assume that nature has its own goodness and that grace has a superior but not conflicting one, if I assume that man has two unequal but equally legitimate ends, which one must I obey here and now? The Church, taught by Thomas, replied: one must consult prudence, heightened by faith. This answer could not satisfy those who wanted to define the independence of the natural world in a clear-cut and incontestable way. Aristotle, whether interpreted by Thomas, Dante, or Marsilius, did not enable them to solve our theologico-political problem. (Fs)

12a The problem was finally resolved, or at least the case decided, two centuries later by Machiavelli. As noted above, it was in Dante's and Marsilius's time that European political thought fell into step with the political situation. It might be added that with Machiavelli political thought became a full participant in the political situation. Henceforth, it was impossible to understand political history without having previously grasped the broad outlines of the history of political thought. (Fs)

12b Those, like Dante and Marsilius, who considered Aristotle's thought to be universally valid still had to admit that it had been born in a radically different political context. The Greek city-state, unlike the Italian city-state, had no experience with the political claims of a universal Church. Thus they had to assert the universal validity of his thought and yet subject it to considerable modifications. We have noted the most important of these modifications: Marsilius and Dante argued in favor of the Empire, a political form regarded by Aristotle as inferior to the city-state, even barbarous. With Machiavelli, it was the modern experience—he speaks of his lunga esperienza delle cose moderne in his Dedicatory Letter to The Prince (written in 1513 )—that found its own expression. In Machiavelli modernity found an interpretation of itself that determined the orientation of the European mind, and hence of European political history, from that moment on. (Fs)

12c But is it not wildly arbitrary to attribute such power to one man? Only a complete account of the development of modern thought and politics after Machiavelli could justify crediting him with a founding role. But in any case we are not ascribing "superhuman" power to the man. The interpretation of modern experience through Machiavelli simply sheds a particularly brilliant light on certain of its fundamental aspects. For it was in the service of a political project, the radical discrediting of the Church's political claims, that numerous men who nurtured this project used Machiavelli to guide their thought and action. By basing themselves on his thought, they transformed the political world: from simple interpretation, from a "theoretical" point of view, it became a part of "real" life. It compelled recognition even from those who had not shared the original project. (Fs)

12d I am not about to analyze Machiavelli's thought in detail: first because it is not a part of the principal theme of this essay, next because it is especially subtle, and thus especially resistant to a succinct presentation. I shall confine myself essentially to the idea that everyone, even those who have not read him, has of Machiavelli—that is, to the surface of his work, because it is this surface that influenced men's minds. With an author of Machiavelli's rank, the surface contains, so to speak, the depth.1 (Fs)