Autor: Manent, Pierre

Buch: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Titel: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Stichwort: Machiavelli 2; Vgl. I Principe, Kap. 9 - Aristoteles, Politik Buch 3; M. als erster demokratischer Denker; das Böse in d. Politik - Unschuld d. Volkes; Plato, A.: Blickpunkt d. Bürger - M.: Blickp. von außen; Il P., Kap. 6, 7; Cesare Borgia - Hobbes

Kurzinhalt: Machiavelli did not elaborate the idea of an institution capable of opposing the encroachments of the Roman Church. That was accomplished by Hobbes. Instead, by discrediting the idea of the good, Machiavelli persuaded men to consider evil ...

Textausschnitt: 15a Up to this point, I have limited myself to recalling the flavor of Machiavelli's teaching, more than the teaching itself. Let me risk a brief incursion into the substance of his argument, in chapter 9 of The Prince. There we learn that the city-state has a fundamental division, that between the common people and the nobility. These two groups are compared with two "diverse humors" of the body politic: the common people do not want to be oppressed, the nobles want to oppress them. One sees that neither of these two groups has an end that is both positive and good, neither is aiming for a good. The nobles have a positive end, but it is wicked: to oppress. The people have no positive end, only a negative one: not to be oppressed. The "humors" of the city-state do not point toward a positive good for the city-state. According to Machiavelli, only the prince who knows how to gain the support of the people in opposing the nobility, without confusing his interest with that of the people, has the chance to found a stable order.1 (Fs; tblStw: Politik) (notabene)

15b Let us compare chapter 9 of The Prince with book 3 of Aristotle's Politics. The themes are the same. This book of the Politics is a kind of dialogue between the people and the nobility, between the democrat and the oligarch. It is not Aristotle's teaching that interests us here, but his approach. He shows that both the democrat and the oligarch have good arguments for asserting their respective claims to govern, and that in a tolerably well-organized city-state both claims have to be granted. He also shows that, even when joined or adjusted to each other, these two claims do not bring about justice. To the considerations of freedom, equality, and wealth, one must add that of virtue. In other words, he shows how each claim of the social body, however biased it may be, points toward justice or the good which is both part of the body politic and its end. In Machiavelli's description, each element of the city-state is turned into a "humor"; in Aristotle's, each "humor" is anchored in the good. (Fs) (notabene)

15c Certainly, there is an element of the Machiavellian city-state whose humor can, in a sense, be called good: the common people. The people's desire, after all, is innocent: they do not want to be oppressed. Machiavelli even praises their "honesty," at least relatively speaking. The desire of the people is more honest (è piu onesto) than that of the nobility, he says. But it is a completely passive or negative goodness. In Machiavelli's city-state, the good is found only in the mutilated form of the people's innocence. Radically depreciating the pretensions to "virtue" of the nobility, and simultaneously making the people "honest," Machiavelli becomes the first democratic thinker. (Fs)

16a It is easy now to see the link between the insistence on evil in politics and the assertion of the goodness or honesty of the people. If political action is not organized in view of a good—or, more generally, if no human action has an intrinsically good end—then all the goodness of the world belongs to the innocent passivity of those who ordinarily do not act in political terms, to the people. Leo Strauss remarked that the Machiavellian viewpoint heralded Rousseau's distinction between virtue (always painful, most often hypocritical or doubtful) and goodness (the innocent passivity of self-love with its headquarters, so to speak, in the people). In this aspect of the Machiavellian analysis, we see a new spiritual mechanism that is going to act powerfully on the development of modern politics and, more generally, of modern sensibility: the discrediting of the idea of the good, coinciding with the elevation of the idea of the people. (Fs) (notabene)

16b Something further should be said about Machiavelli's approach to politics. Aristotle, we have noted, begins by adopting the citizen's point of view. He takes seriously each of the principal claims that spring up in the body politic, accepting them as valid, up to a certain point. Citizens consider their claims as the whole of justice; Aristotle corrects their excess by showing that such claims are only a part of justice. At the same time, Aristotle stands outside the city-state. He puts the accent on the rights of virtue, which tend to be ignored in a political life divided between the people and the nobles, democrats and oligarchs. Nonetheless, his position of exteriority and superiority is based on a certain form of community between the philosopher and the city-state. The good aimed for by the city-state, and which it can attain in the most favorable circumstances, points toward a superior and ultimate good that can be grasped only by the philosopher through contemplation. In a word, it is the idea of the good that permits the philosopher to be superior to the city-state, to understand it better than it understands itself, yet also to understand it from within as it understands itself. (Fs) (notabene)

16c With Machiavelli, this medium of communication between the philosopher and the city-state, the good, disappears. The philosopher is completely exterior to the city-state, understanding it better than it understands itself and exposing its "actual truth."2 But the nobles would not recognize their motives and aspirations in the unique desire to oppress; the people would see in their claims a more positive end than the mere absence of oppression. So, can one say that Machiavelli really understands the aspirations of the citizens better than they themselves do? If nothing connects the city-state's "humors" to the philosopher's search for truth, who will support the "actual truth" when it is found? In a world where nothing can be called intrinsically good, will the knowledge of this truth be an exception? It is not certain that Machiavelli offers us the means to answer these questions. Machiavelli's city-state is a closed totality that he understands completely because he remains completely exterior to it. (Fs)

17a This position occupied by Machiavelli is radically new in the history of philosophy and politics. To understand the meaning of life in the city-state, philosophers like Plato and Aristotle took seriously the citizens' viewpoint by adopting it, even if it subsequently meant pointing out its limits and transcending it. Other philosophers deliberately placed themselves outside civic life, with little concern about understanding the citizens' point of view even temporarily. Such philosophers disdained politics because they thought they had a higher good to contemplate: the order of all the cosmos, the divine, or nature. Machiavelli adopts the paradoxical position of keeping himself outside the city-state, while concentrating his attention exclusively on it. He stays on the outside, not to achieve a superior good, but only in hopes of observing it better. (Fs)

17b The original, paradoxical character of such a position no longer strikes us today. On the contrary, We recognize in it the requisites of the scientific attitude. We even believe we have understood Machiavelli's originality by noting that he was the first to adopt the "scientific" viewpoint for studying politics. This appraisal, however, often formulated by modern historians, is most likely to blind us both to the nature of political science and to Machiavelli's originality. I have already briefly noted why his "realism" is subject to caution. We can add that to describe political life without taking seriously the citizens' viewpoint is more likely a source of arbitrariness than a guarantee of scientificity. Besides, the development of modern science—strictly speaking, the science of "nature"—is appreciably later than Machiavelli's time. To accept that the modern scientific point of view was first born in his political thought would be to weigh down science itself with political suspicions, instead of covering Machiavelli's politics with the protective coating of science. (Fs)

17c An incomparably more plausible and pertinent explanation of Machiavelli's originality is available. After all, in Machiavelli's time, there was another viewpoint claiming to be radically exterior and superior to politics, while pretending, from this position, to act within the city-state: the religious viewpoint of the Church. This position from which one can see politics from the exterior, as subject to intervention, did not have to be invented by Machiavelli; it was furnished to him by his enemy, the Church. Adopting it was not an epistemological exploit, it was, in military language more congruous with Machiavelli's, to fight the enemy on his own ground. (Fs)

17d Of course, the Church's position of exteriority was based on a specific raison d'être, something really different from political life: the worship of God, spiritual perfection. It was based on the supposed superiority of the religious good to the political good. Machiavelli's entire approach consists of occupying this position so as to attack the very foundations of the Church's autonomy and of its right to intervene in the city-state. By interpreting the body politic as a closed totality founded on violence, Machiavelli established that the "good" brought by the Church tended to destroy rather than perfect the city-state, that the idea of the good had no support in the nature of human things. (Fs)

18a One of Machiavelli's texts, perhaps the most famous, confirms this thesis. In chapter 6 of The Prince he compares "armed prophets" to "unarmed ones" and concludes that "all the armed prophets conquered and the unarmed ones were ruined." There is, however, one "unarmed prophet" who could be considered, especially by Machiavelli, as a "conqueror": Jesus Christ. And what is Machiavelli himself, who writes tempting books instead of committing terrible deeds, if not an "unarmed prophet"? Machiavelli is, in his own eyes, that unarmed prophet who is trying to disarm the teaching of the greatest of the unarmed prophets. In this respect, Machiavelli is more an antireligious religious reformer than a philosopher. He tried to change the maxims that actually govern men's lives. (Fs)

18b Machiavelli did not elaborate the idea of an institution capable of opposing the encroachments of the Roman Church. That was accomplished by Hobbes. Instead, by discrediting the idea of the good, Machiavelli persuaded men to consider evil—whether ruse, force, violence, or "necessity"—as the principal source of the political order. (Fs) (notabene)

18c To conclude, let us read a brilliant passage from chapter 7 of The Prince:

Once the duke [Cesare Borgia] had taken over Romagna, he found it had been commanded by impotent lords, who had been readier to despoil their subjects than to correct them, and had given their subjects matter for disunion, not for union. Since that province was quite full of robberies, quarrels, and every other kind of insolence, he judged it necessary to give it good government, if he wanted to reduce it to peace and obedience to a kingly arm. So he put there Messer Remirro de Oreo, a cruel and ready man, to whom he gave the fullest power. In a short time Remirro reduced it to peace and unity, with the very greatest reputation for himself. Then the duke judged that such excessive authority was not necessary, because he feared that it might become hateful; and he set up a civil court in the middle of the province, with a most excellent president, where each city had its advocate. And because he knew that past rigors had generated some hatred for Remirro, to purge the spirits of that people and to gain them entirely to himself, he wished to show that if any cruelty had been committed, this had not come from him but from the harsh nature of his minister. 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. (Fs)

19a This text is a marvelous illustration of how the civil and political order is enveloped and supported by violence. In this episode, Machiavelli distinguishes three types of violence: the diffuse violence of the impotent lords (violent anarchy); the repressive violence of Remirro de Oreo (reestablishing order); and the violence exercised against Remirro de Oreo. The second type of violence reestablishes order but leaves the citizens prey to resentment because of the cruel acts committed. The third type purges them of their resentment: the citizens or subjects are satisfatti e stupidi. These men are satisfied, they are not happy. They do not participate in a good, they are delivered from an evil. They are delivered from a first evil, violence and fear, by another evil, cruel repression; from a second evil, resentment, they are healed by a third evil, fear. This "homeopathic" approach purges them of hate by letting survive just the right amount of fear; and fear is always needed. The political order becomes the alchemy of evil, the suppression of fear through fear. (Fs) (notabene)

19b Thomas Hobbes will see the very logic of the human order in the series of actions and feelings dramatically described by Machiavelli. The absolute monarchy, the "Leviathan" described by Hobbes, is the institutionalization of Cesare Borgia's actions at Cesena. (Fs) (notabene)