kleiman 2001 - machiavelli 's socratic dialogue - the prince as a seduction into virtue

8/2/2019 Kleiman 2001 - Machiavelli 's Socratic Dialogue - The Prince as a Seduction Into Virtue

1/25

Machiavellis Socratic Dialogue:

The Prince as a Seduction into Virtue

Mark A.R. Kleiman

Professor

Department of Policy Studies

UCLA

3250 Public Policy Building

UCLA

Los Angeles, CA 90095

Voice: 310 206 3234

Fax: 310 206 0337

[email protected]

January 3, 2001

Acknowlegements: This paper would not have been started without the inspiration

supplied by four gifted teachers: Sara M. Shumer, Paul J.R. Desjardins, Michael Walzer, and

Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. It could not have been completed without the exemplary research

assistance of Mary Kwak and David Osborne or the cheerful typing and formatting of

Beatrice I. Childs and Karen Friedman. An earlier version was presented to the Political

Theory Seminar of the University of Rochester, where William Riker made several

provocative and helpful comments. Frederick Schauer commented on a later draft, as did the

members of the Political Theory Workshop at the University of Chicago, especially Dante

Scala, who provided a written critique that was detailed, penetrating, and generous. Andy

Sabl provided crucially helpful advice at a late stage in the process.

Quotations from The Prince are taken from the Mansfield translation and are cited as P.,

followed by a chapter and paragraph number (e.g., P., III., 6). I have ventured to differ with

Mansfield at only one point: following Marriott and others in translatingpatrone in Chapter

5 as "master" rather than "patron." Quotations from theDiscourses on Livy are taken from

the Mansfield and Tarcov translation and are cited asD., followed by a book and discourse

number and a paragraph number where needed (e.g.,D., II., 15, par 4),. Letters are cited by

number after the Alvisi edition (Firenze, 1883) and can be found translated in Allan Gilbert,

The Letters of Machiavelli.


2/25

ABSTRACT

On its surface, Machiavellis Prince is inconsistent both with hisDiscourses and his

republican loyalties. The resulting puzzles can be solved by reading The Prince as a Socratic

dialogue involving a Counselor and a Prince, in which only the Counselor speaks. Seeming to

teach merely the technique of acquisition, the Counsellor attempts to seduce the Prince intovirtue.

IfThe Prince is a drama rather than an essay, its meaning may not lie on its surface.

Facing dramatic irony, the reader is forced to engage the text actively to discover the author's

intention.* Such an active reading reveals a republican message: the project of achieving glory

via tyranny is incoherent, and its effectual truth can be found only in the foundation or

renovation of a republic.

Machiavelli's choice of form prevents the reader from uncritically appropriating the

authors ideas. This fits his beliefs that only the wise can be well-advised and that power, to

be secure, must be self-reliant. The teaching ofThe Prince is not given to the lazy; it must be

taken by those worthy to be princes.

* It should not be, but perhaps is, necessary to remark at this point that it is possible to speak of an

authors intention in contradistinction to his surface meaning without being a member of any cult or

the holder of any particular set of political opinions.


3/25

3

INTRODUCTION: The Puzzles ofThe Prince

The Prince is the briefest of the classics of political thought; Harvey Mansfield likens it

to a memorandum written to a busy executive. [Mansfield 1985.] Its language is direct, even

blunt; Isaiah Berlin calls it "a model of clear Renaissance prose." [Berlin 1980, p. 26.] In a

familiar rhetorical figure, Machiavelli disclaims rhetorical artifice: "I have not ornamented

this work, nor filled it with fulsome phrases nor with pompous and magnificent words, nor

with any blandishments or superfluous ornament whatever." [P., Dedication, par. 2.]

Such a book ought to be transparent. The reader may be unpersuaded, or even repelled,

by its teachings, but he* should be in no doubt as to what those teachings are.

Why is it, then, that almost five centuries of readers have been unable to agree what

Machiavelli was up to in writing his most famous work? There has been no scarcity of

inventive interpretations. Machiavelli has been praised for his openness and denounced for

hypocrisy, condemned for both cynicism and utopian idealism. Scholars have described him

variously as a republican patriot and a "venal and treacherous toady"; an "anguished

humanist," "a peace-loving humanist," and an apologist for ruthlessness; and as a pragmatist,

an aesthete, and a "morally neutral scientist." [Berlin 1980, pp.27-36. See also Dietz 1986.]

Hannah Pitkin calls him "a republican for hard times," "a committed lifelong

republican" who was also "something like a protofascist." [Pitkin 1984, p.3.] To Judith Shklar,

he appears as an advocate of cruelty, whose project of taming fortune led to "cruel enormities."

[Shklar, 19XX. p.20.} By contrast, Sheldon Wolin understands him as trying to secure a world

with the least possible violence. [Wolin 1960, Chap. 5.] Leo Strauss calls him "a teacher of

evil." [Strauss 1958, Introduction.] Spinoza seems puzzled that a learned man, known to be

far-seeing and favorable to liberty, should have described so clearly what means a prince,

whose sole motive is lust of mastery, should use to establish and maintain his dominion, andconsequently hopes to find some good design underneath: perhaps a warning to the people

against either futile rebellion or rashly entrusting its welfare absolutely to one man. [Spinoza

1679, Chap.5, Sec. 7.] As one commentator or epoch gives way to another, Machiavelli

appears in so many disparate guises that he might be said to exist only in the eye of the

beholder.

This puzzle fits into another. Machiavelli devoted his public career to the service of

the Florentine Republic. Within a year of the Republic's fall, he was writing in code to Piero

Soderini, who had been its Gonfalonier (chief executive). [Letter 116.] He was suspected of

taking part in a conspiracy against the Medici restoration, and arrested, imprisoned, and

tortured on that charge. [Gilbert 1961, p. 30.] Machiavelli's other major political work, the

* Apology is offered for masculine pronouns; but English lacks a neuter singular personal pronoun

and Machiavelli seems to address himself to a masculine audience. On the importance of

masculinity to Machiavelli, see Pitkin 1984.


4/25

4

Discourses on Livy, written at about the same time as The Prince,* praises republics and

condemns personal or hereditary rule. [Skinner 1981, p.50.]

Yet The Prince is dedicated to a Medici prince, and contains advice much of it sound

about how that prince can maintain his power and thus continue to deprive the Florentines of

their liberty. Why would a dedicated republican advise a tyrant on the technique of rule? It isas if John Locke had written, in addition to the Second Treatise and theLetter Concerning

Toleration, a manual on the successful management of a religious tyranny, with a florid

dedication to James II.

If these two puzzles were not enough, there is a third. The Prince is justly famous as a

source of wicked advice. In the space of a single chapter, the ruler to whom the book is

addressed is advised to exterminate the families of the princes he has dispossessed, to do only

mortal injuries, and to wage preemptive war. [P., III.] Further on, he is advised to be generous

only with the possessions of others, to keep his word only when convenient, and to seek to be

feared rather than loved. [P., XVI-XVIII.] He is urged to develop the animal side of his nature,

to know how to take up evil and learn to be able not to be good. [P., XV., 1.] Error and

blame, he is told, attach, not to aggression, but only to its failure. [P., III., 12.] This evil

teaching is often expressed with great pith and vigor: War may not be avoided but is deferred

to the advantage of others. [P., III., 8.] Men avenge themselves for slight offenses but

cannot do so for grave ones, so the offense one does to a man should be such that one does not

fear revenge for it. [P., III., 5.] He who deceives will always find someone who will let

himself be deceived. [P., XVIII., 3.]

Yet The Prince does not deny the relevance of morality to politics, or argue that justice

is merely the interest of the stronger. [Cf.Republic I, 338c.] Machiavelli's understanding of

political life includes virtues and vices as categories not subservient to the calculus of success

and failure. Why then should anyone who understands the difference between good and evil,

and acknowledges that some tactics may bring empire, but not glory, [P., VIII., 2.]deliberately offer evil counsel?

One explanation can make sense at the same time of Machiavelli's apparent

self-contradictions, his advice to tyrants, and his teaching of evil: that The Prince carries two

sets of meanings, addressed to two separate audiences, one explicitly and on the surface, one

implicitly and between the lines. The surface addressees are those who desire to rule

tyrannically for their own profit, rather than for the benefit of those they rule: the Medici and

their ilk. But Machiavelli also speaks over the heads (or behind the backs) of this audience to

his friends and disciples: to the lovers of liberty and of the common good.

* The composition ofThe Prince is generally dated to 1513, that of theDiscourses between 1513

and 1519. Felix Gilbert, however, holds that theDiscourses were conceived "not more than two or

three years" later than the former work. [Gilbert, 1977, p.130] Whatever the date, The Prince

appears to refer directly to theDiscourses as a completed work available to the reader [P., II., 1] and

vice versa [D., II., 1 and III., 42].


5/25

5

Even more ambitiously, he seeks to transform would-be tyrants by converting their

private ambition into his public one. He teaches evil because evil is what tyrants wish to learn,

but he turns that teaching against itself and to the common benefit [D., I., Pref.] in a devious

one might say Machiavellian manner. C.S. Lewis once remarked that it is impossible to

seduce someone into virtue, but on this reading that is exactly what Machiavelli attempts to do.

The Prince thus interpreted has the intention, albeit not the form, of a Socratic

dialogue, though only one character speaks. That character, a Counselor addressing a

Prince, is Machiavelli only as Iago is Shakespeare. What is said in the voice of the Counselor

cannot be understood outside its dramatic context or without considering its double pedagogic

intent: not only the pedagogy of Machiavelli's Counselor addressing Machiavelli's Prince, but

also the pedagogy of Machiavelli addressing those who deserve to be princes because they

combine ambition with a love of the common good. [D., Dedication.] Machiavelli needs to

teach them two things: how to be able not to be good in order to be able to rule in deeds

rather than merely in words, and how to use law and virtue to tame the potential tyrant that

lurks within them. As a bonus, they can also learn about the nature of the actual, external

tyrants they must confront.

This approach does not follow the shortest path to the discovery of Machiavelli's

meaning. More direct interpretations of the Machiavellian paradox exist. Parsimony of

hypotheses forbids entertaining a complex theory until the simple ones have been tested, and a

more ordinary parsimony forbids discarding what may prove useful. The simple theories, even

if inadequate when considered separately, may prove to be aspects of the truth.

COMPETING EXPLANATIONS

1. Selling Out

The simplest of the simple theories and the one most explicitly supported by the text,

especially the dedicatory letter represents The Prince as an out-of-office civil servant's

attempt to sell out to the Medici, who have taken his citys freedom, in order to get a job. The

Dedication virtually says as much, identifying the author as one who "desire[s] to acquire

favor." It is easy to understand Machiavelli's interest in finding some sort of public

employment in light of his poverty and boredom in exile [Letter 137.] and his utter lack of

interest in any business but politics. [Letter 120.] Machiavelli asked his friend Vettori to

ensure that his gift not go unnoticed, [Letter 137.] and for months seems to have pinned his

hopes for employment on the strategy of getting someone in the Medici camp to read his little

treatise.* Though he obtained no employment at the time, he was happy enough to serve the

Medici in various minor roles in the 1520s. [Ridlofi 1954/1963, pp. 186-241.]The mere intention to find employment under the Medici need not have been entirely

dishonorable. Machiavellis friend Guicciardini, who also combined continuing republican

* On Machiavellis job-hunting at this period, see Ridolfi 1954, pp.152-158.


6/25

6

convictions with the service of the Medici papacy, made the case for collaboration in these

words: Whenever a country falls into the hands of a tyrant, I think it is the duty of good

citizens to try to cooperate with him and to use their influence to do good and avoid evil.

Certainly it is in the interests of the city to have good men in positions of authority at all times.

Ignorant and passionate Florentines have always thought otherwise, but they should recognize

how disastrous the rule of the Medici would be if there were no one around them but foolish

and evil men. [Guicciardini, 1530, Series C, ricordo 220.]

To whatever extent The Prince was part of an effort to gain favor with the Medici, the

overall effort brought at least partial success. The Discourse on Remodeling the Government

of Florence [C. 1520, translated in Gilbert V. 1, pp. 101-115.] is addressed to, and perhaps

was written at the request of, the Medici Pope Leo X. Soon after, Pope Leo commissioned

Machiavelli's last major work, the Florentine Histories.

At least one of Machiavelli's contemporaries thought the work suitable as a present to a

prince; he presented (as his own) a Latin paraphrase to Charles V. [Gilbert 1961, p. 34.] But if

Machiavelli indeed intended to win influence with the Medici through this offering, he

carelessly undermined his own efforts in the text. In one of the final chapters, he warns not

only against flatterers, but against all sorts of unsolicited advice. A prince, he maintains,

should take counsel only when it suits him, and for the rest, He should discourage everyone

from counseling him about anything unless he asks it of them, (though he should be a great

asker of questions). [P., XXIII., 3.] If Machiavelli merely intended to curry favor, why should

he warn his (nominal) reader against himself?

Moreover, The Prince is studded with sentences and examples sure to fall

uncomfortably on the ears of its princely recipient. The praise of Cesare Borgia seems

ill-designed to flatter a prince of the house of Medici, hereditary rivals of the Borgia. Nor is the

admiration for republican life that suffuses Chapter V a likely ticket to any prince's favor. In

particular, the warning that whoever becomes master of a free city and does not destroy itmust expect to be destroyed by it [P., V., 2.] should have been especially unwelcome to the

new master of previously free Florence. As Bernard Crick comments in his introduction to the

Discourses, there is no essential argument in The Prince which is not repeated in the

Discourses...both are incompetent if viewed as pure acts of arse-licking. [Crick, 1986, p. 18.]

Machiavellis undoubted literary genius should make us skeptical of any hypothesis

that requires us to believe that he simply failed to execute his plans due to lack of

compositional skill or care. Given, then, that The Prince is not optimized to the narrow

requirements of its authors job-seeking, Machiavelli must have had an intention, if not

nobler, at least more complex than the hypothesis of sheer opportunism allows.

2. A Theory of Executive Power

An alternative hypothesis interprets The Prince as a theory of executive power in any

system of government. [Mansfield 1989, Chap. 6.] For Machiavelli, any ruler is a prince; in

theDiscourses, he describes his republican disciples as those who deserve to be princes [D.,


7/25

7

Dedication.] and promises the republic he is attempting to found [Mansfield 1979, p. 45.]

infinite most virtuous princes. [D., I., 20.]

In theDiscourses, Machiavelli acknowledges that republics are well-served by kingly

power, so long as that power is regulated by public institutions, as was the case with the

consuls of Rome. More, he warns that ruin will befall a republic if it fails to create a dictatorwhen grave dangers threaten. [D., I., 34.] The Prince may therefore be read as a manual for

those entrusted with an essential political function rather than as a handbook on oppression:

read, that is, as if it were early draft of Richard Neustadt's Presidential Power.*

But what, under this interpretation, are we to make of the teaching of evil in which the

book clearly engages? Evil is not merely described, it is advocated, and without any pretense

that it is other than evil. Machiavelli's reader is reminded often of what can be accomplished

by violence, in direct contradiction to the policy of the wise in instructing the great. If you

will follow my poor advice, said Thomas More to Thomas Cromwell as Cromwell was

replacing him in the favor of Henry VIII, you shall, in your counsel-giving unto his grace,

ever tell him what he ought to do but never what he is able to do. ... For if the lion knew his

own strength, hard were it for any man to rule him. [Roper 1553, p.228.]

Moreover, while the frankly republican Machiavelli of theDiscourses claims to write

for the common good, [D., I., Pref.] the Counselor advises his Prince (explicitly) only about

how to serve the Prince's own interests. The Prince may contain the outline of a theory of

executive power in the public interest, but that is not all it contains.

3. Objective Strategic Analysis

The coexistence of good and evil advice in The Prince can be explained by considering

it as a piece of objective strategic analysis, whose insights may benefit impartially the friends

of liberty and its enemies. It is in this sense that Machiavelli has been said, by Berlin and

others, to have been the founder of modern, value-neutral political science.

Machiavelli's insistence on the importance of quickly eliminating opposition to a new

regime is an example of the sort of impartial, two-edged insight one would expect such an

objective observer to forge. In The Prince, the ruler of a newly acquired state is warned that it

is essential to eradicate the bloodline of the ruler he has displaced. [ P., IV., 3.] In the

Discourses, Machiavelli's counsel to the founders of republics is equally grim. Because a

newly free state "has partisan enemies and not partisan friends, it must proceed harshly

against those who would subvert it: there is no remedy more powerful, nor more valid, more

secure, or more necessary, than to kill the sons of Brutus." [D., I., 16, par. 4.] Clearly, the fact

that his advice can be turned to more than one end has not escaped Machiavelli, who remarks

that one discourse offers valuable lessons as well for those who wish to maintain a freerepublic as for those who plan to subject it." [D., I., 40.]

* For an argument that the Machiavellian prince becomes a republican executive only when brought

under control, see Mansfield 1989.


8/25

8

But note that this warning about the double-edged nature of analysis is provided in the

Discourses, addressed to friends of liberty, and not in The Prince.* Machiavelli did not intend

to apprise his princely reader of his full intention, suggesting at least that his impartiality had

limits.

4. A Warning to Republicans

Many of these problems can be resolved by hypothesizing that the intended audience of

The Prince is distinct from its explicit addressee: that the book is intended to be read by the

friends of liberty. One version of this account, which dates back at least to Voltaire and

Rousseau and was most recently argued by Garrett Mattingly [Mattingly 1958], holds thatThe

Prince is an attempt to discredit princely government by publicly stating its principles in their

most offensive form: either a satire, as theReport from Iron Mountain makes (deadly serious)

fun of the military-industrial machine, or a kind of forgery-to-unmask like theProtocols of the

Elders of Zion or Robert Welch's "Principles of Leninism."

But this hypothesis must confront the evident soundness of much of the advice offered

in The Prince, and the identity of that advice with that offered to republicans in theDiscoursesand elsewhere in Machiavelli's writings. No middle courses, one's own arms and virtue,

paying close attention to military affairs, the management of appearances, using established

forms to cloak innovation, the folly of using office for private financial or sexual acquisition:

the themes ofThe Prince are Machiavelli's characteristic themes, and in particular the themes

of theDiscourses.

5. Literary Parody

Or perhaps Machiavelli intended to attack, not princes and their evil counselors, but the

windy high-mindedness of the humanist mirror-of-princes literature. (William Riker once

described the genre as positing a prince with the disposition of a genial but somewhat

befuddled abbot in charge of a house of not-too-bright monks.)

But once again it is hard to see why Machiavelli should have put so much of his best

thinking and writing into a mere spoof. The liberator of Chapter XXVI is hardly a figure of

fun. If Machiavelli intended The Prince as a parody, we can only conclude that he got carried

away. But as Machiavelli warns his republican readers, when a skillful strategist makes an

apparent blunder, one should suspect a stratagem. [D., III., 48. Cf. Strauss 1958, p. 35.]

* Compare also the discussion of fortresses in P., XX with that in D., II, 24.

The chapter-to-chapter correspondences are striking. Compare, for example, P., V., with D., I.,

26 (ruling previously free cities); P., XIX., with D., III., 6 (conspiracies); P., XII., with D., I., 43

(mercenaries); P., XX., with D., II., 24 (fortresses); P., XXIV., with D., III., 5 (why rulers lose

power); P., XXV., with D., III., 7-9 (virtu and fortune).


9/25

9

6. Finding a Unifier for Italy

The Exhortation to Seize Italy and to Free Her from the Barbarians that concludes

The Prince calls on its Medici addressee to rescue downtrodden long-divided Italy, 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. [P., XXVI., 1.] Hegel and Fichte are among those who have accordingly read

Machiavelli as a ruthless but glorious nationalist, [Crick 1986, p. 15.] giving the advice

necessary to achieve Italian unification.

But reliance on this exhortation as the interpretive key to The Prince risks reading

nineteenth-century nationalism into a sixteenth-century text. Although Machiavelli believed

that disunity was a disaster for Italy, [D., I., 12.] he was himself a product of that disunity; his

fatherland, which he loves better than his own soul, is always Florence.* Italian

unification was neither the object of Machiavelli's practical efforts in office nor the subject of

his detailed speculation out of office. (The Discourse on Remodeling the Government ofFlorence, for example, addressed, as The Prince is, to the Medici, and full of detailed, serious

advice about how to rule Florence, never so much as hints at unification as a project.) This

sharply distinguishes unification with the project of military reform, which occupied both

Machiavellis official energies as Second Secretary and his theoretical attention later.

That Italy be free of foreign domination was not a wish peculiar to Machiavelli:

Guicciardini wrote in 1512, while Florence was still a republic, Machiavelli still in office, and

The Prince not yet started: I want to see three things before I die: a well ordered republic in

our city, Italy liberated from the barbarians, and the world delivered from the tyranny of these

wicked priests. [Guicciardini 1512, Series Q2, ricordo 17.] But kicking the French, the

Spanish, and the Imperialists out of Italy is one project; unifying Italy quite another.It would thus be anachronistic to read The Prince as the outpouring of an Italian nationalist

and its advice as directed toward forming a human instrument of unification.

7. The Founder and Renovator

Perhaps, then, The Prince should be regarded as the first step in a two-stage theory of

republican government. Even in the firmly republicanDiscourses, Machiavelli acknowledges

that some cities are so corrupt as to be incapable of maintaining themselves in freedom [D., I.,

17.] and that princes are superior to peoples in creating institutions, [D, I., 58, par. 4.] and

stresses the need for violence (Romulus and Remus; Brutus and his children) and for sole

* Hulliung 1983, pp. 95-96. Or perhaps Machiavelli'spatria is the world, as opposed to the

kingdom of heaven; see Mansfield 1979, pp. 184-185. But in no case does it seem to be Italy.

On Machiavelli and the militia, see Ridolfi, pp.79-81, 86-88, 105-108. While Ridolfi is

eager to praise Machiavellis concern for Italy as a whole, he cites no single word or action

intended to bring about unification as a practical result.


10/25

10

authority in the foundation and renovation of republics. [D., I., 9.]

The examples of drastic action that punctuate The Prince may thus be read as a

necessary pre-political prologue to the reconstitution of political life. Clearly they are not to be

read as simple glorifications of brutality. Machiavelli does not hesitate to recognize the

usefulness of violence, but only if it is well that is, sparingly used.*

One could thus conceive of The Prince as a source of advice on the reform of a

Florentine republic fallen away from virtue into corruption. [Shumer 1979.] Elsewhere

Machiavelli writes that no project will bring a prince greater renown than the renovation of a

corrupt city. [ D., I., 9.] He also acknowledges that some cities are so corrupt that only

princely government will fit them, though he names Tuscany as being by nature republican.

[D., I., 55.]

Nor would it have been utterly outrageous even for Machiavelli, dedicated republican

that he was, to think that certain features of the Florentine polity needed reforming, even at the

hands of the Medici. TheDiscourse on Remodeling and the Florentine Histories make it clear

how badly the republic Machiavelli served treated what he calls the plebs: the members ofthe lesser guilds and the unorganized wage-workers. [FH, III, 12-21.]

But if the renovation of a republic in Florence is the true intention ofThe Prince, that

intention is concealed from its addressee. The Prince does not purport to be an essay on the

foundation of a republic, but rather on the government of a principality, which the opening

sentence of the book sets up as the antithesis of a republic. [P., I.] While theDiscourses allow

for the existence of a monarchical form of republic, [D., I., 2.] there is no such discussion in

The Prince, which seems to assume that its reader's sole objective is to maintain himself in

power. The gap between renovation as an end and the means recommended to the Prince is

made explicit in theDiscourses: "Because the reordering of a city for a political way of life

presupposes a good man, and becoming prince of a republic by violence presupposes a badman, one will find that it very rarely happens that someone good wishes to become prince by

bad ways, even though his end be good, and that someone wicked, having become prince,

wishes to work well, and that it will ever occur to his mind to use well the authority he has

acquired badly." [D., I., 18.] But the reader ofThe Prince too busy or too impatient to read

theDiscourses is not told explicitly that the authority he acquires badly is to be used well.

Thus, ifThe Prince aims to inspire in its reader the ambition to win the glory proper to

the founders of republics, [D., I., 10.] that aim is not made explicit; the reader must rely on his

own power to carry himself across the gap between what is said and what is intended. [D., I.,

Pref., last par. Cf. Mansfield 1979, p. 28.]

* See, e.g., P., VIII., 4-5. On Machiavelli's "economy of violence," see Wolin 1960, Chapter 5.

Passages such as D., III., 7 seem to support Wolin's view against those who take Machiavelli as

delighting in cruelty.


11/25

11

8. Getting Close Enough to Kill

In his account in theDiscourses of the pretended folly of Junius Brutus, Machiavelli

dissents from Livy's assertion that Brutus wanted only to "live in more security and maintain

his patrimony. Rather, he says, Brutus was looking to have more occasion for crushing the

kings and freeing his own fatherland. He adds that all friends of liberty who find their forces

insufficient for a direct confrontation with a tyrant would be well-advised to follow Brutus's

example, "seek[ing] with all industry to makes themselves friends to him," "following his

pleasures and taking delight in those things they see him delighting in," until the opportunity to

strike presents itself. [D., III., 2.]

The literary resonance between this advice to republican conspirators and Machiavelli's

own obsequious dedication ofThe Prince might suggest that Machiavelli wants to acquire the

favor of the Medici only to "crush the kings" and liberate his city. On this view, the writing of

The Prince would be the first step in a conspiracy against the Medici, intended to place a

hidden enemy in their entourage. (Mary Dietz suggests a different plot; in her account, theadvice in The Prince is so bad that it would, if followed, have led to the downfall of the

Medici. The book is thus seen as a Trojan horse, an attempt to trick the enemy into self-

destruction.) [Dietz 1986. But see Langton 1987.] In either case, the admixture of good

advice (by Machiavelli's lights) is hard to account for, and the sharp warning against taking

unsolicited counsel [P., XXIII.] would be utterly self-defeating.

Moreover, this hypothesis, though more creditable to Machiavelli's integrity as a

republican than the sellout theory, founders on the same rock. The book is even worse

designed for the purposes of conspiracy than it is for mere flattery. Who would expose his

back to the author ofThe Prince?

MORE COMPLEX THEORIES

Thus none of the simple theories seems to cover all the facts. That justifies considering

something more complex. Isaiah Berlin on the one hand and Leo Strauss and Harvey

Mansfield on the other provide complexity and to spare, arguing alike, though with two greatly

different emphases, that Machiavellis project was no less than a complete moral and religious

revolution, or counterrevolution. But none of the three has much to say about why such a

project would lead Machiavelli to betray his republican loyalties in one of his two great books

while upholding them in the other.*

* Berlin sees Machiavelli as urging a return to the pagan virtues, while not denying the validity of

the Christian ones but treating them as incompatible; this would make Machiavelli a precursor of

Berlin himself, insisting on the existence of irreconcilable choices among goods. (On this point see

also Crick 1970, pp. 63-65.) Strauss and Mansfield take Machiavellis obvious political

anticlericalism and insist that it, and the texts, conceal an anti-Christian polemic with strongly

blasphemous undertones. Still, why should either a pagan preference or an active disgust with


12/25

12

THE TWO DEDICATIONS

The contrasting dedications of The Prince and the Discourses hint at the author's

intention. The dedication (to Lorenzo de' Medici*) ofThe Prince begins, "It is customary

most of the time for those who desire to acquire favor with a prince to come to meet him with

things that they care most for among their own or with things that they see please him most."

Machiavelli thus makes a distinction between two conventional practices of favor-seekers:

offering what they themselves most prize, and offering what they think will most please the

recipient. He goes on to identify his knowledge of political affairs as his most prized

possession, qualifying his book as an appropriate gift under the first statement of convention.

But what of the second statement? IfThe Prince is a present to the Medici prince,

designed to win favor for its author, it should include something to delight the recipient. The

"Machiavellian" passages in The Prince are well-suited to that end. There is always a

fascination, even for those without practical evil intentions, about evil openly discussed, and

Machiavelli seems to offer his princely reader both practical advice and authorial sanction fora career of successful oppression, deception, and cruelty.

We can thus understand the sober moral and political analysis of The Prince as

representing what Machiavelli himself cherishes: his "knowledge of the actions of great men."

The more notorious passages can then be seen as attempts to delight the prince for whom

Machiavelli writes. This analysis, if correct, is not very flattering to the putative recipient of

Machiavelli's gift. Lorenzo is certainly not meant to understand the implication of

Machiavelli's twofold statement of conventional practice: that the things that delight Lorenzo

are to be distinguished from the things cherished by one who has understanding.

The dedication, then, seems to presuppose a reader who is not the nominal recipient,

and who will understand what is written in a way beyond the capacity of Lorenzo. It is in thissense that Machiavelli can say, as he does in dedicating theDiscourses on Livy to his friends

and republican co-conspirators, that he writes, not to those who are princes, but to those who

deserve to be so. Even his book on principalities, dedicated to a prince, is written for those

who do not delight in evil but who will penetrate beneath the surface of the discourse to find

Machiavelli's intention "to bring common benefit to everyone." [ D., I., par. 5.]

MACHIAVELLIS SOCRATIC DIALOGUE?

Read thus, The Prince presents at once two very different phenomena. On its face, it is

a handbook written by an out-of-work statesman, Niccolo Machiavelli, by which to

recommend himself to the newly established ruler of his native city and province, Lorenzo de'

Medici. At this level, we can evaluate the advice from the prince's standpoint and from that

Christianity be inconsistent with an honest and consistent republicanism?

* Not Lorenzo "the Magnificent," but his undistinguished grandson, Duke of Urbino (1496-1519).


13/25

13

of his subjects. We can analyze the book's effects, or intended effects, on its author's political

career. We can also attempt to mine the book for general truths of theoretical interest or

enduring practical value.

But, on the reading offered here, The Prince is also a drama, in which a Prince, whose

ambition is to be a tyrant, is advised and manipulated by a far-seeing Counselor whose

monologues make up the dedication and twenty-six chapters of Machiavelli's fiction. The

narrative voice ofThe Prince is only possibly that of the author, just as the Socrates of the

dialogues may or not speak for Plato in any give passage. The immediate content of what the

Counselor says to the Prince is only part of what the author communicates to the reader.

Although the Counselor alone speaks, we learn, through what he chooses to say and to

withhold, about the character of the Prince he addresses as well as about his own, and perhaps

also about counsel and rule in general. For behind the Counselor stands Machiavelli, with his

own Socratic intentions.

In the manner of a Socratic dialogue, the discourse starts with the interlocutor's own

opinions and desires and seeks to demonstrate the errors to which they can lead. The would-be

tyrant, if he reads very carefully, is led around to the understanding that his project of

tyrannical rule is fundamentally incoherent. At the same time, Machiavelli's humanist

audience, classically educated and therefore republican in sympathy, starting from a stance

outside the Prince's project of successful tyranny, will learn how tyrants and their counselors

think and act, and therefore how to resist them. [D., I., 40.] Insofar as their own impulses are

implicitly or potentially tyrannical, as so many reformist and revolutionary impulses have

proven to be, they will learn why it is necessary, if only for their own protection, to tame them

with virtue and with sound institutions. [D., I., 58., par 2.]

This analysis makes it unnecessary to apologize for or explain away the immoraladvice offered in The Prince in order to save Machiavelli's standing as a republican or a lover

of virtue. The advice is not his; it is that of a character in his play. Speeches in a play are not

to be read as essays. They must be read as speeches, coming from a given character in a given

situation, and analyzed in terms of their dramatic function. That Machiavelli has compressed

his play into a dramatic monologue, an anticipation of Browning or Beckett, should increase

our appreciation of his literary originality, but it need not blind us to the fundamentally

dramatic rather than prosaic nature of the work.

If this view is right, then Leo Strauss's suggestion that The Prince considers political

life from the viewpoint of actual princes while theDiscourses cover the same ground from the

viewpoint of potential princes [Strauss 1958, p.21] is at best incomplete. Rather The Princeconsiders, or feigns to consider, politics from a selfishly ambitious or tyrannical viewpoint,

while theDiscourses do so from a public-spirited or republican viewpoint.

Thus, where the Counselor calmly offers breathtakingly immoral advice, Machiavelli

may intend us to understand that this is the sort of advice that rulers like to hear and

job-seeking counselors are always ready to offer. Alternatively, we may be watching the


14/25

14

Counselor, as part of his attempt to instruct the Prince, engaging his attention with lurid stories

of successful wickedness while subtly insinuating the less racy message that a prince can find

real security only in solid popular support, based on skill, courage, and service to the desire of

the people not to be oppressed. [Cf. D., I., 5.] Evil counsel may serve a good purpose either in

Machiavelli's own dramatic strategy or in the pedagogic strategy of his character.

In either of these two ways, the surface discourse ofThe Prince may diverge from the

deeper intention of the author. This equivocation forces the reader to engage the book far

more actively than would otherwise be the case.

The deeply ironic nature of Machiavelli's dialogue makes its structure less obvious than

his Platonic and Xeonophontic models. Theperiogogue, the process by which the interlocutor

is "led around" to recognize the incoherence of his original concept or project, takes place, not

at a single dramatic moment, but subtly and throughout the text.

Surely it is not very far-fetched to credit Machiavelli, the dramatist and humanist, with

having written a dramatic monologue on politics. In the Discourses, he makes explicit

reference to theHiero of Xenophon, known at the time as On Tyranny. [D., II., 2.] In thatdialogue between Hiero, ruler of Syracuse, and the poet Simonides, it is the man of action who

uses most of the words. Rather than showing the powerful being instructed by the wise,

Xenophon portrays a tyrant arguing that despotic power is disadvantageous compared to a

quiet private life. It is left to the poet to point out that, by ruling for the common good, the

tyrant can leave behind the life he characterizes as "a perpetual state of war" and win the

admiration of his subjects and the security such affection brings.* On the reading offered here,

Machiavelli follows Xenophon in trying to teach tyrants that they should abandon tyranny for

their own good, but does so by indirection.

MACHIAVELLI ON THE VIRTUES AND THE VICES

In the film version ofThe Wizard of Oz, Dorothy, on discovering that the Wizard is a

charlatan who cannot deliver on his promise to return her to Kansas, says, "You're a very bad

man." To which the Wizard replies, "No, I'm a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard."

Dorothy identifies incompetence in office with moral blameworthiness. The Wizard

distinguishes them, holding himself "good" morally blameless as a person though "bad"

incompetent as a wizard.

At its beginning in Chapters XV-XVII, the analysis of virtues and vices delivered by

Machiavelli's Counselor rests on the same distinction. "The qualities for which men are

praised" personal goodness, being bene rather than male are to be distinguished from the

skill, or virt, required to rule. When the two conflict, the prince must "learn to be able not tobe good." To act otherwise is to choose the mere name of a praiseworthy quality over the

*Hiero IV., 11, XI., 8-10; cp. P., 20.

P., XV., 1. Nietzsche might say that he must choose to be an evil man rather than a bad prince.


15/25

15

quality itself. To be liberal (generous) in the obvious and personal way by being

open-handed turns out to mean, in a prince, taking from the many to give to the few. Thus a

prince who chooses the reputation il nome of stinginess can in fact be generous to the many

from whom he does not take. [P., XVI.] Similarly, if by a few well-chosen examples of cruelty

he can establish peace and order, he is, in effect, more merciful than one who, by exercising

personal mercy refraining from the punishment of malefactors effectively licenses private

bloodshed. [P., XVII.]

So far, so good: Machiavellis Counselor presents an argument certain to shock the

pre-utilitarian conscience, but a serious moral argument nonetheless. The common-sense

identification of the good ruler with the good man is shattered, not in terms of extraordinary

circumstances or reason of state, but on the grounds that the requirements of public and private

life are different. A prince can be effectively merciful only by the skillful use of cruelty,

effectively liberal only by being tight-fisted, and he must accept the resulting bad reputation as

the burden of office unless his skill at what would now be called impression management

based around his observation that many see, but few touch [P. XVIII, 6.] suffices to give

him the reputation of the surface virtues as a bonus added to the effectual ones.

One looks for this pattern to be repeated in the discussion of keeping one's word, but in

vain. Silently, the Counselor reverses the terms. The ability to deceive involves no acceptance

of the reputation for deceit. On the contrary, the deceiver must be reputed honest, or his

deception fails. While Chapter XVI attempts to show that the effectual truth of liberality in

a prince is parsimony, and Chapter XVII that effectual mercy consists in well-used cruelty,

there is no argument in Chapter XVIII that in some higher sense one keeps one's word by

breaking it. While the examples in Chapters XVI and XVII involve benefits to the subject from

the ruler's exercise of qualities for which blame is customarily assigned, the examples of

successful deceit in Chapter XVIII involve benefits only to the princes involved.

Merely choosing all the bad qualities from the conventional list is no better thanmerely choosing all the good ones, but tyrants and their flatterers are likely to take even a

partial liberation from copybook morality as a generalized license to do evil. The Counselor

may be able to persuade the Prince that a simple reversal of classically assigned moral

categories is a complete political morality, but "he who understands" [P., XV., 1.] the

member of Machiavelli's chosen audience will understand more, and will learn also the

wisdom of the maxim "put not [your] trust in princes." [Psalm 146, Verse 3.]

Thus the device of using the Counselor as his spokesman allows Machiavelli to show

at once the necessity of reappraising conventional moral categories in the context of political

life and the danger that the reappraisal will get out of hand. This recalls the way Plato uses the

characters in Book I of theRepublic to show both the inadequacy of conventional morality asconventionally understood (Cephalus and Polemarchus) and the danger of half-digested

"advanced" doctrines (Thrasymachus).


16/25

16

PRINCIPALITIES AND REPUBLICS

In the opening chapter ofThe Prince, the Counselor introduces his subject the rule of

princes by outlining its place in a taxonomy of "all dominions that have held and do hold

empire over men." "All states," he says, "are either republics or principalities," and he then

goes on to list characteristics by which the category of principalities (principati) may be

subdivided. [P., I.] Nothing, apparently, could be simpler than this series of dichotomous

divisions: republic or principality, new or hereditary, entirely new or mixed.

But in the same chapter, Machiavelli also introduces a further set of terms, that of

kingdoms (regni) and their kings. Initially, "kingdom" seems to be merely a synonym for

"principality." But soon the term reappears with a richer meaning. In Chapter VI, where the

Counselor turns to the discussion of "new principalities that are acquired through one's own

arms and virtue," he singles out Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus. Moses he sets aside as

an executor of divine purpose. The others, however, he praises for having "acquired or

founded kingdoms." [ P., VI., 2.]

How a "kingdom" differs from a "principality" is not further discussed in The Prince,

except glancingly in Chapter 9 where "principality" is opposed, not to "republic," but to a

regime of either "liberty" or "license." In theDiscourses, however, Machiavelli explicitly

contrasts "a republic" or "a kingdom" on the one hand with "tyranny" on the other. [P., VI., 2.]

Under a "free way of life" (vivere libero), he says, rewards are distributed through certain

honest and determinate causes rather than arbitrarily. [ D., I., 16, par. 3] Only in a republic,

he says, is it even possible for the public good to be looked to, because the interests of a prince

are usually opposed to the interests of the city. [D., II., 2, par. 1.]

If principalities are identified with arbitrary rule, and republics with the rule of law,

well-ordered kingdoms then appear as a subspecies of republic. A republic, on this reading, isnot a specific institutional arrangement, but a state governed under law rather than at princely

discretion and (potentially) for the common good rather than merely the good of the ruler. The

subtext ofThe Prince is the Counselor's indirect argument that his reader's true interest lies not

in being a prince that is, a tyrant but in founding a well-ordered kingdom.

Machiavelli implies four arguments for this teaching: that kingship is safer than

tyranny, that it is more glorious, that it creates the basis of an effective armed force, and that it

protects the ruler from his own errors.

No Secure Mode

While apparently encouraging the ambition of his princely reader, Machiavelli hints

that it is likely to come to no good end. Closely read, even the treatment of Cesare Borgia's

career leads the prince away from his project of tyranny. At first blush Cesare is described as

the perfect Machiavellian prince, who "made use of every deed and did all those things that

should be done by a prudent and virtuous man to put his roots in the states that the arms and


17/25

17

fortune of others had given him." [ P., VII., 2.] "I do not know what better teaching I could

give to a new prince than the example of his actions." [Ibid.]

In his initial conquests, Cesare Borgia was forced to rely on the aid of the king of

France and on one of the powerful families of Rome. Yet he soon realized the importance of

depending on his own arms, and, after routing his enemies, eliminated his former allies. [P.,VII., 2; XIII., 3.] He then proceeded to pacify the Romagna, which he had lately acquired, by

first installing a "cruel and ready" governor who reduced the province to obedience, and then

ordering the brutal execution of this servant, leaving the people "satisfied and stupefied." The

Counselor recounts this act of cruelty and duplicity with particular admiration, recommending

it as "deserving of notice and of being imitated by others." [P., VII., 3.]

And yet, despite the ferocity and virtue that the Counselor praises in the duke, in the

end all of Cesare's exertions were nullified by misfortune and a single blunder. [P., VII., last

paragraph.] (The blunder was allowing his enemy Julius II to become Pope, deceiving

himself in the belief "that among great personages new benefits will make old injuries be

forgotten.") Thus even the most skillful and, through most of his career, lucky tyrant

ultimately failed to maintain his dominion. This should be a sobering thought for those who

would emulate him.*

Nor does it appear that even those willing to be altogether wicked can achieve safety.

The authors of the most audacious crimes can in turn become their victims. In his account of

the career of Liverotto de Fermo, who ambushed and murdered not only the uncle who had

raised him but also the rest of the city's most eminent citizens, the Counselor maintains a tone

of cool objectivity bordering on admiration. But the final sentence relates almost a fairy-tale

punishment: Liverotto was himself deceived by Cesare Borgia, and "one year after the

parricide he committed, and together with Vitellozzo, who had been his master in his virtues

and crimes, he was strangled." [P., VIII., 3.]

By contrast, kingship under law is safe. The Counselor cites France as a contemporary

example of a "well-ordered and governed kingdom," in which the ruler's liberty and security

are sustained by "infinite good institutions."

Power and Glory

* If that is indeed Machiavellis intention, he anticipates his admirer Voltaire, who writes in the

prefatory Discourse on the History of Charles XII: No king, surely, can be so incorrigible as, when

he reads theHistory of Charles XII, not to be cured of the vain ambition of making conquests. Where is

the prince that can say, I have more courage, more virtues, more resolution, greater strength of body,

greater skill in war, or better troops, than Charles XII? And yet, if, with all these advantages, and afterso many victories, Charles was so unfortunate, what fate may other princes expect, who, with less

capacity and fewer resources, shall entertain the same ambitious views? History of Charles XII, p. 8.

P., XIX., 5. Cf. D., I., 16, where the laws are praised for preserving the security of the people.

P., IV, identifies the existence of hereditary nobles with strong provincial bases as a source of

weakness for France, as opposed to theparlement, seen as a source of strength.


18/25

18

In addition to this warning about the wages of sin, the Counselor also has advice to

offer about the way to win glory. The glory-seeking prince must tread a path very different

from one who merely feels the "desire to acquire." "Nothing," says the Counselor, "brings so

much honor to a man rising newly as the new laws and the new orders found by him. When

these things have been founded well and have greatness in them, they make him revered and

admirable." [P., XXVI., 3.]

But whoever seeks only personal dominion by a "criminal and nefarious path" cheats

himself of glory. Such a prince may show great courage and daring, but, as in the case of

Agathocles the Sicilian, his crimes exclude him from a place "among the most excellent men."

[P., VIII., 1-2.] In denying glory to the authors of successful crimes, Machiavelli is more

scrupulous than, for example, Homer, who twice makes his Achaian characters describe

Pandaros's sneak attack on Menalaos, in violation of a sworn truce, as having brought "glory to

him." [IliadIV, 197 and 207.]

Writing to his republican friends rather than his Medici enemies, Machiavelli is even

more explicit about what he takes to be the true interests of rulers inDiscourses I., 10, entitled

"Those who set up a Tyranny are no less Blameworthy than are the Founders of a Republic or

a Kingdom Praiseworthy." Founders of republics or kingdoms are famous, he says, while

tyrants are infamous and detestable.

And no one will ever be so crazy or so wise, so wicked or so good, who will

not praise what is to be praised and blame what is to be blamed, when the

choice between the two qualities of men is placed before him. Nonetheless,

afterward, deceived by a false good and a false glory, almost all let themselves

go, either voluntarily or ignorantly, into the ranks of those who deserve more

blame than praise; and though to their perpetual honor, they are able to make a

republic or a kingdom, they turn to tyranny. Nor do they perceive how much

fame, how much glory, how much honor, security, quiet, with satisfaction ofmind, they flee from by this policy, and how much infamy, reproach, blame,

danger, and disquiet they run into.

...And truly, if a prince seeks the glory of the world, he ought to desire

to possess a corrupt city not to spoil it entirely as did Caesar but to reorder it

as did Romulus. And try the heavens cannot give to man a greater opportunity

for glory, nor can men desire any greater. If one who wishes to order a city

well had of necessity to lay down the principate, he would deserve some

excuse if he did not order it so as not to fall from that rank; but if he is able to

hold the principate and order it, he does not merit any excuse. In sum, those to

whom the heavens give such an opportunity may consider that two ways havebeen placed before them: one that makes them live secure and after death

renders them glorious; the other that makes them live in continual anxieties and

after death leaves them a sempiternal infamy.

Thus the "effectual truth" [P., XV.] of the prince's desire to acquire power and win

glory is, if he only understood it, the desire to found a well-ordered state: a monarchy or a


19/25

19

republic rather than a tyranny.

One's Own Arms and Virtue

In considering the advantages of republics and well-ordered monarchies over tyrannies,Machiavelli tacitly qualifies his advice to princes to rely entirely on their own arms and virtue.

The arms of others, whether mercenaries or auxiliaries, are to be shunned. But "one's own

arms" are necessarily the arms of one's subjects or citizens, or of "your creatures" (i.e., a

professional soldiery). [P., XIII., 7.] Creating a separate class of soldiers puts the prince at

their mercy, forcing him to "bear with their avarice and cruelty," as must the Sultan of Egypt

and the Turk, the only two contemporary rulers who rule by means of soldiers. Under those

circumstances, "good deeds are one's enemy." [P.., XIX, 6.] The only alternative is an army of

subjects or citizens. [P., XX, 1.] But an armed populace cannot safely be oppressed: "Now it

is necessary for all princes, except the Turk and the Sultan, to satisfy the people." A citizen

army requires the prince to keep his people content. (This suggests that Machiavellis attempt

to create a Florentine militia had a political purpose as well as a military one.)

Since only republics (and "republican" monarchies) can maintain the citizen armies that

provide a city's sole reliable defense, the prince who follows the Counselor's advice to have

"no other thought ... but the art of war" is led to think how he can keep his subjects his friends.

As Xenophon's Cyrus learns, the art of war is the art of making people want to fight for you.

[Xenophon, Cyropaideia (The Education of Cyrus),passim.] The more ambitious the prince is

for military glory, the less cavalier he can afford to be about the welfare of his people.

This, then, is the effectual truth of Machiavelli's dictum that "where there are good

arms, there must be good laws." [P. XII, 1.] Only in states with good institutions will the ruler

dare to arm the people.

As with arms, so with virtue. "One's own virtue will never be sufficient to adapt itself

to all the vagaries of fortune, and the consequent variability of the good." "Nor may a man

be found so prudent as to know how to accommodate himself to this ... because he cannot

deviate from what nature inclines him to." Any absolute ruler will therefore come to ruin

when the times change and he cannot change with them. [P., XXV.]

In a republic, however, institutions serve to protect not only the public, but also the

princes, from their innate tendencies to excess. Thanks to the restraint of the Roman Senate,

for example, the excess of mercy that would eventually have tarnished Scipio's career had it

been given full rein "not only was hidden, but made for his glory."[ P., XVII., 6.] Thus even

the virtuosi of politics require the laws, acting as an artificial necessity, to make them

excellent. [Cf. D., I, 1.]

The would-be tyrant reader ofThe Prince, if he reads it carefully (as one who deserves

the principate), is therefore led toward the foundation of a monarchy or republic under the rule

of law, because otherwise he will be unable to control either his army or himself.


20/25

20

WHY A DRAMA?If this indeed is Machiavelli's point that the ambition to be a tyrant, if intelligently

pursued to its logical end, results in being instead the founder of a free regime why does he

make it in such a roundabout manner, and dramatically rather than prosaically? Good literary,

pedagogical, and philosophical reasons can be offered, some of them with internal textual

support.

On a merely stylistic level, the book's wealth of sardonic counsel provides much of its

charm, especially for those who imagine themselves as the wielders of power for personal

gain. Like the proverbial mule-tamer with his two-by-four (though using pleasure rather than

pain) Machiavelli with his wicked advice secures his readers undivided attention, in hopes of

seducing him into virtue. If Machiavelli seemed to be criticizing the project of tyranny ratherthan forwarding it, he would have fewer readers, especially among the potential tyrants whose

ambition he most desires to turn to the public good. (The brevity ofThe Prince may be

designed to appeal to the impatient young rather than, per Mansfield, the busy great.) The

dedication, with its twofold statement of conventional practice, seems to support this

interpretation.

As a pedagogical matter, Machiavelli cannot simply provide a list of maxims without

violating his own first principles. He advises his readers that power must, if it is to be secure,

be achieved with their own virtue as well as their own arms. [P., VI.] He points out that one who

is not wise himself cannot benefit from good counsel. [P., XXIII.] If Machiavelli were to

present his reader with a pre-cooked doctrine on a silver platter, he would cheat that reader of

the opportunity to make it his own by discovering it for himself as the solution to Machiavelli's

riddle.* In urging his reader not to accept counsel unasked and not to put himself into the

power of a single counselor, Machiavelli seems to tread dangerously close to the Liar's Paradox;

by burying his meaning in a tangle of indirection, Machiavelli reinforces his advice to trust no

one by forcing his reader to distrust Machiavelli himself. That this not inadvertent is indicated

in the penultimate chapter of theDiscourses, where Machiavelli warns that an enemy's apparent

blunder may conceal a stratagem and immediately makes an apparent blunder. [D., III, 48; cf.

Strauss 1958, p. 35; Mansfield 1979, p. 10.]

But there may be a deeper reason for Machiavelli's use of dialogue rather than simple

exposition to convey his thoughts. He may believe, as the (possibly spurious) Seventh Epistle

* It is said that a younger contemporary of Mozart wrote to the great man for advice on composing a

piano concerto. Mozart responded that his correspondent was too young to work in that form, and ought

to come back to it when he was older. On being reminded that he had composed his own first piano

concerto while still a boy, Mozart replied, Yes I did; but I didnt ask anyone to teach me how.

Cf. Mansfield 1979, p. 12, where Machiavelli is likened to "a wrestling teacher who demonstrates

the holds by throwing you."


21/25

21

suggests that Plato believed, [341 b-e.] that some truths cannot be correctly expressed in direct

propositional form. This impossibility might arise either because each true proposition is

partial, needing the support of other propositions on the same subject to be complete, or

because there is no direct statement that is not subject to trivial or vicious interpretation.*

Thus Machiavelli cannot say what he means, to the audience he seeks, directly. Insteadhe speaks through his character, the Counselor. Of what he intends to say, this essay has, I

hope, given a partially true account.

THEN WHY NOT A REAL DIALOGUE?

But all of this raises an obvious question: If Machiavelli wanted to writeThe Prince as

a dialogue, why didnt he? The dialogue was a familiar Renaissance literary form, and

Machiavelli himself produced one: The Art of War.

But the answer is really just as obvious as the question: Machiavelli wanted his little

treatise read, and not just by a few humanists. A classical dialogue shows how a particular

kind of teacher can transform the thinking of a particular kind of interlocutor. The teacher

starts with the interlocutors opinions or premises and shows them to be either internally

incoherent or inconsistent with that interlocutors practices or aims. The resulting text

illustrates both the truth about some topic and the fallacies that surround it. While, on the

interpretation offered here, Machiavelli had just that intention, the dialogue form did not fit his

project of converting private ambition to the public good.

Whatever wisdom is embodied in The Art of Warremains safely hidden in the text,

beyond the reach of any but the patient and the scholarly. That would have been only slightly

less true in Machiavellis own time than it is today: the book is a work of formidable tedium.

(Perhaps that tedium conceals some even more Machiavellian purpose, or perhaps the

conventions of humanist dialogue writing simply didnt allow even such a literary genius as

Machiavelli to produce readable work in that format.)

By contrast, The Prince, however cunningly Machiavelli may have concealed some of

its meanings and intentions, may well be the most widely read (as opposed to assigned or

purchased) of the great works of political thought, simply because it is brief and breezy, and

seems to hold out political wisdom and permission for wrong-doing as low-hanging fruit to

the ambitious and impatient. Whether the good done by those who solve Machiavellis puzzle

and act on what they have learned is adequate to counterbalance the evil done by those who

merely take the evil advice and apparent permission and run with it is a question for another

day.

* See the definitions of justice inRepublic I: "Justice is the interest of the stronger" is, on one

reading, true, but partial; as read by Thrasymachus, it is merely an excuse for oppression.

This query was raised for me by Andy Sabl.


22/25

22

References

Berlin, Isaiah. 1980. "The Originality of Machiavelli." In Isaiah Berlin,Against the Current.New York: Viking Press, pp. 25-79.

Crick, Bernard, 1970. "Introduction: So Many Machiavellis," inMachiavelli: The Discourses,

Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.

Dietz, Mary. 1986. "Trapping the Prince: Machiavelli and the Politics of Deception."

American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 3, pp. 777-799.

Garver, Eugene. 1987. Machiavelli and the History of Prudence. University of Wisconsin

Press.

Gilbert, Allan H., ed. 1961. The Letters of Machiavelli. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press.

Gilbert, Felix. 1977. History: Choice and Commitment. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of

Harvard University Press.

Guicciardini, Francesco, 1512/1528/1530/1857. Ricordi Politici e Civile, in Opera Inedite

di Francesco Guicciardini, ed. Giuseppi Canestrini. Vol. 1, pp. 81-224. Firenze.

----------1512/1528/1530/1965. Maxims & Reflections of a Renaissance Statesman (Ricordi).

Translated by Mario Domandi. Harper & Row (Harper Torchbooks.)

Hulliung, Mark. 1983. Citizen Machiavelli. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Langton, John. 1987. "Machiavelli's Paradox: Trapping or Teaching the Prince." AmericanPolitical Science Review, Vol. 81, No. 4, pp. 1277-1288.

Lewin, Leonard C. 1967 (writing as Special Study Group).Report from Iron Mountain

on the Possiblity and Desirability of Peace., With introductory material by Leonard C.

Lewin. New York, Dial Press.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. 1531/1996. Discourses on Livy. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield

and Nathan Tarcov. University of Chicago Press.

----------. 1532/1964. The Prince and Other Works. Translation, introduction, and notes by

Allan H. Gilbert. New York: Hendricks House.

----------. 1532/1985. The Prince. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.

Mansfield, Harvey C., Jr. 1979. Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders: A Study of the

Discourses on Livy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

-----------. 1985. "Introduction," in Machiavelli, The Prince, translated by Harvey C.


23/25

23

Mansfield, Jr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-----------. 1989. Taming the Prince. New York: The Free Press.

------------. 1996 Machiavellis Virtue. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

Mattingly, Garrett. 1958. "Machiavelli's Prince: Political Science or Political Satire?"American Scholar, Vol. 27 pp. 482-491.

Neustadt, Richard E. 1960. Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership. New York:

John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. 1984. Fortune is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of

Niccolo Machiavelli. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Pocock, J.G.A. 1975. The Machiavellian Moment. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Ridolfi, Roberto,1954/1963. The Life of Machiavelli, trans. Cecil Grayson: Routledge and

Kegan Paul.

Roper, William. 1553/1962. The Life of Sir Thomas More in Two Early Tudor Lives, edited

Richard S. Sylvester and David P. Harding. Yale University Press.

Shumer, Sara. 1979. "Machiavelli: Republican Politics and Its Corruption." Political

Theory. Vol 7, pp. 5-34.

Skinner, Quentin. 1981.Machiavelli. New York: Hill and Wang.

Spinoza, Baruch, 1679/1883/1951. A Political Treatise, trans. A.H. Gossett, in Benedict de

Spinoza,A Theologico-Political Treatise and A Political Treatise, Dover Publications.

Strauss, Leo. 1958. Thoughts on Machiavelli. Glencoe, Il.: Free Press.

Voltaire, 1731/1901 History of Charles XII, trans.William F. Fleming, Vol. XI ofThe Works

of Voltaire, The St. Hubert Guild.

Wolin, Sheldon S. 1960. Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western

Political Thought. Boston: Little, Brown.

Xenophon. 1956. Hiero, in Scripta Minora. Translated by E. C. Marchant. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press/Loeb Classical Library.


24/25

24

.


25/25

25

kleiman 2001 - machiavelli 's socratic dialogue - the prince as a seduction into virtue

Documents