Modern Political Thought: Readings from Machiavelli to Nietzsche [1 ed.] 0872203425, 9780872203426

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Modern Political Thought eadings from Machiav Edited by David Wootton

Modern

Political Thought:

Readings from Machiavelli to Nietzsche

Modern

Political Thought:

Readings from Machiavelli to Nietzsche

Edited, with Introductions, by

David

Wootton

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis/ Cambridge

f

Copyright

©

1996 by Hackett Publishing Company,

Inc.

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

12

10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

For further information, please address Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. P.O.

Box 44937

Indianapolis, Indiana 46244-0937

Cover

art: J.- L.

David, Marat Assassine

Cover design by

Ann

Makarias

Text design by James N. Rogers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Modern

political thought: readings

from Machiavelli

to Nietzsche

edited, with introductions, by David Wootton.

cm.

p.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-87220-342-5 ISBN 0-87220-341-7 1. I.

(cloth: alk.

paper)

(pbk.: alk. paper)

Political science

— History.

Wootton, David, 1952JA83.M64 1996 320'.01— dc20 96-30452

CIP

.

Contents

ix

Introduction

1.

Machiavelli and the Renaissance

Machiavelli (1469-1527)

1

6 9 58

Letter to Vettori (1513)

The Pnnce {\D\'i-\^) Discourses

2.

Hobbes, the Reformation,

and

(c.

1517) [selections]

93

the Scientific Revolution

Calvin (1509-1564)

On

Hobbes (1588-1679)

Leviathan (1651):

Civil

Government (1536-60)

100 122

Dedicatory

123

Introduction

124

Part

125 187

1

Part 2

269 297

Part 3 [selections]

A Review

3.

4.

John Locke, David Hume, and

and Conclusion

303

the Right of Revolution

Locke (1632-1704)

Second Treatise of Government (1689)

310

Hume

Of

387

(1711-1776)

the Original Contract (1748)

Rousseau, the Enlightenment, and the Age of Revolution

Rousseau (1712-1778)

Discourse on the Origin Inequality

On

397

and Foundations of

among Men {\7dd)

the Social Contract

404 464

(1762)

Smith (1723-1790)

Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759-90) [selections]

Burke (1730-1797)

Reflections on the Revolution in France

(1789-90)

551

[selections]

Kant (1724-1804)

An Answer (1784)

to the Question: WTiat Is

535

Enlightenment?

573

CONTENTS

VI

3. J. S. Mill:

Feminism and

the Pursuit of Happiness

Bentham (1748-1832)

An

579

Introduction to the Principles of Morals

and

Legislation (1780) [selections]

Mill (1806-1873)

6.

On

605 673

Liberty (1859) The Subjection of Women (1869)

Marx and Marxism Hegel (1770-1831)

Marx (1818-1883)

735 Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1821) [selections]

742

On

764

the Jewish Question (1843)

Toward a Critique of Hegel's

Marx and Engels (1820-1895)

Marx

585

Philosophy

of Right: Introduction (1844) Alienated Labor from Economic and Philosophic

782

Manuscripts of 1844 Theses on Feuerbach (1845) The German Ideology (1845) [selections] The Communist Manifesto (1848)

790 798 800 826

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

847

[selections]

Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: Preface (1859) Capital (1867) [selections]

The

Civil

War

in France (1871) [selections]

Critique of the

Gotha Programme (1875) 884

[selections]

7.

Nietzsche For

895

and Against

Nietzsche (1844-1900)

862 865 874

On

the Genealogy of Morals

Preface First Essay

Second Essay

(1887) [selections]

902 902 906 924

Copyright Acknowledgments The

translation of Machiavelli reprinted here

is

from

Selected Political Writings, translated

by David Wootton (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), by permission of the publisher.

The

translation of Calvin reprinted here

is

from

Institutes of the Christian Religion,

edited

by John T. McNeill (Libran- of Christian Classics). Used by permission of Westminster

John Knox Press and T&T Clark, Ltd. The translation of Rousseau reprinted here is from The Basic Political Writings, translated by Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987), by permission of the publisher.

The

translation of Kant reprinted here

Humphrey

by Ted

from

is

Perpetual Peace

(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing

and Other Essays, translated

Company, 1983), by permission of

the publisher.

The

translation of

is from Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Cambridge Universit)' Press, 1991), by permission

Hegel reprinted here

translated by H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge:

of the publisher and H. B. Nisbet.

Marx: 'On the Jewish Question',

Toward

a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right:

from Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, 'Theses on Feuerbach', and The German Ideology translated by Loyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat, copyright 1967, reprinted with the permission of Loyd D. Easton and Mrs. Kurt H. Guddat. Introduction', 'Alienated Labor'

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonapaiie, 'Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Economy 'Critique of the Gotha Program' reprinted with the permission of

Political

,

International Publishers Inc.,

The

New York.

translation of Nietzsche reprinted here

by Walter

Kaufmann and

is

from On

R. J. Hollingdale. Cop)Tight Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.

the Genealogy of Morals, translated

©

1967 by

Random House,

Inc.

Acknowledgments would like to thank Matthew Clayton, Ed Curley, Stuart Elden, Barbara Goodwin, Mark Neocleous, Brian Rak, Gay Weber, and a series of anonymous referees for ad\ice and criticism. The quotation from Rousseau on p. 401 is taken from Tracy B. Strong, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Politics of the Ordinary (Thousand Oaks, Cal.: Sage, 1994), pp. 61-62, itself I

a modified version of Alan Bloom's translation in Politics

and

the Arts (Ithaca:

Cornell

Universit)' Press, 1968), pp. 135-36.

The quotation from Nietzsche on p. 900 Kaufmann and

Power, translated by Walter

is

taken from Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will

R.J. Hollingdale

1968), pp. 364-65.

Vll

(New

to

York: Vintage Books,

Introduction This reader provides an introduction to

modern

political

philosophy from Machiavelli

(1513) to Nietzsche (1887). Most of the works reprinted here have long been recognized as central to the history of political philosophy: Machiavelli,

Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau,

Mill.

Like any such selection, this one also reflects contemporary interests and preoccupations:

Nietzsche seems a

much more important

political

philosopher

now than he

did thirty

The Subjection of Women seems a much more important text. Adding one text in a reader such as this means dropping another; Marxism is the obvious casualty

and

years ago,

of the

last

himself,

I

Mill's

twenty years, and though

I

have included an extensive selection from Marx

have excluded Luxemburg, Lenin, and Trotsky, to

name

three for

whom

space

might once have been found. I have been conscious of the fact that most students are introduced thought in the course of a one-semester course. This volume therefore represents an idealized semester's reading: Instructors will want to drop one or more of the selections in order to make the program more manageable. I hoped the book would be shorter than it is, but it did not seem to me that there would be any general agreement about which texts could best be dropped: WTiile one course may pass lightly over Hobbes in order to spend time on Locke, another will skim Rousseau in order to give time to

In selecting the texts,

to

modern

political

Hume, Smith, and Burke. My hope is that nearly all instructors will find their most urgent needs satisfied by the present selection. While there is in practice fairly general agreement about which texts students should read, we noticeably lack any satisfactory account of how the modern list of 'classic' texts came to be put together. Instead we have accounts of the changing reputations of individual thinkers, such as Machiavelli, over time, and proposed solutions to particular problems, such as why Locke has always seemed more important in America than in England. But when, where, and why did political theory cr)'stallize into a discipline in which these particular texts were accepted as canonical? Alas, political scientists, philosophers, and historians of ideas have been much less self-conscious about questions of canon-formation than literary critics. But it is worth pausing to note that the canon is more diverse than one might fear, yet also less representative than one might hope. More diverse, in that the texts which are accepted as classics do not simply represent the orthodoxies of liberal, democratic culture: Machiavelli and Hobbes are often made to seem more respectable than they should be, but for centurv' after centur)' they have mainly been read as presenting challenging arguments that must be refuted. Despite the shifting fortunes of Marxism and the continuing disagreement as to whether the works of the 'young' or the 'mature' Marx are the more interesting, Marx's arguments will continue to receive attention, as Rousseau's do. Nevertheless, the canon does not adequately represent the historical evolution of political theorizing. to

remedy by including

far too secular, for one thing (a defect I have sought from Cahin); moreover it excludes texts which shaped

It is

a chapter

the political thinking of generations, such as Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, or Beccaria's

IX

INTRODUCTION

•

X

Crimes and Punishments',

and

at

heart

its

lie texts

which were regarded

as insignificant

when they were first published The Prince, The Second Treatise of Government) but which came to seem extraordinarily important much later. This selection adopts a critical attitude ,

(

contemporary canon by including three chapters from Smith which, though they canonical, are pedagogically invaluable. But in the main I have accepted the canon for what it is, not sought to reform it. If there is general agreement about which are the key texts in the history of political philosophy, there is no general agreement about how to read them. Some read them for their relevance to contemporary philosophical debates; others for their enduring wisdom; others in order to understand the development of a particular mode of discourse over time; yet others read them as literature. Different readers are likely to focus on different texts. Contemporary philosophers find Mill more interesting than Machiavelli; followers of Leo Strauss find Machiavelli more interesting than Mill; while Quentin Skinner and John Pocock negotiate the whole question of what distinguishes a classic from a minor text with some unease. Consequently the content of advanced courses designed by members of different schools of thought is bound to differ substantially: It is only at the introductory level that there is widespread agreement on the texts that all students of modern political philosophy need to encounter first. My own introductions to the texts concentrate on historical questions because some historical knowledge is a necessary foundation for any to the

may never be

interpretation.

Anyone reading Hobbes immediately

after Machiavelli (as students often

do) needs to have some sense of what has happened in the one hundred and that separates them.

practice

They need

know

years

fifty

had transformed political Galileo had shaken the entrenched supremacy of Aristotelian to

that the Reformation

and theory, that and that Hobbes was contributing

an existing tradition of natural-law theory. is likely to be much less agreement over the relevance to an interpretation of Leviathan of Hobbes's translation of Thucydides, the Engagement crisis of 1650, or twentieth-century game theory. It is worth remarking that the texts that have found their way into the canon have

science,

About

done

this

to

there can be general agreement, while there

so because they satisfy a

number

of very different requirements.

is a good example of a text that its first readers thought deserved to become a classic, if only it were better written, hence all the revised, reorganized, and heavily annotated editions of Beccaria which promptly appeared.

First,

they are well written and well argued. Beccaria's Crimes and Punishments

Second, they simplify the

lives

of instructors by standing for an intellectual period or

a political epoch. So Machiavelli stands for the Renaissance,

and few students read More The one

or Montaigne; Rousseau symbolizes the French Revolution, obscuring Sieyes.

obvious omission

among

Reformation: Here Calvin

the classic texts fills

is

the absence of a text that encapsulates the

the gap.

Third, the classic texts are both philosophically challenging and intriguingly ambiguous.

It is

fashionable to argue that

one might claim

all texts invite

a multitude of interpretations,

and

that the range of interpretations surrounding each of the classic

texts simply reflects the effort that has

gone

into their exegesis, but

I

suspect that

disagreement about how to interpret Engels, and litde agreement about how to interpret Marx. Yet it is Marx we read, not Engels. Classic texts pose problems that seem almost insoluble. Does Machiavelli favor republicanism or despotism? Is Hobbes an atheist? Is Mill's liberalism ambiguity

is

a precondition for classic status. There

is

little

consistent with his utilitarianism? These texts invite debate

a merely passive reading.

Which

not a chore but a pleasure.

is

why each generation

in

and

resist

turn finds reading

them

and its

disputation,

Introduction

xi

On Method Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind and Quendn Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)

Leo

Strauss, Persecution

and

the Art of Writing

(eds.), Philosophy in History

[1952] (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1988)

James Tully

ed..

Meaning and

Context:

Quentin Skinner and His

Critics

(Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1988)

On Canons John

Guillory, 'Canon', in

Frank Letricchia and Thomas McLaughlin

(eds.), Critical

Terms for Literary Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 233-49

Surveys There

is

no good one-volume, test of time and

have stood the

modern day

single-author survey of our subject. Three works which give

an account of

political theory

from Plato

to the

are

Alasdair Maclntyre,

A

Short History of Ethics

Susan Moller Okin, Women

(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967)

in Western Political

Thought (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1979)

Sheldon

S.

Wolin,

Politics

and

Vision: Continuity

and Innovation

in Western Political

Thought

(Boston: Litde, Brown, 1960)

A useful collection of essays, again covering ancient as well as modern political John Dunn 1992)

(ed.). Democracy:

theory,

is

The Unfinished Journey (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1

Machiavelli and the Renaissance political thought begins in the winter of 1513/14, when Niccolo Machiavelli unemployed, broke, and fresh out of prison sat down to write The Prince on lonely

Modern

—

evenings in his rural exile outside Florence. His letter to Francesco \'ettori of 10

December

1513 describes the circumstances under which /Ae PnVir^ was written, but if we are to grasp why this little book marks a new epoch in the history of ideas, we need to place it in context.

The Renaissance

begins, for our purposes, with Francesco Petrarch's discover)' in 1345

of a copy of Cicero's letters to Atticus, which had lain moldering and unread for centuries. First,

Cicero's letters presented a challenge: Could anyone nowwTite Latin as Cicero

written

it?

Petrarch set out to learn

how to write

had

Latin, not as a living language, transformed

by centuries of Christianity and feudalism, but as a language which had to be rediscovered

was proud of his achievement, proud enough to he were a contemporary>Second, Cicero's letters provoked thought about time and change. Not only language but also institutions, clothes, currency, weights and measures everything had changed since Cicero's time. Accurate knowledge of the lost past involved a new sense of change, adaptation, and anachronism, a new historical consciousness. And yet this historical consciousness was directed at restoring the past to life, at learning to think like a Roman, not at demonstrating that it was impossible to step back into the past, that change was irreversible? Third, Cicero's letters invited a questioning of Christian values. Petrarch himself was a devout Christian who read Augustine with as much enthusiasm as he read Cicero, but to rediscover Cicero's world was to learn to think in terms of a set of moral values quite different from those of Christianity, a set of values which stressed pride and courage rather than humilit)' and guilt, citizenship rather than salvation. And in Cicero too one could find a whole series of alternatives to the Aristotelian Christian philosophy scholasticism which was taught in authentic classical sources. Petrarch

write letters to Cicero himself, as

if

—

—

—

in the universities of Petrarch's day: Platonism, scepticism,

on new

life.

Above

all,

Cicero was a republican politician.

Epicureanism, stoicism took

He

wTote his

letters

from

his

country retreat because Caesar had driven him out of politics. To learn to think like Cicero was to learn to prefer republics to monarchies, political activity to leisure and contemplation.

was

not religious faith, imdertaken by philosophical la)people, not pious monks and nuns. At every point Cicero offered an alternative to both the secular and the religious institutions and values of the Middle Ages (even though they themselves had been suffused with Roman influences). By the time Machiavelli was born, in 1469, the discoveries of Petrarch and his successors had led to the construction of an entirely new educational program, known as humanism. WTiere the universities stressed the study of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology, the humanists (usually outside the universities) concentrated on grammar, rhetoric, historv', poetry, and moral philosophy, studied primarily in Latin, but also, for more advanced students, in Greek. Their claim was simple: Such studies prepared laymen for a useful life as civil servants, lawyers, ad\isers to princes. Men who lacked this education to think of

It

to learn to seek fulfillment in political action,

contemplation as an

activity'

2

Machiavelli

'

could have no claim to participate in public

affairs.

This

and

new education

the Renaisuince

also introduced

students to the characteristic tensions in humanist thinking: between pagan past and Christian present, republic and monarchy, official business and private leisure. Soon there were innumerable different types of humanist. Some, like Machiavelli's contemporary Etienne Dolet (d. 1546), were such dedicated followers of Cicero that they rejected

turned from Cicero to and constructed a philosophy compatible both with Christianity and with courtly yet others, like Desiderius Erasmus (probably born in the same year as Machiavelli),

Christianity; others, like the Florentine Marsilio Ficino (b. 1433),

Plato life;

sought to use humanist techniques to rediscover the authentic message of the Christian Gospels, concealed by centuries of philosophical disputation and anachronistic misinterpretation.

Although

his family

was poor, Machiavelli received a

humanist education, on

first-rate

the strength of which he was catapulted from obscurity into a senior position in the

Florentine

civil

service in 1498, at the age of forty-four.

Machiavelli's Italy

may indeed be

city-states (Florence,

As such,

politics

was

his profession.

described as the birthplace of professional

Milan, Naples,

Rome, Venice) had been involved

politics. Five

in a

continuous

dominance for more than a century. In order to be constantly prepared for any eventuality they had invented the institution of the resident ambassador, men sent to observe and analyze every action of a potential friend or enemy. Such men learned a hard-headed realism that went with such a job: As one of them wrote in 1490, "The first duty of an ambassador is exactly the same as that of any other servant of a government, that is, to do, say, advise, and think whatever may best serve the preservation and aggranstruggle for

dizement of

his

own

state." After

1494 their task was immeasurably complicated. In that Italy. His troops overwhelmed all resistance, and for

year Charles VIII of France invaded the rest of Machiavelli's less

life

the once-closed world of Italian city-state politics lay a defense-

prey to the invading forces from France, Spain, and Germany. Machiavelli's response to

Italian military inadequacy was to advocate that mercenaries (for whom he had unbounded contempt) be replaced by a conscript militia, but the troops he had trained to defend Florence were ignominiously defeated by the Spanish at the battle of Prato in 1512. Machiavelli melded humanism and professional politics in a quite new way. By immers-

it)

hoped to learn why the Romans had been more successful power politics than anyone before or since. In insisting that 'politics' (as we now call must be the study of what worked in practice, Machiavelli was advocating the study

of

'statecraft' {larte dello stato),

ing himself in ancient history, he at

political

not

'polities', as it

philosophy had concerned

best state be constructed?

How

itself

was understood

at the time. Since Plato,

with quite different questions.

should a just

man

act?

How

How

should the

should a good ruler be

Politics was concerned with the definition of the good life (life in a city-state) and was inseparable from moral philosophy. Machiavelli had no interest in the study of

educated?

politics as that subject

dealt with success

Of course,

and

was traditionally understood; he read historians instead, since they failure, victory

and

defeat.

the line cannot be drawn quite so sharply. Historians were interested in glory

disgrace, as well as success and failure; philosophers had insisted that the good man could achieve practical success. Machiavelli had no doubt that qualities such as courage and piety might be rewarded with success. But for him, success, not morality, was what counted. The important thing about the Romans was that they had defeated their enemies, not that

and

good life. Indeed, he believed that, on closer inspection, civil conflict (to take an example of something that had always been regarded as an unmitigated evil) could be seen to have been the precondition for their aggressive foreign policy. Disunity, previously universally condemned, must now be praised. Machiavelli used political they had lived the

Machiavelli

and

3

the Renaissance

professionalism and historical reading to put in question the political philosophy that

had been most influential among the humanists, that of Cicero himself. Where Cicero had insisted that honesty was always the best policy, Machiavelli advocated the creative use of deception; where Ciceronians had been preoccupied with the power of words, Machiavelli constantly stressed that violence was the most effective of political tools. Machiavelli's political theory is born out of humanism and statecraft. These alone make him a 'modern' thinker: secular, scientific, utilitarian. At first sight, one would expect there to be more to it than that. Gutenburg invented printing with movable type around 1450; Columbus, helped by the compass, discovered the New World in 1492; the first batde to be won by artillery was the Battle of Ravenna in 1512. But none of these harbingers of modernity seemed particularly important to Machiavelli. What impressed him was how the problems of politics had remained unchanged for the last two thousand years. Despite the fact that nothing had changed, Machiavelli claimed to be doing something completely new, for he set out to analyze what made for success in politics, so that one could do self-consciously what Roman politicians had done accidentally and instinctively. In the same way, humanists had had to formulate and master the rules of classical Latin, while of course Cicero had learned them without thought in the process of learning to speak.

new kind of knowledge.

Machiavelli offered a

Second,

it is

generally assumed that, in order to understand Machiavelli's Prince,

we

must learn to read it in the context of Machiavelli's own experience of Florentine politics. Between 1494 and 1512, when Machiavelli was acquiring his poHtical training, Florentine political life was exceptionally egalitarian and participatory. In 1512 defeat by Spain brought with it the restoration of the Medici family, who thereafter wielded effective power in Florence, even though the institutions of the republic survived in name and there was a continuing pretense of freedom. On 12 February 1513 Machiavelli was arrested and tortured, suspected of plotting against the new regime, to restore the republic. Released a month later, he soon began work on The Prince, which (it is argued) must be read as the work of a republican politician trying to come to terms with a post-^ ^x republican age. This interpretation

was committed

is

There is no evidence that Machiavelli and it is only later in life that he republics are superior to monarchies because

plausible but unconvincing.

to republican institutions before 1512,

which he argues that changing circumstances. Nor was Machiavelli preoccupied, in the winter of 1513/14, with Florentine politics. The fate of Florence had already been decided. What hung in the balance was his own fate. He desperately needed employment, but he had no prospect of being invited back into the inner circles of power in Florence. However, the same Medici family which now ruled Florence had taken charge in Rome in March 1513, with the election of Giovanni de' Medici as Pope Leo X. Machiavelli's friend Francesco. Vettori was the Florentine ambassador to Rome, well-placed to seek employment for him. And there was every expectation that one of the pope's^ ne^ews would seek to imitate Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI, who, a few years earlier, had tried to carve out an independent kingdom in Italy. In the winter of 1513/14 Machiavelli's eyes were on Rome, not Florence; he was preoccupied with the construction of new states, not with the reform of old ones. It is at this moment of deracination, defeated at home but not without hope of future success abroad, that he wrote TA^ Prince, His hope was to persuade the Medici to employ him in their future conquests. In this he failed, and he remained without significant employment until his death in 1527. Machiavelli's situation was very different in 1517, when he wrote the bulk of the Discourses, from what it had been in 1513, when he still hoped that his professional skills

wrote the

Discourses, in

they find

it

easier to adapt to

Machiavelli

and

the Renaissance

might win him employment. By then Machiavelli's friends included discontented republicans, such as Zanobi Buondelmonti and Cosimo Rucellai, who met to discuss politics in the gardens of the Rucellai family. In the Discourses Machiavelli is still preoccupied with power and success, but he is now also fascinated by a series of problems which must have obsessed men who longed to restore political freedom to their city. How does one establish a free city? Why do free cities succumb to tyranny? What are the social and political preconditions for freedom? How can one restore freedom once it has been lost? The heroes of the Discourses are men like Lycurgus and Romulus, who concentrate power in their own hands, but only in order to establish the preconditions for freedom. The longest chapter is on political assassinations: Buondelmonti was to be condemned to exile after

murder Cardinal Giulio de' Medici in 1522. If The Prince is a nephew seeking to establish an hereditary monarchy, the Discourses men who live under tyranny but long for freedom.

the failure of a plot to

handbook is

for a papal

a primer for

So different are Machiavelli's two most famous works that, over the next three centuries, both the most cynical politicians and their most idealistic opponents could turn to him

on the Index in 1559. Apparently condemned, it was read everywhere, and the word 'Machiavellist' was soon coined to describe immoral politicians (1581 in France; 1589 in England). 'Reason of state,' as the new, practical science of politics came to be called, dominated political theorizing for the next century. But when the first modern republic was established, in England in 1649, it was to Machiavelli's Discourses that James Harrington turned, and in his Oceana he offered a new account of the social preconditions for liberty (one much indebted to Discourses 1.55) and a new account of the political institutions most likely to preserve freedom (one implicitly critical of Discourses 1.4). Algernon Sidney, executed in for inspiration. Published in 1532, ThePrincew2is placed

universally

1683 for plotting against Charles II, was also a faithful reader of Machiavelli's Discourses, his own posthumously published Discourses were to be the text which had the most

and

influence on America's revolutionaries a century

later.

Further Reading The

book on the Renaissance

is Jacob Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance which there are many editions. Two writers have shaped recent discussions: Paul Oskar Kristeller (see for example Renaissance Thought and Its Sources [New York: Columbia University Press, 1979]) and Hans Baron {The Crisis of the Early Italian

classic

in Italy (1860), of

Renaissance [rev. ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

recent book

is

Anthony Grafton and

Lisa Jardine, From

Humanism

An

to the

important,

more

Humanities (Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986).

The

best introduction to Renaissance political theory

tions of

Modem

More recent

is

Maurizio Viroli,

is

Quentin Skinner, The Founda-

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). From Politics to Reason of State (Cambridge: Cambridge

Political Thought, vol.

1

University Press, 1992).

Again, the best introduction to Machiavelli is Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). There are two useful collections of articles: G. Bock, Q. Skinner, and M. Viroli (eds.), Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) and A. R. Ascoli and V. Kahn (eds.), Machiavelli and the Discourse of Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). Indispensable is Hans Baron, "Machiavelli the Republican Citizen and Author of The Prince," in his In Search of Florentine Civic

Humanism

(2 vols., Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1988), 2:101-51.

Machiavelli

An tion

and

the

Renaissance

5

important book which begins with Machiavelli and ends with the American RevoluJ.G.A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

is

1975). For a discussion of the issues raised by Pocock, see the introduction to D. (ed.), Republicanism, Liberty

1994).

and Commercial

Society

Wootton

(Stanford: Stanford University Press,

Machiavelli

Letter to Francesco Vettori To His Excellency the Florentine Ambassador to his Holiness the Pope, and my benefactor, Francesco Vettori, in Rome.

Your Excellency. "Favors from on high are always timely, never late." I say this because I had begun to think I had, if not lost, then mislaid your goodwill, for you had allowed so long to go by without writing to me, and I was in some uncertainty as to what the reason could be. All the explanations I could think of seemed to me worthless, except for the possibility that occurred to me, that you might have stopped writing to me because someone had written to tell you I was not taking proper care of your letters to me; but I knew that I had not been responsible for their being shown to anyone else, with the exception of Filippo and Paolo. Anyway, I have now received your most recent letter of the 23rd of last month. I was delighted to learn you are fulfilling your official responsibilities without fussing and flapping. I encourage you to carry on like this, for anyone who sacrifices his own convenience in order to make others happy is bound to inconvenience himself, but can't be sure of receiving any thanks for it. And since fortune wants to control everything, she evidently wants to be left a free hand; meanwhile we should keep our own counsel and not get in her way, and wait until she allows human beings to have a say in the course of events. That will be the time for you to work harder, and keep a closer eye on events, and for me to leave my country house and say: "Here I am!" Since I want to repay your kind gesture, I have no alternative but to describe to you in this letter of mine how I live my life. If you decide you'd like to swap my life for yours, I'll be happy to make a deal. I am still in my country house: Since my recent difficulties began I have not been, adding them all together, more than twenty days in Florence. Until recently I have been setting bird snares with my own hands. I've been getting up before dawn, making the bird-lime, and setting out with a bundle of cages on my back, so I look like Geta when he comes back from the harbor laden down with Amphitryo's books. I always caught at least

am the

two thrushes, but never more than

sorry to say life

I

I

have had to give up

six.

This

is

how

I

spent September; since then

my rather nasty and peculiar hobby,

so

I

will

I

describe

lead now.

in the morning at daybreak and go to a wood of mine where I am having some timber felled. I stay there two hours to check on the work done during the preceding day and to chat to the woodcutters, who are always involved in some conflict, either I

get

up

among themselves or with the neighbors. I could tell you a thousand fine stories about my dealings over this wood, both with Frosino da Panzano and with others who wanted some of the

timber. Frosino in particular

had them supply some cords without mentioning

[Reprinted from Selected Political Writings, translated by David Wootton (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), by permission of the publisher.]

7

Letter to Francesco Vettori

to me, and when I asked for pa\Tnent he wanted to knock off ten Hre he said I had owed him for four years, ever since he beat me at cards at Antonio Guicciardini's. I began to cut up rough; I threatened to charge with theft the wagon driver who had fetched the wood. However, Giovanni Machiavelh inter\ened, and got us to settle our differences. Batista Guicciardini, FiHppo Ginori, Tommaso del Bene, and a number of other citizens each bought a cord from me when the cold winds were blowing. I made promises to all of them, and supplied one to Tommaso. But in Florence it turned oiu to be only half a cord, because there were he, his wife, his servants, and his sons to stack it: They looked like Gabbtirra on a Thursday when, assisted by his workmen, he slaughters an ox. Then, realizing I wasn't the one who was getting a good deal, I told the others I had run out it

of wood. They've as

bad

as

all

complained

bitterly

about

it;

especially Battista,

who

thinks this

is

an)thing else that has happened as a result of the battle of Prato.

When I leave the wood I go to a spring, and from there to check my bird-nets. carrvbook with me: Dante, or Petrarch, or one of the minor poets, perhaps Tibullus, 0\id, or someone like that. I read about their infatuations and their love affairs, reminisce about my own, and enjoy my reveries for a while. Then I set out on the road to the inn. I chat to those who pass by, asking them for news about the places they come from. I pick up bits and pieces of information, and study the differing tastes and various preoccupations of mankind. It's lunchtime before I know it. I sit down with my family to eat such food as I can grow on my wretched farm or pay for with the income from my tiny inheritance. Once I have eaten I go back to the inn. The landlord will be there, and, usually, the butcher, the miller, and a couple of kiln owners. With them I muck about all day, playing card games. We get into endless arguments and are constantly calling each other names. Usually we only wager a quarter, and yet you could hear us shouting if you were in San Casciano. So, in the company of these bumpkins, I keep my brain from turning moldy, and put up with the hostility fate has shown me. I am happy for fate to see to what depths I have sunk, for I want to know if she will be ashamed of herself for what she has done. WTien evening comes, I go back home, and go to my studv. On the threshold I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing, and was born to savor. I am not ashamed to talk to them, and to ask them to explain their actions. And they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go by withoiu my feeling any anxiet}'. I forget ever}- worr\. I am no longer afraid of poverty, or frightened of death. I I

a

live entirely

through them.

.And because Dante says there

have learned,

my

I

have

made

is

no point

in studying unless

notes of what seem to

me

you remember what you

the most important things

I

have

book On princedoms in which I go as deeply as I can into the questions relevant to my subject. I discuss what a principalit}' is, how many t\pes of principality there are, how one acqtiires them, how one holds onto them, why one loses them. .\nd if any of my litde productions have ever pleased you, then this one ought not to displease you; and a ruler, especially a new ruler, ought to learned in

dialogue with the dead, and written a

be delighted by

little

I have addressed it to His Highness Giuliano. Filippo he can give you a preliminary' report, both on the text, and on the discussions I have had with him: though I am still adding to the text and polishing it. You may well wish, Your Excellency, that I should give up this life, and come and enjoy yours with you. I will do so if I can; what holds me back at the moment is some business that won't take me more than six weeks to finish. Though I am a bit concerned the it.

Consequently,

Casavecchia has seen

it;

'

MACHIAVELLI

8

and I will be obliged, if I come, to visit them and socialize with I might intend my return journey to end at my own house, but find myself instead dismounting at the prison gates. For although this government is well established and solidly based, still it is new, and consequently suspicious, nor is there a shortage of clever fellows who, in order to get a reputation like Pagolo Bertini's, would put me in prison, and leave me to worry about how to get out. I beg you to persuade me this fear is irrational, and then I will make every effort to come and visit you before six weeks are up. I have discussed my little book with Filippo, asking him whether it was a good idea to present it or not; and if I ought to present it, then whether I should deliver it in person, or whether I should send it through you. My concern is that if I do not deliver it in person Giuliano may not read it; even worse, that chap Ardinghelli may claim the credit Soderini family

them.

for

is

there,

My concern

my latest

is

that

effort. In favor

of presenting

poor

I

lose face. In

any case,

I

would

is at the door, for my much longer without becoming so lordships, the Medici, to start putting me

the fact that the wolf

it is

funds are running down, and I cannot continue like their

like this

me some menial task, for

once I was in their employment, As for my book, if they were to read it, they would see the fifteen years I have spent studying statecraft have not been wasted: I haven't been asleep at my desk or playing cards. Anyone should be keen to employ someone who has had plenty of experience and has learned from the mistakes he made at his previous employers' expense. As for my integrity, nobody should question it: For I have always kept my word, and I am not going to start breaking it now. Someone who has been honest and true for forty-three years, as I have been, isn't going to be able to change character. And that I am honest and true is evident from my poverty. So: I would like you to write to me again and let me have your opinion on this matter. I give you my regards. Best wishes. to use,

I

even

if

they only assign

did not win their favor,

I

would have only myself

if,

to blame.

Niccolo Machiavegli in Florence 10

December

1513.

Machiavelli

The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli to His Magnificence Lorenzo de' Medici

Those who wish

to acquire favor with a ruler

their possessions that are

him

most valuable

most often approach him with those among

in their eyes, or that they are

confident

will give

pleasure. So rulers are often given horses, armor, cloth of gold, precious stones,

and

ornaments that are thought worthy of their social eminence. Since I want to offer myself to your Magnificence, along with something that will symbolize my desire to give you obedient service, I have found nothing among my possessions I value more, or would put a higher price upon, than an understanding of the deeds of great men, acquired through a lengthy experience of contemporary politics and through an uninterrupted study of the classics. Since I have long thought about and studied the question of what makes for greatness, and have now summarized my conclusions on the subject in a little book, it is this I send your Magnificence. And although I recognize this book is unworthy to be given to Yourself, yet I trust that out of kindness you will accept it, taking account of the fact there is no greater gift I can present to you than the opportunity to understand, after a few hours of reading, everything I have learned over the course of so many years, and have undergone so many discomforts and dangers to discover. I have not ornamented this book with rhetorical turns of phrase, or stuffed it with pretentious and magnificent words, or made use of allurements and similar

embellishments that are irrelevant to my purpose, as many authors do. For my intention has been that my book should be without pretensions, and should rely entirely on the variety of the examples and the importance of the subject to win approval. I

hope

it

will

not be thought presumptuous for someone of humble and lowly status

and to make recommendations regarding policy. up their easels down in the valley in order to portray the nature of the mountains and the peaks, and climb up into the moimtains in to dare to discuss the behavior of rulers

Just as those

who

order to draw the

paint landscapes set

valleys, similarly in

order to properly understand the behavior of the

lower classes one needs to be a ruler, and in order to properly understand the behavior

of rulers one needs to be a I

member

of the lower

classes.

therefore beg your Magnificence to accept this

little gift

in the spirit in

which

it is

and think over what it contains, you will recognize it is an expression of my dearest wish, which is that you achieve the greatness your good fortune and your other fine qualities seem to hold out to you. And if your Magnificence, high up at the summit as you are, should occasionally glance down into these deep valleys, you will see I have to put up with the unrelenting malevolence of undeserved ill fortune. sent. If

you read

it

carefully

[Reprinted from Selected Political Writings, translated by David Wootton (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), by permission of the publisher.]

•

10

Chapter One:

MACHIAVELLI

How many And how

types of principality are there? are they acquired?

forms of government that have had and continue to have authority over men, have been and are either republics or principalities. And principalities are either hereditary, when their rulers' ancestors have long been their rulers, or they are new. And

All states, all

if

they are new, they are either entirely new, as was Milan for Francesco Sforza, or they

added on to the hereditary state of the ruler who acquires them, as the kingdom of Naples has been added on to the kingdom of Spain. Those dominions that are acquired by a ruler are either used to living under the rule_pf one man, or accustomed to being free; and they are either acquired with soldiers belonging to others, or with are like limbs

one's own; either through fortune or through strength

Chapter Two:

On

[virtu].

hereditary principalities.

behind me the discussion of republics, for I have discussed them at length will concern myself only with principalities. The different types of principality I have mentioned will be the threads from which I will weave my account. I will debate how these different types of principality should be governed and defended. I maintain, then, it is much easier to hold on to hereditary states, which are accustomed to being governed by the family that now rules them, than it is to hold on to new acquisitions. All one has to do is preserve the structures established by one's forebears, and play for time if things go badly. For, indeed, an hereditary ruler, if he is of no more than normal resourcefulness, will never lose his state unless some extraordinary and overwhelming force appears that can take it away from him; and even then, the occupier has only to have a minor setback, and the original ruler will get back to power. Let us take a contemporary Italian example: The Duke of Ferrara was able to resist the assaults of the Venetians in '84, and of Pope Julius in 1510, only because his family was long established as rulers of that state. For a ruler who inherits power has few reasons and less cause to give offense; as a consequence he is more popular; and, as long as he does not have exceptional vices that make him hateful, it is to be expected he will naturally have the goodwill of his people. Because the state has belonged to his family from one generation to another, memories of how they came to power, and motives to overthrow them, have worn away. For every change in government creates grievances that those who wish to bring about further change can exploit. I

will leave

elsewhere.

I

Chapter Three: New

principalities are the

On mixed

principalities.

ones that present problems.

And

first

of

all, if

the whole of

not new, but rather a new part has been added on to the old, creating a whole one may term "mixed," instability derives first of all from a natural difficulty that is to be found in all new principalities. The problem is that people willingly change their the principality

is

change will be for the better; and this belief leads them to take up arms against him. But they are mistaken, and they soon find out in practice they have only made things worse. The reason for this, too, is natural and typical: You always have to give offense to those over whom you acquire power when you become a new ruler, ruler, believing the

11

The Prince

both by imposing troops upon them, and by countless other injuries that follow as necessary consequences of the acquisition of power. Thus, you make enemies of all those to whom you have given offense in acquiring power, and in addition you cannot keep the goodwill of those who have put you in power, for you cannot satisf)' their aspirations as they thought you would. At the same time you cannot use heavy-handed methods against them, for you are obliged to them. Even if you have an overwhelmingly powerful army, you will have needed the support of the locals to take control of the province. This is why Louis XII of France lost Milan as quickly as he gained it. All that was needed to take it from him the first time were Ludovico's own troops. For those who had opened the gates to him, finding themselves mistaken in their expectations and disappointed in their hopes

new sovereign. Of course it is true that, after a ruler has regained power in rebel territories, he is much more likely to hang on to it. For the rebellion gives him an excuse, and he is able of future benefit, could not put up with the burdensome rule of a

measures to secure his position, punishing delinquents, checking up on and taking precautions where needed. So, if the first time the King of France t*^ ^J^Iost Milan all that was needed to throw him out was Duke Ludovico growling on his t>orders, to throw him out a second time it took the whole world united against him, and the destruction or expulsion from Italy of his armies. We have seen, why this was so. Nevertheless, he lost Milan both times. We have discussed why he was almost bound to lose it the first time; now we must discuss why he managed to lose it the second. WTiat remedies should he have adopted? What can someone in the King of France's position do to hold on to an acquisition more effectively than he did? Let me start by saying these territories that are newly added on to a state that is already securely in the possession of a ruler are either in the same geographical region as his existing possessions and speak the same language, or they are not. WTien they are, it is quite straightforward to hold on to them, especially if they are not used to governing themselves. In order to get a secure hold on them one need merely eliminate the sur\i\ing members of the family of their previous rulers. In other respects one should keep things as they were, respecting established traditions. If the old territories and the new have to take firmer

suspects,

I