Classic Political Philosophy for the Modern Man

by Andrew Lynn

Now equality is of two kinds, numerical and proportional: by the first I mean sameness or equality in number or size; by the second, equality of ratios. For example, the excess of three over two is numerically equal to the excess of two over one; whereas four exceeds two in the same ratio in which two exceeds one, for two is the same part of four that one is of two, namely, the half. As I was saying before, men agree that justice in the abstract is proportion, but they differ in that some think that if they are equal in any respect they are equal absolutely, others that if they are unequal in any respect they should be unequal in all. Hence there are two principal forms of government, democracy and oligarchy; for good birth and virtue are rare, but wealth and numbers are more common. In what city shall we find a hundred persons of good birth and of virtue? whereas the rich everywhere abound. That a state should be ordered, simply and wholly, according to either kind of equality, is not a good thing; the proof is the fact that such forms of government never last. They are originally based on a mistake, and, as they begin badly, cannot fall to end badly. The inference is that both kinds of equality should be employed: numerical in some cases, and proportionate in others.

  Still democracy appears to be safer and less liable to revolution than oligarchy. For in oligarchies there is the double danger of the oligarchs falling out among themselves and also with the people; but in democracies there is only the danger of a quarrel with the oligarchs. No dissension worth mentioning arises among the people themselves. And we may further remark that a government which is composed of the middle class more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy, and is the safest of the imperfect forms of government.

  Book V, Part XI

  [How Tyrannies Are Preserved]

  …As to (2) tyrannies, they are preserved in two most opposite ways. One of them is the old traditional method in which most tyrants administer their government. Of such arts Periander of Corinth is said to have been the great master, and many similar devices may be gathered from the Persians in the administration of their government. There are firstly the prescriptions mentioned some distance back for the preservation of a tyranny, in so far as this is possible: viz., that the tyrant should lop off those who are too high; he must put to death men of spirit; he must not allow common meals, clubs, education, and the like; he must be upon his guard against anything which is likely to inspire either courage or confidence among his subjects; he must prohibit literary assemblies or other meetings for discussion, and he must take every means to prevent people from knowing one another (for acquaintance begets mutual confidence). Further, he must compel all persons staying in the city to appear in public and live at his gates; then he will know what they are doing: if they are always kept under, they will learn to be humble. In short, he should practice these and the like Persian and barbaric arts, which all have the same object. A tyrant should also endeavour to know what each of his subjects says or does, and should employ spies, like the ‘female detectives’ at Syracuse, and the eavesdroppers whom Hiero was in the habit of sending to any place of resort or meeting; for the fear of informers prevents people from speaking their minds, and if they do, they are more easily found out. Another art of the tyrant is to sow quarrels among the citizens; friends should be embroiled with friends, the people with the notables, and the rich with one another. Also he should impoverish his subjects; he thus provides against the maintenance of a guard by the citizen, and the people, having to keep hard at work, are prevented from conspiring. The Pyramids of Egypt afford an example of this policy; also the offerings of the family of Cypselus, and the building of the temple of Olympian Zeus by the Peisistratidae, and the great Polycratean monuments at Samos; all these works were alike intended to occupy the people and keep them poor. Another practice of tyrants is to multiply taxes, after the manner of Dionysius at Syracuse, who contrived that within five years his subjects should bring into the treasury their whole property. The tyrant is also fond of making war in order that his subjects may have something to do and be always in want of a leader. And whereas the power of a king is preserved by his friends, the characteristic of a tyrant is to distrust his friends, because he knows that all men want to overthrow him, and they above all have the power.

  Again, the evil practices of the last and worst form of democracy are all found in tyrannies. Such are the power given to women in their families in the hope that they will inform against their husbands, and the license which is allowed to slaves in order that they may betray their masters; for slaves and women do not conspire against tyrants; and they are of course friendly to tyrannies and also to democracies, since under them they have a good time. For the people too would fain be a monarch, and therefore by them, as well as by the tyrant, the flatterer is held in honour; in democracies he is the demagogue; and the tyrant also has those who associate with him in a humble spirit, which is a work of flattery.

  Hence tyrants are always fond of bad men, because they love to be flattered, but no man who has the spirit of a freeman in him will lower himself by flattery; good men love others, or at any rate do not flatter them. Moreover, the bad are useful for bad purposes; ‘nail knocks out nail’, as the proverb says. It is characteristic of a tyrant to dislike everyone who has dignity or independence; he wants to be alone in his glory, but anyone who claims a like dignity or asserts his independence encroaches upon his prerogative, and is hated by him as an enemy to his power. Another mark of a tyrant is that he likes foreigners better than citizens, and lives with them and invites them to his table; for the one are enemies, but the others enter into no rivalry with him.

  Such are the notes of the tyrant and the arts by which he preserves his power; there is no wickedness too great for him. All that we have said may be summed up under three heads, which answer to the three aims of the tyrant. These are, (1) the humiliation of his subjects; he knows that a mean-spirited man will not conspire against anybody; (2) the creation of mistrust among them; for a tyrant is not overthrown until men begin to have confidence in one another; and this is the reason why tyrants are at war with the good; they are under the idea that their power is endangered by them, not only because they would not be ruled despotically but also because they are loyal to one another, and to other men, and do not inform against one another or against other men; (3) the tyrant desires that his subjects shall be incapable of action, for no one attempts what is impossible, and they will not attempt to overthrow a tyranny if they are powerless. Under these three heads the whole policy of a tyrant may be summed up, and to one or other of them all his ideas may be referred: (1) he sows distrust among his subjects; (2) he takes away their power; (3) he humbles them. …

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  Groups of people within a tribe who have a common ancestor. ↵

  A body of five magistrates annually elected by the people of Sparta. ↵

  One of the chief magistrates of ancient Athens. ↵

  3

  Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince & Discourses

  Introduction

  Niccolò Machiavelli, the pre-eminent political thinker of the Italian Renaissance, is often considered to be a master of the dark arts of statecraft. His most infamous work, The Prince, is a guidebook on how princes may obtain and hold onto power; his lesser-read but no less thought-provoking Discourses, nominally a commentary on the work of Roman historian Livy, is an inquiry into the establishment of a republic, the manner in which such republic may be best organized, and the type of political leadership most conducive to its well-being. Underlying the two works is, in fact, a common approach based upon the extraction of general political principles and practical political wisdom from ancient and modern history. What makes Machiavelli’s work uniquely valuable to the modern man is his unapologetic real-talk and his uncompromising real-world focus: if you want to obtain and consolidate power, says Machiavelli, I will show you how it is done.

  Machiavelli (1469-1527) was born into a prominent and wealthy Florentine family, although his father, a lawyer, was one of its poorest members. In
his twenties, Machiavelli observed in Florence the remarkable rise to prominence of Savonarola, a Dominican friar who dominated the city-state as de facto ruler on a reforming mission against tyrannical rulers and a corrupt clergy, until he was hanged as a heretic and his body burned in the public square. Shortly thereafter Machiavelli obtained a post in the government of Florentine Republic as head of the second chancery, putting him in charge of the Republic’s foreign affairs in subject territories. He undertook diplomatic and military missions to the court of Louis XII in France, to Cesare Borgia in the Romagna, to Pope Julius II in Rome, and to the court of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. Upon the restoration of the Medici in Florence in 1512, Machiavelli—who was suspected of conspiring against them—was imprisoned and tortured, before being sent into exile in 1513 to his farm at Percussina just south of Florence. It was here in enforced retirement that Machiavelli wrote his major works, The Prince and Discourses, neither of which were published until after his death in 1527, the same year in which the armies of Charles V sacked Rome.

  Machiavelli brought a strongly pragmatic element into Western political philosophy: his works bridge the gap between how rulers in fact conducted their political affairs, as a matter of practical necessity, and what it was possible for thinkers, like Machiavelli, to say about this. He is open about his approach in The Prince: we could talk about an imaginary world in which princes are possessed of all the virtues and free of all vices, he says, but this would be pointless; far better to face up to the fact that no prince is wholly virtuous and that no wholly virtuous prince would be likely to hold onto power for long. A prince must, in fact, ‘know how to do wrong’. Of course, it is preferable to seem virtuous, and indeed a prince should avoid by all means the vices that cause harm to his state; he should even (as far as possible) avoid those vices that are inconsequential to it. But there are certain vices ‘without which the state can only be saved with difficulty’—certain vices that positively assist in ruling the state—and in respect of these the prince need feel no compunction or remorse.

  This is, lest the reader misunderstand, a philosophy every bit as applicable to the saint as it is to the sinner. It is true, of course, that Machiavelli has not ordinarily been viewed as being on the side of the angels: the Catholic Church went as far as to ban The Prince by putting it on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (the list of forbidden books), and even today ‘Machiavellian’ is routinely used as a synonym for ‘unscrupulous’. But this is unfair. In fact, Machiavelli communicated two insights of enduring value: first, that the art and craft of political action could be studied empirically from its historical exempla in order to extract principles and practices that were, in themselves, morally neutral, and capable of being applied equally in the cause of good or of evil; and second, that it is necessary for the good man to master this art in order to overcome the evil in the world that will otherwise deprive him of his power—and hence his capacity to do good—before destroying him completely.

  The ruler, then, must engender and release something of the animal within himself in order to survive: he must be as cunning as the fox and as ferocious as the lion. Cultivate appearances, counsels Machiavelli, since men are credible and easily fooled: show yourself to be merciful, faithful, humane, religious, and upright—but have a mind framed so that you may change to the opposite when necessary. Be open-handed when you need to buy your way into power or when you can spend money extracted from citizens of other nations; otherwise, liberality is best avoided, as it risks weighing down on the people through taxes, or arousing their contempt for your poverty once you are spent up. And, while it would be better to be loved as well as feared, if you have to choose one, choose the latter. Men, in general, are contemptible creatures, who will offer blood, property, life, and children in your support when you are successful, but when you need their help they will turn against you. Fear, on the other hand, has a more prolonged effect: it protects and preserves you by a dread of punishment that never fails.

  Powerful as The Prince certainly is, it is Machiavelli’s Discourses that establish him most securely in the firmament of great European political thinkers. It is in this work that Machiavelli presents an affirmative political ethos in support of national independence, security, and a well-ordered constitution.[1] In doing so he brings together what he perceives to be the best of the ancient past with a vision for the future: he is an enthusiastic advocate, for example, of a doctrine of constitutional checks and balances whereby princes, nobles, and commons keep each other reciprocally in check, as did the consuls, senate, and commons (represented by the tribunes) of the Roman Republic.

  The greatest gift, however, that Machiavelli can offer the modern man is his thoroughgoing consciousness that the state is a moral entity held together by the overall ethical level of the nation and the personal virtue of its citizens. Great nations, like great men, preserve their spirit and bearing through every change of fortune: it is this that ensures that they behave with dignity and graciousness in victory, and resolution in defeat, with the consequence that fortune has no dominion over them and their onward progress will be assured. A nation can be great irrespective of its economic prosperity, just as Rome had been great even while its citizens were still poor: the state is there to be served by its economic functions, and it is only insofar as those functions contribute to the well-being and improvement of its inhabitants as a whole that they have significance. Machiavelli would have rejected, then, and without a moment’s hesitation, the particular insanity of the modern age of viewing the state as a vehicle whose main role and justification is the accumulation of paper wealth and the expansion of production or trade irrespective of the overall cultural and ethical level and general well-being of its inhabitants. Follow the Romans, he suggests, in ensuring that the prospects of advancement are open to all, and that merit is preferred wherever it is found, since this renders wealth of less significance, at the same time as rendering honour all the more the proper object of aspiration.

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  The Prince

  Chapter 15

  Concerning Things for Which Men, and Especially Princes, Are Praised or Blamed

  It remains now to see what ought to be the rules of conduct for a prince towards subject and friends. And as I know that many have written on this point, I expect I shall be considered presumptuous in mentioning it again, especially as in discussing it I shall depart from the methods of other people. But, it being my intention to write a thing which shall be useful to him who apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to follow up the real truth of the matter than the imagination of it; for many have pictured republics and principalities which in fact have never been known or seen, because how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live, that he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation; for a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil.

  Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity. Therefore, putting on one side imaginary things concerning a prince, and discussing those which are real, I say that all men when they are spoken of, and chiefly princes for being more highly placed, are remarkable for some of those qualities which bring them either blame or praise; and thus it is that one is reputed liberal, another miserly, using a Tuscan term (because an avaricious person in our language is still he who desires to possess by robbery, whilst we call one miserly who deprives himself too much of the use of his own); one is reputed generous, one rapacious; one cruel, one compassionate; one faithless, another faithful; one effeminate and cowardly, another bold and brave; one affable, another haughty; one lascivious, another chaste; one sincere, another cunning; one hard, another easy; one grave, another frivolous; one religious, another unbelieving, and the like. And I know that everyone will confess that it would be most praiseworthy in a prince to exhibit all the above
qualities that are considered good; but because they can neither be entirely possessed nor observed, for human conditions do not permit it, it is necessary for him to be sufficiently prudent that he may know how to avoid the reproach of those vices which would lose him his state; and also to keep himself, if it be possible, from those which would not lose him it; but this not being possible, he may with less hesitation abandon himself to them. And again, he need not make himself uneasy at incurring a reproach for those vices without which the state can only be saved with difficulty, for if everything is considered carefully, it will be found that something which looks like virtue, if followed, would be his ruin; whilst something else, which looks like vice, yet followed brings him security and prosperity.

  Chapter 17

  Concerning Cruelty and Clemency, and Whether It Is Better to Be Loved Than Feared

  Coming now to the other qualities mentioned above, I say that every prince ought to desire to be considered clement and not cruel. Nevertheless, he ought to take care not to misuse this clemency. Cesare Borgia was considered cruel; notwithstanding, his cruelty reconciled the Romagna, unified it, and restored it to peace and loyalty. And if this be rightly considered, he will be seen to have been much more merciful than the Florentine people, who, to avoid a reputation for cruelty, permitted Pistoia to be destroyed. Therefore a prince, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal, ought not to mind the reproach of cruelty; because with a few examples he will be more merciful than those who, through too much mercy, allow disorders to arise, from which follow murders or robberies; for these are wont to injure the whole people, whilst those executions which originate with a prince offend the individual only.