We first saw Machiavelli’s portrait of The prince—now we can return & look more closely & more carefully at the text, the teaching, & the Teacher. I bring in the third item - the Teacher - to acknowledge a reasonable objection to my initial focus on the princely figure. Isn’t Machiavelli a sort of super-Prince, a teacher of princes? Is he (or his thought) exhausted in the princely figure he limns? And with respect to the Anton essay that prompted these reflections, can Machiavelli’s teaching on the strategy and tactics required to bring decadent authorities to heel and to reinvigorate authentic political life be reduced to the figure of the prince? The answer to these questions is no. But the follow-up question is, can they be severed? With these questions, we have a triangle of topics: The prince, the Prince (Machiavelli), & Machiavelli’s teaching, which includes both a new anthropology and stratagems to pursue the dual design limned above. In what follows, we will continue to track what Machiavelli says about the new figure he’s introducing into the world, but also what he reveals about himself as a teacher & a thinker. In Chapter One, he subtly presents himself as a subversive parodist. One could call this “spiritual warfare 101.”
Chapter One is an introduction to Machiavellian subtleties & reorientations which start with the title & go to the very last word. With Aristotle & St. Thomas in mind, you can make the requisite comparisons & contrasts. The title has two parts & is cast in Latin, while the body of the text jumps to vernacular Italian. The move from Latin to Italian is suggestive, as if the author is beginning with the language of the Church & of accredited learning, then abandoning it, or relocating to another locale & idiom. But to affirm this without further evidence is a stretch. Let’s return to the beginning & attend to the title, Machiavelli’s subversive parody of scholasticism.
Quot sint genera principatuum & quibus modis acquirantur. “How many kinds of principates there are & in what modes they are acquired.” Machiavelli begins in lingua Latina. But not just any old Latin. The opening four words are reminiscent of scholasticism. The implied promise to lay out how many kinds there are of something (in this case, principatūs) echoes scholastic thinking, which characteristically conducts itself in terms of genus-species thinking. The opening promise also echoes scholasticism’s theoretical attitude & aim, to know the essence of things by classifying them. Implicit in this attitude is the conviction that the world is stable & that the mind can come to grips with its structures. The scholastics maintain that the best way to think about something is to define it, which means to locate its genus, then to seek what specifies or defines it, its “specific difference.”
The next four words however go in another direction, they turn toward practice & envisage (or elicit) a practical attitude: “& in which modes are they acquired.” Actually, the second half doesn’t simply point in a different direction. It reflects back on the first half & alters it dramatically. With the introduction of the second half, i.e., ways of acquiring, the items of the first half, the kinds of principates, become erstwhile products & contemporary targets of acquisition. They’re no longer just standing there to be intellectually considered & comprehended, they’re now past & present objects of schemes and ambitions. The world–at least the political world–now takes on a much different cast. The clear contrast between theory & practice is scrambled with the introduction of the conjunction “&” followed by the verb “to acquire.” Things we can classify, humans also desire & strive to acquire. We grasp with the mind, but also with our hands. Thus, from the titular beginning, Machiavelli is introducing a new way of conjugating thinking & desiring. The independence of thinking is encroached on by the appetite of acquiring. Is this alteration of the relation between theory & practice done subtly? To be sure. Is it more suggested than stated? Indeed. But is it there? Little doubt.
What he’s grasped so comprehensively, he names alternatively “states” or “dominions.” When Machiavelli looks out on the human world, he sees it characterized, then & now, by states, which are dominions. The human world is a political world, not, say, a world of “cultures” or “civilizations.” When one asks about his two naming terms—why two? Why these two? What does each mean? What brings or holds them together?—, on the basis of the evidence supplied in the sentence, two features come to the fore: States & dominions “hold imperium over men”; & a state, any state, every state, is a “dominion.” Both indicate ominous realities. “Imperium” is the Roman field general’s absolute control over life & death, it is the authority or power to inflict capital punishment. Death & human mortality thus come forward, but viewed through the prism of humans killing humans in an organized way. When Machiavelli looks at the human world, he sees it organized politically, & when he sees political organization, he sees the sword held & wielded. Hobbes & Weber are present in nuce. As for “dominion,” as a noun it comes from “dominus,” which means “lord” & “master.” Death & mastery: the harsh realities of political life are intimated from the outset.
To further appreciate the distinctive character of this opening presentation of the human world, two contrasts are helpful, one with Aristotle, the other with Descartes. Aristotle & Machiavelli agree that the human world is politically organized, but when they look at these human associations, they see & highlight quite different things. A look at the openings of the Politics & Nicomachean Ethics indicates that Aristotle sees human beings in motion, acting & collaborating for the sake of this-or-that good or goods. The fullest collaboration in goods is the polis, the political community. Its good is the highest, the most comprehensive good, hence its authority is supreme. (It can tell mothers to send their sons to war & fathers to yield their property in taxes.) But political authority is based upon, & at the service of, goods shared in common. Even imperium should be viewed in that light. When Machiavelli looks at the human world, he doesn’t see teleological activity, he doesn’t see authority at the service of the Good, he sees organized dominance & imperious threats. It is a somber world he depicts, with apprehension & vigilance the appropriate responses. Death & dominance always lurk.
Descartes highlights the political character of Machiavelli’s de-teleologization of the human world by presenting an apolitical version of the same. In Part One of the Discourse on the method, he writes of himself: “Looking with the eye of a philosopher, there is almost nothing among the enterprises & activities of men that does not seem to me to be empty (vain) & useless (inutile).” Instead of Aristotle’s observation at the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics, that he sees human beings engaged in three broad genera of human pursuits (investigation, craft, & moral practice), each with its defining goal & good, Descartes sees human “vanity” & “useless” pursuits. In the great aggregate, human beings are going in the wrong direction &, not surprisingly, coming up empty handed. It would be hard to find a more thoroughgoing dismissal of ordinary & not-so-ordinary human life. Here is anti-Aristotelian teleology with a vengeance. While it shares—perhaps extends—Machiavelli’s anti-teleological view of the human world, it also highlights the latter’s political focus. Machiavelli speaks of “states” & “dominions,” not “enterprises” & “activities.”
With the help of these comparisons, the distinctive character of Machiavelli’s opening characterization of the human world comes better into focus. It’s political like Aristotle, anti-teleological like Descartes, & focused on the Sword like Hobbes. Of course, this opening portrayal will be further developed & refined, likely even qualified. The division into species, republics & principates, begins this work almost immediately. But the reader would be unwise to forget this opening articulation. “In my beginning is my end.” The human world fundamentally is a matter of death—its threat, its infliction—& of dominion.
With these simple reflections on the title & opening sentence, we acquire an initial understanding of Machiavelli’s manner of proceeding. He parodies what he aims to replace. He infuses old wineskins with new wine. This indeed continues throughout the rest of the short chapter, both in general & in particular. In general, the rest of the chapter is a Porphyry’s Tree that aims relentlessly at the Machiavellian substitution for classical virtue, virtù, now presented as a means of acquiring principate & state. The general development thus confirms the decisive character of the second half of the title, as every sort of principate is considered sub specie acquisitionis & virtue is recast as a “mode” thereof—perhaps the fundamental mode, certainly the culminating mode. Yet again, old forms serve as vehicles for new contents & thoughts.
What have we learned about Machiavelli the Teacher from these reflections? As we look ahead to subsequent chapters, we will not be surprised at other Machiavellian reworkings of august forms, figures, & concepts (Moses in Chapter 6 & Fortuna in Chapter 25, for example).
In connection with the Anton project that prompted our reflections, the following questions come to mind. When we note the sovereign way in which Machiavelli separated old forms from their contents in order to introduce his own, we wonder if this is reversable by us Aristotelians & Thomists? Can we effect the same operation on his thought, in a way that allows us to salvage good aspects of it while jettisoning the bad? Or does the operation only work one way? One can generalize the question: What would a Machiavelli-Aristotelian compound look like? Or one can sharpen it: Are strategy & tactics formal or material elements of Machiavelli’s teaching? In either way, the thinkers that Machiavelli parodied are allowed a retort.