Machiavelli's new modes and orders: A study of the Discourses on Livy

462 Pages·1979·30.205 MB·English

by  Harvey Claflin Mansfield

MACHIAVKLLI’S M W MODKS AND ORDKRS
A Study of the Discourses on Livy
the same author
The Spirit of Liberalism
Statesmanship and Party Government: A Study of Burke and Bolingbroke
M A C H I A V E L L I ’S
NE W MODES
AND ORDERS
A Study of the Discourses on Livy
HARVEY C. MANSFIELD, J .
r
Cornell University Press
Itbaca and London
(Copyright © 1979 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. F.xcept for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be
reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address
(Cornell University Press, 124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 1979 by Cornell University Press.
Published in the United Kingdom by Cornell University Press Ltd.,
2-4 Brook Street, London WlY IAA.
International Standard Book Number 0-8014-1182-3
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 79-12380
Printed in the United States of America.
Librarians: Library of Congress cataloging information appears on the last page of the book.
it‘2
C O N T E N T S
Prefacc 7
Acknowledgments 15
Abbreviations 17
Machiavelli’s Dedicatory Letter 21
BOOK I
Introduction 25
1. The Building of Cities (I 1) 28
2. The Ordering of Regimes (I 2-8) 32
3. Founders and Their Reputation (I 9-10) 63
4. The Use of Religion (I 11-15) 69
5. Living under a Prince (I 16-18) 79
6. The Third King (119-24) 88
7. The Tyranny of the New Prince (1 25-27) 97
8. A Grateful People (I 28-32) 101
9. The Dictator and the Decemvirate (I 33-45) 110
10. Fear and Glory in the Multitude (I 46-59) 139
11. Conclusion (I 60) 177
BOOK II
Introduction 181
1. How Rome Acquired Its F.mpire (II 1-5) 189
2. The Cause of Rome’s Subjection (II 6-10) 206
3. The Beginnings of Modernity (II11-15) 219
4. The Modem Army (II 16-18) 232
5. False Opinions (II19-22) 247
6. Reasons or Causes (II 23-25) 259
7. The Passions of Idleness (II 26-32) 273
8. The Captain’s Free Commission (11 33) 293
BOOK III
Introduction 297
I. The Founder-Captain (III 1-15) 299
2. Virtue and the Multitude (III 16-34) 364
3. Machiavelli’s Strategy (III 35-49) 411
Index 443

PREFACE
This study of Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy is in the nature of a commen­
tary, a somewhat obsolete mode of discussion that deserves a return to favor. A
commentary attempts to bring forth and interpret an author’s intent, and so
supposes that he has one, that it is worth finding, and that it is not manifest on
the surface. A commentary therefore seeks out and adopts the author’s
viewpoint as its own until the author’s intent becomes clear and criticism of it
becomes necessary. Usually the author—and certainly Machiavclli—compares
himself with other writers and makes claims of novelty or superiority that
require one to judge him sound or not. So the task of commentary leads to the
duty of criticism of its own motion and docs not need to begin from a critical
stance.
Or should it be said that it is impossible to understand past intentions, and
that the scholar is forced to an effort of creativity? Such creativity, some might
add, avoids an arbitrary imposition of external standards only, and precisely,
when the creativity is felt to emerge from the scholar’s own needs. Machiavelli’s
books arc then reduced to matter offering both guidance and resistance to the
interpreter. l*he “matter” could Ik* described as it has been by L. J. Walker in
his invaluable researches into w hat scholars call the “sources” (meaning the
matter) of Machiavelli’s Discourses; or the matter could be restated or recreated
for our times, as in a notable recent interpretation by Claude Lefort.
Yet how do we know that the most creative interpretation will not coincide
with Machiavelli’s intention until we find his intention? The scholar’s own
needs may have been shaped by Machiavelli’s thought, and he will not succeed
in dismantling his obligation to Machiavclli until he knows what it is. He will
not have sufficient incentive to succeed in knowing it, however, if he believes
that Machiavclli cannot have had an intention or an intention relevant to us. It is
true that Machiavelli observes Livy putting words in the mouths of the men he
writes about, making them his characters; and Machiavelli could be said with
his Discourses to have appropriated Livy’s characters for himself and thus to have
re-formed the Livian matter. Nonetheless, for him this act of “creation” (a word
he uses politically to mean “instituting” or “election”) implies a criticism of
Livy’s intention, not a denial that it exists, and the difference between Livy and
his use of Livy is intended to make us aware of his ow’n intention.
8
PREFACE
The result of the creative interpretation is not very creative, because it denies
to Machiavelli the possibility of any great creativity. In making him readily
available to scholars, such interpretation leaves nothing concealed and indeed is
forced to assert that nothing has been concealed. As wc know from Machiavelli’s
chapter on conspiracies (III 6) that one cannot plan a change of government
without concealing some part of the plan, we infer from this supposed incapabil­
ity that his intent, such as it could be, was ingenuous and his thoughts a gift of
his fortune, innocent of any “firm disposition... to kill the prince.” Overes­
timating the difficulty of understanding Machiavelli comes to the same thing as
underestimating the difficulty as it becomes apparent that the creativity claimed
by interpreters comes to nothing more than forced enthusiasm for Machiavelli
the harbinger of modernity. Since Machiavelli is not allowed to be creative, he
has been presented as either scientist or patriot. As scientist, he did not develop
a methodology that would enable him to be ranked among the founders of
modern science; and as patriot, his loyalty was divided between Florence and
Italy, not to mention wider boundaries, so that his intention disappears in his
influence, thus dissipated, in Italian history. In both respects Machiavelli fal­
tered in the foresight or occult virtue that would have enabled him to anticipate
later developments, or should we say that he knew how to curb his unruly
prescience so that he remained a representative man of his time, not too dull and
not too sharp? Certainly he is seen as a man of the Renaissance, hence encum­
bered by the past and distracted by a futile dream of reviving it.
This scholarly opinion w as conceived in opposition to the popular opinion of
Machiavelli, expressed in the term “Machiavellian,” that he was a teacher of
evil. That “vulgar” opinion (let us call it) implies greater responsibility in the
role of teacher than can be ascribed to a mere harbinger. The term “Machiavel­
lian” applies to neither lazy, half-hearted evil nor the w'holehearted but some­
times inadequate wickedness of an evil nature, but rather to a perfected, schem­
ing evil in which everything is plotted and nothing left to chance. Then if one
should apply the term “Machiavellian” to Machiavelli himself, the vulgar opin­
ion would point to the possibility of a more complicated Machiavelli than it
knows of, because the intention behind his immoral ism may have been some­
thing of “common benefit to each one” of mankind. One can ascend, that is,
from the simple denunciation of moral evil by means of the accusation of schem­
ing evil. One cannot ascend, however, from an opinion that in its superiority
does not admit the need or possibility of ascent and dismisses Machiavelli’s
reputation for Machiavellianism as simply false.
If the scholarly opinion would admit that Machiavelli had an intention, we
might say that it opposes the vulgar opinion out of a desire to do justice to
Machiavelli’s humane intention. Knvy of his power is a more likely motive,
however, perhaps not conscious envy of Machiavelli the founder but that gen­
eral envy of founders arising out of bad conscience and loss of faith in
modernity, expressed in the willingness, nay eagerness, to attribute our liberty
9
PREFACE
as well as its ills to the inevitable motions of unconscious forces. In dismissing
Machiavelli’s vulgar reputation as false, present-day scholars depreciate his in­
fluence to a widely misunderstood Machiavellianism. They deny his power to
introduce “new modes and orders,” so that the question of his responsibility for
modernity is not raised or is raised in terms that are not sufficiently broad and
uncompromising. That question is the underlying, if not the thematic, question
of my study.
The theme is Machiavelli’s intention as he presents it to us in 142 chapters of
the Discourses on Livy. Machiavelli is most himself when he is making his own
choices and developing his own designs. His intention is most visible not in his
actions or writings as a Florentine secretary, where he was subject to others, but
in his books, and only in the two books in which he claims to have presented
everything he knows, The Prince and the Discourses on Livy. These books have a
special status in his works by his own statement, apart from their reputation as
his two major works, and each is to be read by itself without reference to any­
thing outside it, except in pursuit of Machiavelli’s intended meaning and under
his direction. Any reference to what Machiavelli must have meant because of
some external circumstance supposedly unrecognized by him will prevent an
undistorted view of Machiavelli’s meaning and will impose the interpreter’s
view instead, so that the whole inquiry is tainted by premature criticism and
results merely in another Machiavellianism. It would be foolish to deny the
aid of historical knowledge in understanding Machiavelli’s allusions and stories
and to overlook other writings of his that might confirm one’s interpretation or
not; but it is futile to make one’s understanding of Machiavelli’s intention de­
pend on them. When indeed we need something that is not in the Discourses in
order to understand the Discourses, Machiavelli will tell us so in the Discourses. Or
if he does not, that is his mistake; but we should be very slow to conclude that
he has not, considering the necessary obscurities of his communication.
In examining these two books, one sees immediately that they arc, and are
said to be, written on sensitive topics, introducing “new modes and orders” in
face of the “envious nature of men” and advising suspicious princes who are
rightly suspicious of ambitious advisers. One must then infer that even where
Machiavelli is most himself he is subject to others or subject to the necessity of
using others to further his design. He will have to be careful in communicating
that design not to say too much or too little. One can legitimately ask: docs he
have a design or intention? He surely says that he has a design in the Dedicatory
Letters to both The Prince and the Discourses, more openly in the latter. Whether
he has a design, how far it extends, and whether any human being can have
intended so much are matters to be resolved as we look for evidence of his
intention, and must not be foreclosed prior to inquiry.
One must make a careful inspection of The Prince and the Discourses, looking
for an intention that one would expect to be only partly visible in broad day­
light. This is not to say that we are entitled to ignore what is visible in broad
IO PREFACE
daylight. Looking first for the visible plan of these books, we find in the
Discourses, as we shall sec, several announcements by Machiavelli of baffling
inadequacy or inaccuracy. The Discourses seems on the whole to be a shuffle of
disconnected essays, while the plan of The Prince has been made more obvious
by its subject matter to suit the requirements of the busy executive. Then to
supplement or complete the announced plan, one must take into account little
things that might seem to be mindless accidents and in other authors would be.
Such formulas of introduction as “in the following chapter,” such favorite
phrases as “everyone knows,” and above all the exact courtesies that Machiavelli
extends to Livy must be noticed; and finally, one must not despise the use of
quantitative methods, including the most mundane operation of counting. For
in attending to “little things” we are taking a hint from Machiavelli. In Discourses
III 33, Machiavelli praises a Roman consul for not despising the cosepiccole by
which the intentions of the gods are discerned, or rather interpreted and bent to
suit human political designs; but he also praises Livy for putting these words in
the mouth of the consul, and thus suggests that authors too can leave auspices of
their meaning.
Other instances of apparent mindlessness—an unexpected silence or a mis­
take or contradiction, for example—must be considered for the meaning they
might have, so as to be sure that Machiavelli’s blink is not a wink. Again, this
consideration is not imposed by a certain method of interpretation but rather
suggested by Machiavelli himself. Machiavelli remarks in Discourses II 10 that
Livy indicates his opinion by failing to mention something when one would
expect him to mention that thing; it is possible, then, for an author to contrive a
pregnant silence and make it distinguishable from a doltish one. If Livy can do
this, why not Machiavelli? A pregnant silence consists in an obvious answer to a
suggested question that one must have the sense to ask oneself. Machiavelli also
supplies a chapter in the Discourses (III 48) on manifest blunders. He says there
that when an enemy makes a great error, one should believe that a deceit lies
hidden underneath; in illustrating this maxim, he himself makes a manifest
blunder by giving an example in which an enemy did not make a manifest
blunder. Should one suspect that a deceit of Machiavelli’s might lie hidden
underneath this manifest blunder?
Little things, pregnant silences, and manifest blunders lend themselves to a
certain levity of treatment, even the gaiety that Nietzsche appreciated in
Machiavelli’s writing.1 Not to appreciate Machiavelli’s humor is worse than
insensitivity; it is a defect of scholarship. Perhaps no paragraph in The Prince
and the Discourses can be fully understood until the reader has found something
funny in it. This is not to say that Machiavelli’s true meaning is a joke; it is
rather that Machiavelli is determined to laugh at everything. In these two books
he keeps a straight face for the most part; and while enjoying himself with the
1. Friedrich Nictzschc, Beyond Good and Evil 28.