Machiavelli
2 The Art of the State
Machiavelli considered himself to be an expert on a special art which we call statecraft, and he called 'arte dello stato'. 'If I could talk to you,' he wrote to Vettori on 9 April 1531, 'I could not help but fill your head with castles in the air, because Fortune has seen to it that, since I do not know how to talk about either the silk _or the wool trade, or profits or losses, I have to talk about the state.' 1A few months later, in the famous letter of 10 December 1513, he puts forth his long and assiduous apprenticeship in the art; if the Medici read The Prince, he writes, it 'would be evident that during the fifteen years I have been studying the art of the state I _have neither slept nor fooled around, and anybody ought to be happy to utilize someone who has had so much experience at the _expense of others.' 2 And Vettori, like all who knew Machiavelli well, acknowledged with pleasure his mastery: even if you have been out of the workshop for two years, Vettori wrote to him in December 1514, 'I know you have such intelligence that although two years have gone by since you left the shop, I do not think you have forgotten the craft'.
Spending years in the study of the art of the state; to be able to discuss only the art of the state; to be in or out of the workshop in which the art of the state is practised, and taught to apprentices: what did Machiavelli mean when he claims to have applied himself to the study of the art of the state? What precisely was the subject of the art? And what kind of expertise or skill did the mastery of the art precisely entail? Was it the same as being a master of civil _science or politics, or was it something different, something more or something less? These questions need to be raised, not only to understand the shades of meaning implicit in Machiavelli's selfpresentation as an expert of the arte dello stato, but also to identify the intellectual project which oriented the writing of The Prince.
Politics as Civil Wisdom
The first observation to be made in this respect is that Machiavelli does not describe himself as an expert on politics or civil science, nor on 'government and public administration', nor on 'the theory of the best governments', nor on 'the theory and practice of civil affairs', to mention some of the expressions used by his contemporaries. 5 He prefers instead to present himself as an expert on the art of the state, a choice all the more strange because, in Machiavelli's Florence, politics, or civil science, was praised as the most noble of all intellectual endeavours, while the word 'state' had, as we shall see, a dubious connotation. In early sixteenth-century Florence, public rhetoric, philosophy, and historiography were in fact still pervaded by the Aristotelian and Ciceronian interpretation of politics as the art of instituting, preserving, and reforming a respublica--that is, a community of free and equal citizens living together for the common good under the rule of law--and by the ideal of the political or civil man, understood as an upright citizen who serves the common good with justice, prudence, fortitude, and temperance.
This interpretation of politics and of the political man had deep and old roots in Florentine public discourse. According to the chronicler Giovanni Villani, the founder of Florentine political rhetoric was Brunetto Latini, who, in the early thirteenth century, taught the Florentines to speak well and to steer and rule their republic 'according to politics'. 6 In Li livres dou Tresor, (The Books of Treasure), composed around 1260, he presents the science of politics (politique) as the highest among the human sciences and the most noble activity of man, because its aim is to teach how to rule the inhabitants of a kingdom and a city (ville), and a people and a commune, in times of both peace and war according to reason and justice ('selonc raison et selonc justice'). 7 The science of politics, continues Latini paraphrasing Aristotle, orders the arts and the knowledge that are to be cultivated in the city, and through language it preserves civil order. An essential component ofpolitics are then the sciences that teach us how to speak: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric. Following Cicero, Latini stresses that language is the prerequisite of the city and civil life, because without language there can be no justice, no friendship, no humane community. 8 The proper place where men can express themselves through speech and conversation is the political community, which must be seen as the natural place for men living a truly humane life. Aptly, then, Cicero said that rhetoric is the most important, and the noblest, component of the science of ruling a city.
Latini's emphasis on rhetoric as a fundamental element of the art of government--a theme that I shall discuss at length in the next chapter--should not, however, obscure another equally important aspect of the conception of politics that he introduced in thirteenth-century Florence. When he says that politics is the discipline that teaches how to rule according to reason and justice, he means that politics consists in governing impartially, giving each citizen his due and ensuring that rational assessment of individual and social claims is not perturbed by partiality and private interests. The reason he is referring to in his definition of politics is civil reason, or civil wisdom--that is, the reason that presides over the framing and the implementation of civil laws; 'justice' stands here for civil justice, the principles of justice that ought to regulate the relationships among citizens. By saying that politics means to rule according to reason and justice, Latini was keeping alive an even older tradition of communal self-government based upon the idea of reason as civil justice. In a model speech composed by Guido Faba in the early thirteenth century, for instance, the new Podestà solemnly declares that his main goal is to live according to the laws of the commune and ensure justice to every person.
At the same time, Latini was restating another equally important piece of pre-humanist political language--that is, the view that civil society, and above all free republics, are kept together by the principles of civil wisdom, which consists in the correct administration of justice and respect for laws. What Latini taught was then a conception of politics based upon the principle of legal reason--that is, the sort of reason which presides over making and implementing civil laws and therefore preserves the civil community. He taught the Florentine, in other words, to regard politics as the civil science par excellence, to be cultivated with the support of rhetoric and the knowledge of civil law.
Like the idea that politics is based on rhetoric, the interpretationof politics as civil science (civilis scientia), or civil philosophy (civilis philosophia), or civil reason (civilis ratio) also belongs to Roman political philosophy. When he speaks of civil science, or civil reason, or civil philosophy, Cicero, to mention the most obvious example, does not mean just the knowledge or the competence in civil law, but the more general art of ruling the republic. As he says in De finibus: 'the topic of what I think may fitly be entitled Civil Science was called in Greek politikos.'
The affinity between politics and civil law was refined and strengthened by fourteenth-century jurists. They maintained that the subject matter of civil law is the political or civil man--that is, the man living in a civil community. As one of the most eminent jurists of the time--Baldus of Ubaldis ( 1327-1400)--wrote, to say that the subject matter of civil law is the political man means that the goal of civil law is to make men political--that is, capable of living the sort of life appropriate to the polis. Because it compels individuals to behave with restraint and moderation, to respect other citizens' liberty, and to discharge their civic duties, civil law forges the citizens who keep the civitas alive.
The identification of politics and law and therefore of politics and recta ratio became one of the basic tenets of the civic humanists' ideology. Politics and the laws, wrote Salutati in his dialogue De nobilitate legum et medecinae (Of the Nobility of Law and Medicine), are actually the same thing ('idem esse politicam atque leges'). He speaks of 'political reason' (politica ratio) as a synonym of the Ciceronian 'civil reason' (ratio civilis). Even if it is a human creation, the Law, he writes, is the rational norm of human life. True laws come in fact from nature, and therefore their origin is ultimately divine. A true law must in fact respect the highest norm of equity, which is the precept of eternal reason. The task of political reason, Salutati remarks, is that of introducing measure, proportion, and justice into the human world--a task accomplished through the laws, which are the arrangement and the rule of political reason.
Both politics and laws aim at the preservation of civil society. Politics' goal is the good citizen; so is the legislator's. 19 His concern is the good and the order of the city and the whole of humanity. As Aristotle aptly said, the political good (bonum politicum) is greater and nobler than the individual one. Politics, therefore, is responsible for the health of the soul, and for men's happiness. True happiness is political happiness (politica felicitas), the life of virtue in the human city. Only politics, through laws, makes political or civil felicity available to men by creating the condition for a virtuous life.
The logical corollary of this interpretation was the idea that politics deserves the highest status among human sciences and arts. This view, which had been amply discussed by scholastic political philosophers, became another conventional theme of Florentine public rhetoric. After Salutati's forceful defence of the superiority of jurisprudence and politics over medicine, Leonardo Bruni, his successor as Chancellor of the Florentine Republic, restated the same point in the 'Proem' to his translation of Aristotle's Politics. The respublica, as he translates the Greek politia, is a self-governing community where the common good prevails over particular interests, and only in such a community can individuals enjoy happiness and a truly human life. Because a civil society where men can attain self-sufficiency and the perfection of their moral life is the most precious common good, Bruni remarks, the art that teaches what a civitas is, and how it is to be preserved, deserves the highest rank among human disciplines.
Celebrations of the excellence of politics also continued to be part of Florentine intellectual life in the second half of the Quattrocento. In the 'Proem' to his translation of Aristotle's Politics composed in 1472, Donato Acciaiuoli remarks that Aristotle's intention in writing the Politics was to argue that, even if civil discipline relies upon probable arguments, rather than infallible demonstrations, it is none the less the most excellent of practical sciences because through politics men can moderate and rule the republic and therefore enjoy a most happy life on earth. 21 In 1478 Donato Acciaiuoli issued a new Latin translation of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, and in his commentary he remarks that the goal of civil science is the highest good of man ('summum bonum hominis'), and that the highest good of the individual is one and the same as the good of the civil community, even though the good of the civil community (civitas) is more divine and beautiful than the good of the individual; for this reason, civil science (scientia civilis) is the most noble of all practical sciences. From the Aristotelian literature and the works of jurists, the ideal of political life spread into Florentine public rhetoric. In an oration delivered in 1493, for instance, Alamanno Rinuccini remarks that both ancient history and modern experience prove that justice and good laws are the necessary foundations for the liberty of the city and for the preservation of the political and civil life. As long as cities and empires are governed in justice, they increase in glory and reputation. People are content with justice and, if justice is provided to all, the city enjoys concord and peace. Cicero, remarked Rinuccini, was then perfectly right in ranking justice as the queen of virtues.
The Limits of Civil Wisdom
Machiavelli was perfectly acquainted with the conventional language of politics. Donato Acciaiuoli's summary of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics was among the books borrowed by Niccolò's father, Bernardo Machiavelli, and even if he did not attend Rinuccini's orations and did not read Acciaiuoli's works, he surely had many other opportunities to hear that political or civil life is based upon justice and law, that politics is therefore the most noble of human activities, and that political science is the highest of all practical sciences.
To this one must add that Machiavelli was acquainted with the language of public law and civil jurisprudence, and the traces of his acquaintance are visible in all his works. At the very outset of the Discorsi, for instance, he writes that 'civil law is nothing but a collection of decisions, made by jurists of old, which the jurists of today have tabulated in orderly fashion for our instruction'. 25 In the Ritracto delle cose di Francia (Portrait of the Affairs of France), composed in 1510, he describes the authority of the barons over the subjects as 'mera', that is absolute, in accordance with the classic legal concept of merum imperium. 26 His interpretation of the concept of political life and his assessment of the value of political action and political philosophy are perfectly consonant with the tradition that I have outlined. For him the vivere politico or the vivere civile is the civil community based upon the rule of law and the common good. He also fully endorses another fundamental tenet of the conventional language of politics--namely, the view that laws make men good: All writers on civil life [vivere civile] have pointed out that . . . in constituting and legislating for a republic one must presuppose that all men are wicked . . . and that men never do good unless necessity drives them to it . . . Hence
it is said that hunger and poverty make men industrious and that laws make them good. For this reason he considers civil life based upon the rule of just laws the highest good on earth on which human felicity depends and regards philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato, who wrote with competence on the vivere civile, as the greatest of all men.
Machiavelli's Critique of Classical Politics
The last thing that Machiavelli would have liked to be told was that he was ignorant on how matters of state ought to be handled. When he says that he has distilled in The Prince what he has learnt on the art of the state, he implies that his little book contains all that it is necessary to know how to preserve a state, including indications on what a prince should do when the interest of the state compels him to violate the norms of moral reason. Since a ruler who intends always to be good among many who are not good will necessarily be ruined, he remarks, it is necessary for a ruler to learn to be able to be 'not good' and to use or not to use this capacity according to necessity. And in Chapter 18 he states in even clearer terms that for a prince it is often (spesso) necessary to act against the principles of Christian morality, if he wants to preserve his state: 'and it must be understood that a ruler, and especially a new ruler, cannot always act in ways that are considered good because, in order to maintain his state, he is often forced to act against good faith, against charity, against humanness, against religion.'
What was truly bold about it was not so much what he said, but the fact that he wrote it in a text intended for public circulation. Cosimo was reported to have said that states cannot be held with prayer books ('paternostri') in the hand; the Florentine citizens who remarked that there are questions pertaining to the security of the state that are not to be handled according to justice and reason were speaking in restricted gatherings; Guicciardini developed the concept of a reason of the state which supersedes Christian morality in a text never intended for publication, and even in the text itself he makes the protagonist of the dialogue say that discourses on a reason of the state are not to be made in public. Machiavelli's choice was an act of intellectual courage instigated by his longing for great accomplishments and, perhaps, also by the compelling need to see his expertise on the art of the state acclaimed. For people already accepted within the élite, a letter or a memorandum was sufficient to be credited as a reliable adviser. But Machiavelli had been the Secretario and was 'a man of very low and humble condition'. He had to do something of much higher intellectual quality, even at the cost of breaking well-established conventions.
In his explanations as to why a new prince 'cannot always act in ways that are considered good', his language remains quite close to the conventions that the Florentine élite and princes used in discussing matters of state and diplomatic transactions. Like them, he argues that the practice of states amply proves that it is sometimes necessary to leave aside the precepts of moral reason, and points to the great accomplishments of princes who have held uprightness in little respect:
everyone knows how praiseworthy it is for a ruler to keep his promises, and live uprightly and not by trickery. Nevertheless, experience shows that in our time the rulers who have done great things are those who have set little store by keeping their word, being skilful rather in cunningly deceiving men; they have got the better of those who have relied on being trustworthy.
Maurizio Viroli: Machiavelli (Oxford University Press, 1998) (Trechos).
