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- Herausgeber: Icon Books
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Graphic Guides
- Sprache: Englisch
Illustrated guide to the crucial Italian philosopher and author of The Prince. 'Machiavellian' is a popular byword for treachery and opportunism. Machiavelli's classic book on statecraft, The Prince, published over 400 years ago, remains controversial to this day because of its electrifying frankness as a practical guide to power. Is it a how-to manual for dictators, a cynical philosophy of 'the end justifies the means', or a more complex and subtle analysis of successful government? Machiavelli was a loyal servant of the Florentine republic. His opposition to Medici despotism led him to torture on the rack and exile, and yet he chose as his model for the Prince the most notorious tyrant, Cesare Borgia. Introducing Machiavelli traces the colourful life of this paradoxical realist whose clear-sighted patriotism made him the first truly modern political scientist. Machiavelli is seen as central to the postmodern debate on Civil Society. This book brings the creative turbulence of Renaissance Italy to life, and presents a compelling portrait of a key figure of European political history.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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Published by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road, London N7 9DPEmail: [email protected]
ISBN: 978-184831-978-3
Text copyright © 2012 Icon Books Ltd
Illustrations copyright © 2012 Icon Books Ltd
The author and illustrator has asserted their moral rights
Originating editor: Richard Appignanesi
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
“Old Nick”
Renaissance Florence
Emblem of Florence
What is Humanism?
Civic Republicanism: the Good Citizen
Birth of Machiavelli
A Divided Italy
Nation States and the Holy Roman Empire
Guelfs and Ghibellines
The Dream of Republican Liberty
The Medici take Power
The Medici
The Republic Reborn
Savonarola
The Bonfire of Vanities
Machiavelli Goes to Work
The Diplomat at Work
Who Were the Borgias?
Cesare Borgia’s Genius
Leonardo and Machiavelli
A Change of Fortune
Secretary of the Militia
The Return of the Medici
Macmavelli’s Downfall
Machiavelli at Sant’Andrea
The Prince
The Whims of Fortune
The Fortunes of War
The Lion and the Fox
Pagan Virtù and Christian Virtue
The Fine Balance of Power
Prophet of the Risorgimento
Still Unemployed
A Machiavellian Comedy
Republican Friends: the Orti Oricellari
The Citizens’ Free State
The Discourses …
… an Argument for Liberty
The Republican Ideal of Liberty
The Case of Caesar
Trading the Future
Civic Duties
A Law unto Themselves
A Modern Separatist Élite
Checks and Balances
The Place of Religion
Other-worldly Christianity
An Argument for Imperialism
Immigration
Hope of Employment
The Art of War
The Balancing Act
Fortune and Misfortune
Machiavelli Applied in Practice
The Way of the Fox
The Iron Lady
Machiavelli’s Lessons
Machiavelli and the Foundation of the Modern Political Theory of Civic Republicanism
Machiavellian America
The Social Contract
Post-Enlightenment Historicism
Post-Modern Machiavelli
Civic Virtue versus Civil Society
The Free Market
Republican Critics of the Free Market
Post-Communist Civil Society
“No Such Thing as Society”
The Origins of Liberal Democracy
Modern Liberal Democracy
What Becomes of “Civic Virtue”?
Republicanism of the Left and Right?
A Right-wing Machiavellian
A Left-wing Machiavellian
Gramsci’s Rethinking of Marxism
Post-Modern Gramsci “The People is the Prince”
Communitarianism
Positive versus Negative Liberty
Republicanism Now
Machiavelli Now
Further Reading
Index
“Old Nick”
For over four hundred years, Niccolò Machiavelli has been a byword for cynicism, immorality and cruelty in politics. In the 16th century, his first name was often shortened to “Old Nick”, the popular nickname for Satan. The Jesuits (themselves accused of Machiavellism by Protestants) called him “the Devil’s partner in crime”. “Murderous Machiavel” became a favourite reference in Elizabethan plays, including those of Shakespeare.
As Lord Macaulay wrote in 1827, “We doubt whether any name in literary history be so generally odious …”
This is how the philosopher Bertrand Russell, in our own century, described Machiavelli’s most famous book, The Prince.
A HANDBOOK FOR GANGSTERS…WELL… AH…A HANDBOOK FOR STATESMEN!
Fittingly, one of the people Russell probably had in mind, Benito Mussolini, praised it. He had a strong view about whom the new Prince was meant to be and wrote a foreword to a new edition.
This undoubtedly explains the response of Henry Kissinger, for several years the power behind the presidential throne in American politics, to an interviewer’s suggestion in 1972 that he was a Machiavellian: “No, not at all!” Was he not influenced by Machiavelli’s ideas to at least some extent?
As we shall see, Machiavelli had his fans too, and many of these, like the philosopher Francis Bacon, were not thugs.
WE ARE MUCH BE HOLDEN TO MACHIAVELLI AND OTHERS, THAT WRITE WHAT MEN DO, AND NOT WHAT THEY OUGHT TO DONICCOLO MACHIAVELLI WROTE ABOUT THE WORLD WE LIVE IN, MAN, THE WAY IT REALLY IS, WITHOUT ALL THE BULLSHIT.
But Machiavelli’s bad press continues today. The Prince, says the Guardian newspaper, is “the ultimate handbook in political expediency”. And the latest edition of Chambers English Dictionary has Machiavellian as an adjective, meaning “politically cunning and unscrupulous, seeking power or advantage at any price; amoral and opportunist”.
So what was Machiavelli: evil genius or brilliant political theorist? And what does he have to tell us today? To answer that you have to know who he was, and what he wrote in relation to his own time and problems.
Renaissance Florence
The golden age of Florence was in the 15th century. Florence’s wealth became legendary. Its coin, the florin, was respected everywhere, and its merchants conducted business far and wide, first in the wool industry and then in silk and trade with the East. One of the richest and most successful families was the Medici. Originally from the Mugello valley, they amassed great wealth as merchant bankers and became bankers to the Papacy. Soon their ambitions extended to politics, the Papacy itself, and the rulership of their native city. But the Medici were also renowned as generous patrons of the arts and humanities. They were no petty tyrants.
Emblem of Florence
This combination of commerce, culture and enlightened despotism made Florence the Renaissance equivalent of Athens in classical antiquity, another turning point in European culture and civilization.
Thanks to the patronage of wealthy merchant families like the Medici, in a time of almost unprecedented creativity and optimism, Florence became the principal centre for Western arts and sciences. Around 1420, Filippo Brunelleschi designed the huge dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, near the Tower by Giotto, and, together with Ghiberti, oversaw its construction. It was completed in 1436, although the lantern was not finished until after Brunelleschi’s death. Along with Alberti, he also developed linear perspective.
Discoveries in anatomy, combined with artistic creativity, distinguished the sculptures of Donatello and the paintings of Piero della Francesca. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Primavera exquisitely expressed the new interest in pagan classical subjects.
Leonardo da Vinci was a Florentine and in his life and work perhaps best exemplifies its intellectual curiosity, humane scepticism, and sensitivity. He rubbed shoulders in Florence with Michelangelo, the giant of Western sculpture and painting, as he developed his mastery of the human form.
And, incredibly, the still younger Raphael – from Urbino, but painting in Florence – visited and watched both men’s work in progress.
At the same time, ideas about the frontiers of the known physical world were also being challenged. Christopher Columbus set sail on his first historic trip in 1492. Shortly afterwards, he was followed by a Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci, who gave his name to the Americas.
PATIENCE, COMRADES: LAND IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER!THE PARTY’S OVER… THE ITALIANS ARE COMING!HMMM–AMERICA… WHAT A GOOD NAME FOR A NEW WORLD!
In philosophy, Cosimo de’Medici commissioned Marsilio Ficino to translate the mystical writings of Hermes Trismegistus and Plato’s dialogues into Latin. Ficino upturned the old Aristotelian–Christian synthesis with his translations. Lorenzo the Magnificent continued this support, underwriting the foundation of the Platonic Academy, Ficino’s own work, and the short but extraordinary career of Pico della Mirandola, whom Machiavelli described as “a man almost divine”. Pico’s meditations on the dignity of man, combining Christian theology, Platonic philosophy and hermetic magic, set the seal on Renaissance humanism.
What is Humanism?
The word comes from the Latin humanitas, from homo, man. As a movement, it can be said to have started with the 14th-century poet Petrarch, the son of a Florentine exile. The humanists’ heroes were the poets, scholars and orators of classical republican Rome: Cicero, Horace and Virgil. Renaissance humanism was not anti-Christian: it perceived a universal harmony underlying both classical pagan philosophy (especially that of Plato, Plotinus and their followers) and Christianity.
At the centre of the humanist world was not God, however, but the human being (in some versions a divine humanity); not the next world but this; not the ineffable individual soul but public and social life. There was faith, but mainly in the idea that with wisdom, skill and effort the world could be changed: “virtu vince fortuna” (ability wins over fortune).
Civic Republicanism: the Good Citizen
Humanism was closely identified with classical (that is, pagan) and civic (social and political) republicanism.
THE GOOD MAN IS IDENTIFIED WITH THE CITIZEN, WITH THE RESULT THAT HIS GOODNESS, RATHER THAN BEING PURELY INDIVIDUAL, DEPENDS CRUCIALLY ON THAT OF OTHERS.
An attempt was made to integrate the classical virtues – typically justice, temperance, wisdom and fortitude – with the later Christian ones of humility and righteousness. Nonetheless, this position involved a sharp rejection of Augustinian or medieval Christianity, with its emphasis on original sin, the omnipotence of God, and individual salvation.
Birth of Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence on 3 May 1469 to an old and moderately wealthy family. He was the third son of his father, Bernardo, an educated humanist, who practised law.
I WAS BORN IN THE MIDDLE OF A NEW AND EXCITING WORLD!
He received the best humanist schooling of his day, culminating in attendance at lectures at the University of Florence. Humanist education continued with the system that had become institutionalized in the Middle Ages consisting of the seven liberal arts: the trivium (logic, rhetoric and grammar) plus the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music). Special attention, however, was paid to classical Latin literature, and the study of ancient history, philosophy and rhetoric.
Humanism was not only an intellectual movement. Educated humanists held many of the most important positions in Florentine government.
A Divided Italy
Florence was one of several city-states on the Italian mainland which dominated the surrounding areas. They included Milan, Venice, Florence, papal Rome, Genoa, Siena and Naples. From the early 15th century, Florence ruled most of Tuscany, except Lucca and Siena. Pisa, as Florence’s only outlet to the sea, had a particular strategic importance and was the object of continual struggle between the Florentines and the Pisans who were attempting to become independent.
OPTIMISM IS COMMERCE AND CULTURE – THAT’S THE GOOD NEWS. NOW FOR THE BAD NEWS!
Despite its cultural and artistic achievements, Renaissance Italy was about to enter a period of intense political chaos and upheaval. It was this that came to dominate Machiavelli’s life and work.
