In his 1972 essay, “The Originality of Machiavelli,” Isaiah Berlin tallied more than 20 interpretations of Machiavelli. Unsurprisingly, the number has only grown since. Little need be said about why Machiavelli’s thought is still of interest: Five hundred years later, he still shocks and delights. Each of his works also contains interpretive puzzles; and reading his “canonic” works (Prince and Discourses) together, let alone his other major works (Art of War, Clizia, Mandragola, Florentine Histories, Life of Castruccio Castracani), is a herculean task. The volumes under review wrestle with Machiavelli in different ways: Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict displays the controversy endemic to Machiavelli scholarship, while Machiavelli’s Politics develops a systematic interpretation of him.
In the latter book, Catherine Zuckert delineates three broad approaches to interpreting Machiavelli: “contextual or historical,” for example, John Najemy’s Between Friends (1993); “rhetorical, literary, and ironic,” for example, Quentin Skinner’s work; and “theoretical—scientific, philosophical, or political theoretical,” for example, Sheldon Wolin or Leo Strauss. Each approach has a downside: “simply historical” approaches “deprive his works of any interest except as historical documents” (p. 4). Rhetorical readings err, portraying Machiavelli as too conventional, or neglecting his statements that he “does not think that his immediate addressees will understand his arguments” (p. 5). As for theoretical readings, different approaches have different merits and weaknesses; Strauss, for instance, “does not pay much attention to the new form of republic” (p. 18) found in the Discourses.
With Zuckert’s framework in mind, we can turn to Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict, based on a Columbia University conference commemorating The Prince’s five hundredth anniversary. The editors’ goal was “to record the most representative lines of research and interpretation on Machiavelli’s The Prince” (p. 23). With an introduction outlining Machiavelli scholarship beginning with The Prince’s three hundred and fiftieth anniversary during the risorgimento, the chapters are organized into four thematic parts: “Between Antiquity and Modernity”; “The Prince and the Politics of Necessity”; “Class Struggle, Financial Power, and Extraordinary Authority in the Republic”; and “Machiavellian Politics beyond Machiavelli.” Some of the chapters (e.g., Skinner or Gabriele Pedullà) are clearly historical, and others (e.g., Giovanni Giorgini) are more rhetorical, though most are a mix of the historical, rhetorical, and theoretical approaches.
In Part I, Harvey Mansfield argues that Machiavelli is a “professor of necessity” (p. 41); opposed to Aristotle, skeptical of morality, Machiavelli also doubts “redemption in the next world” (p. 43), while Giorgini’s Machiavelli is part of a tradition of writers concerned with “dirty hands.” Arguing against Mansfield’s interpretations of Machiavelli, Giorgini finds it “scarcely credible” that there are those who still view Machiavelli as “the evil counsellor” (p. 61); rather, Machiavelli teaches his readers to remain good while getting their hands dirty. Pedullà critiques Genarro Sasso, by focusing on who Machiavelli had in mind in defending Rome’s success by virtue rather than fortune. Miguel Vatter explores the prophetic dimensions of Machiavelli’s civil religion, arguing for his debt to Byzantine theology along with Jewish and Arabic prophetology.
Part II begins with Skinner’s discussion of Machiavelli’s redescription and his critique of “seeming” virtues (p. 149), given Machiavelli’s emphasis on prudence oriented to maintaining the state. Erica Benner turns to Machiavelli’s realism and the problem of trust, showing how the prince can build “obligations based on mutual trust” (p. 166) by delineating between two forms of realism: “go-it-alone” and “collaborative realism” (p. 171), each of which is present in Machiavelli. Stephen Holmes’s chapter, echoing Benner, explores Machiavelli’s “strategy for mastering the future” (p. 187) through the creation of a “chain of obligation” (p. 195) between himself and the people; Paul Rahe distinguishes modern tyranny from ancient tyranny via Machiavelli.
Benedetto Fontana begins Part III with a discussion of conflict in Machiavelli’s thought, delineating beneficial conflict and harmful conflict, with particular attention to Machiavelli’s discussion of the Gracchi. Jérémie Barthas argues that the “people in arms” (p. 258), central to Machiavelli’s project, is a mechanism for breaking the Florentine aristocracy’s financial power; while Marco Geuna provides a detailed analysis of the dictatorship in Machiavelli’s thought. Jean-Fabien Spitz’s pointed critique of Skinner’s account of Machiavelli’s republicanism begins the fourth part of the book. Spitz argues in part that “freedom is not the effect but the cause of institutions” (p. 310, emphasis in the original), with institutions threatening freedom, and thus suggests (contra Skinner) that law cannot make Machiavellian citizens virtuous. John McCormick shows that Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories are continuous with his earlier writings with respect to class, challenging aristocratic readings of the Histories. Luca Baccelli challenges realist and republican readings of Machiavelli; Michele Battini explores the importance of armi proprie in Machiavelli and a range of twentieth-century Italian Machiavelli scholarship. Marie Gaille concludes with a discussion of Louis Althusser’s reading of Machiavelli.
The volume presents a wide range of approaches and interpretations; some chapters take up themes encountered in other work by the contributors (e.g., Skinner, Mansfield, Rahe), while others are more tailored to the volume (e.g., Holmes). Some chapters stand out in terms of their argumentative or evidentiary novelty. For example, Barthas’s discussion of the financial backdrop of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Florence and the relationship between the Florentine commercial aristocracy and mercenary arms sheds new light on Machiavelli’s desire to institute a citizen militia. Benner’s discussion of Machiavelli’s relationship to two different sorts of realism, and what this relationship means for thinking through his often murky account of trust and obligation, is similarly striking, and I found her account of trust and obligation to be more fruitful than that of Holmes, given her careful construction of the “two realisms” framework.
Other chapters stand out for the clarity of their interventions: Spitz’s critique of Skinner is pointed and careful, and raises important questions not only regarding Skinner’s reading of Machiavelli, but also how Machiavelli is to be understood more broadly. McCormick’s chapter, by contrast, focuses on a particular line of scholarly interpretation, systematically—and persuasively—arguing against conservative readings of the Florentine Histories. Rahe’s chapter, while provocative and, as usual with his work, superbly written, draws an overly strong distinction between ancient and modern tyranny—Augustus strikes me as a very apt example of a ruler who governed “in the name of an idea” (p. 223), and Augustus even seems to have taken quite seriously the role of priestcraft in his construction of Roman autocracy. For sheer ambition and creativity, Vatter’s chapter is noteworthy; while I found it to be persuasive, one imagines that his careful tracing of the Jewish and Islamic theological dimensions of Machiavelli’s complex political theology will provoke those who read Machiavelli as a nonbeliever, per se.
The chapters are not always in critical dialogue, though when they are, as with Spitz’s critique of Skinner, the result is an edifying exchange. A reader will not come away from this volume with a synoptic view of Machiavelli’s thought, but will rather have encountered a range of substantive, ideological, and methodological approaches. In effect, Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict performs the sort of disagreement that Berlin catalogued, a performance that is particularly apt given the centrality of conflict to the volume’s title.
If a reader wants a synoptic and novel take on Machiavelli, Machiavelli’s Politics is the place to go. Erudite, clearly written, original, and ambitious, the book is a remarkable work. Zuckert’s approach, as she states, is a synthesis of historical, rhetorical, and theoretical approaches, “incorporating the advantages of all three . . . while avoiding their difficulties” (p. 13). Machiavelli is deeply political, for the author: “[O]ur desires naturally put human beings into competition and conflict” (p. 20). Given the facts of human desire and conflict, Zuckert reads the Prince and Discourses as working together: The Prince teaches the prince how to acquire and extend, or maintain, his power, while the Discourses teaches those who deserve to be princes to found “new modes and orders” (p. 108). The Prince is a “revolutionary” (p. 106) book (contra, e.g., Giorgini or Skinner) because of its redefinition of moral virtue, not to mention Machiavelli’s deeply circumstantial understanding of princely behavior, a view that prevented him from writing “a traditional book on the education of a prince” (p. 99). Machiavelli teaches his prince to act in ways that “seem to be in the common interest,” as his rule will be most stable if he is seen to rule in the people’s interest (p. 107). In the Discourses, Machiavelli turns to “establishing and maintaining a free way of life by means of a republican form of government,” a project entailing the elucidation of “general principles upon which the domestic order” (p. 118) is to be founded (Book I), the foreign policy required to preserve such a republic (Book II), and what his “young Florentine readers would need to do as private individuals” (118) to bring the system about (Book III).
Zuckert painstakingly works through the Discourses, making more sense of their coherence and argumentative strategies than most scholars have done. Machiavelli’s Rome is exemplary, but not an ideal; as with The Prince, Machiavelli is innovating, though he is doing so “in the guise of an ‘imitation’ of ancient orders” (p. 153). And while his republic relies upon an active and armed populace, Machiavelli is no democrat (contra, e.g., McCormick): The people respect the law because they are “weaker and more fearful” than princes (p. 172), but maintaining the people uncorrupted requires the presence of fear and, in a sense, insecurity. Rather than aim at universal domination, an outcome that undermined both Rome’s liberty and that of other republics, Zuckert argues that Machiavelli aims at a federation in which Florence would be secure and hemmed in by the emerging national states. Both the Prince and the Discourses aim to “persuade those who possess or seek to possess political power that the first . . . goal of government is and must remain the security of the people” (p. 274). Her reading thus shares with rhetorical readings (e.g., Maurizio Viroli or Mary Dietz) a focus on Machiavelli’s audience, but takes seriously his own intention of reaching beyond his immediate audience (as does Leo Strauss).
Zuckert extends her reading of Machiavelli, rooted in human acquisitiveness and the constancy of human nature, to the Mandragola, Clizia, Art of War, Florentine Histories, and the Life of Castruccio Castracani, each of which developed “a particular theme or partial application of his more comprehensive understanding” (p. 280). The Mandragola portrays the impure morality of The Prince, demonstrating its necessity for human happiness; the Art of War echoes Machiavelli’s emphasis on citizen militias with republican political ramifications, while the Life shows a self-made ruler who could neither maintain nor hand on his power. Clizia draws the readers eyes from the heavens to the goods of the world, and the Florentine Histories shows where Florence went wrong, and why it could be great “if only there had been a legislator who knew how” to make it so (p. 282).
Certain of Zuckert’s points could be more fully argued. If we are to speak of Machiavelli’s innovations, for example, how new is Machiavelli’s teaching if, as others (e.g. Virginia Cox) have shown, it takes up themes found in the Rhetoric to Herennius? And what are we to make of Machiavelli’s relationship to the classical author—Lucretius—with whom he seems to have the most in common? Zuckert’s close and careful engagement with Machiavelli’s own fascination with empire, along with his recognition of its dangers, is of particular value to Machiavelli scholarship, though it seems to me that Zuckert herself recognizes a worrisome remainder in his thought: After all, even if he recognizes the importance of a league for Florence’s future, he still seems to think that “a city will contract and disappear if it does not seek constantly to expand” (p. 198). But Machiavelli’s Politics is a remarkable achievement, and anyone writing on Machiavelli will need to reckon with it; read in conjunction with Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict, a reader will come away with a firm anchor in contemporary Machiavelli scholarship.
