I thank Michelle Clarke for her thoughtful review, which offers both generous praise and important criticism. I will leave aside our interpretive disagreements about historical efforts to advance equality (by the Gracchi in second-century bc Rome and the Ciompi in fourteenth-century Florence) and focus instead on two questions raised by the review: 1) Are the flaws in contemporary theories of violence particular to analytic political philosophy? 2) Does the populist interpretation of Machiavelli as endorsing not just bloodless but also violent forms of class conflict unduly privilege equality over liberty?
Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence challenges the depoliticization prevalent in many contemporary theoretical approaches to violence. But Clarke suggests that my critique has a more specific focus, namely, analytic political philosophy and that I am “using Machiavelli to develop an encompassing critique of analytic philosophy.” This response took me by surprise, and I would like to take the opportunity to clarify my argument.
Clarke correctly notes that I defend a historical and political approach to violence that is at odds with the abstract moral theorizing prevalent in analytical political philosophy; yet my critique is not restricted to the analytic tradition. Robert Nozick’s theory of coercion, which I criticize in the Conclusion, is a particularly glaring example of a tendency to depoliticization that goes far beyond analytic philosophy. Throughout the book, I argue—drawing on Machiavelli—that political violence does not have a dyadic but a triadic structure. Most political violence produces effects not because it physically compels another agent but by appealing to a third party: an audience. This is Machiavelli’s principal insight about the structure of violence, and that insight has a number of implications: most importantly, that violent acts are not self-evident but require interpretation. The thesis that violence is a form of communication contests two tacit premises shared by theories of violence from divergent philosophical traditions (including, for example, social contract and natural law theories, Weberian sociology, and political realism): namely, that violence is a primordial form of social action (a residual instrument of nature), and that when deployed politically it takes the form of a duel between two independent wills.
Clarke’s second question concerns the object of Machiavelli’s political pedagogy. If he seeks to teach readers how to read violence, what is the purpose of these lessons? Clarke contends that my version of Machiavelli as a champion of the plebs overstates the importance of equality and thereby neglects liberty. I agree that freedom is his paramount political value, but Clarke and I diverge 1) in our understanding of the relation between freedom and equality and 2) in our assessment as to whether oligarchy or tyranny poses the greater danger to freedom.
On my reading, equality is not only freedom’s necessary condition but also its form. For Machiavelli, freedom involves a constant struggle for political and economic equality. Inequality by contrast, is synonymous with corruption. Hence, liberty and equality are not opposed and there is no prima facie trade-off between the two.
As for the principal threat to freedom, Machiavelli’s answer is unambiguous: the grandi. While the danger of tyranny is certainly also on his radar, he regards inequality rather than tumultuous and contested politics as the breeding ground for both types of unfreedom. Whether a particular instance or formation of political violence advances or thwarts freedom and equality is a question that can only be answered by investigating the qualità de tempi, that is to say, the particular relations of forces at work in a given historical situation.
