M.J.Huxtable
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THE CIVIC FACE OF HUMANISM
(Machiavelli’s The Prince, 1513)
Seminar Preparation
What are the key themes of the work? Write brief notes on Machiavelli’s conception
of the following: virtù, onore, gloria, necessità, fortuna.
(Using a. Niccolò Machiavelli. The Prince. Trans and notes by George Bull. Int by
Anthony Grafton. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961, 1999. And b. Peter Bondanella
and Mark Musa, trans and eds. The Portable Machiavelli. Viking Portable Library;
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.)
Of virtù:
Machiavelli … spoke of virtue, constantly. But he used the term ‘virtue’ in
many senses, including that of the basic ability needed, independent of any
questions about good or evil, to keep control of one’s subjects and one’s
kingdoms. Accordingly, Machiavelli often told the reader that the qualities
traditionally considered as ‘virtuous’, in the Christian or feudal senses, were
not virtuous at all in a prince. (…)
(p.xxi – a. Grafton)
Of Machiavelli’s first use of his concepts of virtù and fortuna:
In one of his dispatches describing the duke’s character (Cesare Borgia), we
find one of the first instances in his works where ability or ingenuity (virtù) and
good fortune (fortuna) are joined together in the person f a single historical
figure. This is a them that will occupy much of Machiaveli’s attention in The
Prince, where, once again, Borgia’s role will be of crucial importance.
(p.12 – b. Bondanella and Musa)
Machiavelli on the pitfalls of traditional virtue:
The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily
comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous. Therefore if a prince
wants to maintain his rule he must be prepared not to be virtuous, and to make
use of this or not according to need.
(p.50 – a. Machiavelli, The Prince, xv.)
The net result of Machiavelli’s point of view re virtue:
A prince who truly understood ‘virtue’ – the sense of the qualities needed to
perpetuate his state and his own power – would prefer the ‘vice’ of meanness
to the ‘virtue’ of liberality. Again and again, Machiavelli transformed the
values traditionally highlighted and praised in formal writing on political
theory.
(p.xxi – a. Grafton)
M.J.Huxtable
Of virtù and ordini in The Discourses:
Its [The Princes’s] individualistic bias, with its concentration upon a single
protagonist, the ‘new’ prince, is not abandoned in The Discourses but
incorporated into the search for stable institutions. Virtù, the key term of The
Prince, is now supplanted in the commentary on Livy by the word ordini,
meaning institutions, constitutions, and, in general organisation of various
aspects of the state. The man of virtù is still necessary, for only a single man’s
actions can found a new republic or principality or reform completely its
corrupted ordini (Discourses, I, ix). In The Discourses, Machiavelli’s problem
becomes how to move from individual virtù to social ordini, how to
institutionalize the ability of a government’s creator or founder so that it can
defend itself from civic corruption and inevitable destruction.
(p. 33 – b. Bondanella and Musa)
Of fortuna:
…he argued that fortune had enormous powers over men. (…) In general,
Machiavelli insisted, the bold would succeed better than the hesitant. Fortune,
he wrote, framing an image often cited in his own time and still notorious now,
was after all a woman. Accordingly, she favoured those bold enough to treat
her roughly. (…)
(p.xxiii-iv – a. Grafton)
…as fortune is changeable whereas men are obstinate in their ways, men
prosper so long as fortune and policy are in accord, and when there is a clash
they fail. I hold strongly to this: that it is better to be impetuous than
circumspect; because fortune is a woman and if she is to be submissive it is
necessary to beat and coerce her. Experience shows that she is more often
subdued by men who do this than by those who act coldly. Always, being a
woman, she favours young men, because they are less circumspect and more
ardent, and because they command hr with greater audacity.
(p.82 – a. Machiavelli, The Prince, xxv.)
…in his passionate concern with the power of conditions to shape events, and
his sense of the fragility of human leaders and their plans, he drew on the
intellectual resources of the Florentine ruling class. Patricians whose
prominence rested not on ancient birth and military prowess but on sales and
investments knew they could lose everything overnight. (…)
(p.xxiii-iv – a. Grafton)
In treating success and failure as something not earned by good conduct but
wrested from the control of an unsympathetic cosmos, Machiavelli used a wellestablished set of images and metaphors.
(p.xxiii-iv – a. Grafton)
Of conflict as the result of the relation of virtù and fortuna:
While human desires are defined as insatiable, fortuna prohibits men from
possessing sufficient virtù or ability to obtain all of what they desire (…) There
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M.J.Huxtable
is not enough material wealth to satisfy the boundless human desire to acquire
more wealth. When such an acquisitive, aggressive human nature is combined
with severely restricted resources, political conflict is the inevitable result.
(p. 28-9 – b. Bondanella and Musa)
Of gloria:
Note that the following placing of ‘glory’ as earned in the achievement of a
moral task – despite the practical realities of human nature (selfish) - sets up a
Machiavellian paradox and evidence of the problem of reconciling The Prince
with The Discourses. He needs moral values to account for some important
human desires – does this mean those moral values are meaningless to
Machiavelli, or simply too difficult to pursue as ends in themselves given the
nature of men?
If a prince truly seeks worldly glory, he should hope to possess a corrupt city –
not in order to ruin it completely as Caesar did but to reorganize it as Romulus
did. And the heavens cannot truly bestow upon men a greater opportunity for
obtaining glory than this, nor can men desire a greater one”.
(p. 206 – b. Machiavelli, Discourses, I, x)
Of necessità:
You must realize this: that a prince, and especially a new prince, cannot
observe all those things which give men a reputation for virtue, because in
order to maintain his state he is often forced to act in defiance of good faith, of
charity, of kindness, of religion. And so he should have a flexible disposition,
varying as fortune and circumstances dictate. As I said above, he should not
deviate from what is good, if that is possible, but he should know how to
do evil, if that is necessary.
(p. 57 – a. Machiavelli, The Prince, xviii)
Of onore:
Nothing brings a prince more prestige than great campaigns and striking
demonstrations of his personal abilities.
(p. 71 – a. Machiavelli, The Prince, xxi)
Above all, in all his doings a prince must endeavour to win the reputation of
being a great man of outstanding ability.
(p. 72 – a. Machiavelli, The Prince, xxi)
The content of this endeavour, presumably entailing that –
He should appear to be compassionate, faithful to his word, kind, guileless and
devout. And indeed he should be so. But his disposition should be such that, if
he needs to be the opposite, he knows how.
(p. 57 – a. Machiavelli, The Prince, xviii)
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