Machiavelli

In this little exercise I, FCA have cut and pasted Wikipedia text on Machiavelli and then responded to it. 

-first take on The Prince, whether it is better to be loved or feared

-this is all about the exercise of power and control

-keep a balance of love and fear, keeping of order is the objective, unity, loyalty, be clement, not cruel

-states are full of dangers, from within and without

-feared: Putin, Hitler, Ayatollah, Stalin

-loved: Mandela, MLK, Dalai Lama,

-that people are with you when things are going good and abandon you when they are not, this is psychology and self-preservation, it gets right into the motives for altruism, and if there is even any altruism (inclusive fitness)

-this is premised on an every dog for himself model

-you want people to fear you but not hate you, don’t get them started on a cycle of revenge, there is no turning back from that

-respect flows from combination of fear and admiration of valor, this is baboon dominance type stuff

-“men who know much better how not to err than to correct the errors of others”, this is about being a boss, a leader, that arbitrary use of power, the use of double binds, this is not respected, so the good leader avoids hatred by not being arbitrary

-Scipio was permissive, wanted to please, Bill Clinton, Scipio was covered by institutional apologists, he never had to pay the fiddler

-tendency for gratuitous self congratulation, SCA, it’s a delusion, groupthink

Fundamental break between political realism/ idealism

Art of control

Publicly benign/ privately ruthless (amoral)

Goals of the State, Republic or despotic

Good results from evil actions

How to manual of acquiring and keeping political power

FCA: in this respect, behavioral models of dominance and hierarchy fit perfectly, this is not a matter of philosophy but of immutable, unchanging nature

The Prince is a manual to acquiring and keeping political power. In contrast with Plato and Aristotle, a Classical ideal society is not the aim of the prince’s will to power. As a political scientist, Machiavelli emphasises necessary, methodical exercise of brute force punishment-and-reward (patronage, clientelism, et cetera) to preserve the status quo.

FCA: it seems to be true that once in power, people don‘t want to give it up and try by whatever means to keep power, but this then is also true of personal relations, in that power and control is a central issue, so Machiavelli is really a behavioral psychologist

If the book was only intended as a manual for tyrannical rulers, it contains a paradox: it would apparently be more effective if the secrets it contains would not be made publicly available.

the adjective Machiavellian (in the sense of devious cunning), often in the introductions of political tracts offering more than government by “Reasons of State”,

FCA: the thing is, if you are Mr. Nice Guy and your associates are devious, which you pretty well have to assume, as people are universally petty, parochial, self-serving, back-stabbing, blaming etc and this is par for the course, so that if you have rosy sunglasses on, or are otherwise somehow unaware of the nature of human relations, then those around you will take advantage of you; the alternative is to seize the moral high ground and not relinquish it in the face of petty onslaughts

consensus that Machiavelli was the first political theorist with a practical, scientific approach to statecraft, considering him “the first Modern Man”. The commentators view the political scientist Machiavelli positively—because he viewed the world realistically, thus, such statecraft leads to (generally) constructive results.

FCA: realistic in the sense that human nature is going to play out in predictable ways, and this is based on that humans are basically acting like baboons with more culture, so then, that culture may be a factor in why the West was exceptional, is only to the degree that it gave an advantage in power and control, which it must have, if the West came to its current hegemonous position

Machiavelli was in many respects not an innovator. His largest political work seeks to bring back a rebirth of the Ancient Roman Republic; its values, virtues and principles the ultimate guiding authority of his political vision. Machiavelli is essentially a restorer of something old and forgotten. The republicanism he focused on, especially the theme of civic virtue, became one of the dominant political themes of the modern world, and was a central part of the foundation of American political values.

FCA: there is nothing new under the sun, it’s all a mishmash of gradualism and innovation, punctuated equilibrium

he admits that the old tradition was true - men are obliged to live virtuously as according to Aristotles Virtue Ethics principle. However, he denies that living virtuously necessarily leads to happiness. Machiavelli viewed misery as one of the vices that enables a prince to rule

FCA: you can’t live virtuously because society and human nature is fundamentally a den of snakes where you have to watch your ass all the time and that drags you down from being able to be virtuous, only a few can get there and we idolize them: Jesus, Ghandi, etc but that type of behavior remains out of reach for the Joe Sixpacks of the world, as well, “virtue” is nothing more than morality, which itself is codified in-group behavior

In much of Machiavelli's work, it seems that the ruler must adopt unsavory policies for the sake of the continuance of his regime.

FCA: Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Putin, Dick Cheney, clinging to power, all these guys try to rig elections and extend the constitutional limits of presidential terms, people cling to relationships as well, clinging itself may be a propensity to opt for stasis in a changing world

Pocock (1981) traces the Machiavellian belief in and emphasis upon Greco-Roman ideals of unspecialized civic virtue and liberty from 15th-century Florence through 17th-century England and Scotland to 18th-century America. Thinkers who shared these ideals tended to believe that the function of property was to maintain an individual's independence as a precondition of his virtue. Consequently, in the last two times and places mentioned above, they were disposed to attack the new commercial and financial regime that was beginning to develop. However, Paul Rahe (1992) takes issue with Pocock on the origins and argues Machiavelli's republicanism was not rooted in antiquity but was is entirely novel and modern. Scholars have argued that James Madison followed Machiavelli's republicanism when he (and Jefferson) set up the Democratic-Republican Party in the 1790s to oppose what they saw as the emerging aristocracy that they feared Alexander Hamilton was creating with the Federalist Party.[13] Conservative historians likewise conclude that Thomas Jefferson's republicanism was "deeply in debt" to Machiavelli, whom he praised.[14]

FCA: the critical issue may not be property but independence, that allows one to develop an “higher” senses, it is material well-being that provides the possibility of independence, not property per se, and so in the modern world, the trajectory of the individual has come to allow independence without all the yeoman farmer stuff, now it’s a good wage that can set your mind free, you can get there through wage labor, if you make enough to get leisure time to develop “virtue”, which is really just the ability to be creative and find something to offer life/ society

For four centuries scholars have debated whether Machiavelli was the theorist of evil or just being realistic.

FCA: well, you look at chimps and you see light and dark, you see violence and compassion, Machiavelli was maybe not so much of a theorist then someone noticing fundamental characteristics of the race, of biology

German philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1946) held that Machiavelli simply adopts the stance of a political scientist—a Galileo of politics—in distinguishing between the "facts" of political life and the "values" of moral judgment.[18]

FCA: biology and culture, genetically inherited and socially inherited

Thoughts on the State

Machiavelli was not a political philosopher in the ordinary sense. He did not try either to define the State or to justify its existence. His views about the State are implied as matter of course when he describes how a ruler may retain or acquire control, how he is liable to lose it, which qualities are necessary for a republic to remain strong, or how precarious a Republic’s liberty can be at times. Medieval thinkers had taken the political authority of any prince or king in the community of Christendom to be necessarily limited – by the Emperor (In the case of the Holy Roman Empire), by the power of the Roman Catholic Church in spiritual matters and by the power of natural law (Universal moral principles) that determine the boundaries of justice. Machiavelli did not challenge this long held traditional position. He ignored it, writing as a matter of fact that the state had absolute authority. He thought that the value of religion lies in its contribution to social order and the rules of morality must be dispensed with if security required it.

Machiavelli further differed from medieval thinkers in taking for granted that the power of the state is a single whole and can be centrally controlled, irrespective of whether the state is a monarchy or a republic. He preferred a republic because he preferred liberty. However, he believed that in order for the liberty of republicanism to function, it needed a citizenry who were independent and courageous (Virtuous). Machiavelli believed these qualities were rare and existed hardly anywhere in the Europe of his day since the Romans.

FCA: a state’s security is precarious, yes, look at the history of war and shifting empire, it’s easy enough to see how conquest, power and control are central to human history and human behavior, but why? Because that is the kind of animal we are, it is our nature, and that leads straight to sociobiology, principles only serve power, culture is only a veneer

Impact on America

The Founding Fathers read Machiavelli closely. In his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States, Adams praised Machiavelli, with Algernon Sidney and Montesquieu, as a philosophic defender of mixed government. For Adams, Machiavelli restored empirical reason to politics, while his analysis of factions was commendable. Adams likewise agreed with the Florentine that human nature was immutable and driven by passions. He also accepted Machiavelli's belief that all societies were subject to cyclical periods of growth and decay. For Adams, Machiavelli lacked only a clear understanding of the institutions necessary for good government.[19]

Most recently, Michael A. Ledeen, holder of the "Freedom Chair" at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, was instrumental in uniting neoconservatives with the new Christian Right. An admirer of the political philosophy of Machiavelli[20], he used Christian fundamentalism as a political tool to advance the candidacy and help ground the presidency of George W. Bush, producing what political scientist David Domke has called "political fundamentalism." Ledeen's theoretical ideas have influenced the policies of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Karl Rove.[21]

FCA: “human nature immutable and driven by passions”/ cyclical growth and decay, well, this plays right into reducing all ultimately to biology; “Revolutions produce other men, not new men. Halfway between truth and endless error, the mold of the species is permanent. That is earth’s burden.” Barbara Tuchaman

Steve Mueller:

-an attempt to describe politics as if it were a natural, amoral force.

-universal appeal is rooted in it's amoral perspective

-explains the forces at work and provides indications regarding future political events

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