Replies, debates, discussions
1. Machiavelli's misogyny
The passage in chapter XXV of The Prince in which Machiavelli compares fortune to a woman is part of the patriarchal paradigm of his time. The misogyny is blatant: "it is better to be impetuous than cautious, because Fortune is a woman, and if you want to keep her under it is necessary to beat her and force her down." The fact that Machiavelli is advocating rape here has never left the students with whom I have worked on this text indifferent, nor myself.
If The Prince is, in its very concepts, characteristic of a virilist vision of gender relations, in which women are summoned only to occupy a subordinate position, it is important to discuss whether and how Machiavelli’s concepts can be thought of and used today. In a philosophy course, you don't study Machiavelli before you've studied Plato: the same patriarchal paradigm applies here and there, although between classical Greece and the Renaissance the Romans happened, Romans who have nothing to envy the Greeks in terms of virilist ideology, quite the contrary.
A review of the role and place of women throughout history will immediately make sense from this perspective. In the corpus of Western philosophy, there are a few names and few texts. We could look at the character of Diotime in Plato' Symposium, analyse the possibility opened up by Plato for women to be among the guardians of the ideal city, or evoke the role played by Aspasia in the education of Socrates, and more broadly in the Athenian society. Read poems by Sappho, talk about Hypatia the Neoplatonist, read extracts from La Cité des Dames (1405) by Christine de Pizan. And why not go straight into Les Guérillères (1969) by Monique Wittig, or King Kong théorie (2006) by Virginie Despentes?
We could also work on the gender of concepts: is the concept of fortune comprehensible if we subtract its feminine gender, if we de-gender it? Since virtù is clearly marked as masculine, how can we grasp these polarities outside the gendered distribution of power? The idea would be to 'detach' the gender of concepts from the gender of beings (after having done so with the biologically assigned sexes), and thus translate masculine/feminine into active/passive, without linking the first pair to the second. Isn't fortune necessarily a material of/for all genders and none, of all signs, of all identities and especially of those that change?
It might be relevant to read Simone de Beauvoir's reworking of Hegel's dialectic of domination and servitude at the beginning of The Second Sex. As I indicated in my analysis of the concepts of The Prince, Machiavelli himself plays with these positions, not hesitating to put himself in the passive position in the Dedicatory letter, only to turn around and assume that of the "master" at another point. He is certainly a "changeable" man, and the fortune he invites to strike and beat, for he who has suffered the strappado, must undoubtedly have been of some inspiration to him.
Reading about Machiavelli's work, one cannot help but be struck by the fact that he is an author who attracts men, in academic circles and elsewhere, far more than women. It's easy to see why, an obvious fact that is all the more worthy of questioning. What legitimacy do our societies and our modes of education and teaching produce for women and minorities when it comes to thinking about politics? About war? History? And to take part in them? Among the students I had the opportunity to work with, teenagers, the ease with which some of the boys thought they were in a video game when we talked about a contemporary conflict (it was the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022) was a good springboard for getting to grips with this issue. For example, I tried to short-circuit this 'ease' by getting them all to talk about the emotions that wars and atrocities of today elicit in them. In this respect, my experience was that a community very quickly formed that had not much to do with gender.
In the associations of ideas common in Machiavelli's time (and ours), to compare fortune to a woman is still to compare nature to a woman. So is this an apology for the exploitation of nature, which is only recognised as an entity in its own right in this relationship of domination? The link with Descartes' famous phrase, "to make oneself as master and possessor of nature", in the sixth part of the Discourse on the Method, is easy to establish. Placing the threatening aspects of nature for the human world in perspective with human attempts to control or channel these forces, right up to the reversal of the Anthropocene where it is humans who have become a systemic risk for the earth's ecosystem, echoes with the positional fluidity mentioned above.
Last but not least, we can highlight women of the Renaissance, in order to break through this scene dominated entirely by men. The first one would be Caterina Sforza, stateswoman, intellectual and alchemist, whose account by Machiavelli of her prowess at the siege of Imola certainly gives food for thought (see Julia L. Hairston's article, Skirting the issue, Machiavelli’s Caterina Sforza). There are others: Lucrezia Borgia, whose 'black legend' is now being called into question by historians. Caterina de' Medici, daughter of Lorenzo II (to whom Machiavelli dedicated The Prince), became the best ambassador for this “little work” in France, where she was crowned queen in 1547. Then we’d turn to women outside of the aristocratic circles, starting with the woman with whom Machiavelli shared his life, Marietta Corsini, and from there into the lifestyles, customs, possibilities and limitations imposed to the women of the time. In the ties that bind them to each other, to men, and men to women, we could end up questioning the erotic, heteroerotic, homoerotic and queer culture that developed in Florence — a 'licentious' city if ever there was one!
2. The end justifies the means, if...
A common opinion on Machiavelli makes him the author of a sentence he never wrote: "the end justifies the means". Two passages in his work come close, but they do not give credence to this formula, which appears to be a faulty oversimplification.
In The Prince, he writes in ch. XVIII: "Men in general judge more by their eyes than their hands: everyone can see, but few can feel. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few touch upon what you are, and those few do not dare to contradict the opinion of the many who have the majesty of the state to defend them. In the actions of all men, and especially of princes, where there is no tribunal to which to appeal, one must consider the final result."
In the Discourses, I, 9: "A wise mind will never condemn someone for having used a means outside the ordinary rules to govern a monarchy or found a republic. What is desired is that if the fact accuses him, the result excuses him; if the result is good, he is acquitted."
The first point is that Machiavelli does not give free rein to any action, since his thinking focuses on political action: to regulate a monarchy, to found a republic, or, as he writes in The Prince, "to maintain and govern the state" (ch. II). If an action led by a prince achieves this goal, then all means are good, of course. But you need to read the whole book. Machiavelli warns against the excessive use of violence (chapter VIII); he also warns that a prince who has the hatred or contempt of the population against him cannot last (chapter XIX). These two aspects considerably limit the means that a government can use if its aim is indeed to maintain and govern the state, and if we give these two words their full extension and depth.
The second point is that there is no court to which to appeal, and this is an opportunity to discuss the role played by the United Nations General Council or the International Court of Justice. The recommendations of the former rarely have a leverage effect on ongoing conflicts; as for the judgements of the latter, months or years after the fact, while they provide essential restorative justice for victims and may have an influence on the development of the law, they have no impact on the immediacy of wars and massacres. Machiavelli's analysis therefore deserves to be discussed. "Consider the final result" means that, faced with a fait accompli, the survivors of a political conflict or war have no choice but to take account of what has happened and, on that basis, form a new way of being in the present and future world. The way in which a population is forced to come to terms with what has happened could be called a "community of what has happened". "If the result is good" is only one of many possibilities, so that such a community – or rather communities – can be formed against the result, which is judged to be bad or disastrous. Machiavelli sticks to his method of effectual truth, without making any moral judgements about the actions of rulers, or about the actions of the governed, who may rise up against a given result. For Machiavelli, acknowledging the facts is never tantamount to submission to authority.
Third point, the concept of raison d'Etat is anachronistic if we are talking about Machiavelli, because it enshrines a type of separation between the population and the ruling elites that did not exist during the Renaissance. In short, this separation will be effective after the rise of the bourgeoisie, both in the appropriation of the means of production and in that of knowledge. An oligarchic, technocratic government speaks of raison d'Etat in order to justify its actions, whatever they may be (repression, special operations, torture camps, etc.), in the eyes of the majority. Those who are fooled by it are generally those who find it useful to maintain the distribution of power that this justification hypostases.
3. The adjective "machiavélique"
"1. Qui est digne de la doctrine de Machiavel, considérée comme négation de la morale : Politique machiavélique. 2. Qui est d’une grande perfidie, d’une scélératesse tortueuse : Projet, personnage machiavélique. Synonymes : diabolique, scélérat, tortueux.” (Larousse)
Few philosophers have had the privilege of having their name adjectivized, and this word to develop into a life of their own. Plato is the only one I can think of, and the expression 'platonic love' is as far removed from the philosophy of the author of the Symposium as 'plan machiavélique' is from that of Machiavelli. And it's not the fault of the French. For the English adjective machiavellian we find: "1. of or relating to Machiavelli or Machivallianism. 2. suggesting the principles of conduct laid down by Machiavelli, specifically: marked by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith." (Merriam Webster). And for Italian machiavèllico: "1. che appartiene o si refersice a Niccolò Machiavelli; che si ispira aux princìpi di amoralità, di cinismo e di doppiezza tradizionalmente attribuiti al pensiero del Machiavelli. 2. seguace delle teorie e della prassi etica et politica del Machiavelli." (Grande Dizionario).
By the way, Italian has a panoply of words that would make any other language green with envy: machiavellàgine, machiavellare, machiavelleggiante, machiavelleggiare, machiavellerìa, machiavellescaménte, machiavellésco, machiavellianaménte, machiavelliano, machiavèllica, machiavellicaménte, machiavellièro, machiavellino, machiavellista…
To explain this highly charged connotation, Jean Giono (and can one suspect the man of Machiavellianism, who lived through the trenches of Verdun and later claimed to be a pacifist?) put forward this judicious (if not cunning) lead in 1955:
"What could poor Niccolò have done to everyone? He didn't invent gunpowder or the police!
I'm told: "No, but he did report such-and-such. – Who did he report? – Someone who was into politics. – Politics? Judging by the wrong side of the word (and that's what it usually means), he should be congratulated. – Yes, but we all play politics.
That's the eel under the rock. After all, we are all involved in politics: whether it's at the level of the General or Municipal Council (and we believe ourselves to be Caesar) or at the level of the lead article in the daily partisan newspaper (and we believe ourselves to be Saint Paul or Saint George) or whether we practice the politics of passions in general (and we believe ourselves to be Don Juan, Ford or Buffalo Bill).
People never like to come down from a pedestal (especially if it's just a soapbox). But we're dead set against anyone who knows how to get up there, doesn't use it, and give the game away". (pp. IX-X)
As is often the case in the history of ideas, bad reputation comes from opponents and contradictors, in this case those who saw in Machiavelli's writings not an error, but a danger. A danger to the state (for example, Frederick II and Voltaire published their Anti-Machiavelli in 1740), a danger to morality (The Prince was banned by the Church as early as 1559), and ultimately a danger to all those who coveted any kind of authority.
So, masks off? Everyone is playing a game. The question being: is it even possible to be sincere? Or at least not to be duplicitous? Are there people so "simple" that they are never devious? So generous and selfless that they are never treacherous? And if not in deed or word, then in thought? But if we follow this slope, we will soon be like those directors of conscience – and casuistry may be Machiavellian, but it is contrary to Machiavelli's view to singularity – who look in the smallest nooks and crannies, under the smallest stones, behind the smallest slip of the tongue, for a reason to suspect you of being 'something', something to be condemned, no doubt, and the best way to trip someone up is to reproach them the way they walk, to make them 'aware' of it, in short, to reason them like one would pin a butterfly in an entomoralogist's ledger (a blend word that Voltaire would have loved!).
Of course, the only thing we have retained from this whole story is a sentence from Chapter VIII and a bit from Chapter XVIII: wickedness and breaking one's word, both of which are justified under certain conditions in the eyes of the Florentine. Under certain conditions.
Let's look at keeping one's word. What century was more hypocritical in this respect than the 19th, the very century that took its cue from Kant and the categorical imperative? Has there ever been a policy – that of the European nation states – more concerned with passing off its own interests as universal values? Is there any political system more likely to break its promises than parliamentarianism, in which, in order to get elected, everyone presents themself as a defender of the people, until they are no more than a happy pawn of lobbyists and partisan logic?
Machiavelli view is quite different: "A wise ruler, therefore, cannot and should not keep his word when such an observance would be to his disadvantage, and when the reasons that caused him to make a promise are removed. If men were all good, this precept would not be good. But since men are a wicked lot and will not keep their promises to you, you likewise need not keep yours to them. A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to colour over his failure to keep his word." (ch. XVIII). The colouring is rightly seen as a form of lying, and this is the art of dis/simulation. But in this passage, what shocks most people isn’t that, it's not even that we give ourselves the right to break our word, it's what's in the middle: "men are a wicked lot and will not keep their promises to you". For everyone uses their own word as they were God, placing their hope of salvation and that of society as a whole in it (ah, if only we could live in a world governed by the categorical imperative and by men of good will!) This is to misunderstand human nature, replies Machiavelli. For who has never been angry, not at being lied to, but at being lied to badly? Who hasn't wished that certain things were hidden from them, or that some part of reality was magically concealed? That's human nature too, especially if you're not lucky enough to get up at 5.30 every morning to the sound of "Es ist Zeit!" and spend the day in a small town in East Prussia studying philosophy.
A prince must break his word if : 1. it is harmful for him to keep it, 2. the reasons which made him promise it have been extinguished. Both conditions are necessary since it is in the prince's interest to keep his word as long as it is not harmful to do so, and since even if it is harmful if the reasons that made us give our word have not died out it could be more dangerous not to keep it. Weighing up interests. Machiavelli bases his proposal on political utility and on the advantage or disadvantage that a government can derive from an agreement. What could be more foolish than a government that continues to honour the terms of a treaty when its former ally has turned against it?
Machiavelli's thinking is therefore not the negation of morality, but its suspension. We know that he has his morality well in place, for example in chapter XVI: "generosity employed in such a way as to give you a reputation for it will injure you, because if it is employed virtuously and as one should employ it, it will not be recognized" – generosity is what you do, not what you claim. But political utility rarely coincides with ascetic virtues. The problem with morality is that it aims to be universal, to be applicable in all circumstances, whereas political action must always be concerned with the singular. Machiavelli does the exact opposite of casuistry... as heir to Lucretius, for whom nothing repeats itself in exactly the same way.
I once asked a class to form small groups and decide together on an ideal government, in which, of the 4-5 people in each group, each would be a minister and administer an important aspect of public life. That day, almost all the groups opted for a tyrannical regime. Why was this? We discussed it, and the most plausible explanation seemed to be: because it's the only way to make politics resemble morality. Adolescence being an age of strong moral development (between rejection and acquisition of group norms), we were faced with the strange paradox that the most “machiavélique” plan is at the same time the most moral form of organisation.
4. Young and old
At the end of the first chapter of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle writes a few lines about youth in politics which contrast sharply with the end of chapter XXV of The Prince. The question is whether or not young people are qualified to study and engage in politics. Aristotle's argument, based on the idea that young people are guided by their passions, concludes that they are not; Machiavelli concludes the opposite, based on the idea that young people take more risks and are therefore more likely to seize the opportunities that fortune presents them with. Here are the two texts.
Aristotle: “Now each man judges well what he knows, and of these things he is a good judge: on each particular matter then he is a good judge who has been instructed in it, and in a general way the man of general mental cultivation. Hence the young man is not a fit student of Moral Philosophy, for he has no experience in the actions of life, while all that is said presupposes and is concerned with these: and in the next place, since he is apt to follow the impulses of his passions, he will hear as though he heard not, and to no profit, the end in view being practice and not mere knowledge. And I draw no distinction between young in years, and youthful in temper and disposition: the defect to which I allude being no direct result of the time, but of living at the beck and call of passion, and following each object as it rises. For to them that are such the knowledge comes to be unprofitable, as to those of imperfect self-control: but, to those who form their desires and act in accordance with reason, to have knowledge on these points must be very profitable." (Translation by D. P. Chase)
Machiavelli: "I certainly believe this: that it is better to be impetuous than cautious, because Fortune is a woman, and if you want to keep her under it is necessary to beat her and force her down. It is clear that she more often allows herself to be won over by impetuous men than by those who proceed coldly. And so, like a woman, Fortune is always the friend of young men, for they are less cautious, more ferocious, and command her with more audacity."
I have already discussed Machiavelli's misogyny in this passage, and elsewhere the erotic of the fortuna/virtù pair that runs throughout the book, The idea that ‘women’ would prefer 'young men' is of course questionable, but let's accept it as a premise and see where the reasoning leads. What is important for Machiavelli is the importance of impetuousness and audacity: without these qualities, a prince would not be able to take the risks necessary to conquer, maintain and govern a state. These are qualities akin to virtù.
Aristotle's idea that, in politics, we should be masters of our passions and guided by reason alone is opposed by all the revolutions that have succeeded (but for Aristotle, revolutions are undoubtedly a bad thing...). Machiavelli's view is opposed by all the revolutions that have failed through lack of experience and preparation.
Machiavelli is not anti-Aristotelian for that, since his concept of prudence applies to the experience and rationality dear to Aristotle. To exercise prudence is to learn to no longer live under the sway of the passions, and to refer oneself to the past of experience is to "grow old"; whereas virtù is to be ready to take the initiative, to become contemporary with events as they happen, and in this sense to "grow younger". Understood in this way through two verbs, these two measures of complete one another.
To discuss this topic, it would be interesting to bring together people of different ages and ask them to share their experiences. Older people will remember their youth, and will be able to say how they have (or have not) found answers in their passions and experiences. Younger people will be able to say how they perceive a society that remains in the hands of its elders, whether we're talking about gerontocracy or the rationality of acquired experience. Don't older people get caught up in their own habits and prejudices? Don't they have too strong a preference for their quiet corner by the fire? And the younger ones, how do they deal with their own prejudices, which one day may become old hat? How do they manage their passions, what qualities do they recognise in them? And so on.
5. An economy of violence
Machiavelli theorises an economy of the use of violence that is striking for its lack of empathy. This is certainly a suspension of morality, but it is also a purely utilitarian relationship to the "government and maintenance of the state": since the state cannot survive without some use of – or at least preparation for – violence, it all comes down to measure its adequateness.
Machiavelli understands violence as a natural and ordinary necessity. Thus when he speaks of newly acquired states at the beginning of chapter III: "This stems from another natural and ordinary necessity, which is that a new prince must always harm his new subjects, both with his soldiers as well as with countless other injuries involved in his new conquest." It is a question of being attentive to what actually happens, while calling a spade a spade: countless other injuries. Any change of regime, whether within a country or as a result of an invasion, generates changes of such nature that the injustices are bound to be innumerable. In this context, it is first and foremost up to any government to make choices that will ensure that such a change does not (re)occur any time soon: the stability of the State is de facto equivalent to the maintenance of a justiciary paradigm.
After discussing the question of colonies and asserting that they were a better choice than maintaining an army of occupation, Machiavelli writes: "I conclude that these colonies are not expensive, they are more loyal, they are less injurious, and the offended can do no harm since they are poor and scattered (as I have said). Concerning this, it should be noted that men must be either caressed or wiped out; because they will avenge minor injuries, but cannot do so for grave ones. Any harm done to a man must be of the kind that removes any fear of revenge." Machiavelli's attitude may well be described here as cynical, in the common sense of the word, to express his detachment from morality; yet he also indicates what he has read and seen done by many past and present governments, a list which has since grown longer without much change in method, only in the means used. He may well be called a realist, but what this veils is precisely the fact that such an attitude is not neutral insofar as the 'tried and tested methods' are by definition those of the past.
His economy of violence can be summed up in a few words: the use of violence should be measured by the inability of the offended to take revenge. Thus, when a principate is conquered, he advises assassinating not only the prince but his entire lineage. In Chapter III, he pursues the same logic, indicating that colonisation is a viable strategy against those who are "poor and scattered", since they cannot fight back. He concludes with a one-to-one rule: either flatter men, i.e. give them new titles, possessions and key positions, or annihilate them, depending on their subsequent capacity for revenge. These two types of action refer to the same anthropological premise, reaffirmed in ch. IX and XVIII, namely that a prince must trust no one, neither the people nor the greats. While Machiavelli's equanimity in this respect is unfailing, he writes that "the end pursued by the people is more honest than that of the great, for the latter wish to oppress and the former not to be oppressed": it is necessary to act towards everyone according to their nature (ch. IX).
This economy of violence is rooted in a politics of the passions. He addresses this point in Chapter XVII to emphasise the importance of avoiding hatred, against which, once unleashed, the prince is powerless: "let him abstain from the property of others, for men forget the death of their father more quickly than the loss of their patrimony". He takes up the same motif in chapter XIX: "what makes him [the prince] hated above all else is being rapacious and a usurper of the property and the women of his subjects." Here Machiavelli places two limits on the use of violence, limits justified by their consequences in terms of passion: there are types of suffering that human beings do not forget and that lead them to hatred and the desire for revenge. Isolated, they may not be a danger, but gathered together they will certainly become one, which is why princes "should concentrate upon avoiding those things that make him hated and contemptible."
If violence can lead to hatred, it is in fear that it takes root. We could discuss fear at length from an anthropological point of view; from a political point of view, fear exists because power exists, manifested in physical violence, class, gender and racial violence, and the violence of laws and institutions. But in Machiavelli, fear appears as a continuum, since it manifests itself not only on the side of the subjects, but also on the side of the prince: "For a prince should have two fears: one internal, concerning his subjects; the other external, concerning foreign powers." (ch. XIX). And he makes fear respond to fear, since an army of its own must frighten and dissuade enemies from the outside; while at home he thinks it necessary for the government to be feared (fear of punishment) because of human nature, humans seeking their own utility and showing morality and respect for the laws only when it suits them.
A prince who abuses violence, however, fails in Machiavelli's eyes on an essential point: "it cannot be called virtue to kill one’s fellow citizens, to betray allies, to be without faith, without pity, without religion; by these means one can acquire power, but not glory." (ch. IX) There would be good and bad violence, and therefore good and bad fear. Bad is that which only ensures power. Good is that which can contribute to glory. Would glory then be the assumption of violence in the body of the State? The moment when the interests of the subjects converge with those of the government? Fear does not disappear, however; it transforms, it mutates (in a thousand possible ways).
This idea is central to the way in which Machiavelli, in Chapter VIII, conditions the use of cruelty: "I believe that this depends on whether cruelty be badly or well used. Those cruelties are well used (if it is permitted to speak well of evil) that are carried out in a single stroke, done out of necessity to protect oneself, and then are not continued, but are instead converted into the greatest possible benefits for the subjects. Those cruelties are badly used that, although few at the outset, increase with the passing of time instead of disappearing.” What Machiavelli warns against is the passion for violence, a perversion of power if ever there was one. Cruelty – violence that is showed as violence – is well used when, conversely, it is limited by political utility. The Italian says "e dipoi non vi si insiste dentro, ma si convertono in più utilità de' subditi che si può". This happens "afterwards" because cruelty should only be used as a last resort, "out of necessity" to defend oneself, unlike the ordinary violence of acts of government whose injustice must be measured and distributed for the benefit of the maintenance and government of the State. But it's all the same, only the temporality changes. Ordinary violence is also summoned to be "converted into the greatest possible benefits for the subjects", but, as the government is not then in a situation of emergency, it must, in its very administration, contain the seeds of its transformation; whereas in the case of cruelty, the act is carried out in extremis and must then be transformed.
Between fear and glory, then, there is a transcensus of violence, to which responds the quality of the alliance and loyalty of the subjects in the whole-body of the State. Excessive violence leads to the loss of both, and to hatred. At the other end of the spectrum, an excess of mercy (which amounts to a failure to use ordinary violence effectively) also leads to the dissolution of the bond of loyalty: "With a very few examples of cruelty, he will prove more compassionate than those who, out of excessive mercy, permit disorders to continue from which arise murders and plundering, for these usually injure the entire community, while the executions ordered by the prince injure specific individuals." (ch. XVII)
Machiavelli's emphasis once again on communities, which constitute the power of the state, shows the extent to which he thinks in terms of whole and parts, in the manner of Aristotle, for whom "the part is prior to the whole" (Politics, I, 2, 1253 a 20) and is only fully realised when it is integrated into it (cf. mereology).
The government is not the whole, it is a part whose function is to ensure the cohesion of the whole (and there is no cohesion except in the movement towards glory). The loyalty of subjects (from the particular to the whole) is linked to the fear that the prince must inspire to external potentates (the whole must be united) and to the fear that he must inspire in his subjects (from the whole to the particular).
Violence therefore appears in Machiavelli's thinking as the counterpoint to the interests of the subjects (the people and the greats), ensuring the continuity of the form of the state.
6. Capitalism and neo-feudalism
In 1967, Antony Jay – an author the world has probably forgotten since – published his book Management and Machiavelli, a study of the similarities between the art of governing and business management: "The new science of management is in fact no more than an extension of the old art of governing, and by studying in parallel the theory of management and that of politics, economics and history, we see that they are two similar branches of the same subject" (p. 16 of the French translation, Machiavelli et les princes de l'entreprise, Robert Laffont, 1968).
With chapter headings such as "The King and the Barons", "The Successor", "Risk-taking and Self-Control" and "The Principle of Self-Interest", we quickly realise the shift that is taking place between Machiavelli's thought and the practices of liberal entrepreneurship. Admittedly, Machiavelli is used here as a pretext for linking the world of business and politics, and we learn nothing new from this book; but such an approach nonetheless reveals certain links between capitalism and the Renaissance. Commenting on the passage about the colonies in ch. III of The Prince, Jay reformulates Machiavelli's thinking as follows: "The fundamental rule is that, in revived affairs, the former rulers must either be warmly encouraged or dismissed; eliminated, they are powerless; demoted, they unite and try to regain their status quo ante. [...] Since I read this passage, I have advised this attitude to several bosses who had an absorption on their hands; they have all adopted it". (p. 20)
What is it to say? Companies are not the only field in which Machiavelli's method, observations and principles of action can be taken up: as soon as there is a group with a leader at its head, the analogy of situations makes it possible. Corporate Machiavellianism nonetheless gives the impression of a sandbox game, for the reason that where there are no people there are no politics. A company's employees can be made redundant at any time; not a people.
Another line of convergence between the Renaissance and capitalism is historical: the Medici built their power on their banking business, during a proto-capitalist 15th century that saw the creation of many other fortunes (the Fuggers in Germany, for example). Joining forces to cope with cargo losses at sea and pirate attacks, the shipowners of Genoa, Venice and Florence (via Pisa, which provided access to the Mediterranean sea) inaugurated the principle of insurance and risk management. The Medici understood this dynamic better than others and set up trading posts from Naples to Bruges and from London to Geneva, circulating money and lending to merchants, princes and popes alike. Florence was to become their fiefdom, first in the 15th century under Cosimo the Elder and then Lorenzo the Magnificent, and then again in the 16th century, after the Medici took back Florence with the help of one of their creditors, Pope Julius II. This control was confirmed in 1568 when another Cosimo became Grand Duke of Tuscany with the blessing of Pius V, in return for a promise to place his fleet at the service of the Holy League.
Machiavelli was born at a time when the Medici were climbing up the ladder, and the year of his birth (1469) coincided with the accession to power of Lorenzo, known for his patronage, which emptied the city's coffers. What rivers of tourists go to admire in Florence today dates from this period: from the Duomo designed by Brunelleschi with the support of Cosimo the Elder, to the many works exhibited at the Uffizi (Da Vinci, Botticelli, Lippi, Michelangelo, etc.) and paid for by Lorenzo or his friends, bearing witness to the way in which the Medici gradually forged their own identity (a class identity) and used this economic and symbolic power to attain political power (the famous expression "de facto prince").
Machiavelli was well aware of this, writing a chapter in The Prince devoted to liberality and parsimony. In it, he half-heartedly criticises the Medici: "if a prince wants to maintain his reputation for generosity among men, it is necessary for him not to neglect any possible means of sumptuous display; in so doing, such a prince will always use up all his resources in such displays" (ch. XVI) On the one hand, maintaining such a spending regime leads princes to increase taxes, making them odious to their subjects. On the other hand, Lorenzo de' Medici's magnificence kept him so busy that he forgot about the dangers outside, against which, rather than indulging in the eros of triumphant humanism, it would have been better to be prepared: proof of this is the way in which the city of Florence fell into the hands of Charles VIII in 1494 without his having had to fight a battle.
It is again at the end of chapter XXI that Machiavelli raises the question of patronage: "A prince should also demonstrate that he is a lover of the virtues, by giving hospitality to virtuous men and by honouring those who excel in a particular skill." He thought it would be useful to introduce a system of rewards to encourage "anyone who thinks of making his city or state greater". And in keeping with Roman tradition – panem et circenses – he advised "keeping the populace occupied with festivals and spectacles". The prince also participates in this in his own way, since he must "offer himself as an example of humanity and munificence while always, nevertheless, firmly maintaining the majesty of his dignity". Private and public patronage, official artists (Vasari, etc.), political show – Machiavelli was no doubt hardly an innovator, and here we see him echoing the practices of his time, when a new social class, the bourgeoisie, was experiencing a meteoric rise.
If we follow the course of history up to the present day, we cannot fail to make a passing reference to Marx's philosophy, comparing the two humours of Chapter IX with the two classes articulated by capitalist relations of production. The people and the greats, the proletarians and the bourgeois: those who have nothing and don't want to be oppressed, and those who have everything and want to oppress and command the others. Another question in passing: has this situation been fundamentally altered by the emergence of the middle class? Or is the middle class simply the consequence of the imperialism of the great powers and the predation of Western capitalism? Another question is how to interpret the widening gap between the richest 1%, who in 2024 own 43% of the world's wealth, and the remaining 99%.
In a mix of effectual truth and English-style utilitarianism, liberalism and neo-liberalism can then be discussed through the practices of transnational companies in a globalised world. The neo-feudalism of power relationships within the private sector, but also in those of the underground economy. And at the geopolitical level, what are we to make of nuclear lords, vassal states and proxy wars? What is the place of international law in such conditions? The law that originated with the Greeks and Romans and in which Machiavelli took such little interest...
Our attention could finally turn to the emergence of the lords of tech, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and co. For some years now, there has been talk of techno-feudalism: digital platforms are replacing markets. Yannis Varoufákis, a self-defined libertarian Marxist, puts it this way: "Capitalist profits (in the sense of entrepreneurial profits understood by Adam Smith and Marx) are disappearing, while new forms of rent are accumulating in the accounts of techno-lords controlling both the state and digital fiefdoms, in which unpaid or precarious labour is performed by the masses, who are beginning to resemble techno-peasants." (On techno-feudalism, 2022). And all the while, he analyses, it is the central banks that keep the economy going by creating money, incessantly since the subprime crisis in 2008.
So, is The Prince a recipe for success in the age of neo-techno-feudalism? It's true that the philanthropism of the 'greats' in the tech world colours their stranglehold on energy and data to feed Big Data, but deception and cunning are not Machiavelli's prerogative. In truth, to be Machiavellian, one would still have to be involved in politics, in other words, take the risk of playing a game open to anyone; and this is of course not the case with capitalist enterprise, framed by the state laws that protect it and the networks of co-optations that isolate it from 'the people'. From Machiavelli's point of view, capitalism is the crushing of the people by the great, a situation of imbalance of humours within the body politic that cannot continue indefinitely. Of all those who have read Machiavelli – Marx or Mussolini, Gramsci, Macron, Elon Musk – each undoubtedly draws the lessons that resemble them.
7. Making history: a mereology
What happens to all the stories we tell? Do they blend together, form a whole, produce an unconscious, a kind of creature with a thousand heads that participates in the unfolding of our temporality as historical beings?
Machiavelli insists on this point: when acquiring a new state, a prince must take care to make it "tutto un corpo" with those already in his government. And I read again his Florentine Histories and speculate: is the same thing true of stories? Does every new book written by an author get embodied in the all-encompassing book of his or her life – of our lives?
Mereology is the science of the whole and the parts. Based on Aristotelian principles, it was developed during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. But right now I'd like to get away from philosophy. I'm not sure, as the 'prince of philosophers' wrote, that the part exists prior to the whole. Twenty-five centuries later, Deleuze and Guattari would no doubt have said something like: the whole and the parts are contemporary with each other to the extent of the intensity that runs through them, which means that the whole never ceases to transform itself – not like a greedy mass that incorporates part after part, but like a chimera whose form and disposition change according to who is looking at it, generating a singular potential for action each time.
Let's go back in the other direction: from the mereology of Mille Plateaux to Boccaccio's Decameron, only six centuries but a whole new way of making history. In 1980, they preferred the rhizome to the tree, and operated by folding partial textualities, so much so that no one has ever read Mille Plateaux in its entirety. In 1350, the Decameron consisted of a hundred stories stuffed into the skin of a ten-day-old duck, but we don't know whether these feathers allowed it to fly away or whether at the end it was plucked from its skin, turned on a spit and tasted.
Boccaccio is right there. He's sitting on a stump, a tree that's just been cut down, in the little wood that belongs to the Machiavelli family, not far from Sant'Andrea in Percussina (I've been there once, I went by bus, wandered around the deserted village, then a thunderstorm broke out and I nearly got hit by a bolt of lightning, "that was close" as they say, I just ended up soaking wet. On the way back to Florence there was a wet dog in the bus, that was me). So Boccaccio is sitting on a stump. Machiavelli has fallen asleep on the grass after his work, and Boccaccio tells him a story, one of the hundred stories in the Decameron. To relax someone like Machiavelli, you need something like Tancredi and Ghismonda. Do you know about it? Tancredi the father wants his daughter to marry into the nobility, so Ghismonda marries, but her husband dies hunting, and she becomes a widow, and back in her father's house. That's where things go wrong, because she falls in love with a page, Guiscardo. As fate would have it, they meet in secret... but the father catches them. Tancredi's reaction reminds me of Zeus in the myth by Aristophanes: he is so afraid of the power of love that he has the page killed and serves his heart to his daughter on a plate. A silver plate. Ghismonda's words about refusing to give up on love are among the most beautiful in all literature. As he listens to Boccaccio tell his story, Machiavelli thinks about the two humours of society: the people and the greats. He was well aware that these two do not mix easily. You don't become an alchemist (or Hephaestus) overnight. Nonetheless, the two lovers took the plunge, they dared, the folly of youth no doubt, unless the fault lies in a merry-go-round of fortune, a test for anyone willing to undertake it. And if it fails for these two, it succeeds for a thousand others, in other places, in other times. Fascinating how all the characters play their parts to perfection, and how the result is a failure that has all the makings of a success. La malignità di fortuna is a fabulous counterpoint.
And with the counterpoint, we're right in the middle of Baroque music. Did you know that Machiavelli wrote poems? One of them was set to music by Philippe Verdelot: O dolce nocte (you can find it on Youtube). This poem is in fact an interlude from his play La Mandragola, written around 1518 and first performed in 1526, on which he and Verdelot collaborated. This is no longer Ghismonda and Guiscardo, it's Molière avant la lettre, a farce, neither silly nor nasty, just an anticlerical miscreant's farce.
When you're writing a story, there's always a question at some point of how you're going to make it stand up, "on its own" so to speak, just as a book seems to stand up on its own, a small sum of magic held between a cover and a back that needs to be leafed through and aired from time to time. The counterpoint helps to hold the song together. As la malignità di fortuna, to hold together the story of our disappointments. It's when you're used to being sad that you're most likely to be a clown, isn't it? A king needs a jester. Or as Nietzsche put it: every philosopher needs a poet.
So, in the age of storytelling, where are our jesters and poets? What stories can relieve us of the categorical imperative, control society and consumerist narcissism? What stories can we tell that will allow us to take a step aside from incitement, assignment, injunction, censorship and the rest of them? How do we tell our stories today, how do we make history out of everything that the media spew forth, out of all the positions we take on social networks? In the face of the acceleration of society theorised by Hartmut Rosa, is it enough to create resonance to hold everything together? But not in a straight line. Perhaps in a circle. The great story is over anyway. That was the lesson Frank Herbert drew at the end of God Emperor of Dune: we have entered the Age of Dispersion.
To escape global warming, a group of ten young people have moved to the countryside. They're doing a technology detox, and to stop the cops listening in, they've put their mobile phones in the fridge. And every day, while they wait for things to calm down, they tell each other stories...
8. Machiavelli and astrology
Fortune is a concept commonly used in the Middle Ages, during the Renaissance and right up to the dawn of modernity. From Dante to Descartes, via Boccaccio, Christine de Pizan and the poets of the Pléiade, there is a whole range of literature, philosophy and popular beliefs to study. It would lead us to examine the role of astrology – the twelve segments of the wheel and the planets that move within them – at a time when it was competing with Christian Providence on the one hand, and with the ancient sense of destiny on the other, at the crossroads of Greek and Latin, Chaldean, Christian and Arab-Muslim cultures.
The question that interests me here is a specific one: can a political thought, that of Machiavelli, which operates within a vision of the cosmos inherited from Aristotle and Ptolemy, still have something to tell us after Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Einstein? Is Machiavelli's thinking so tainted by geocentrism that we must invalidate his conclusions, even though he seems to care so little about cosmology? In his book The Machiavellian Cosmos (1992), Anthony J. Parel denies the relevance of Machiavelli's work on the grounds that its anthropological and cosmological premises are outdated. But isn't this taking Thomas Kuhn's thesis on scientific paradigms too literally?
I agree with Parel on one point: unlike Leo Strauss, I do not see Machiavelli as a 'modern' with a desire to control luck. But whereas Parel rejects this modernity on the grounds that Machiavelli remains anchored in the Aristotelian cosmos and determines political action by reference to a fortune coloured by astrology, I reject it because I do not find in Machiavelli a desire to control luck: rather, he invites us to come to terms with it. Dealing with luck is something that human beings have been doing for thousands of years; the first traces of a science that interprets the stars date back at least 5,000 years, so there's no paradigm shift here. I would go even further: Machiavelli is not a modern because modernity is a historical category resulting from a perspective from which the observer claims to be absent. Yet in his way of looking at history, of telling it, of making it, Machiavelli situates his knowledge: there is no fortune except in relation to a virtù, just as there is no text except in relation to a reader.
If I dispute Parel's thesis as to the invalidity of Machiavelli's thought in a modern context, it is also because I dispute his interpretation of astrology. Yes, Machiavelli uses the notion of the quality of the times, yes, he resorts to the advice of astrologers, but he does not use it literally. Rather, his notions of fortune and the quality of the times serve an experimental approach to historical development. Indeed, if the quality of the times is a matter for interpretation, astrologers are no exception: their interpretations of the movement of the stars are only systematic in terms of the interpretative opportunities they seize. In other words, it is necessary for events to be perceived as such for astrologers to be able to interpret them and, on the basis of these interpretations, to make projections towards future events, thus determining pending opportunities for interpretation. Astrologers thus find themselves in the wake of the effectual truth that affects them, and at the heart of discursive effects that produce a narrative when, and only when, subsequent events help to validate it. The rest is quickly forgotten, just as the weather forecast is forgotten when the desired weather arrives. And by the way, how many events are invisible as such, absolved of any historicity?
From this observation, I conclude that astrology does not need to be an exact science, that this is not in fact its purpose. The knowledge it can offer is knowledge in motion, movement. It is written on water. It is a science of images drawn on Heraclitean rivers.
When modernity denies astrology the title of 'science', it is applying its own criteria without putting itself into perspective. Modernity cannot escape becoming, but the form it has invented for itself by moving into zenithal time claims to. It was Leonardo Da Vinci in 1502, drawing the map of Imola, the first map "seen from the sky". Later, Copernicus and Galileo modifying the cosmic perspective by rediscovering the heliocentrism of Aristarchus of Samos. Matter stopped falling towards the centre of the Earth, as Aristotle had thought, and was soon held in orbit around the Sun by the force of gravity. Later came aeroplanes, then satellites, and the illusion produced by technology that life is entirely measurable, calculable and objectifiable. An illusion, because, as Machiavelli put it so well, the people look at/to the prince as much as the prince looks at/to the people; but an effective illusion. Donna Haraway has called it "the conquering gaze from nowhere": this way of playing God through the intercession of technical means aimed at mastering and possessing a nature artificially separated from the human agent who contemplates it.
So is astrology a 'pseudo-science'? As if all knowledge were not always waiting to be surpassed, and as if inaccuracy were not a sign of all that we do not know.
The Renaissance was one of those moments when, because the dominant interpretations seemed to be failing, a suspension of the reign of the literal made it possible for magic and science, poetry and philosophy, to live in concert. At such times, the meaning of language as metaphor is clearer and more alive. But this did not last long, and the force of the reaction was devastating. Giordano Bruno was able to infer that there were countless planets inhabited by other forms of life: the Inquisition burnt him at the stake. In this way, the Church of Rome and the imperialist powers of Europe denied minds the freedom to think and imagine, just as they abolished the ability of non-white and non-Christian peoples to self-determine.
So let's allow ourselves to be intrigued by our relationship with ancient beliefs, and let go of our certainties for a moment, make some space in our minds. How is it that, some 5000 years after its first appearance in Mesopotamia, we still use astrology today as a tool of knowledge, we who 'know' all about the precession of the equinoxes? The first known traces of literary writing also date from 5000 years ago... but then: what is the effectiveness of a story, a narrative, a vision of the cosmos?
Speaking of contemporary uses of astrology, Alice Sparkly Kat wrote in 2021: "A lot of people, whether they're millennials or boomers, white or other, queer or cisnormal, have told me they were first attracted to astrology because it seems to offer a way to talk among ourselves about ourselves without having to address the trappings of identity. Rather than talking about ourselves within the typical categories of race, gender, and class, people want to build community around identities that feel authentic and close. Astrology fans want identity to be as complex as humanity. (Post-colonial astrology, p. 9) If we exist in a vis-à-vis with fortune, isn't it obvious that its rivers flow through us as well, that we are to ourselves both the colours and the wheel? Is it not time, then, to plunge our hands into these images?
Alice Sparkly Kat devotes her book to the question of symbolic content inherited from Greek and especially Roman antiquity: for example, what it means today to say that the constellation Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter, and that Jupiter is a planet symbolising expansion and sovereignty. Mars, a warrior planet? Does this mean that there will always be war? What do we mean by 'war'? Is Venus a 'feminine' planet? How do these ancient symbols play into our history, and how do we integrate the meaning of history into the way we understand and orient these symbols, into our interpretations?
9. Waiting for chance
Between fortune and astrology, the concept of qualità dei tempi is linked to the so-called 'chronocrates' planets, which determine the point at which a particular action should be carried out in a particular way. But as soon as we understand fortune from this perspective, the dimension that makes it a dispenser of chance is removed, or even cancelled out. If it is the movement of the planets that determines the quality of the time, then there is no such thing as chance: fortune ceases to be blind when astrologers lend it their eyes and their language. Of course, it is not 'exact', as all astrologers know – but it is 'inclined', 'coloured', determining a spectrum in the realm of accident.
I maintain, however, that Machiavelli does not renounce chance, that is to say, in its liminal form, a principle of indeterminacy lodged at the heart of becoming. This is the meaning of his quasi-metaphysics, which in no way prevents him from making use of astrology in a pragmatics of momentum that knows how the invention of a story is concomitant with the role we want to play in it. For the Florentine, the meaning of history is always at stake; the seriousness of existence, its necessity, is to be sought on the side of effectual truth. Thus fortune remains unpredictable, nature's bulwark against all transcendence.
But it is also politically that the unpredictability of fortune interests me, in that it seems to establish itself as a rule of egalitarian distribution. Egalitarian, because anyone can win at a game of chance, because anyone can be called upon to play a role that the previous course of events did not allow for. And since politics is a human property, anyone can experience success and defeat. This is the meaning of the address of The Prince, when Machiavelli says that he wants to write "something useful for everyone who understands it" (ch. XV): princes and commoners, old or young, women or men, Aries, Cancer, Scorpio or Capricorn, it doesn't matter. From the moment you enter the game, an element of chance is also involved. The conditions of the game are therefore not entirely fixed, fortune being at the root of the chance interjections that make its future obscure.
There is a precedent for chance in politics: Athenian democracy. Among the citizens of Athens, administrative offices were distributed by the drawing of lots, in order to prevent the powerful and lineages from controlling the government of the State. The role of chance must nevertheless be clarified by remembering that citizens were a minority of the population: only males of Athenian parentage and landowners were citizens. In other words, chance was confined to a very narrow circle of co-optation... a reality that the contemporary idealisation of Athenian democracy as the forerunner of Western "democracies" generally overlooks.
In La haine de la démocratie, Jacques Rancière also seems to overlook this fact in his discussion of the role of chance in classical Greece and beyond. Nonetheless, he conducts a very detailed analysis of the dynamics of equality and inequality in this context, focusing in particular on Plato's strategies for undoing democracy by limiting the domain of chance (see the chapter entitled "La politique ou le pasteur perdu"). Limiting, not eliminating, because although for Plato good government, the only form of justice, must be placed in the hands of philosophers, it cannot do without a certain amount of chance, since chance makes it possible to question – and to set in motion – any legitimisation of power (by age, social origin, strength or knowledge), a questioning of which the philosopher is also the agent and the product.
In the famous myth of Er that closes The Republic, Plato's use of chance is unmistakable. Following their deaths, the souls are guided to the throne of Necessity. Necessity is surrounded by her daughters, the Moirai, dressed in white, their heads crowned with strips, Lachesis, Clotho and Atropos, who spins, weaves and cuts the threads of individual lives. What follows is a two-stage process. First of all, a proclaimer casts spells before the souls present to determine the order in which each will pass on; then, according to this random order, each soul chooses the life it wishes to lead in its next incarnation:
A proclaimer placed them in a certain order, then, taking spells and models of life from the lap of Lachesis, he climbed the steps of a high platform and declared: "Word of the virgin Lachesis, daughter of Necessity. Ephemeral souls, this is the beginning of a new cycle that will bring death to a mortal race. It is not a demon who will draw lots for you, but you who will choose a demon. Let the first to be drawn be the first to choose the life to which he will be bound by necessity. No one is the master of virtue; each person, depending on whether he honours it or despises it, will receive a greater or lesser share of it. Responsibility lies with the person who chooses. The god is not responsible.
With these words, he cast the spells on all of them, and each one picked up the one that had fallen near him, except Er himself, who was not allowed to do so. And when each had picked up his spell, he clearly knew the rank he had been given to choose from. After that, he went on to place before them, spread out on the ground, the models of life, the number of which far exceeded that of the souls present. There were all sorts.
Echoing Socrates' dictum that "the unexamined life is not worth living", and reducing the role of chance to a strict minimum, Plato emphasises the choice of a life rather than the equalising role of chance. Lots are only drawn to decide the order of passage, but this is of secondary importance given the number of lives available.
Things are different in Machiavelli, since we do not choose our life, but find ourselves caught up in a singular concordat with the quality of the times (the expression "concordiano insieme", ch. XXV). What we are able to choose – and insofar as we wish to take the risk of Fortune – are only the opportunities that we make our own, opportunities magnetised by our character and our habits (cf. the example of Julius II in ch. XXV, who according to Machiavelli would not have been able to change his ways of acting, being old and having followed the same method all his life). While Plato and Machiavelli agree on the idea that choosing well is the hallmark of wisdom, they differ on the conditions of choice.
For Plato, having to choose is imposed on us, and everything happens, in the image proposed by the myth, before we are born: a way of saying that it is possible, for the contemplative, to extract himself from life and evaluate it without this choice being tainted by interest. The non-philosophical soul therefore aims to satisfy its desires, resulting either in a bad choice (tyranny) or a choice that in any case does not lead to the best choice (the philosophical life). For Machiavelli, on the other hand, our choices (in the plural) are exercised at the whim of the flows of fortune in which we are caught; so that if we do not choose, other forces "choose" for us, which are not only our passions but also and above all social and political forces.
The same difference can be seen in the question of the desire to govern. Unlike Plato, for whom government must be entrusted to the philosopher insofar as he does not desire power, for Machiavelli the desire for power plays an essential role and is part of a conception of action that envelops interest. For the Florentine, there is no such thing as a judgement that is not coloured by interest, and any philosophy that claims the contrary would focus "on the image we have of things" rather than on their reality, on the way "we should live" rather than on the way we live (ch. XV), an idealistic philosophy that leads individuals and governments to ruin.
That there is no possible position of exteriority implies that wisdom is not the fruit of disinterested contemplation, but of interest grappling with itself, since only interest experiencing its own effectiveness can learn to know itself, in the face of situations as diverse as fortune will present them. The immanence of the Machiavellian choice is thus ensured, it would seem, by the 50/50 nature of our relationship with fortune, where it is not a question of negotiation between agencies, but of an agreement formulated as to the conditions of the action. Whether we are talking about a new prince or a prince by heredity, struggles within a republic or a situation of anomie, each time the situation pits individuals against each other who are taking the risk of initiative and self-determination in the face of an indeterminate sum of chance that may be favourable or unfavourable to them – a sum of which they themselves are a part. Machiavelli believes that it is at moments of transition from one time to another that the question of choice reaches its critical threshold of intensity in determining the future: it is at such moments that virtù as a measure of a face-to-face encounter with fortune emerges; at such moments when fortune is most mutable, that the relationship with unpredictability reveals the freedom of action of which an agent – individual or collective – is capable.
What is at stake, then, is the determination of freedom. A freedom that is not a given, but the result of the exercise of virtù in its immanent dialogue with fortune.