Nuance in Machiavelli: An Introduction

Posted by Ahsan – March 27, 2010

Nuance: neither-nor

Let us begin with this extract from a speech by Arthur Koestler:

Since the earliest days, the teachers of mankind have recommended two diametrically opposed methods of action. The first demands that we should refuse to see the world divided into black and white, heroes and villains, friends and foes; that we should distinguish nuances and strive for synthesis, or at least compromise; it tells us that in nearly all, seemingly inescapable dilemmas there exists a third alternative which patient search may discover. In short, we should refuse the choice between Scylla and Charybdis and rather navigate like odysseus of the nimble wit. We may call this the “neither-nor” attitude.

The second, opposite advice was summed up two thousand years ago, in one single phrase: “Let your communication be, Yea, yea, Nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these, comes from evil.” This we may call the “either-or” attitude.

Nuance in Machiavelli

For a supposedly simple work, The Prince has been a source of diverse interpretations among scholars, even up to the present day. Some consider it a satire, others think it evil, still others see it as straightforward advice by a courtier to his prince.

The most interesting interpretation comes from Leo Strauss, who proposed that ancient writers wrote esoterically, hiding their true meaning so as to escape retribution from the difficult times they lived in. The argument is complex enough that Strauss wrote an entire book on Machiavelli, Thoughts on Machiavelli, and another, Persecution and the Art of Writing.

The question arises in the amateur mind as to how Machiavelli could write such a slim volume with seemingly straightforward advice, peppered with some inconsistencies and self-contradictions, and still generate such confusion regarding his intention and meaning! But to the careful reader, The Prince is anything but straightforward.

In Machiavelli’s Virtue, Harvey Mansfield looks at Machiavelli’s puzzling use of the word virtù:

In the eight chapter of The Prince, Machiavelli considers “those who have attained a principality through crimes.”

[...]

Machiavelli’s example from ancient times is “Agathocles the Sicilian” who became “king” of Syracuse while always keeping to a life of crime at every stage of his career. In considering this criminal Machiavelli says that “one cannot call it virtue to kill one’s citizens, betray one’s friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion” – all of which Agathocles was or did. Yet in the very next sentence Machiavelli, doing what he said one cannot do, proceeds to speak of the “virtue of Agathocles”.

[...]

What is one to make of this? Machiavelli seems to deplore the need for a prince to be evil, and in the next breath to relish the fact. He alternately shocks his readers and provides relief from the very shocks he administers: Agathocles has virtue but cannot be said to have virtù.

A surface reading of Machiavelli with an either-or attitude will leave readers confused. We must open our minds and look for a third way.

In The Machiavellian Enterprise, a chapter-by-chapter commentary on The Prince, Leo de Alvarez describes Machiavelli’s technique:

The wickedness of advocating that one, especially the prince, be vicious is among those things that have given Machiavellianism its dark reputation. Machiavelli understood the importance of appearances [...] Why, then, does he permit himself to say that one must learn to be wicked and do vicious things? To act according to necessity is to be neither good nor wicked, but instead of presenting a decent surface for a harsh teaching, he seems to take a certain delight in saying what no one has dared to say.

In Thucydides, and classical writers generally, the harsh teaching is always concealed under a decent surface. Machiavelli’s surface is an indecent one. He speaks of indecent things in his own name. Why does Machiavelli bring shocking things to the surface? [...] At the same time, Machiavelli conceals a far more moderate teaching beneath the shocking surface…

Some will be horrified by the surface teaching; these will be the disarmed. What of those who will be attracted by the surface teaching? What such blood-thirsty ones will miss and will not see is the concealed moderate teaching. The blood-thirsty will destroy themselves because they will not be prudent. But this is the most dangerous course to follow, for cannot such men do great harm as they are tempted to extreme and violent deeds?

This, therefore, is one of Machiavelli’s techniques. He presents two extreme choices and then subtly hints at a third, often moderate, way. The reader is tempted to choose either-or, but the real meaning may lie in the way of neither-nor. His true meaning is therefore available only to the prudent reader, patient enough to look for the third way.

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