Thread by @robkhenderson

Thread with excerpts from one of my favorite Isaiah Berlin essays, "The Originality of Machiavelli"

Or, as Paulie from The Sopranos calls him, "Prince Matchabelli"

berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published_work…

"What other writer has caused his readers to disagree about his purposes so deeply and so widely? Yet, I must repeat, Machiavelli does not write obscurely; nearly all his interpreters praise him for his terse, dry, clear prose." berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published_work…

Machiavelli makes no reference to God or Nature or Ideal Order in his work. His focus is on what works. Very unusual for his time

Machiavelli doesn't defend the need for a powerful state. He takes it for granted. Doesn't dwell on differences between people-- men are the same everywhere and for all time. No mention of Platonic ideals, and no belief in progress toward some utopian end.

"As for religion, it is for him not much more than a socially indispensable instrument, so much utilitarian cement: the criterion of the worth of a religion is its role as a promoter of solidarity and cohesion"

"Machiavelli's doctrine was a sword thrust in the body politic of Western humanity, causing it to cry out and to struggle against itself." berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published_work…

"Reality misunderstood will always defeat you in the end."

"Men must be studied in their behaviour...Men are not as they are described by those who idealise them—Christians or other Utopians—nor by those who want them to be widely different from what they in fact are and always have been and cannot help being."

People respond to fear and love, but fear is more reliable as long as it does not turn into hate. Hatred for a ruler undermines respect, which is required for governance

"They care little for liberty—the name means more to them than the reality—and place it well below security"

"Above all he warns one to be on one's guard against those who do not look at men as they are, and see them through spectacles coloured by their hopes and wishes, their loves and hatreds, in terms of an idealised model of man as they want him to be, and not as he is"

"Honest reformers, however worthy their ideals, foundered and caused the ruin of others, largely because they substituted what should be for what is; because at some point they fell into unrealism."

"What has led and will lead such statesmen to their doom? Often enough only their ideals. What is wrong with ideals? They cannot be attained. How does one know this? This is one of the foundations upon which Machiavelli's claim to be a thinker of the first order ultimately rests"

"it seems to him perfectly obvious (as it must have done to most men of his age) that Italy was both materially and morally in a bad way...A good society is a society that enjoys stability, internal harmony, security, justice, a sense of power and of splendour"

Machiavelli believed that to create such desirable societies, men needed to cultivate "inner moral strength, magnanimity, vigour, vitality, generosity, loyalty, above all public spirit, civic sense"

"What Machiavelli distinguishes is not specifically moral from specifically political values...what he institutes is something that cuts deeper still - a differentiation between two incompatible ideals of life, and therefore two moralities."

Machiavelli makes a distinction between 2 sets of values and says they cannot co-exist

Pagan values

Courage
Strength
Achievement
Discipline
Vigour
Fortitude

Christian values

Mercy
Charity
Sacrifice
Forgiveness of enemies
Contempt for goods of this world
Faith in afterlife

Important to note that Machiavelli does not necessarily disagree with Christian morality

But in his view, "it is in fact impossible to combine Christian virtues, for example meekness, with a satisfactory, stable, vigorous, strong society on earth. Consequently a man must choose"

"To choose to lead a Christian life is to condemn oneself to political impotence: to being used and crushed by powerful, ambitious, clever, unscrupulous men"

Because men will not be honest with themselves that Pagan and Christian values cannot co-exist, they then make compromises and errors that "end in weakness and failure"

Machiavelli softens his stance on Christianity in the Discourses. He redirects his condemnation to the Church and Papacy

"Machiavelli does not formally condemn Christian morality, or the approved values of his own society...He transposes nothing: the things men call good are indeed good"

"He does not seek to correct the Christian conception of a good man. He does not say that saints are not saints, or that honourable behaviour is not honourable...only that this type of goodness cannot create or maintain a strong, secure and vigorous society"

"men who pursue such ideals are bound to be defeated and lead other people to ruin, since their view of the world is not founded upon the truth, the truth that is tested by success and experience - which (however cruel) is always less destructive than the other (however noble)."

"One can save one's soul, or one can found or maintain or serve a great and glorious state; but not always both at once."

I once heard it put this way: Is it possible to be both a Great man and a Good man?

Machiavelli in The Prince: "any man who under all conditions insists on making it his business to be good will surely be destroyed among so many who are not good. Hence a prince...must acquire the power to be not good, and understand when to use it and when not to use it"

"The qualities of the lion and the fox are not in themselves morally admirable, but if a combination of these qualities will alone preserve the city from destruction, then these are the qualities that leaders must cultivate..if cruelty is necessary, then it must not be evaded."

"Machiavelli is not sadistic ; he does not gloat on the need to employ ruthlessness or fraud for creating or maintaining the kind of society that he admires and recommends...it would be quite wrong to practise violence for violence's sake"

Machiavelli did not deny that evil as defined by Christian morality was in fact evil. But he also said it was sometimes necessary.

"His factual, objective description of contemporary political practices, then, is a sign not of cynicism or of detachment, but of anguish."

"In other words the conflict is between two moralities, Christian and pagan (or as some wish to call it, aesthetic), not between autonomous realms of morals and politics"

"the traditional view of him as simply a specialist on how to get the better of others, a vulgar cynic who says that Sunday school precepts are all very well, but in a world full of evil men you too must lie, kill and so on, if you are to get somewhere, is incorrect."

"If you object to the political methods recommended because they seem to you morally detestable..Machiavelli has no answer, no argument..But you must not make yourself responsible for the lives of others or expect good fortune; you must expect to be ignored or destroyed."

"He is convinced that states which have lost the appetite for power are doomed to decadence and are likely to be destroyed by their more vigorous and better armed neighbours"

Some of Machiavelli's "most notoriously wicked pieces of advice"

"All these maxims have one property in common : they are designed to resurrect or maintain an order which will satisfy what Machiavelli conceives as men's most permanent interests. Machiavelli's values may be erroneous, dangerous, odious ; but he is in earnest. He is not cynical"

"What is there, then, about his words, about his tone, which has caused such tremors among his readers? Not, indeed, in his own lifetime - there was a delayed reaction of some quarter of a century, but after that it becomes one of continuous and mounting horror."

"The choice is painful because it is a choice between two entire worlds. Men have lived in both, fought and died to preserve them against each other. Machiavelli has opted for one of them, and he is prepared to commit crimes for its sake."

His distinction between the well-being of the soul versus the state

"To Dostoevsky's famous question 'Is everything permitted?' Machiavelli answers 'Yes, if the end - that is, the pursuit of a society's basic interests in a specific situation - cannot be realised in any other way.'"

Berlin clarifies that Machiavelli is not claiming that societies should adhere to some version of Christian morality, only to suspend it and use "wicked acts" in extraordinary circumstances. Rather, Machiavelli accepts such acts as part of governance, nothing extraordinary

If Machiavelli is right that one cannot build a secure society while also being a good person, then "a conclusion of the first importance follows": the belief that there is an objectively valid way to live one's life is not true.

"a truly erschrekend [frightening] proposition"

"One of the deepest assumptions of western political thought is the doctrine, scarcely questioned during its long ascendancy, that there exists some single principle which not only regulates the course of the sun and the stars, but prescribes proper behaviour to all creatures."

"It is this rock, upon which western beliefs and lives had been founded, that Machiavelli seems, in effect, to have split open...The purpose of this essay is to suggest that it was Machiavelli who lit the fatal fuse."

It has long been taken for granted that a perfect society is imaginable. We could build it if only we were smart enough, or rich enough, or good enough, or wanted it badly enough, or...

Machiavelli revealed that this is nonsense

"Plato and the Stoics, Hebrew prophets and Christian medieval thinkers and writers of Utopias had a vision of what it was that men fell short of; they claimed to measure the gap between the reality and the ideal. But if Machiavelli is right, this tradition is fallacious"

Machiavelli revealed that people must sometimes make choices between incompatible moral values

And that there is no rational, objective measuring stick to choose between ends that are equally valid berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published_work…

"Was it, perhaps, this awful truth, implicit in Machiavelli's exposition, that has upset the moral consciousness of men, and has haunted their minds so permanently and obsessively ever since?"

"Whenever a thinker still stirs passion, enthusiasm or indignation, or any kind of intense debate, it is generally the case that he has propounded a thesis which upsets some deeply established idée reçue [received wisdom]"

"Machiavelli's juxtaposition of two incompatible moral worlds, and the acute moral discomfort which follow, has been responsible for the desperate efforts to interpret his doctrines away, to represent him as a cynical and therefore ultimately shallow defender of power politics"

Berlin suggests the character assassination of Machiavelli is due to Machiavelli having uncovered an uncomfortable truth that most people do not want to confront

"Yet if no such solution can, even in principle, be formulated, then all political and, indeed, moral problems are thereby transformed...implicit invitation to men to choose either a good, virtuous, private life, or a good, successful, social existence, but not both."

"Machiavelli calls the bluff of one of the foundations of the central western philosophical tradition, the belief in the ultimate compatibility of all genuine values...He seems wholly unworried by, indeed scarcely aware of, parting company with traditional western morality."

"what reason have we for supposing that justice and mercy, humility and virtue, happiness and knowledge, glory and liberty, magnificence and sanctity, will always coincide, or indeed be compatible at all?"

Sir Isaiah Berlin does occasionally throw some shade on old Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

"Machiavelli's cardinal achievement is his uncovering of an insoluble dilemma...his de facto recognition that ends equally ultimate, equally sacred, may contradict each other, that entire systems of value may come into collision without possibility of rational arbitration"

"If what Machiavelli believed is true, this undermines one major assumption of western thought"

"After Machiavelli, doubt is liable to infect all monistic constructions. The sense of certainty that there is somewhere a hidden treasure - the final solution to our ills - and that some path must lead to it"

A key quote "rationality and calculation can be applied only to means or subordinate ends, but never to ultimate ends"

Rationality is a tool, not an end in itself.

The bright side of Machiavelli. If there is no objectively valid way to live one's life, if ends can be equally valid, then no need to kill a lot of people to build a Utopia. Because there is no Utopia. Compromise is possible

Ironically, Machiavelli's writings contributed to the bases of liberal pluralism/tolerance

"His achievement is of the first order, if only because the dilemma has never given men peace since it came to light (it remains unsolved, but we have learnt to live with it)."

Tl;dr

Machiavelli said it is not possible to be a good person while building/maintaining a strong, secure state. Sometimes leaders have to get their hands dirty

It is not possible to obtain all moral ends at once

This revelation is why people react in horror to Machiavelli