Prince II (redux)
Can you live so as to deserve good fortune?
The Prince was published posthumously. It contains a dedicatory letter gifting the book to Lorenzo de Medici, who was also dead at the time of publication, and who had died eight years prior to Machiavelli. This is the grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who is anything but magnificent. Both because of the oddity of a dead man gifting a book to another dead man, and because the work was published together with the letter, we should read the letter carefully.
Niccolò Machiavelli to the Magnificent Lorenzo de' Medici:
It is customary most of the time for those who desire to acquire favor with a Prince to come to meet him with things that they care most for among their own or with things that they see please him most. Thus, one sees them many times being presented with horses, arms, cloth of gold, precious stones and similar ornaments worthy of their greatness. Thus, since I desire to offer myself to your Magnificence with some testimony of my homage to you, I have found nothing in my belongings that I care so much for and esteem so greatly as the knowledge of the actions of great men, learned by me from long experience with modern things and a continuous reading of ancient ones. Having thought out and examined these things with great diligence for a long time, and now reduced them to one small volume, I send it to your Magnificence. And although I judge this work undeserving of your presence, yet I have much confidence that through your humanity it may be accepted, considering that no greater gift could be made by me than to give you the capacity to be able to understand in a very short time all that I have learned and understood in so many years and with so many hard ships and dangers for myself I have not ornamented this work, nor filled it with fulsome phrases nor with pompous and magnificent words, nor with any blandishment or superfluous ornament whatever, with which it is customary for many to describe and adorn their things. For I wanted it either not to be honored for anything or to please solely for the variety of the matter and the gravity of the subject. Nor do I want it to be reputed presumption if a man from a low and mean state dares to discuss and give rules for the governments of princes. For just as those who sketch landscapes place themselves down in the plain to consider the nature of mountains and high places and to consider the nature of low places place themselves high atop mountains, similarly, to know well the nature of peoples one needs to be prince, and to know well the nature of princes one needs to be of the people.
Therefore, your Magnificence, take this small gift in the spirit with which I send it. If your Magnificence con siders and reads it diligently, you will learn from it my extreme desire that you arrive at the greatness that fortune and your other qualities promise you. And if your Magnificence will at some time turn your eyes from the summit of your height to these low places, you will learn how un deservedly I endure a great and continuous malignity of fortune.
In life there are two types of gifts: there are gifts the giver wants and appreciates, and there are gifts the receiver wants and appreciates. Which type attests to the sincerity of the gift?
The second type, the kind the receiver appreciates. If you give what you want and appreciate then you will typically get it back. The first type only works as a gift when the receiver already loves you – think of gifts children will give to their parents (or that husbands give to their wives).
What type of gift does Machiavelli give? He gives the first type – that which he cares for and esteems most of all his belongings, his knowledge, which is infinitely shareable and, thus, doesn’t cost him anything. In short, in offering his wisdom he sacrifices nothing of his own. Moreover, he is giving unsolicited advice, the giving of which presupposes a degree of superiority of the giver over the receiver. He gives what Lorenzo does not have: knowledge of the actions of great men. And how could he have knowledge of such actions, as he is anything but great.
Machiavelli claims he does not ornament his writings like most, that he wants the work to stand on its own, “to please … for the variety of the matter and the gravity of the subject.” Nor did he want to be taken to be presumptuous – a low man giving advice to a prince may seem presumptuous – and he gives a justification in the form of a metaphor: like a painter who considers the nature of mountains from the plain and the nature of the plain from the mountain top, so too to know the nature of peoples one needs to be a prince and to know the nature of princes one needs to be of the people.
Here Machiavelli is hinting at the issue of perspective – the fact that to a large extent how things look depends on where one stands.
Moreover, is it true that we have two kinds of painters? The first only paints mountain tops and the second the valleys? No, because the mountains and the valleys are coterminous; they exist together; the valleys are as deep as the mountains are high. Just as the painting is done by one painter, so too to understand politics one must know well both rulers and the ruled.
Finally, at the end of the letter, Machiavelli raises one of the most important themes of this work and a subject of the project of modernity: Fortune. He mentions “the fortune and other qualities” of Lorenzo – is fortune really a quality? We speak that way when we speak of fortunate people. Now is fortune a deserving quality? Can one deserve to be fortunate? What about the other qualities? We see that fortune has given Lorenzo a high place and Machiavelli a low one – and that neither of them deserves either his fortune or his lack thereof.