Prince VII (Redux)
“Son of a Pope” sounds like profanity
Cesare Borgia is the protagonist of Chapter 7. He was the son of a Pope who did everything right, and yet failed anyway. His problem was that he relied on others, in this case, he relied upon the church. Machiavelli draws our attention to a particular example in this chapter.
And because this point is deserving of notice and of being imitated by others, I do not want to leave it out. Once the duke had taken over Romagna, he found it had been commanded by impotent lords who had been readier to despoil their subjects than to correct them, and had given their subjects matter for disunion, not for union. Since that province was quite full of robberies, quarrels, and every other kind of insolence, he judged it necessary to give it good government, if he wanted to reduce it to peace and obedience to a kingly arm. So he put there Messer Remirro de Orco, a cruel and ready man, to whom he gave the fullest power. In a short time Remirro reduced it to peace and unity, with the very greatest reputation for himself Then the duke judged that such excessive authority was not necessary, because he feared that it might become hateful; and he setup a civil courty in the middle of the province, with a most excellent president, where each city had its advocate. And because he knew that past rigors had generated some hatred for Remirro, to purge the spirits of that people and to gain them entirely to himself, he wished to show that if any cruelty had been committed, this had not come from him but from the harsh nature of his minister. And having seized this opportunity, he had him placed one morning in the piazza at Cesena in two pieces, with a piece of wood and a bloody knife beside him. The ferocity of this spectacle left the people at once satisfied and stupefied.
The lesson here is to have someone to throw under the bus, one has to have a scapegoat. In politics, sometimes hard things have to be done, but it is best to have someone else exercise the necessary cruelty and then to punish them for it. This is an example of cruelty well used, and thus serves as a support for Machiavelli’s contention that one must use both mercy and cruelty if one is to rule well.
Chapters 8 and 9 are connected: both treat ways of acquiring a principality that were not listed explicitly in Chapter 1 – through crimes and elections.
As Machiavelli portrays it, crime is connected to one’s virtue, because crime, like virtue, is one’s own. Election, on the other hand, is connected to fortune, because like fortune, election does not depend on oneself, but on something or someone else.
The problem with acquisition by crime is that it allows one to obtain an empire, but not to acquire glory. Think here of the four cardinal Greek virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. The first three benefit you unconditionally, that is, it is always better to be wise than ignorant, courageous than cowardly, and moderate than immoderate, but what about justice? Is not successful injustice the counterpart to the other three? Justice only benefits you under the condition that others recognize your justice, that is, insofar as one acquires a reputation for justice. In short, the goodness of the virtue of justice depends upon others.
Machiavelli is answering Glaucon’s challenge here. He is claiming that justice is only good in the appearance; he highlights that if others do not regard you as virtuous then you’re not virtuous.
Finally, Machiavelli wants us to look past the rhetoric, to look past what people say, and to look at what they do. If you do as Moses said and not as he did, then you will be limited. Recall the story from Exodus, on the very day he brought down the tablets with the ten commandments, which includes ‘thou shall not kill,’ he killed three thousand men. Agathocles’s problem is that he was not like Moses, he lacked prophecy, he lacked someone to blame for the killing, he lacked a higher order to justify the killing. Moses could pretend it was for God, while also pretending he didn’t want to do it. The real founder does what the tyrant did, but he does more by introducing new modes and orders. He gives people their first taste of liberty; everything in the past will be looked upon as a form of slavery.
In treating the subject of elections in the sequel, Machiavelli seems to praise them. He gives some advice for the political candidate: one should found oneself on the people because they are easier to control than the nobles. The people do not have really strong passions, are really simply afraid of being harmed, and thus are, in a sense at least, more decent. The nobles have tasted freedom and want to rule. Thus, there are really two sorts of people, those who want to rule and those who do not want to rule. The lesson is that you get to rule by claiming that you do not want to rule. Every regime is based upon force and fraud, you need both the lion and the fox. Agathocles had the force but lacked the fraud.