Ms. Flint, as is her habit,
asked a provocative question in reply to my last post on Machiavelli. I suspect she already knows the answer, but it
is worth commenting on here. My post
ended with this:
Machiavelli [in contrast to
Aristotle]… does not believe in any order that emerges from nature. He supposes that all order is imposed by
human will. That, ultimately, is what he
means by virtue. Whereas the ancients
had supposed that virtue lay in the perfection of natural human propensities,
Machiavelli supposes that it lies in certain human characters that enable their
possessors to impose their will on their surroundings.
There is then a state of nature
theory implied here. The state of nature
is all disorder and chaos. Order and
hence justice and the common good can be achieved by conquering fortune.
Ms. Flint then asks:
But is Machiavelli really proposing something different from
the state of nature, then? As I understand it (and perhaps my understanding is
wrong) in the state of nature, "might makes right". If that is what
naturally happens, what is Machiavelli proposing that is different?
This is a very good
question. If the prince (or the
republic) must act without any moral restraint in order to preserve law and
order, can the state of civil society that results be said to be different from
a state of nature? I submit that
Machiavelli would say “yes, and no”.
What makes it possible for two
human beings to genuinely trust one another?
Perhaps the only thing that can do that is fear of a higher power. That would explain the ancient customs of swearing
an oath before the gods, putting one’s hands on a Bible before testimony, or
retreating into a temple for sanctuary.
Interestingly, evolutionary
psychology has done a lot of work on this.
Many ancient religions involve what are called signaling costs. Sacrifices to the gods, painful rituals (circumcision
comes to mind) have a profound social function: they demonstrate to others that
you genuinely fear the invisible powers.
That makes you look like a trustworthy candidate for partnerships. It is possible that one can only leave the
state of nature by means of accepting a state of grace, or to put it less
poetically but more precisely, if everyone believes that transgressions will be
punished by divine sanction.
Machiavelli does not believe in
invisible powers and he does not believe that belief in such powers is enough
to render men civil. All law and order
are imposed by the ruthless power of some prince and it is maintained in the
same way. Machiavellian virtú is the
capacity, present in some human beings, to impose dominion on human
beings. So it is true to say that “might
makes right” for Machiavelli, in the sense that human might alone can literally
generate right or justice and so necessarily comes before and is not restrained
by justice. However, the virtue of
princes is not the same as the virtue of subjects and citizens. The prince must frequently act without faith,
charity, pity, or religion, but he must seem to observe all of these things for
he wants his subjects to observe them.
He wants to impose the king’s peace on the people, for a law abiding and
prosperous society is a source of his wealth and power.
Machiavelli’s disciple, Thomas
Hobbes, set out to legalize Machiavelli’s thought. Hobbes held that the state of nature and
likewise the state of civil society are nothing more than relationships between
two or more human beings. If you and I have
fear nothing of gods nor princes, we can get away with anything we might do to
one another. Thus we have to fear one
another, and that is the state of nature.
If we can trust one another, it is only because there is a prince
standing over us who can hurt either of us if we step out of line. That is a state of civil society.
It follows that whenever two
human beings are under the authority of a prince, then they are in a state of
civil society vis-à-vis one another. That state of civil society is indeed
different from the state of nature.
However, each of us remains in a state of nature vis-à-vis
the prince. There is no higher power
keeping him in line. Likewise, all princes are in a state of
nature vis-à-vis one
another. They cannot but mistrust one
another and are always in a state of war, hot or cold.
Hobbes anticipates Miranda’s
question and offers an answer. He
believed that all government was by definition absolute, since moral restraint
was possible only by people under such a power.
Both Hobbes and Machiavelli believed that human beings are by nature
amoral. Morality and justice are
necessarily artificial, imposed by a ruthless will.
They got it wrong. Locke got it right. Human beings are moral animals. Our sense of justice is just as much a part
of our nature as our capacity for language.
We have a natural inclination to recognize and punish transgressions. I think that modern biopolitical theory backs
up Locke. All human government requires
violent power; however, that power works precisely because of human nature and
not against it. The origin of government
lies not (or not merely) in mutual fear and desire for dominion; it lies in our
capacity for righteous indignation.
I think that this explains why
Locke’s political thought is more decent, more productive of genuine civility,
than that of his predecessors. I will
have more on this later.
