Notes on Ball & Dagger reader
Ch. LVIII of Machiavelli (1514)
The Discourses

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469 - 1527)

Post in Florentine government:  1498;  opposed Medicis, but they were restored in 1512 and he was arrested, tortured, and sent into exile.  During his government service he developed & trained a civilian militia.

Machiavelli at the birth of modernity.  Gunpowder meant that mercenary armies could not (and would not) really defend castles;  only people willing to fight & die for their government could & would defend.  Gunpowder also meant the decline of the armored knight, since muskets could defeat him.  Rise of absolutist monarchies;  the Church (abbeys) were rich and weak and so were seized by (or coopted by or subsumed under) the monarchies.  Continual change meant both necessity for adaptability and many opportunities to be seized.  Reformation & Enlightenment were taking the position that common people can understand issues, both political and religious.

Machiavelli vs. Christianity:  look to this world, not the next;  no "pie in the sky when you die".  Later chastised by the Counter-Reformation.  Never uses Bible or Church to justify his writings, setting the stage for Hobbes.  Need a more secure grounding for legitimacy than the Church, which was under attack.  Religion is used to justify rule, but only by way of fooling the people;   it isn't the real source of legitimacy.  Moses uses force (the Levites slaughter 3,000) when the people turn away from God.  Clinton vs. Bush in the use of power.

Republics to be preferred:   single ruler can be corrupted by wealth & power more easily than the people as a whole.  Vox populi, vox dei ["The voice of the people is the voice of God"].  The people are better at maintaining a state, even if a single leader tends to found one.

Freedom, liberty, free enterprise -- creates loyalty to a state, and the expectation that one's efforts will be rewarded means that people try harder.  (Book II, Ch. 2)  Prefigures Adam Smith and the rise of capitalism.

Believed in checks & balances;  democracy led to tyranny, as Solon's democracy did to the tyrant Pisistratus.

QUESTIONS FOR CLASS DISCUSSION

• What is wrong with princely rule?  [Not as wise & constant as the people.]  Why not?  [Princes are more self-interested, more subject to whim, corruption, and bad advice.]
• So what?  Why is Machiavelli concerned with this?  [He believes in a new, democratic form of government.]
• Why?  For religious or moral reasons?  [No.  He believes — prefiguring Adam Smith's work about 250 years later — that a country has power through its citizens.  With the decline of the power of the Church, Machiavelli looks for non-religious justification for rule.  Force is supreme, but having & keeping it is more complex now.  (We will see this with Hobbes, later, and to a lesser extent with Locke.]

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