Religion Analysis in texts of Machiavelli and Hobbes - Essay Example

Religion Analysis in texts by Machiavelli and Hobbes Judging by texts like The Prince, Leviathan, and Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli and Hobbes are both not friends of religion, but Machiavelli is much less a friend than Hobbes is. This is because Machiavelli sees morality as subterfuge, but Hobbes recognizes a basic morality, even if he doesn’t necessarily come out as a champion of the conventional religion of his time. By looking at how these two famous political philosophers reveal their tendencies towards and away from religion, one can clearly see how they felt about conventions of their eras, many of which they were trying to change. This impetus towards change seems to draw both writers away from being champions of conventional religious concepts. However, whereas Hobbes still recognizes conventional moral concepts like the golden rule, Machiavelli advises the prince to get ahead, by all means necessary. Generally, Machiavelli observes that people are caught up in superficial concerns as a matter of ensuring the success of princely subterfuge, and also as a matter of demonstrating the importance of the perception of correction, whatever the actual state of affairs may be. The true prince may have committed any number of crimes and sins against religion, but as long as the people see them as benevolent and just in terms of reputation and public image, the subterfuge can continue. Machiavelli does not offer a warning against subterfuge. He does not call upon people to open up their eyes and look deeper into the inner, spiritual nature of things. As a political writer, he is unconcerned with this aspect of life, and is more concerned that the true prince whom he is advising learns to be an effective leader in a way that ensures the success of his rule, at whatever cost and by all means necessary. “You must know there are two ways of contesting,” he writes to the prince, “the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second.” (Machiavelli, p. 114). Obviously, aligning with the beast is not the most sound principle for a friend of religion to espouse. Machiavelli does address religion, but only in so far as he shows that people tend to be taken in by religious appearances, and are thus easily fooled, and portrays this state of affairs as being one that can be taken advantage of by the effective ruler. The successful or true prince is able, according to the author, to put a veneer of respectability on disrespect, and to disguise cruelty with a mask of religious benevolence, thus taking the perceived gullible public in and ensuring that the surface of the rule is not necessarily a reflection of its inner nature, which is assumedly ignored by the multitudes, who are more concerned with malleable traits. In establishing this point of view, Machiavelli is going against conventional notions of the importance of religious duty and piety, and thus cannot be logically called a friend of religion. Throughout The Prince, the author keeps his distance from any sense of moral or religious responsibility in which a person’s actions are seen to be judged by either their individual conscience or the moral dictates of a higher power. Machiavelli’s point of view seems to be that such concerns are best left to the clergy; he is writing a manual of practical, real-world instruction to the ruler, not a metaphysical treatise. The sphere of politics is kept separate from the sphere of religion in his text, so that the ruler is given what seems, at times, to be special license to craft their own public image based on principals of subterfuge and covering up rather than popularly vaunted religious and moral ideals of honesty and piety. In fact, Machiavelli’s text works on some levels to subvert these vaunted ideals, which are shown in his text to be more the result of superficial appearance than real inner worth. Although the author shows disdain for some of the baser function of human nature, he does not let this disdain get in the way of his profession of the convenience of some of these baser functions. Perceived necessity takes the place of morality. And in terms of ruling, the formulation of a positive public image despite personal acts of an irreligious nature is seen to be a necessity for the true prince. Thomas Hobbes also had difficulties with the idea of people being free to exert authority over each other, but his consideration was informed less by basic Christian guilt in this sense than it was by a fear of the total chaos of nature. According to Hobbes, people made social contracts with one another to give up some of their rights to preserve their safety and self-interest. Although this may sound less like an offshoot of early reformation thinking, it is actually supported by a basically moral sense of natural law that is also present in the writings of Machiavelli. The basic morality of the social contract as it was proposed by Thomas Hobbes had its foundations in the Christian ideal of the “golden rule,” or the hope that one’s actions in benevolence will be replicated by those in one’s proximity. Hobbes’ basic contract states “that a person be willing, when others are so too (as far-forth as for peace and defense of himself he shall think it necessary), to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other people, as he would allow other people against himself” (Hobbes 215). This was the underlying religious morality to Hobbes’ theories of social and political order. The basic religious ramifications of Hobbes’ contract is that individuals should do unto others as they would expect others to do unto them. Hobbes also began, like Machiavelli, with the potential for basic equality of all people, or, as the religious thinkers would have had it, all Christians, and went on to assert problems of social and authoritarian control over this basic assumption of equality. Whereas Machiavelli saw order as being necessarily maintained by secular authority that had its superficial reflections in moral religious principles, Hobbes evinced these principles directly. His was a morality of peace rather than subterfuge, however. Hobbes did not endorse a state of base nature in which war was seen to multiply without reason, but instead based nature on basic moral human assumptions about guiding reason. In Hobbes’ ideal, the sovereign was aligned with his/her people in terms of distinctively separated interest and support, much as in Machiavelli, the church was separated from and supported by the state. “The source of every crime is some defect of the understanding or some error in reasoning, or some sudden force of the passions. Defect in the understanding is ignorance… ignorance of the law of nature excuses no man, because every man who has attained reason is supposed to know what he ought not to do to another” (Hobbes, p. 157). In many cases, reason takes the place of religion. In Hobbes’ ideal, the sovereign was aligned with his/her people in terms of distinctively separated interest and support, much as in Luther and Calvin’s, the church was separated from and supported by the state. And in this context, Hobbes wrote, “Into what place soever a man may come, if he do anything contrary to that law, it is a crime. If a man come from the Indies hither, and persuade men to use a new religion, though he be never so well persuaded of the truth of what he teacheth, he commits a crime, and may be justly punished for the same… because he does that which he would not approve in another” (Hobbes, p. 147). The equity of the punishment is the main thing that disagrees in terms of Hobbes with the idea of religion as it is espoused here, as a basic function of the golden rule. The internal nature of the golden rule, and how it informs Hobbes, also reflects on Machiavelli because a prince, according to Machiavelli, must be able to keep up appearances at all costs. Even in weakness, the successful prince must look strong; even in moments of indecision, they must appear to be dynamic and decisive. According to Machiavelli’s somewhat amoral view, there is nothing necessarily wrong (in the prince’s narrow horizons of here and now) with behaving with cruelty or immorality, so long as the job of covering up and disguising this immorality or cruelty with religious trappings, is done immaculately. The public is relegated to the role of the duped spectator in Machiavelli’s text; the ruler is the one who is in on the secret of his personal transgressions against conventional religion, while the public occupies the function of the satiated specator. Machiavelli states that it is the effective leader’s duty to “know how to avoid the infamy of those vices that would take his state from him and to be on guard against those that do not” (Machiavelli, p. 62), which seems like it may be quasi-religious. But in effect, the protection of the state and the prince’s rule becomes the all-important goal, obliterating all other concerns, including the concern of religion. This spectator does not even necessarily expect honesty and pious behavior of the ruler; they would rather, it seems, have the appearance of morality and piety. The author separates humanity effectively from both the prince and the clergy as a sort of mass audience which is torn between guilt and satiation. REFERENCE Hobbes, T. (1997). Leviathan. New York: Norton. Machiavelli, N. (1998). The Prince. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Read More