The Role of Virtu for Machiavellis Ideal Prince - Book Report/Review Example

EXPLAIN THE ROLE OF VIRTU FOR MACHIAVELLIS IDEAL PRINCE The Prince (Il Principe) is one of the most influential books in politics. It is widely accepted as the greatest contribution of Niccolo Machiavelli – the Italian public servant, humanist and a political theologian – to political science. Although, he had a number of books and treatises to his name, it was The Prince, which people generally think of when Machiavelli’s name is mentioned. This is not surprising because those ideals, theories and principles found therein that explained the ideal and successful ruler were the ones which have entered into practice of subsequent princes and have been all too often accepted as guide and the justification of the unscrupulous politics to this day. It is particularly successful in guiding politicians in terms of gaining, using and maintaining power. The Prince even earned for Machiavelli a place in the contemporary political vocabulary with the term Machiavellian denoting a cunning, unscrupulous and clever politician. This was foisted upon the world by the fact that his infamous discussion on the ideal prince was contained herein. One of the most interesting elements of the book was the virtu – the embodiment of all the requirements of the Machiavellian ideal prince. This paper will explain the significance of virtu in Machiavelli’s concept of the ideal prince. Background Virtu and the extensive discussion on the ideal prince are contained in Machiavelli’s opus The Prince. These books, along with The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy (or the Discourses), were intended for the podesta and the city magistrates of the north Italian towns. The Prince was published in 1532, about four years after the author’s death. Since then, its maxims and ideals would resonate from politicians, scholars, students, adherent and critics alike. In The Prince, Machiavelli particularly made use of the far more ancient tradition of holding up a speculum or a mirror to the princes, presenting them with an ideal image and asking them to seek reflections in its depths. The idea is that the ideal prince as vir virtutis, whose conduct in the normal course should be onesto and utile, but, in exceptional circumstances, he must transcend all considerations of conventional conscience and rely on virtu in order to overwhelm fortuna and thus achieve success. (Singh 1997, p. 982) Machiavelli’s opinions on political matters have been so admirably expressed in The Prince. There are critics who argued that the treatise is an aberration in the development of political science, with the idea that morality can be sacrificed for political expediency. For Machiavelli, acts of outright deceit and extreme violence can be considered virtuous in his sense of the term. In The Prince, he admonished his readers, for example, that they must acquire troops in order to be taken seriously and gain control of their destinies. Taking from Livy, he underscored this by justifying that war is sometimes not only necessary but also just: A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms legitimate if they represent your only hope. These circumstances are ideal; and when circumstances are ideal there can be no great difficulty in achieving success. (Machiavelli & Wooton 1995, p. 79) Virtu Virtu is the pivotal concept in Machiavelli’s The Prince. The word is more aptly translated as ‘prowess’ rather than as virtue, since the former translation captures the notion of effectiveness without implying to conventional Christian morality. One should note, wrote Nigel Warburton and D. Matravers (2000), that Machiavelli certainly does not believe that the Christian virtues of compassion, humility, mercy and honesty should prevail in every circumstance. To quote: Machiavelli nowhere provides a detailed abstract account of virtu – precisely what he means by it only emerges through a series of case studies and commentaries on those case studies. He does, however, make it clear that virtu is the quality that any new prince, who wishes to maintain long-term control of the state, and thereby promote the common good, must cultivate. (p. 7) There are critics who argued that Machiavelli completely ignored morality or the Christian values in order to satisfy the ruler’s lust for power. But, however the case is – consciously shocking it may be – the work is passionately driven forward by a sense of what must realistically be said and done if political success is to be achieved. Hence, its popularity. For Machiavellian adherents, the ideal prince and the virtu are concepts that address political realism. Qualities As has been established, virtu for Machiavelli is the embodiment of the range of qualities required for a prince to gain power and hold it with minimum of difficulty. And what are these qualities? Machiavelli’s arguments is anchored on the idea that a prince, to be a truly virtuouso, must be willing and able to do whatever is necessary for the preservation of one’s government – including acts that are both benign and evil, as long as they are necessary. The Machiavellian virtu consists in a willingness to follow the virtues when possible and an equal willingness to disregard them when necessary, so to speak. To illustrate: Machiavelli argued that one of the most important thing that a ruler must do in order for his reign to be successful is to secure the loyalty of his subjects and that he must do everything in his power not to be hated or despised. (Machiavelli, p. 63) As such, a ruler who wishes to hold on to power must ensure above all that the whole populace, nobles and ordinary citizens alike, remain respectful and content with his government. But in the event that the situation is otherwise he has some advice. For instance, he stressed that the threat of punishment can be employed since it is a far more effective means of securing loyalty. This goes back to Machiavelli’s point that the ultimate end of any government is political stability, and from this perspective fear and even cruelty may sometimes be lesser evils than clemency and magnanimity. (Leerssen & Spiering 1996, p. 35) What is interesting is that in Machiavelli’s line of thinking in terms of the ideal prince and his virtu is that it is more preferable to be feared than to be loved because the former provides a greater sense of security and, therefore, more beneficial to the ruler, the public and the realm. Amoral Elsewhere in this paper it was mentioned that Machiavelli’s prince has no qualities of a Christian ruler. That is not to say, however, that the ideal prince openly defies Christian values. Although the prince must be able to use brute force, if necessary, he should keep up appearances as long as possible and act as a virtuous man, since this is what people expect of him. According to Joseph Leerssen and Menno Spiering, Machiavelli believed that “since people live by appearances, nothing more is important in politics than the power to addle the brains of men with trickery.” (p. 35) Machiavelli further goes against traditional politics and refused to be drawn into hypocritical pedagogy by arguing that political doctrine has a need for deceit instead of truth. Far from being a lamb, his ideal prince, hence, is a lion and a fox at the same time. He set store on the concept of the necessary evil in order to produce the common good. In this regard, we have the analysis of Leersen and Spiering which pointed out that: Machiavelli’s virtu, has less to do with Christian virtue than with will power and the ability to assert oneself in a world filled with uncertainties. In fact, Machiavellian virtu is the capacity to shape one’s own destiny in the face of chance. (p. 35) One can find merit in Quentin Skinner’s (1988) analysis that the ideal prince or the virtuoso prince is a positive and creative force. According to him, “sometimes the ruler who is guided by necessity is pictured not as someone who uses his virtu to beat down the malice of Fortune, but simply as someone who successfully learns to adapt himself to political exigencies.” (Machiavelli & Skinner, p. xxiii) He then commented on how Machiavelli, for his part, argued his case in this regard by saying, that “nature produces different kinds of mind and temperament by which we are all controlled. But times are varied and are subject to frequent change. So a man who wishes to enjoy good fortune will have to be shrewd enough to understand the times and circumstances.” This passage, which was contained in his previous correspondence with his friend Giovan Soderni, was repeated almost word for word by Machiavelli in Chapter XXV of The Prince. The Ideal Prince It was the infamous Cesar Borgia who became Machiavelli’s model of his ideal prince. When Borgia murdered his enemies when it suited him, such as Remirro de Orco, Machiavelli can find nothing but praise from these acts. He believes that Borgia’s actions although cruel, were always consistent with benefiting the common good. The Borgia model has been attacked sufficiently by critics who pointed to the fact that Machiavelli cannot possibly know if Borgia’s murders were not driven by lust for power. However, Machiavelli seems to be concerned only with the outcome with Borgia’s success in achieving some degree of changes that benefits the public with his actions. We find this elaborated in John Plamenatz (1972) commentary on the subject: The point is not that Borgia wanted to do good to others… for Machiavelli, when he speaks of Borgia, never suggests that he was unselfish or concerned for the common good. It is not Borgia’s having some good motives… it is rather that what Borgia tried to do, whatever his motives for trying, was worth doing, not only from his own but also from a more general point of view. (p. 23) With the case of Cesar Borgia, we are led to understand that there is more to virtu that Machiavelli so much admires. It is not solely all about being ruthless but that ruthlessness must be consistent with the common good, even though it was not inspired by a desire for it or the motivation is different. The Machiavellian ideal prince is amoral not for the sake of being one, for Machiavelli does not preach to the ruler about pure egoism. The whole issue is not about the prince, his pursuits and desires. Rather, Machiavelli with his virtuous prince, argue about the special responsibilities of princes. Nigel Warburton provided us an excellent example. A prince who is squeamish and abhors taking swift and effective acts of violence risks bringing the state to ruin; a situation worse for everyone. Better short, painful bout of violence, than the swift decline and collapse of the state. It is easy to understand the Machiavellian principle because, after all, the new princes are in the position to demand strong and effective actions and that they are not like ordinary men who are bound to adopt moral standards and conventions of ordinary men. Machiavelli’s works made it clear for us how he viewed history. For him, it is of interest chiefly because it supplied enumerable instances which he felt that the princes and politicians of his time might advantageously imitate. Hence, we can see from his writings that historical account were precise and therefore, very valuable. Machiavelli’s later political writings were all more leisurely and expansive than The Prince. Perhaps this is the reason why the book and the principles it espoused – the ideal prince, virtu – has always exercised the greater hold over the imagination of succeeding generations. As this paper has established, it was in The Prince wherein Machiavelli’s basic assumptions that rulers must always be prepared to do evil if good will come of it, was presented in such clarity never to be replicated in future writings. Quentin Skinner posited that in doing so, he threw down a challenge which subsequent writers and thinkers on statecraft have found almost impossible to ignore. Machiavelli, with his concepts of the ideal prince and virtu, was undoubtedly interested in the effects of actions in that he justifies the appropriateness of cruelty by its outcome. Another way of explaining this is that Machiavelli does not believe that any ends any means of achieving them. Only the end that bring about the common good justifies any bout of cruelty or violence that he approvingly recounted. As such, he belongs to the category of moral theorists now known as consequentialists. For them, the moral worth of any action is dependent solely on its effects rather than deriving from the motives from which that action was performed. They are the extreme opposite of deontologists who stress that the rightness or wrongness of an action is a matter of absolute rule. Today Machiavelli’s ideals are espoused by notables such as Lawrence Dennis, James Burnham and Arthur Sylvester, the US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. References Leerssen, J.T. and Spiering, M. (1996). Machiavelli: Figure-Reputation. Rodopi. Machiavelli, N. and Wooton, D. (1995). The Prince. Hackett Publishing. Machiavelli, N. (2005) The Prince. Oxford University Press. Plamenatz, J. (ed.) (1972). Machiavelli: The Prince, selections from the Discourses and other writings. Fontana Collins. Singh, N. (1997). Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Anmol Publications PVT, Ltd. Machiavelli, N. and Skinner, Q. (1988) Machiavelli. Cambridge University Press. Warburton, N. and Matravers, D. (2000). Reading Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Mill. Routledge. Read More