WEBVTT NOTE 6. Absolutist Thought in Italy and France 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Chapter 6 Absolutist Thought in Italy and France 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:12.000 1. The Emergence of Absolutist Thought in Italy 3 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:22.000 By the 12th century, the Italian city-states had evolved a new form of government, new at least since ancient Greece. 4 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:28.600 Instead of the usual hereditary monarch as feudal overlord, basing his rule on a network 5 00:00:28.600 --> 00:00:35.780 of feudal dominion over land areas, the Italian city-states became republics. 6 00:00:35.780 --> 00:00:41.020 The commercial oligarchs who constituted the ruling elite of the city-state would elect 7 00:00:41.020 --> 00:00:48.400 as ruler a salaried bureaucratic official, or podesta, whose term of office was short 8 00:00:48.400 --> 00:00:52.760 and who therefore ruled at the pleasure of the oligarchy. 9 00:00:52.760 --> 00:00:59.900 This city republican form of government began at Pisa in 1085 and had swept northern Italy 10 00:00:59.900 --> 00:01:03.120 by the end of the 12th century. 11 00:01:03.120 --> 00:01:09.600 Since the age of Charlemagne in the 9th century, the German or Holy Roman emperors were legally 12 00:01:09.600 --> 00:01:13.300 supposed to be rulers of northern Italy. 13 00:01:13.300 --> 00:01:18.620 For several centuries, however, this rule was merely pro forma, and the city-states 14 00:01:18.620 --> 00:01:21.540 were de facto independent. 15 00:01:21.540 --> 00:01:28.580 By the mid-twelfth century, the Italian city-states were the most prosperous countries in Europe. 16 00:01:28.580 --> 00:01:34.860 Prosperity meant the standing temptation of wealth to loot, and so the German emperors, 17 00:01:34.860 --> 00:01:41.940 beginning with Frederick Barbarossa in 1154, began a two-centuries-long series of attempts 18 00:01:41.940 --> 00:01:45.420 to Conquer the Northern Italian Cities. 19 00:01:45.420 --> 00:01:51.500 The incursions came to an end with the resounding defeat of Emperor Henry VII's expedition 20 00:01:51.500 --> 00:02:00.580 of 1310 to 1313, followed by the abject withdrawal and dissolution of the imperial army of Louis 21 00:02:00.580 --> 00:02:04.940 of Bavaria in 1327. 22 00:02:04.940 --> 00:02:10.740 In the course of this chronic struggle, legal and political theorists arose in Italy to 23 00:02:10.740 --> 00:02:17.380 to give voice to an eventually successful Italian determination to resist the encroachment 24 00:02:17.380 --> 00:02:19.600 of the German monarchs. 25 00:02:19.600 --> 00:02:25.560 They evolved the idea of the right of nations to resist imperial attempts at conquest by 26 00:02:25.560 --> 00:02:33.140 other states, what would later be called the right of national independence or self-government 27 00:02:33.140 --> 00:02:37.320 or national self-determination. 28 00:02:37.320 --> 00:02:42.640 During the two centuries of conflict, the major ally of the Italian city-states against 29 00:02:42.640 --> 00:02:49.200 the German Empire was the Pope, who in that era was able to put Papal armies into the 30 00:02:49.200 --> 00:02:50.760 field. 31 00:02:50.760 --> 00:02:55.960 As the Papal armies helped the cities roll back the Emperor's forces during the thirteenth 32 00:02:55.960 --> 00:03:02.440 century, the city-states found to their growing chagrin that the Pope was beginning to assert 33 00:03:02.440 --> 00:03:09.180 Temporal Power Over Northern Italy, and those claims could be backed up by the Papal armies 34 00:03:09.180 --> 00:03:14.220 occupying large sections of the Italian peninsula. 35 00:03:14.220 --> 00:03:20.800 For a while, some theorists toyed with the idea of reversing Italian policy and submitting 36 00:03:20.800 --> 00:03:26.640 to the German emperor in order to rid themselves of the Papal threat. 37 00:03:26.640 --> 00:03:34.320 And among this group was the great Florentine poet Dante Alighieri, who advanced his pro-imperial 38 00:03:34.320 --> 00:03:41.120 and anti-papal views in his Monarchy, written at the height of the imperial hopes for the 39 00:03:41.120 --> 00:03:45.380 1310 expedition of Henry VII. 40 00:03:45.380 --> 00:03:52.520 The end of the imperial threat soon afterwards, however, made this turn to the emperor impractical, 41 00:03:52.520 --> 00:03:56.760 as well as unpalatable to the majority of Italians. 42 00:03:56.760 --> 00:04:03.300 And so a new political theory was needed by the oligarchs of the Italian city-states. 43 00:04:03.300 --> 00:04:09.080 Such a theory would assert the claims of the secular state, whether republic or monarchy 44 00:04:09.080 --> 00:04:17.360 made little difference, to rule at will, unchecked by the age-old moral and often concrete authority 45 00:04:17.360 --> 00:04:24.460 of the Catholic Church to Limit State Invasions of Natural Law and Human Rights. 46 00:04:24.460 --> 00:04:33.340 In short, the Italian oligarchs needed a theory of state absolutism, of secular power, untrammeled. 47 00:04:33.340 --> 00:04:39.920 The Church was to be impatiently relegated to the purely theological and religious area, 48 00:04:39.920 --> 00:04:45.360 while secular affairs would be in the entirely separate hands of the State and its temporal 49 00:04:45.360 --> 00:04:47.100 power. 50 00:04:47.100 --> 00:04:53.540 This amounted to the politique doctrine, as it would come to prevail in late 16th century 51 00:04:53.540 --> 00:04:55.500 France. 52 00:04:55.500 --> 00:05:00.540 As we have seen above, the Italian oligarchs found their new theory in the writings of 53 00:05:00.540 --> 00:05:06.780 the political theorist and university professor Marsiglio of Padua. 54 00:05:06.780 --> 00:05:13.220 Marsiglio can therefore be considered the first absolutist in the modern western world, 55 00:05:13.220 --> 00:05:21.860 and his Defensor Patches, 1324, the first main expression of absolutism. 56 00:05:21.860 --> 00:05:27.900 While Marsiglio was the founding theorist of absolutism in the West, the specific form 57 00:05:27.900 --> 00:05:34.640 of his own cherished polity quickly became obsolete, at least in Padua. 58 00:05:34.640 --> 00:05:40.700 For Marsiglio was an adherent of oligarchical republicanism, but this form of government 59 00:05:40.700 --> 00:05:48.020 proved short-lived and disappeared in Padua soon after the publication of his treatise. 60 00:05:48.020 --> 00:05:53.700 During the latter half of the 13th century, the Italian city-states became riven between 61 00:05:53.700 --> 00:06:00.780 the old oligarchs, the magnati, striving to retain their power, and the newly wealthy 62 00:06:00.780 --> 00:06:07.020 but disenfranchised popolani, who kept attempting to gain power. 63 00:06:07.020 --> 00:06:13.140 The upshot was that throughout Northern Italy during the last half of the 13th century, 64 00:06:13.140 --> 00:06:22.780 beginning with Ferrara in 1264, power was seized by one man, one senior, one despot, 65 00:06:22.780 --> 00:06:28.140 who imposed the hereditary rule of himself and his family. 66 00:06:28.140 --> 00:06:33.480 In effect, hereditary monarchy had been established once again. 67 00:06:33.480 --> 00:06:39.020 They were not called kings, since that would have been an absurdly grandiose title for 68 00:06:39.020 --> 00:06:46.320 the territory of one city, and so they gave themselves other names, Permanent Lord, Captain 69 00:06:46.320 --> 00:06:50.040 General, Duke, etc. 70 00:06:50.040 --> 00:06:56.800 Florence was one of the few cities able to resist the new tide of one-man rule. 71 00:06:56.800 --> 00:07:03.800 In 1328, four years after the publication of Defensor Pacis, the Della Scala family 72 00:07:03.800 --> 00:07:09.600 finally managed to impose their control over the city of Padua. 73 00:07:09.600 --> 00:07:17.080 The Della Scalas had taken over Verona in the 1260s, and now, after many years of conflict, 74 00:07:17.080 --> 00:07:23.240 Congrande Della Scala was able to seize power in Padua as well. 75 00:07:23.240 --> 00:07:30.020 To inaugurate a new tradition of fawning adulation of tyranny was the prominent Paduan literary 76 00:07:30.020 --> 00:07:39.740 figure Ferreto de Ferretti, circa 1296 to 1337, who abandoned his previous republicanism 77 00:07:39.740 --> 00:07:45.960 to compose a long Latin poem on the rise of the Della Scala. 78 00:07:45.960 --> 00:07:51.800 The hero con grande had come, according to Ferretti, and brought peace and stability 79 00:07:51.800 --> 00:07:56.840 Furetti at last to turbulent and torn Padua. 80 00:07:56.840 --> 00:08:02.480 Furetti concluded his Panegyric by expressing the fervent hope that the descendants of Con 81 00:08:02.480 --> 00:08:10.080 Grande della Scala would continue to hold their scepters for long years to come. 82 00:08:10.080 --> 00:08:11.800 2. 83 00:08:11.800 --> 00:08:16.720 Italian Humanism, The Republicans 84 00:08:16.720 --> 00:08:23.560 The defenders of the old oligarchic republics countered the rise of the signori with a pro-republican 85 00:08:23.560 --> 00:08:26.620 absolutism of their own. 86 00:08:26.620 --> 00:08:30.240 This development began in the teaching of rhetoric. 87 00:08:30.240 --> 00:08:36.040 By the early 12th century, the University of Bologna and other Italian centers for training 88 00:08:36.040 --> 00:08:43.440 lawyers had developed courses in rhetoric, originally the art and style of writing letters, 89 00:08:43.440 --> 00:08:47.480 to which was later added the art of public speaking. 90 00:08:47.480 --> 00:08:52.000 By the first half of the thirteenth century, the professors of rhetoric were including 91 00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:57.340 direct political commentary in their lessons and handbooks. 92 00:08:57.340 --> 00:09:03.560 One popular form was a propagandistic history of their particular cities, glorifying the 93 00:09:03.560 --> 00:09:10.320 city and its rulers and expressly devoted to inculcating the ideology of support for 94 00:09:10.320 --> 00:09:12.880 the ruling elite of the city. 95 00:09:12.880 --> 00:09:19.160 The most prominent early master of this genre was the Bolognese rhetorician Boncampagno 96 00:09:19.160 --> 00:09:31.680 da Cigna circa 1165 to 1240, whose most popular work was The Siege of Ancona, 1201 and 1202. 97 00:09:31.680 --> 00:09:36.620 Another prominent form developed by Italian rhetoricians in the second half of the thirteenth 98 00:09:36.620 --> 00:09:43.220 century was advice books for rulers and city magistrates, in which political advice was 99 00:09:43.220 --> 00:09:45.820 directed to the rulers. 100 00:09:45.820 --> 00:09:52.620 The most important early advice book was John of Viterbo's The Government of Cities, which 101 00:09:52.620 --> 00:10:01.460 he wrote in the 1240s after serving as a judge under the elected ruler or podesta of Florence. 102 00:10:01.460 --> 00:10:09.100 Viterbo, however, was not a full absolutist, since his determinedly moral approach counseled 103 00:10:09.100 --> 00:10:17.020 the ruler always to pursue virtue and justice, and to avoid vice and crime. 104 00:10:17.020 --> 00:10:23.440 Whereas the Italian teaching of rhetoric at Bologna and elsewhere was narrowly practical, 105 00:10:23.440 --> 00:10:29.100 the French professors of rhetoric in the thirteenth century upheld the classical Greek and Roman 106 00:10:29.100 --> 00:10:35.300 and Writers as Models of Style. The French method was taught at the University of Paris 107 00:10:35.300 --> 00:10:42.820 and particularly at Orléans. By the second half of the thirteenth century, Italian rhetoricians 108 00:10:42.820 --> 00:10:48.740 who had studied in France brought the new approach to Italy, and the broader, more humanistic 109 00:10:48.740 --> 00:10:55.660 approach quickly swept the field, dominating even the University of Bologna. Soon these 110 00:10:55.660 --> 00:11:01.980 Early humanists began to study the ideas as well as the style of the classical poets, 111 00:11:01.980 --> 00:11:08.780 historians and orators, and began to enliven their political theory with classical references 112 00:11:08.780 --> 00:11:13.220 and models. The most important of these early humanist 113 00:11:13.220 --> 00:11:22.420 rhetoricians was the Florentine Brunetto Latini, circa 1220 to 1294. Exiled from his native 114 00:11:22.420 --> 00:11:28.420 of Florence, Latini went to France at the age of 40 and imbibed the works of Cicero 115 00:11:28.420 --> 00:11:35.620 and the French rhetorical approach. During his exile, Latini composed his leading work, 116 00:11:35.620 --> 00:11:41.780 The Books of Treasure, which introduced Cicero and other classical writers into the traditional 117 00:11:41.780 --> 00:11:50.060 works of Italian rhetoric. On his return to Florence in 1266, Latini also translated and 118 00:11:50.060 --> 00:11:53.060 published some of Cicero's major works. 119 00:11:54.060 --> 00:12:05.060 Particularly important in the new learning was the University of Padua, beginning with the great judge Lovato Lovati, 1241-1309, 120 00:12:05.060 --> 00:12:14.060 whom no less a poet than Petrarch, mid-14th century, called the greatest Italian poet up to that time. 121 00:12:14.060 --> 00:12:24.060 The most important of Lovati's disciples was the fascinating character Alberto Musato, 1261-1329. 122 00:12:24.060 --> 00:12:33.060 Lawyer, politician, historian, dramatist and poet, Musato was the leader of the Republican faction in Padua, 123 00:12:33.060 --> 00:12:41.060 the main opposition to the lengthy campaign by the Della Scala family to seize power in that city. 124 00:12:41.060 --> 00:12:51.060 Ironically enough, Ferretto de Ferretti, the panegyrist of the Della Scala victory, had been a fellow-disciple in the Lovati circle. 125 00:12:51.060 --> 00:13:08.060 Musato wrote two histories of Italy. His most prominent literary effort was the notable Latin verse play Etcherinus, 1313 and 1314, the first secular drama written since the Classical era. 126 00:13:08.060 --> 00:13:14.100 Here, Moussotto employed the new rhetoric as politician and propagandist. 127 00:13:14.100 --> 00:13:20.200 He explains in the introduction to the play that his chief purpose was to convey with lamentations 128 00:13:20.200 --> 00:13:26.340 against tyranny, specifically, of course, the tyranny of the Della Scala's. 129 00:13:26.340 --> 00:13:33.660 The political propaganda value of Echerinus was quickly recognized by the Paduan oligarchy, 130 00:13:33.660 --> 00:13:40.980 which crowned Musato with a laurel wreath in 1315 and issued a decree ordering the play 131 00:13:40.980 --> 00:13:47.180 to be read aloud each year before the assembled populace of the city. 132 00:13:47.180 --> 00:13:53.380 The new study of the classics also gave rise to sophisticated city chronicles such as The 133 00:13:53.380 --> 00:14:01.420 Chronicle of Florence, written in the early 14th century by Dino Campagni, circa 1255 134 00:14:01.420 --> 00:14:10.020 1324, a prominent lawyer and politician of the city. Indeed, Compagny was himself one 135 00:14:10.020 --> 00:14:16.900 of the rulers of the Florentine oligarchy. Another important example of Republican rhetorical 136 00:14:16.900 --> 00:14:26.540 humanism was Bonvacin della Riva's book, The Glories of the City of Milan, 1288. Bonvacin 137 00:14:26.540 --> 00:14:31.460 was a leading professor of rhetoric in Milan. 138 00:14:31.460 --> 00:14:37.900 All these writers—Latini, Musato, Campagni and others—were concerned to work out a 139 00:14:37.900 --> 00:14:43.380 political theory in defense of oligarchical republican rule. 140 00:14:43.380 --> 00:14:49.780 They concluded that there are two basic reasons for the rise of the hated signori—the emergence 141 00:14:49.780 --> 00:14:55.380 of factions within the city, and love of greed and luxury. 142 00:14:55.380 --> 00:15:02.100 Both sets of ills were, of course, an implicit attack on the rise of the nouveau riche popolani, 143 00:15:02.100 --> 00:15:07.820 and the challenge of the popolani against the old republican magnates. 144 00:15:07.820 --> 00:15:13.300 Without the new wealth of the popolani or the rise of their factions, the old oligarchy 145 00:15:13.300 --> 00:15:19.540 would have gone on their way undisturbed in the quiet exercise of power. 146 00:15:19.540 --> 00:15:26.700 Lompani put it baldly, Florence was disrupted because the minds of the false popolani had 147 00:15:26.700 --> 00:15:31.920 been corrupted to do wrong for the sake of gain. 148 00:15:31.920 --> 00:15:38.000 Latini sees the source of evil in those who covet riches, and Musato attributes the death 149 00:15:38.000 --> 00:15:45.340 of the Paduan Republic to the lust for money which undermined civic responsibility. 150 00:15:45.340 --> 00:15:52.500 Not the emphasis on the lust or coveting of money, that is, by new wealth. 151 00:15:52.500 --> 00:15:59.820 Old, and therefore good, wealth, that of the magnates, does not require lust or coveting 152 00:15:59.820 --> 00:16:04.460 since it is already in the possession of the oligarchy. 153 00:16:04.460 --> 00:16:09.740 The way to end factions, according to the humanists, was for the people to put aside 154 00:16:09.740 --> 00:16:16.540 Personal Interests for Unity on behalf of the Public or Civic Interest of the Common 155 00:16:16.540 --> 00:16:17.540 Good 156 00:16:17.540 --> 00:16:25.260 Latini set the tone by bringing in Plato and Aristotle, Plato for instructing us that we 157 00:16:25.260 --> 00:16:31.300 ought to consider the common profit above everything else, and Aristotle for stressing 158 00:16:31.300 --> 00:16:38.620 that if each man follows his own individual will, the government of men's lives is destroyed 159 00:16:38.620 --> 00:16:42.300 and Totally Dissolved. 160 00:16:42.300 --> 00:16:47.580 Blather about the public interest and the common good may be all very well until the 161 00:16:47.580 --> 00:16:54.340 time comes to interpret in practice what these cloudy concepts are supposed to mean, and, 162 00:16:54.340 --> 00:16:59.340 in particular, who is supposed to interpret their meaning. 163 00:16:59.340 --> 00:17:04.180 To the humanists, the answer is clear, the virtuous ruler. 164 00:17:04.180 --> 00:17:09.960 Trust virtuous rulers, trust in their virtue, and the problem is solved. 165 00:17:09.960 --> 00:17:15.120 How are the people supposed to go about selecting virtuous rulers? 166 00:17:15.120 --> 00:17:21.440 That was not the sort of embarrassing question posed or considered by the Italian humanists, 167 00:17:21.440 --> 00:17:28.260 for that would have led ineluctably to considering institutional mechanisms which might promote 168 00:17:28.260 --> 00:17:35.960 the selection of virtuous rulers, or, worse yet, prevent the selection of the vicious. 169 00:17:35.960 --> 00:17:41.620 Any such tampering with institutions would have led to checks on the absolute power of 170 00:17:41.620 --> 00:17:47.900 rulers, and that was not the mindset of these humanist apologists for the sovereign power 171 00:17:47.900 --> 00:17:50.420 of oligarchy. 172 00:17:50.420 --> 00:17:57.240 The humanists were clear, however, that virtue inheres in the individuals and not in noble 173 00:17:57.240 --> 00:18:00.080 and noble families per se. 174 00:18:00.080 --> 00:18:06.360 While it was surely sensible of them to avoid centering virtue in hereditary noble families, 175 00:18:06.360 --> 00:18:12.440 it also meant that the virtuous ruler could personally reign unchecked by any traditional 176 00:18:12.440 --> 00:18:16.280 family ties or commitments. 177 00:18:16.280 --> 00:18:22.920 The only check offered to ensure the virtue of rulers, the only real criterion for such 178 00:18:22.920 --> 00:18:29.360 Such Virtue was if the rulers followed the advice of these humanists, as elaborated in 179 00:18:29.360 --> 00:18:31.400 their advice books. 180 00:18:31.400 --> 00:18:38.440 Happily, while Latini and his humanist followers established all the preconditions for absolute 181 00:18:38.440 --> 00:18:43.840 rule, they did not proceed to endorse absolutism itself. 182 00:18:43.840 --> 00:18:52.080 For, like John of Viterbo before them, they insisted that the ruler must be truly virtuous, 183 00:18:52.080 --> 00:18:56.520 CLEAVING TO HONESTY AND THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE 184 00:18:56.520 --> 00:19:03.400 Like John of Viterbo and others in what has been called the Mirror of Prince's Literature, 185 00:19:03.400 --> 00:19:09.080 Latini and his followers insisted that the ruler must avoid all temptations to fraud 186 00:19:09.080 --> 00:19:14.220 and dishonesty, and that he serve as a model of integrity. 187 00:19:14.220 --> 00:19:20.080 To Latini and the others, true virtue and the self-interest of the ruler were one and 188 00:19:20.080 --> 00:19:22.240 are the same. 189 00:19:22.240 --> 00:19:29.440 Honesty was not only morally correct, it was also, in a later phrase, the best policy. 190 00:19:29.440 --> 00:19:37.040 Justice, probity, being loved by his subjects rather than being feared, all would also serve 191 00:19:37.040 --> 00:19:40.840 to maintain the ruler in power. 192 00:19:40.840 --> 00:19:46.280 Seeming to be just and honest, Latini made clear, was not enough. 193 00:19:46.280 --> 00:19:53.160 The ruler, both for the sake of virtue and for keeping his power, must actually be as 194 00:19:53.160 --> 00:20:00.040 he wishes to seem, for he will be grossly deceived if he tries to gain glory by false 195 00:20:00.040 --> 00:20:01.760 methods. 196 00:20:01.760 --> 00:20:08.400 There was, in short, no conflict between morality and utility for the ruler. 197 00:20:08.400 --> 00:20:14.440 The ethical turned out, harmoniously, to be the useful. 198 00:20:14.440 --> 00:20:21.340 The next great burst of Italian humanism came in the city of Florence nearly a century later. 199 00:20:21.340 --> 00:20:27.100 The independence of Florence, the stronghold of oligarchic republicanism, was threatened 200 00:20:27.100 --> 00:20:34.220 for three-quarters of a century, from the 1380s to the 1450s, by the Visconti family 201 00:20:34.220 --> 00:20:36.360 of Milan. 202 00:20:36.360 --> 00:20:44.160 John Galeazzo Visconti, Signor and Duke of Milan, set out in the 1380s to reduce all 203 00:20:44.160 --> 00:20:51.680 northern Italy to his subjection. By 1402, Visconti had conquered all northern Italy 204 00:20:51.680 --> 00:20:59.320 except Florence, and that city was saved by the sudden death of the Duke. Soon, however, 205 00:20:59.320 --> 00:21:07.520 And Galeazzo's son, Duke Filippo Maria Visconti, launched the War of Conquest again. 206 00:21:07.520 --> 00:21:16.120 All-out war between Florence and Imperial Milan continued from 1423 until 1454, when 207 00:21:16.120 --> 00:21:23.440 Florence induced Milan to recognize the independence of the Florentine Republic. 208 00:21:23.440 --> 00:21:30.360 The embattled status of the Florentine Republic led to a revival of republican humanism. 209 00:21:30.360 --> 00:21:36.320 While these early 15th century Florentine humanists were more philosophically oriented 210 00:21:36.320 --> 00:21:43.480 and more optimistic than their early 14th century Paduan and other Italian predecessors, 211 00:21:43.480 --> 00:21:47.000 their political theory was very much the same. 212 00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:52.400 All these leading Florentine humanists, much better known to later historians than the 213 00:21:52.400 --> 00:21:59.760 by the earlier Paduans, had similar biographies. They were trained as lawyers and rhetoricians, 214 00:21:59.760 --> 00:22:06.040 and they became either professors of rhetoric and or top bureaucrats in Florence, in other 215 00:22:06.040 --> 00:22:12.840 cities, or at the papal court at the Vatican. Thus the doyen of the Florentine humanists 216 00:22:12.840 --> 00:22:22.040 was Coluccio Salutati, 1331-1406, who studied rhetoric at Bologna and became Chancellor 217 00:22:22.040 --> 00:22:28.820 at various Italian cities in the last three decades of his life at Florence. 218 00:22:28.820 --> 00:22:39.280 Of Salutati's main disciples, Leonardo Bruni, 1369-1444, studied law and rhetoric in Florence, 219 00:22:39.280 --> 00:22:46.120 became secretary at the papal curia, and then became a top bureaucrat and finally Chancellor 220 00:22:46.120 --> 00:22:51.320 of Florence from 1427 until his death. 221 00:22:51.320 --> 00:23:00.720 Pierre Paolo Vergherio, 1370-1444, began training in law in Florence, and then rose 222 00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:10.940 to secretary at the Papal Curia, and, similarly, Poggio Braxiolini, 1380-1459, studied civil 223 00:23:10.940 --> 00:23:18.820 law at Bologna and Florence, and then became a professor of rhetoric at the Papal Curia. 224 00:23:18.820 --> 00:23:26.340 The second generation of the salutati circle also followed similar careers and had kindred views. 225 00:23:26.340 --> 00:23:35.260 Here should be mentioned the distinguished architect Leon Battista degli Alberti, 1404-1472, 226 00:23:35.260 --> 00:23:40.860 of the great banking family, who earned a doctorate in canon law at Bologna and then 227 00:23:40.860 --> 00:23:43.900 became a papal secretary. 228 00:23:43.900 --> 00:23:52.700 Giannuzzo Manetti, 1396-1459, was educated in law and humanistic studies in Florence 229 00:23:52.700 --> 00:23:59.060 and then served for two decades in the Florentine bureaucracy, later becoming secretary at the 230 00:23:59.060 --> 00:24:04.660 papal curia and finally secretary to the King of Naples. 231 00:24:04.660 --> 00:24:14.340 and Matteo Palmieri, 1406-1475, became a top bureaucrat for five decades in Florence, 232 00:24:14.340 --> 00:24:18.220 including eight different ambassadorships. 233 00:24:18.220 --> 00:24:26.060 3. Italian Humanism, The Monarchists 234 00:24:26.060 --> 00:24:31.140 The political and economic decline of the Italian city-states after the turn to the 235 00:24:31.140 --> 00:24:37.660 The Atlantic in the late 15th and 16th centuries was marked in foreign affairs by the repeated 236 00:24:37.660 --> 00:24:43.720 invasions of Italy by armies of the burgeoning nation states of Europe. 237 00:24:43.720 --> 00:24:50.600 The French kings invaded and conquered Italy repeatedly from the 1490s on, and from the 238 00:24:50.600 --> 00:24:58.140 early 1520s to the 1550s, the armies of France and the Holy Roman Empire fought over Italy 239 00:24:58.140 --> 00:25:02.060 as a Battleground for Conquest. 240 00:25:02.060 --> 00:25:08.240 While Florence and the remainder of northern Italy were being invaded from without, republicanism 241 00:25:08.240 --> 00:25:15.660 throughout Italy finally gave way to despotic one-man rule of the various signori. 242 00:25:15.660 --> 00:25:21.900 Whereas republican forces, headed by the Colonna family, had managed to deprive the popes of 243 00:25:21.900 --> 00:25:28.700 of their Temporal Power during the mid-15th century. By the end of that century, the Popes, 244 00:25:28.700 --> 00:25:40.420 led by Alexander VI, 1492-1503, and Julius II, 1503-1513, managed to reassert themselves 245 00:25:40.420 --> 00:25:47.840 as unchallenged temporal monarchs over Rome and the Papal States. In Florence, the powerful 246 00:25:47.840 --> 00:25:54.020 The Cosimo de' Medici family of bankers and politicians began slowly but surely to build 247 00:25:54.020 --> 00:26:01.340 up their political power until they could become hereditary monarchs, signori. 248 00:26:01.340 --> 00:26:08.240 The process began as early as the 1430s with the great Cosimo de' Medici and culminated 249 00:26:08.240 --> 00:26:16.280 in the seizure of power in 1480 by Cosimo's grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent. 250 00:26:16.280 --> 00:26:22.920 Lorenzo ensured his one-man rule by setting up a Council of Seventy with complete control 251 00:26:22.920 --> 00:26:28.760 over the Republic, all comprising his own supporters. 252 00:26:28.760 --> 00:26:35.200 The Republican forces fought back, however, and the struggle lasted another half century. 253 00:26:35.200 --> 00:26:43.420 In 1494, the Republican oligarchs forced Lorenzo's son Piero into exile after he had surrendered 254 00:26:43.420 --> 00:26:46.380 Florence to the French. 255 00:26:46.380 --> 00:26:52.180 Republican rule collapsed in 1512 when the Medici took command with the aid of Spanish 256 00:26:52.180 --> 00:26:54.220 troops. 257 00:26:54.220 --> 00:27:01.780 Medici power then reigned until 1527 when another Republican revolution drove them out. 258 00:27:01.780 --> 00:27:08.940 But two years later, the Medici Pope, Clement VII, induced the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, 259 00:27:08.940 --> 00:27:17.780 Charles V to invade and conquer Florence on the Medici's behalf. Charles did so in 1530, 260 00:27:17.780 --> 00:27:25.980 and the Florentine Republic was no more. Clement VII, left in charge of Florence by the Emperor, 261 00:27:25.980 --> 00:27:32.020 appointed Alessandro de Medici ruler of the city for life, and Alessandro and all his 262 00:27:32.020 --> 00:27:38.860 heirs were also named lords of the city in perpetuity. The government of Florence dissolved 263 00:27:38.860 --> 00:27:48.860 dissolved into the Medici Grand Dukie of Tuscany, and the Medici's ran Tuscany as monarchs for two more centuries. 264 00:27:48.860 --> 00:27:56.860 The final triumph of the Signori put an end to the optimism of the early 15th century Republican humanists, 265 00:27:56.860 --> 00:28:04.860 whose successors began to grow cynical about politics and to advocate lives of quiet contemplation. 266 00:28:04.860 --> 00:28:16.860 Other humanists, however, seeing on which side their bread was buttered, executed a quick shift from praising republican oligarchy to lauding one-man monarchy. 267 00:28:16.860 --> 00:28:25.860 We have already seen Ferretto Ferretti's swiftness in composing a panegyric to the Della Scala tyranny and Padua. 268 00:28:25.860 --> 00:28:44.100 Similarly, around 1400, the peripatetic and usually republican P. P. Vergerio, during his stay in monarchical Padua, composed a work, On Monarchy, in which he hailed that system as the best form of government. 269 00:28:44.100 --> 00:28:51.540 Monarchy, after all, ended tumult and the ceaseless conflict of factions and parties. 270 00:28:51.540 --> 00:28:56.420 It brought peace, safety, security, and the defense of innocence. 271 00:28:56.420 --> 00:29:03.300 Also, with the victory of Visconti absolutism in Milan, the Milanese humanists quickly fell 272 00:29:03.300 --> 00:29:11.340 into line, composing panegyrics to the glory of princely and especially of Visconti rule. 273 00:29:11.340 --> 00:29:19.580 Prince Huberto de Sembrio, circa 1350-1427, dedicated four books on local government to 274 00:29:19.580 --> 00:29:30.740 Filippo Maria Visconti in the 1420s, while his son, Pierre Candido de Sembrio, 1392-1477, 275 00:29:30.740 --> 00:29:39.660 keeping up the family tradition, wrote a eulogy in praise of the city of Milan in 1436. 276 00:29:39.660 --> 00:29:45.220 With the triumph of the Rule of the Signore throughout Italy in the late 15th and early 277 00:29:45.220 --> 00:29:51.200 16th centuries, pro-Princely humanism reached a peak of enthusiasm. 278 00:29:51.200 --> 00:29:56.620 The humanists proved to be nothing if not flexible in adjusting their theories to adapt 279 00:29:56.620 --> 00:29:59.940 from republican to princely rule. 280 00:29:59.940 --> 00:30:06.500 The humanists started turning out two kinds of advice books, to the prince and to the 281 00:30:06.500 --> 00:30:11.980 The Courtier, on how he should conduct himself toward that prince. 282 00:30:11.980 --> 00:30:17.860 By far the most celebrated advice book for courtiers was The Book of the Courtier by 283 00:30:17.860 --> 00:30:24.580 Baldessare Castiglione, 1478-1529. 284 00:30:24.580 --> 00:30:30.480 Born in a village near Mantua, Castiglione was educated at Milan and entered the service 285 00:30:30.480 --> 00:30:32.700 of the Duke of that city. 286 00:30:32.700 --> 00:30:38.940 In 1504 he became attached to the court of the Duke of Urbino, which he served faithfully 287 00:30:38.940 --> 00:30:43.780 as diplomat and military commander for two decades. 288 00:30:43.780 --> 00:30:51.900 Then in 1524 Castiglione was passed over to the Emperor Charles V in Spain, and for his 289 00:30:51.900 --> 00:30:56.220 services Charles made him bishop of Avila. 290 00:30:56.220 --> 00:31:02.680 Castiglione composed the book of the courtier as a series of dialogues between 1513 and 291 00:31:02.680 --> 00:31:09.180 in 1518 and the book was first published in 1528 in Venice. 292 00:31:09.180 --> 00:31:15.260 The work became one of the most widely read books in the 16th century, known to Italians 293 00:31:15.260 --> 00:31:22.380 as il libro d'oro, clearly touching a nerve in the culture of that epoch in its description 294 00:31:22.380 --> 00:31:28.240 and celebration of the qualities of the perfect courtier and gentleman. 295 00:31:28.240 --> 00:31:34.240 The Florentine humanists of the early 15th century had been optimistic for man, for his 296 00:31:34.240 --> 00:31:41.640 quest for virtus or virtu or excellence, and for the honor, praise and glory which more 297 00:31:41.640 --> 00:31:46.360 traditional Christians had thought due only to God. 298 00:31:46.360 --> 00:31:52.680 It was therefore easy for the later 16th century humanists to transfer that quest for excellence 299 00:31:52.680 --> 00:31:59.360 Humanists and Glory from individual man to being the sole function of the prince. 300 00:31:59.360 --> 00:32:05.960 Thus Castiglione declares that the courtier's chief goal, the end to which he is directed, 301 00:32:05.960 --> 00:32:12.020 must be to advise his prince so that the latter may attain the pinnacle of glory and make 302 00:32:12.020 --> 00:32:16.440 himself famous and illustrious in the world. 303 00:32:16.440 --> 00:32:22.520 The earlier republican humanists had nurtured the ideal of liberty, by which they meant 304 00:32:22.520 --> 00:32:30.840 not the modern concept of individual rights, but republican, generally oligarchial, self-government. 305 00:32:30.840 --> 00:32:38.680 Castiglione expressly condemns such old notions on behalf of the monarchical virtues of peace, 306 00:32:38.680 --> 00:32:44.360 absence of discord and total obedience to the absolute prince. 307 00:32:44.360 --> 00:32:50.000 In the book of the courtier, one of the characters in the dialogue protests that princes hold 308 00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:55.580 They hold their subjects in the closest bondage so that liberty is gone. 309 00:32:55.580 --> 00:33:03.080 Castiglione shrewdly counters, in age-old terms used in numerous apologia for despotism, 310 00:33:03.080 --> 00:33:09.400 that such liberty is only a plea that we be allowed to live as we like, rather than according 311 00:33:09.400 --> 00:33:11.640 to good laws. 312 00:33:11.640 --> 00:33:17.520 Since liberty is only licensed then, a monarch is needed to establish his people in such 313 00:33:17.520 --> 00:33:29.340 A leading writer of advice books to both the prince and the courtier, and a man who bears 314 00:33:29.340 --> 00:33:36.120 the dubious distinction of being perhaps the first mercantilist, was the Neapolitan duke 315 00:33:36.120 --> 00:33:46.020 Diomede Carapha, 1407-1487. Carapha wrote The Perfect Courtier while serving at the court 316 00:33:46.020 --> 00:33:52.740 of Ferdinand, King of Naples in the 1480s, as well as the Office of a Good Prince during 317 00:33:52.740 --> 00:33:54.980 the same period. 318 00:33:54.980 --> 00:34:01.020 In the perfect courtier, Carapha set the tone for Castiglione's enormously influential 319 00:34:01.020 --> 00:34:03.900 work a generation later. 320 00:34:03.900 --> 00:34:09.660 In his Office of a Good Prince, Carapha set the model for the form of economic advice 321 00:34:09.660 --> 00:34:13.520 presented by consultant administrators. 322 00:34:13.520 --> 00:34:19.720 As in many later works, the book begins with principles of general policy and defense, 323 00:34:19.720 --> 00:34:26.240 then goes on to administration of justice, to public finance, and finally economic policy 324 00:34:26.240 --> 00:34:28.040 proper. 325 00:34:28.040 --> 00:34:34.160 In detailed policies, Caraffa's advice is relatively sensible, and not nearly as totally 326 00:34:34.160 --> 00:34:42.280 power-oriented or as statist as later mercantilists advising fully-fledged nation-states. 327 00:34:42.280 --> 00:34:48.360 The budget should be balanced, since forced loans are comparable to robbery and theft, 328 00:34:48.360 --> 00:34:54.440 and taxes should be equitable and moderate in order not to oppress labor or drive capital 329 00:34:54.440 --> 00:35:00.940 from the country. Business should be left alone, but, on the other hand, Caraffa called 330 00:35:00.940 --> 00:35:07.540 for subsidies of industry, agriculture and commerce by the state, as well as substantial 331 00:35:07.540 --> 00:35:21.540 and Federal Welfare Expenditures. In contrast to the later mercantilists, foreign merchants declared caraffa should be made welcome because their activities are highly useful to the country. 332 00:35:21.540 --> 00:35:31.540 But there is no hint in caraffa in contrast to the scholastics of any desire to understand or analyze market processes. 333 00:35:31.540 --> 00:35:36.540 The only important question was how the ruler can manipulate them. 334 00:35:36.540 --> 00:35:48.940 As Schumpeter wrote of carafe, the normal processes of economic life harbored no problem for carafe, the only problem was how to manage and improve them. 335 00:35:48.940 --> 00:36:02.040 Schumpeter also attributes to carafe the first conception of a national economy, of the entire country as one large business unit managed by the prince. 336 00:36:02.040 --> 00:36:29.040 Caraffa was, so far as I know, the first to deal comprehensively with the economic problems of the nascent modern state, the fundamental idea that Caraffa clothed in his conception of the Good Prince, of a national economy which is not simply the sum total of the individual households and firms, or of the groups and classes within the borders of a state. 337 00:36:29.040 --> 00:36:42.040 It is conceived as a sort of sublimated business unit, something that has a distinct existence and distinct interests of its own and needs to be managed like a big farm. 338 00:36:42.040 --> 00:36:57.040 Perhaps the leading work among the new genre of advice books to princes was that of Francesco Patrizzi, 1412-1494, in his The Kingdom and the Education of the King, 339 00:36:57.040 --> 00:37:15.040 Written in the 1470s and dedicated to the first activist pope, Sixtus IV, engaged in restoring the temporal power of the papacy in Rome and the Papal States, a Sienese humanist, Patrizzi, was made Bishop of Gaeta. 340 00:37:15.040 --> 00:37:23.040 As in the other humanist advice books, Patrizzi sees the locus of vertus in the prince. 341 00:37:23.040 --> 00:37:28.440 But it should be noted that along with his fellow pro-prince humanists, as well as the 342 00:37:28.440 --> 00:37:34.720 earlier republicans, Patrizzi's virtuous prince is very much the model of Christian 343 00:37:34.720 --> 00:37:36.240 virtue. 344 00:37:36.240 --> 00:37:43.320 The prince must be a staunch Christian, and must always seek and cleave to justice. 345 00:37:43.320 --> 00:37:49.080 In particular, the prince must always be scrupulously honest and honorable. 346 00:37:49.080 --> 00:37:55.080 He is never to engage in deceit, never to tell a lie, and never to permit others to 347 00:37:55.080 --> 00:37:57.380 tell lies. 348 00:37:57.380 --> 00:38:02.720 Alone with his fellow later humanists, however, Patrizzi speaks of the prince as having a 349 00:38:02.720 --> 00:38:07.460 different set of virtues from his more passive subjects. 350 00:38:07.460 --> 00:38:13.280 As the maker of history and the seeker after glory, for example, the prince is not supposed 351 00:38:13.280 --> 00:38:29.840 The triumph of the Signori led to many advice books entitled simply The Prince. 352 00:38:29.840 --> 00:38:40.680 One was written by Bartolomeo Sacchi, 1421-1481, in 1471, in honor of the Duke of Mantua, and 353 00:38:40.680 --> 00:38:49.800 An important one by Giovanni Pontano, 1426-1503, who introduced himself to King Ferdinand of 354 00:38:49.800 --> 00:38:56.000 Naples by writing The Prince in his honor in 1468. 355 00:38:56.000 --> 00:39:02.600 In return, King Ferdinand made Pontano his secretary for more than 20 years. 356 00:39:02.600 --> 00:39:09.600 Pontano continued to extol his patron in two separate treatises praising the twin princely 357 00:39:09.600 --> 00:39:15.440 Virtues in Ferdinand of Generosity and Lavish Splendor. 358 00:39:15.440 --> 00:39:22.200 In On Liberality, Pontano declares that nothing is more undignified in a prince than lack 359 00:39:22.200 --> 00:39:24.400 of generosity. 360 00:39:24.400 --> 00:39:31.180 And in On Magnificence, Pontano insists that creating noble-building, splendid churches 361 00:39:31.180 --> 00:39:38.780 and theaters is a crucial attribute of princely glory, and lauds King Ferdinand for the magnificence 362 00:39:38.780 --> 00:39:42.220 and Majesty of the Public Building He Had Constructed 363 00:39:42.220 --> 00:39:46.820 4. 364 00:39:46.820 --> 00:39:54.740 Old Nick, Preacher of Evil or First Value-Free Political Scientist 365 00:39:54.740 --> 00:40:01.540 The Italian humanists had propounded the doctrine of absolute political rule, first by Republican 366 00:40:01.540 --> 00:40:07.900 oligarchs and next by the glorified despot, the monarch or prince. 367 00:40:07.900 --> 00:40:14.340 But one crucial point remained to free the ruler of all moral shackles and to allow and 368 00:40:14.340 --> 00:40:20.420 even glorify the unchecked and untrammeled rule of royal whim. 369 00:40:20.420 --> 00:40:27.260 For while the humanists would hear of no institutional check on state rule, one critical stumbling 370 00:40:27.260 --> 00:40:31.500 block still remained, Christian virtue. 371 00:40:31.500 --> 00:40:38.900 The ruler, the humanists all admonished, must be Christian, must cleave always to justice, 372 00:40:38.900 --> 00:40:42.580 and must be honest and honorable. 373 00:40:42.580 --> 00:40:48.140 What was needed then to complete the development of absolutist theory was a theoretician to 374 00:40:48.140 --> 00:40:55.800 fearlessly break the ethical chains that still bound the ruler to the claims of moral principle. 375 00:40:55.800 --> 00:41:04.680 That man was the Florentine bureaucrat Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527, in one of the most 376 00:41:04.680 --> 00:41:11.880 influential works of political philosophy ever written, The Prince. 377 00:41:11.880 --> 00:41:18.320 Niccolo Machiavelli was born in Florence to a moderately well-off Tuscan noble family. 378 00:41:18.320 --> 00:41:23.840 His personal preference was clearly for the old oligarchic republic rather than for the 379 00:41:23.840 --> 00:41:31.120 Signore, and in 1494, when the Republicans kicked the Medici's out of Florence, young 380 00:41:31.120 --> 00:41:34.560 Niccolo entered the city bureaucracy. 381 00:41:34.560 --> 00:41:40.460 Rising rapidly in the government, Machiavelli became secretary of the Council of Ten, which 382 00:41:40.460 --> 00:41:44.760 managed the foreign policy and the wars of Florence. 383 00:41:44.760 --> 00:41:51.400 He held this important post until the Medici's reconquered Florence in 1512, serving in a 384 00:41:51.400 --> 00:41:55.840 and a series of diplomatic and military missions. 385 00:41:55.840 --> 00:42:02.400 Machiavelli was nothing if not flexible, and this philosopher extraordinaire of opportunism 386 00:42:02.400 --> 00:42:07.760 greeted the return of the hated Medici's by attempting to ingratiate himself in their 387 00:42:07.760 --> 00:42:09.620 eyes. 388 00:42:09.620 --> 00:42:16.000 During the year 1513 he wrote The Prince, superficially yet another in the traditional 389 00:42:16.000 --> 00:42:40.920 The Medici's, however, did not take the bait, and the only thing left for Machiavelli was 390 00:42:40.920 --> 00:42:47.920 is to embark on a literary career and to drift back into Republican conspiracies. 391 00:42:47.920 --> 00:42:54.000 Machiavelli took part in conspiratorial Republican meetings at the Orocellari Gardens on the 392 00:42:54.000 --> 00:42:59.640 outskirts of Florence, owned by the aristocrat Cosimo Rucellai. 393 00:42:59.640 --> 00:43:06.200 It was at the Orocellari Gardens that Machiavelli discussed the drafts of his second most important 394 00:43:06.200 --> 00:43:16.040 book, the discourses on the first ten books of Titus Livy, written from 1514 to 1519. 395 00:43:16.040 --> 00:43:21.800 Niccolo Machiavelli was reviled throughout Europe during the 16th century and on into 396 00:43:21.800 --> 00:43:24.020 the next two centuries. 397 00:43:24.020 --> 00:43:29.560 He was considered to be someone unique in the history of the West, a conscious preacher 398 00:43:29.560 --> 00:43:36.420 Preacher of Evil, a diabolic figure who had unleashed the demons in the world of politics. 399 00:43:36.420 --> 00:43:42.220 The English used his given name as a synonym for the devil, Old Nick. 400 00:43:42.220 --> 00:43:48.020 As Macaulay put it, out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out 401 00:43:48.020 --> 00:43:52.660 of his Christian name, a synonym for the devil. 402 00:43:52.660 --> 00:43:57.980 In modern times, Machiavelli's reputation as a preacher of evil has been replaced by 403 00:43:57.980 --> 00:44:03.620 by the admiration of political scientists as the founder of their discipline. 404 00:44:03.620 --> 00:44:11.460 For Machiavelli had cast off outdated moralism to look at power coolly and hard-headedly. 405 00:44:11.460 --> 00:44:18.100 A tough-minded realist, he was the pioneer developer of modern, positive, value-free 406 00:44:18.100 --> 00:44:20.660 political science. 407 00:44:20.660 --> 00:44:27.140 As the mercantilist, power-oriented founder of modern scientific method, Sir Francis Bacon 408 00:44:27.140 --> 00:44:46.500 Well, which was Machiavelli, a teacher of evil or a value-free political scientist? 409 00:44:46.500 --> 00:44:48.060 Let us see. 410 00:44:48.060 --> 00:44:53.540 At first glance, the prince was very much like other mirror-of-princes advice books 411 00:44:53.540 --> 00:44:56.740 of the late 15th century humanists. 412 00:44:56.740 --> 00:45:02.540 The prince was supposed to seek virtue or excellence, and was supposed to pursue honor, 413 00:45:02.540 --> 00:45:06.900 glory and fame in the development of such excellence. 414 00:45:06.900 --> 00:45:14.340 But within this traditional form, Machiavelli wrought a radical and drastic transformation, 415 00:45:14.340 --> 00:45:18.980 creating in this way a new paradigm for political theory. 416 00:45:18.980 --> 00:45:25.780 For what Machiavelli did was to redefine the critical concept of virtue. 417 00:45:25.780 --> 00:45:32.860 For the humanists, as for Christians and classical theorists alike, virtue, excellence, was the 418 00:45:32.860 --> 00:45:40.820 fulfillment of the traditional classical and Christian virtues, honesty, justice, benevolence, 419 00:45:40.820 --> 00:45:42.180 etc. 420 00:45:42.180 --> 00:45:48.620 For old Nick, on the contrary, virtue in the ruler or prince, and for the late humanists, 421 00:45:48.620 --> 00:45:55.300 after all, it was only the prince who counted, was, simply and terribly, as Professor Skinner 422 00:45:55.300 --> 00:46:07.860 In short, the overriding, if not the only, goal for the prince was to maintain and extend 423 00:46:07.860 --> 00:46:12.020 his power, his rule over the state. 424 00:46:12.020 --> 00:46:18.860 Keeping and expanding his power is the prince's goal, his virtue, and therefore any means 425 00:46:18.860 --> 00:46:23.860 necessary to achieve that goal becomes justified. 426 00:46:23.860 --> 00:46:29.460 In his illuminating discussion of Machiavelli, Professor Skinner tries to defend him against 427 00:46:29.460 --> 00:46:32.540 the charge of being a preacher of evil. 428 00:46:32.540 --> 00:46:37.900 Machiavelli did not praise evil per se, Skinner tells us. 429 00:46:37.900 --> 00:46:43.820 Indeed, other things being equal, he probably preferred the orthodox Christian virtues. 430 00:46:43.820 --> 00:46:50.020 It is simply that when those virtues became inconvenient, that is, when they ran up against 431 00:46:50.020 --> 00:46:57.740 the overriding goal of keeping state power, the Christian virtues had to be set aside. 432 00:46:57.740 --> 00:47:03.820 The more naive humanists also favored the prince's keeping his state and achieving greatness 433 00:47:03.820 --> 00:47:05.460 and glory. 434 00:47:05.460 --> 00:47:11.060 They believed, however, that this could only be done by always maintaining and cleaving 435 00:47:11.060 --> 00:47:14.100 to the Christian virtues. 436 00:47:14.100 --> 00:47:21.060 In contrast, Machiavelli realized that cleaving to justice, honesty and other Christian virtues 437 00:47:21.060 --> 00:47:26.940 might sometimes, or even most of the time, conflict with the goal of maintaining and 438 00:47:26.940 --> 00:47:29.760 expanding state power. 439 00:47:29.760 --> 00:47:35.620 For Machiavelli, orthodox virtues would then have to go by the board. 440 00:47:35.620 --> 00:47:39.620 Skinner sums up Machiavelli as follows. 441 00:47:39.620 --> 00:47:45.260 Murray's final sense of what it is to be a man of virtue and his final words of advice 442 00:47:45.260 --> 00:47:51.980 to the prince can thus be summarized by saying that he tells the prince to ensure above all 443 00:47:51.980 --> 00:47:55.940 that he becomes a man of flexible disposition. 444 00:47:55.940 --> 00:48:02.860 He must be capable of varying his conduct from good to evil and back again, as fortune 445 00:48:02.860 --> 00:48:05.380 and circumstances dictate. 446 00:48:05.380 --> 00:48:12.300 Professor Skinner, however, has a curious view of what preaching evil might really be. 447 00:48:12.300 --> 00:48:19.580 Who in the history of the world, after all, and outside a Dr. Fu Manchu novel, has actually 448 00:48:19.580 --> 00:48:27.680 lauded evil per se, and counseled evil and vice at every step of life's way? 449 00:48:27.680 --> 00:48:32.540 Preaching evil is to counsel precisely as Machiavelli has done. 450 00:48:32.540 --> 00:48:37.540 Be good so long as goodness doesn't get in the way of something you want, in the case 451 00:48:37.540 --> 00:48:42.860 of the ruler that something being the maintenance and expansion of power. 452 00:48:42.860 --> 00:48:49.920 What else but such flexibility can the preaching of evil be all about? 453 00:48:49.920 --> 00:48:55.700 Following straight away from power as the overriding goal and from his realism about 454 00:48:55.700 --> 00:49:02.220 Power and Standard Morality being often in conflict, is Machiavelli's famous defense 455 00:49:02.220 --> 00:49:06.460 of deception and mendacity on the part of the prince. 456 00:49:06.460 --> 00:49:12.480 For then, the prince is advised always to appear to be moral and virtuous in the Christian 457 00:49:12.480 --> 00:49:19.500 manner, since that enhances his popularity, but to practice the opposite, if necessary, 458 00:49:19.500 --> 00:49:21.340 to maintain power. 459 00:49:21.340 --> 00:49:29.840 Thus Machiavelli stressed the value of appearances of what Christians and other moralists call hypocrisy. 460 00:49:29.840 --> 00:49:38.340 The prince, he writes, must be willing to become a great liar and deceiver, taking advantage of all the credulous. 461 00:49:38.340 --> 00:49:44.840 For men are so simple that the deceiver will always find someone ready to be deceived. 462 00:49:44.840 --> 00:49:50.840 Or, in the immortal words of P. T. Barnum centuries later, there's a sucker born every minute. 463 00:49:50.840 --> 00:49:58.400 And, again, in praising fraud and deceit, Machiavelli writes that contemporary experience 464 00:49:58.400 --> 00:50:03.900 shows that princes who have achieved great things have been those who have given their 465 00:50:03.900 --> 00:50:10.480 word lightly, who have known how to trick men with their cunning, and who, in the end, 466 00:50:10.480 --> 00:50:14.080 have overcome those abiding by honest principles. 467 00:50:14.080 --> 00:50:22.080 or, in the words of another astute American social critic, nice guys finish last. 468 00:50:22.080 --> 00:50:28.400 There is, of course, an inner contradiction in a preacher of deceit candidly broadcasting 469 00:50:28.400 --> 00:50:35.880 such views to one and all, for as rulers begin to adopt a pragmatic philosophy, which is 470 00:50:35.880 --> 00:50:42.280 their natural inclination in any case, the deluded public may begin to awaken to the 471 00:50:42.280 --> 00:50:52.280 and the true state of affairs. The suckers may wise up. And then continuing deceit by the ruling class might well prove counterproductive. 472 00:50:52.280 --> 00:51:00.280 The great liars and deceivers might no longer find so many subjects so ready to be deceived. 473 00:51:00.280 --> 00:51:11.280 Niccolo Machiavelli, therefore, was unquestionably a new phenomenon in the Western world, a conscious preacher of evil to the ruling class. 474 00:51:11.280 --> 00:51:19.280 What of his alleged contributions in founding a hard-nosed, realistic, value-free political science? 475 00:51:20.280 --> 00:51:30.280 First, one of his main contributions has been claimed to be the overwhelming use of power, of force and violence, by the rulers of state. 476 00:51:31.280 --> 00:51:39.280 Machiavelli was scarcely the first political philosopher who understood that force and violence are at the heart of state power. 477 00:51:39.280 --> 00:51:47.280 Previous theorists, however, were anxious to have that power curbed by ancient or Christian virtues. 478 00:51:47.280 --> 00:51:55.280 But there is a certain refreshing realism in Machiavelli's total casting off the cloak of virtue in politics 479 00:51:55.280 --> 00:52:03.280 and in his seeing the state plainly as unadorned brutal force in the service of sheer power. 480 00:52:03.280 --> 00:52:11.480 There is a profound sense, too, in which Machiavelli was the founder of modern political science. 481 00:52:11.480 --> 00:52:18.440 For the modern policy scientist, political scientist, economist, sociologist, or whatever, 482 00:52:18.440 --> 00:52:25.120 is a person who has put himself quite comfortably in the role of advisor to the prince, or, 483 00:52:25.120 --> 00:52:28.440 more broadly, to the ruling class. 484 00:52:28.440 --> 00:52:34.560 As a pure technician, then, this counselor realistically advises the ruling class on 485 00:52:34.560 --> 00:52:41.640 how to achieve their goals, which, as Machiavelli sees, boils down to achieving greatness and 486 00:52:41.640 --> 00:52:46.560 glory by maintaining and expanding their power. 487 00:52:46.560 --> 00:52:53.180 The modern policy scientists eschew moral principles as being unscientific and therefore 488 00:52:53.180 --> 00:52:56.780 outside their sphere of interest. 489 00:52:56.780 --> 00:53:03.620 In all this, modern social science is a faithful follower of the wily Florentine opportunist. 490 00:53:03.620 --> 00:53:07.180 But in one important sense, the two differ. 491 00:53:07.180 --> 00:53:14.260 For Niccolo Machiavelli never had the presumption or the cunning to claim to be a true scientist 492 00:53:14.260 --> 00:53:17.500 because he is value free. 493 00:53:17.500 --> 00:53:21.540 There is no pretend value freedom in old Nick. 494 00:53:21.540 --> 00:53:27.940 He has simply replaced the goals of Christian virtue by another contrasting set of moral 495 00:53:27.940 --> 00:53:34.220 principles, that of maintaining and expanding the power of the prince. 496 00:53:34.220 --> 00:53:39.820 As Skinner writes, it is often claimed that the originality of Machiavelli's argument 497 00:53:39.820 --> 00:53:46.180 lies in the fact that he divorces politics from morality and, in consequence, emphasizes 498 00:53:46.180 --> 00:53:49.260 the autonomy of politics. 499 00:53:49.260 --> 00:53:55.540 But the difference between Machiavelli and his contemporaries cannot adequately be characterized 500 00:53:55.540 --> 00:54:03.860 as a difference between a moral view of politics and a view of politics as divorced from morality. 501 00:54:03.860 --> 00:54:11.200 The essential contrast is rather between two different moralities, two rival and incompatible 502 00:54:11.200 --> 00:54:16.140 accounts of what ought ultimately to be done. 503 00:54:16.140 --> 00:54:23.860 And social scientists, in contrast, pride themselves on being realistic and value-free. 504 00:54:23.860 --> 00:54:30.660 But in this, ironically, they are far less realistic, or perhaps less candid, than their 505 00:54:30.660 --> 00:54:33.060 Florentine mentor. 506 00:54:33.060 --> 00:54:39.100 For as Machiavelli knew full well, in taking on their role of advisor to the rulers of 507 00:54:39.100 --> 00:54:46.900 of State, the value-free scientist is willy-nilly committing himself to the end and, therefore, 508 00:54:46.900 --> 00:54:53.220 to the overriding morality of strengthening the power of those rulers. 509 00:54:53.220 --> 00:55:01.380 In advocating public policy if nowhere else, value-freedom is a snare and a delusion. 510 00:55:01.380 --> 00:55:09.060 Old Nick was either too honest or too much of a realist even to consider thinking otherwise. 511 00:55:09.060 --> 00:55:15.660 Niccolo Machiavelli, therefore, was both the founder of modern political science and a 512 00:55:15.660 --> 00:55:18.480 notable preacher of evil. 513 00:55:18.480 --> 00:55:25.420 In casting out Christian or natural law morality, however, he did not presume to claim to be 514 00:55:25.420 --> 00:55:29.220 value-free as do his modern followers. 515 00:55:29.220 --> 00:55:35.960 He knew full well that he was advocating the new morality of subordinating all other considerations 516 00:55:35.960 --> 00:55:44.320 to Power and to the Reasons of State Machiavelli was the philosopher and apologist par excellence 517 00:55:44.320 --> 00:55:50.560 for the untrammeled, unchecked power of the absolute state. 518 00:55:50.560 --> 00:55:57.560 Some historians like to contrast the bad Machiavelli of the prince with the good Machiavelli of 519 00:55:57.560 --> 00:56:01.560 his later, though less influential, discourses. 520 00:56:01.560 --> 00:56:08.040 Failing to convince the Medici's of his change of heart, Machiavelli reverted in the discourses 521 00:56:08.040 --> 00:56:14.840 to his republican leanings. But the old nick of the discourses is in no sense transformed 522 00:56:14.840 --> 00:56:22.840 by goodness. He is simply adapting his doctrine to a republican as against a monarchical polity. 523 00:56:22.840 --> 00:56:28.980 Obviously, as a republican, Machiavelli can no longer stress the virtue and the greatness 524 00:56:28.980 --> 00:56:35.060 of the Prince, and so he shifts ground to a kind of collective virtue by the community 525 00:56:35.060 --> 00:56:41.420 as a whole, except that in the case of the community, of course, virtue can no longer 526 00:56:41.420 --> 00:56:46.380 be doing great deeds and maintaining one man's power. 527 00:56:46.380 --> 00:56:53.680 It now becomes acting always in the public good, or the common good, and always subordinating 528 00:56:53.680 --> 00:57:07.920 In contrast, Machiavelli condemns the pursuit of private interest as corruption. 529 00:57:07.920 --> 00:57:14.220 In short, Machiavelli is still holding the maintenance and expansion of state power to 530 00:57:14.220 --> 00:57:20.980 be the highest good, except that now the state is oligarchic and republican. 531 00:57:20.980 --> 00:57:26.940 What he is really preaching is similar to the creed of earlier Republican humanists. 532 00:57:26.940 --> 00:57:33.380 Each individual and group subordinates itself and obeys without question the decrees of 533 00:57:33.380 --> 00:57:39.100 the oligarchic ruling class of the Republican city-state. 534 00:57:39.100 --> 00:57:44.260 Niccolo Machiavelli is the same preacher of evil in the discourses as he had been in the 535 00:57:44.260 --> 00:57:45.820 Prince. 536 00:57:45.820 --> 00:57:51.420 One of the first atheist writers, Machiavelli's attitude toward religion in the discourses 537 00:57:51.420 --> 00:57:55.260 is typically cynical and manipulative. 538 00:57:55.260 --> 00:58:01.380 Religion is helpful, he opined, in keeping subjects united and obedient to the state, 539 00:58:01.380 --> 00:58:07.300 and thus those princes and those republics which desire to remain free from corruption 540 00:58:07.300 --> 00:58:14.340 should above all else maintain incorrupt the ceremonies of their religion. 541 00:58:14.340 --> 00:58:19.940 Man could also make a positive contribution if it glorified strength and other warlike 542 00:58:19.940 --> 00:58:26.820 qualities, but unfortunately, Christianity has sapped men's strength by preaching humility 543 00:58:26.820 --> 00:58:29.420 and contemplation. 544 00:58:29.420 --> 00:58:35.780 In a tirade anticipating Nietzsche, Machiavelli charged that Christian morality has glorified 545 00:58:35.780 --> 00:58:44.060 humble and contemplative men, and that this peaceful spirit has led to existing corruption. 546 00:58:44.060 --> 00:58:50.680 Machiavelli thundered that citizens can only achieve virtue if their highest goal is maintaining 547 00:58:50.680 --> 00:58:56.580 and expanding the state, and that therefore they must subordinate Christian ethics to 548 00:58:56.580 --> 00:58:58.060 that end. 549 00:58:58.060 --> 00:59:03.840 Specifically, they must be prepared to abandon the restraints of Christian ethics and be 550 00:59:03.840 --> 00:59:09.580 willing to enter on the path of wrongdoing in order to maintain the state. 551 00:59:09.580 --> 00:59:12.940 The state must always take precedence. 552 00:59:12.940 --> 00:59:20.940 Therefore, any attempt to judge politics or government on a scale of Christian ethics must be abandoned. 553 00:59:20.940 --> 00:59:27.940 As Machiavelli puts it with crystal clarity and great solemnity at the end of his final discourse, 554 00:59:27.940 --> 00:59:32.940 when the safety of one's country depends upon the decision to be taken, 555 00:59:32.940 --> 00:59:43.940 No considerations of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, nor of glory or shame, should be allowed to prevail. 556 00:59:43.940 --> 00:59:56.940 Machiavelli's views and the essential unity with his outlook in the prints are shown in his discussion in the discourses of Romulus, the legendary founder of the city of Rome. 557 00:59:56.940 --> 01:00:09.340 The fact that Romulus murdered his brother and others is justified by Machiavelli's view that only one man should impose the founding constitution of a republic. 558 01:00:09.340 --> 01:00:19.940 Machiavelli's wily conflation of the public good with the private interests of the ruler is shown in the following mendacious passage. 559 01:00:19.940 --> 01:00:27.220 A sagacious legislator of a republic, therefore, whose object is to promote the public good 560 01:00:27.220 --> 01:00:34.660 and not his private interests, should concentrate all authority in himself. 561 01:00:34.660 --> 01:00:41.700 In such concentration the end of establishing the state excuses any necessary means. 562 01:00:41.700 --> 01:00:48.620 A wise mind will never censure anyone for taking any action, however extraordinary, 563 01:00:48.620 --> 01:00:55.380 which may be of service in the organizing of a kingdom or the constituting of a republic. 564 01:00:55.380 --> 01:01:01.260 Machiavelli concludes with what he calls the sound maxim that reprehensible actions may 565 01:01:01.260 --> 01:01:06.940 be excused by their effects, and that when the effect is good, as it was in the case 566 01:01:06.940 --> 01:01:12.580 of Romulus, it always excuses the action. 567 01:01:12.580 --> 01:01:18.340 Throughout the discourses, Machiavelli preaches the virtue of deceit for the ruler. 568 01:01:18.340 --> 01:01:24.740 He insists also, in contrast to previous humanists, that it is better for a ruler to be feared 569 01:01:24.740 --> 01:01:31.500 than to be loved, and that punishment is far better than clemency in dealing with his subjects. 570 01:01:31.500 --> 01:01:37.860 Furthermore, when a ruler finds that a whole city is rebelling against his rule, by far 571 01:01:37.860 --> 01:01:42.220 the best course of action is to wipe them out altogether. 572 01:01:42.220 --> 01:01:49.240 Thus, Professor Skinner is perceptive and correct when he concludes, in regard to the 573 01:01:49.240 --> 01:01:55.780 prints and the discourses, that the underlying political morality of the two books is thus 574 01:01:55.780 --> 01:02:02.880 the same. The only change in Machiavelli's basic stance arises out of the changing focus 575 01:02:02.880 --> 01:02:09.780 of his political advice. Whereas he was mainly concerned in the prints with shaping the conduct 576 01:02:09.780 --> 01:02:15.780 of Individual Princes, he is more concerned in the discourses with offering his counsel 577 01:02:15.780 --> 01:02:18.840 to the whole body of the citizens. 578 01:02:18.840 --> 01:02:26.700 The assumptions underlying his advice, however, remain the same as before. 579 01:02:26.700 --> 01:02:32.580 Machiavelli is still, at one and the same time, a preacher of evil and a founder of 580 01:02:32.580 --> 01:02:35.580 of Modern Political and Policy Science.