Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Volume 20 A
Number 1
Maimonides'
Terence Kleven
Study
of
of
The Guide of
17
Perplexed
Larry
Peterman
Dante
and
37
Robert K. Faulkner
The Empire
of
Essay
Collingwood's Embattled Liberalism
63
81
Nino Langiulli
Individuals
and
Their Rights,
by
Tibor Machan
Interpretation
Editor-in-Chief General Editors
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of
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?
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Inquiries: Patricia D'Allura, Assistant to the Editor,
interpretation, Queens
Interpretation
Fall 1992
Volume 20
Number 1
Terence Kleven
Study
Maimonides'
of
3 17
Larry
Peterman
Dante
and
Robert K. Faulkner
The Empire
Essay
Collingwood's Embattled Liberalism 63
James W. Muller
Book Review Nino Langiulli
Individuals
and
Their Rights,
by
Tibor Machan
81
Copyright 1992
interpretation
ISSN 0020-9635
Study
Maimonides'
of
of
Terence Kleven
Memorial
University
of Newfoundland
recent
book
entitled
Interpreting Maimonides
"esotericism"
reveals
both
Maimonides'
sympathy uncertainty The Guide of the Perplexed (the edition used in this essay is Moses Mai monides, The Guide of the Perplexed, translated and introduced by Shlomo Pines
essay by Leo Strauss [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963], volumes I and II, hereafter cited as the Guide). At one point, Mr. Fox recognizes the difficulties in reading the Guide because of its
with an
of
introductory
result
he initiates
direction
of
study
the contra
the Guide.
we
begin to
read
we can no
longer be
his
writers'
trust the
the
most
statements about
views and
doctrines.
Only
painstaking
a sensitive
study
makes
it
possible
for
us even
Maimonides,
is
only if it
emerges
from
confrontation with
Fox, Interpreting
Maimonides, Studies in Methodology, Metaphysics, and Moral Philosophy [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990], p. 7.)
At
another
of
the
esotericism.
In
response
to Dr. Leo
Strauss'
essays,
magnitude of
which
are, in the
modern
Maimonides'
esotericism,
Fox
writes:
I have
chosen
to discuss to
Strauss'
method at such
and
justly,
study for
considered
be
one of
the most
important
to the
and
of
however,
that
its brilliance
ingenuity, it
to
do little to
advance
expound an
interpretation, Fall
Interpretation
esoteric text should give
is
by
compounding
and
up the
effort altogether,
Few
that the
arguments made
by
deliberate
Moreover, if
what can
another part of
possibly be written about the Guide which will it. The interpreter of Maimonides seems
be
contradicted
by
required
to
reconsider
preliminary impressions of the book and destined to regret his first expositions of the Guide. This tension remains evident in Mr. Fox's recent publication. In
the same
page
chapter
from
which
later),
he
writes:
"If he but to
to
conform
law], Mai
(p. 63).
re
monides
had
no choice
write
fashion"
Despite Fox's
spect
occasional
tone of
frustration, he
Maimonides'
recognizes
for
a rabbinic
law in the
concealment of certain
teachings.
If,
then, Mai
to make an
monides
does
deliberately
conceal as well as
reveal,
we will need
inquiry
we are
endure
he is concealing and how the concealment is accomplished. If determined not to misunderstand the Guide, and we are resolved to disturbances which might cause evasiveness in our inquiry, it seems into
what
unavoidable
that
we will need
difficult,
esoteric,
composition. write a
Fox
be done; he
suggests that
commentary
the
Maimonides'
teaching, but
and what
be the
each
chapter,
the
chapter's relation
is to
II
Part"
of
the
Guide, Maimonides
with a
states
that
treatise,
biblical
parables.
discussion
most central
biblical
chapters
parables as
of
Genesis)
Beginning (ma'aseh bereshit, the first the Account of the Chariot (ma'aseh merkabah,
the
Ezekiel 1
and
10). The
place
each parable
is
more
with
Account
of the
Beginning
does
not
be discussed
directly
in any
chapter of
Chariot is discussed in
seven chapters
seven chapters at
the
Even in these
and
allusive,
is,
the explanation of
biblical parables, it is necessary to discern the manner in which he offers this explanation. Furthermore, in what sense are these two passages parables? It is
perhaps
Ezekiel'
s visions are
symbolic, but
The Guide
even
of
the
bols. And in
is
a
way is the
Is the
of
claim
the Account
present
the Chariot
is
parable,
and
is it therefore
the
more
necessary to
Beginning
to the
enigmatically? of
Account
Why does it appear that there are no chapters devoted Beginning in the way that there are for the Account of the by
cautioning the
reader of
In the Epistle
not cease
Dedicatory to Joseph (2b), Maimonides writes: dissuading you from this [Joseph's demand for additional
approach matters should
knowledge] and enjoining upon you to My purpose in this was that the truth
accident."
in
an
be
established
cording to the proper methods and that certainty should not come to you by Maimonides recognizes that the reader may be impatient; the reader wants to know the final statement on all matters without the appropriate respect
for the
difficulty
of
the subject,
without
taking
develop
ing
and
completing
training. In order to guard against the superficial readings that will arise due to
the student's
contemplate
of
impatience, Maimonides
the
warns
that it is necessary to
to
teaching
of each chapter of
place.
By
means
with
this cautionary remark Maimonides indicates that the Guide will begin
certain
preliminary teachings
which are
comprehension of
Maimonides'
does
not
creation of a seems
difficult,
esoteric, book
fashion
this
tise
have
proper
preparation.
an
doubt in this matter, let us note the three ways that he claims he uses to achieve aim. First, Maimonides does not explain what the organization of the trea
another" precision"
(9a). is; he says only that "you must connect its chapters one with Second, the treatise is written "with great exactness and exceeding (9a), and only the meticulous reader will scrutinize it with the required persis tence and thoroughness. Third, Maimonides claims that the treatise contains
contradictions.
In the
"Introduction"
Maimonides
mentions
seven causes
of
contradictions ation
he
says
in any book or compilation (10a- 12a); at the end of this enumer that "Divergences that are to be found in this Treatise are due to
seventh"
from the necessity (10a- 10b). of teaching difficult matters in ways that are easy to comprehend The seventh cause arises from the necessity to conceal some parts of a difficult matter and to reveal other parts (10b). The reader is required to identify these
the
fifth
cause arises
by
means of and
acquiring
a complete
familiarity ing
with
texts
of
both
classical
Maimonides'
argument closely.
by
follow
confidence
in the
precision
Interpretation
Maimonides'
with which
first may
In
appear as
lack
a sustained and
problems.
to be as
concrete as possible as
which
these assertions
us
let
look
at one
As already mentioned, the Account of the Chariot is found preliminary in Chapters 1-7 of Part III of the treatise. Yet even an initial reading of these chapters reveals how the explanation found in these passages is incomplete
without
the
proper
discussion
of certain
chapters.
For instance, in III 1 and III 2 Maimonides insists, through three different arguments, that the forms of living creatures in Ezekiel 1
are
least
10
the
and
those
of
not
in any
of
the
seven chapters of
the
key
argument chapters
elsewhere. explained
of
The term
"face,"
for example, is
studied
in I 37
and not
there it is
Maimonides does
say
which
the six senses is used in the Account of the Chariot. The explanation of the
of
Account
the Chariot requires the study of other biblical terms as well, and
reader
they
are
is only
alerted
to the
variety
of
of meanings of a word
if the
chapters of
order, that
is, if the
able
chapters
devoted to the
mastered.
variety
of usages
Thus impatient
disorderly
readers
will
be
because they have not studied the other parts of the Guide adequately. The student who is serious in study is required to begin the laborious task of under
standing each chapter in its place. Maimonides also cautions the reader
against
commenting
to be
on
the treatise may be harmful to the student, to the teacher and to the
and
Maimonides
urges
the
reader
reticent
in making
extent
com
The
reader
is
cautioned
that the
by
authorities of
the Jewish
sanction
biblical
passages
before the
student
is
prepared.
sons
such a
difficult book.
Only
cautious
student,
will complete
the to
Guide,
student
provided
he
respects
the cautions
what
issued
by
Maimonides
or submits
is limited in
he may say
or write about
does
not submit
instructions,
there is little
chance of
discovering
would also
what
his true
views are.
If the
student respects
monides'
instruction,
others, but
be
restrained
in teaching
of
all
certain subjects.
The
need
for
orderliness
in the study
an agreement
The Guide
between the teachings
teach the
need of
of
the
and
'1
Aristotle for
For Aristotle the authority that must be respected is rationality; for Scripture the authority is the teaching of the proph Maimonides' ets. intentionally difficult rhetoric, therefore, requires the student for
respect
authority.
to submit to the
rash student will
requirements of
do
neither.
rationality and the wisdom of the prophets. A In this respect for authority the Guide is a vigorous
and of
defence
of
the teachings
of
nature of
the Guide
is, thus,
way
distinguishing
between
truly
when
respectful of
those authorities
and
It is
of
the
Guide
to be able to distinguish
between trustworthy and untrustworthy authorities. The key to this discrimina tion is always the extent to which the alleged authority can lead each student to
the next step
of
his
education.
Maimonides
not gained
have
has
understood
is
under an obligation
it only for themselves; the one who to allow the knowledge to be learned by
the hints intimated
competence of
someone else
by
the
teacher, the
student can
who will
student
has
reason
to be convinced of the
the au
is
always
much as
the
to
student
is adequately prepared. To be sure, what constitutes adequate preparation be a continual problem; each reader's first inclination will likely be to
he is
competent.
assume which
Maimonides
aware of
must
begin
by
creating learn to
a situation
in
his
readers
become
more, the
to work
independently
and
resolve
diffi in
culties alone.
However,
be betrayed
by
teacher
who
fact does
not or
being
obscure as a
hiding
severe
his
loyalty
texts,
all
in revealing the
next
step,
even
if
not
steps, in the
learning.
of of
This essay begins the reading reveal, at least in part, the nature
the
the Guide
in
an
orderly way in I
order to
study
to
first
seven chapters of
Part I, but
not of
in these
chapters
make no claim
we
having
determined the
purpose of all
However, if
begin
too
is
at
first
apparent,
be
cautioned against a
discussion
of
an extensive
commentary
on certain
to be
with
alerted
familiar
individual terms
well
The
student cannot
but begin to
and
how
Scriptures,
to be cautioned against
Interpretation
of the
Guide only
as
discussion
of
careful exposition of
key
biblical
passages
randomly is only
Maimonides'
esotericism
in the Guide.
Ill
chapter of
"image"
(selem)
and
(demuth).
establishes
By
citing the
means
use of
these
limited to
Selem
"physical
shape"
in I Samuel 6:5, "images of your Psalm 73:20, "thou shalt despise their
notion,"
emerods,"
but it does
"shape"
not mean
in
image,"
for
what
is despised is
a charac
teristic of their soul and not their physical shape. Demuth means "likeness
respect
in
to a
rather
likeness;
see
Ezekiel
31:8,
Psalms 58:5
(King
6),
(KJV,
which
verse
James Version English translation, verse 4), Psalms 102:7 Selem and demuth are both used to refer to that immaterial. In particular, selem may be used to indi thing to be what it is, the formal cause or essence.
words
is incorporeal
cate
that
which causes a
Maimonides
the
same
studies
because they
occur
in
us make
man
in
our
image,
likeness,"
after our
cal quotation
in Chapter 1
of
containing both terms, is the first bibli the Guide. Parts of Genesis 1:26-27, though not
three more times in the first chapter.
always
repeated
Thus, 1:26-27,
of
is
a sugges
the
biblical
passage.
Guide is devoted especially to the explanation The importance of this passage is confirmed first
chapter.
this the
by
identification
of
Maimonides if
states
that
it is
necessary to prove the doctrine of God's doctrine of His unity (II). Thus he sets God does
not
incorporeality
out
we are
to prove the
to
prove
have
body,
and
He is wholly
separate
from
According
to say that is corporeal; but Maimonides does not draw attention to that argument. He proceeds by showing that biblical passages teach
contradiction and most central passage made
has
body
image may be man's physical shape. Maimonides sets out to refute this argu ment. Through his lexical study he shows that selem and demuth in this pas
sage
do
likeness.
that the image
the
of
As
an alternative
he
says
God in
mankind
is intellect
or
reason.
Reason is
what constitutes
human
being
as a substance or
being: it
is
our
highest
perfection.
It distinguishes
our species
from
The Guide
plants or animals. nature
of
the
Moreover,
reason
is
like
unto
God. God's
is best
evoked
is
an
image
of
by saying God is reason and the image of God in mankind this reason. The first chapter of the Guide introduces the reader
The
chapter gives a
to a
basic
principle of philosophy.
justification in the
of philoso
of
Hebrew terms
resulted
explanation of a
key biblical passage, Genesis 1:26-27. The significance of this one pas sage is, however, at first concealed because the chapter examines the meaning of another Hebrew term, (to'ar), and there are numerous references to
"form"
other
chapter.
We
study
terms may
conceal
the
more significant
biblical
context
certain
IV
not
begin
with
the
explanation of
biblical terms
as
Chapter 1
presents and
mankind
is
prohibited
they
eat
they
will
knowing
perfection
from eating the fruit because if good and evil. Genesis 3:5 appears to
to the
contradict
regard
is
reason and
that the
the
purpose of
cultivation of
the intellect
and perhaps
attainment of
the knowledge
beings
verses
are
forbidden to
pursue such
God. Yet in Genesis 3:5, it appears that human knowledge. It appears too in the following
gain
knowledge only
Genesis 3
after their
says
fruit their
suggests
they knew
that
they
were naked.
that the
knowledge is
a result of
disobedience.
Maimonides
man who
places
is intemperate in
second
de
fends the
desires
biblical
passage over
he
seems
and
reason
into
being
rather
diminution
it.
Maimonides'
initial
reservation about
however, by noting
Maimonides
what
type of moral
life
accompanied
this objection.
the apparent contra
answers
this intemperate
passages with
two
rejoinders.
First, he
shows
Elohim, has
it
to the
deity,
Maimonides does
not
establish refers
these
meanings of another
instead to
citing their use in biblical passages; he authority, the Aramaic translation of Onqelos. In Gen
Elohim
by
esis
3:5 Onqelos
translates
Elohim
"rulers"
as
pos-
10
Interpretation
sessed
by
rulers
is
not
not
identical to the
knowledge
possessed
of
by
God. What
disobe
knowledge that
rulers
the type
of
knowledge
the first
"good"
second argument
is
argument.
He distinguishes
"evil"
"truth"
('emeth)
and
and
(sheqer)
from
(tob)
and
false
exists
by
necessity.
With the
which
necessity of all things or that always true. Good and evil, in contrast, are designations for generally opinions (al-mashhurdt). Maimonides identifies the Hebrew words
nature or
"evil"
is
accepted
"good"
(tob)
al-
and
(ra')
words
hasan
which
which
may
mean
"evil," "ugly"
but
"agreeable,"
even
and al-qablh
may
and
mean
"evil"
and refer
"disagreeable". He thus
emphasizes that
are
"good"
They
the opinions
majority,
they may
be
ra')
and
or
may
not
replaced
by
the terms
"truth"
"good"
"evil"
and
"falsity"
(tob
and
are used
in Genesis
concludes
3:5,
that
and not
what
and
('emeth
sheqer), Maimonides
is
acquired as a result of
generally
are
accepted opinions.
Opinions
are
lower in
dignity
than
and tend
to distract
people
from the
inferiority
for food,
of
these generally
of
accepted opinions
is
revealed
in their
ad
mixture with
the desires
as good
as pleasant
But Due
peo
different in
nature
comes
by way by way
of
imagination is
of reason.
be
absorbed
in imaginings. Most
know only
what
is
agreeable upon
sions of
edge"
this sensuality
the
imagination. The
inferiority
of
this "knowl
The
is indicated by the intemperate morality of the man who advocates it. depravity of mankind's subsequent condition is further evinced by the dif ficulty he has in securing food (Genesis 3:17-19); the human state becomes
more
like that
of
Chapter 2
of
of
by
Chapter 1. Chapter 2
the
an account of
responding to an objection to the reading key verses in Genesis 3 and, thus, gives of Adam's and Eve's disobedience. Chapter
chapters set
2, like Chapter 1, focuses upon a biblical passage. The first two a dialectic between two different positions. Both positions have
and
up
a certain merit
persuasive.
However, Maimonides
not possible
case against
an
view presented
man.
argument
is
made
by
intemperate
Yet is it
have been
what
made
by
a moral man?
We may
perhaps need
The Guide
Maimonides implies especially
of as
Maimonides'
of
the
11
about
he may modify
argument
clarify his position later in the Guide. The force in these first two chapters stresses that the image of
that God is incorporeal. The
chapters seem
God in humans is
written and
reason and
who will of
to be
to someone
that the
intemperance
argument
will
incorrect. The be
one
that intemperance
is wrong,
their
philosopher,
Maimonides'
makes
likely
a religious reader
who, because
of
the
in Chapter 2,
will accept
is rationality
and
is the image he
God's is
perfection persuaded
in
to
human
accept
beings,
as presented
in Chapter 1. The
religious reader
might not
is,
a view
initially
be
sympa
thetic with, for moral reasons. There are also two types of readers that may not
be
immediately
persuaded
by
Maimonides'
argument.
The first
reader
moral
is the is
genuinely intemperate
though
intemperance to right
action,
be left
with
argument
irrational because they are intemperate. Now it is possible that Maimonides affirms that intemperance causes irrationality, but it is also possible that he
claims that someone who certain
has
his
passions
degree
of
intellectual
perfection.
At this
stage we
these situations
who
characterizes
the
intemperate
man.
The
is
one
is temperate
tion, but
extremes
who wonders
if
what
has been
this
dialectic
are
two
imagination
and commonly accepted opinions participate in any more integral in perfection of the human intellect? We can at this point only wait to the way see how Maimonides manages these two positions in the subsequent chapters of
the Guide.
The dialectical
character of
distinction
between the
work
ostensible
literary
form
of
truly
are.
The Guide
appears
topics in
a sustained
the
first two
chapters
introduces the possibility that two or perhaps more viewpoints will be in con versation in subsequent chapters. It remains to be seen how one or the other of
the views
predominates or
how
one view
is
modified
by
the other.
Chapters 3
Chapter 3
purpose of
and
of
examines
the words
(temunah)
"shape"
and
(tabnith). The
respect
is
similar
to what we
discovered in
to the
"image,"
terms
and
"form": Maimonides
shows which
term is used
12
Interpretation
physical shape and
to indicate
form.
shape. (te exclusively physical in the has three uses: it be used in the sense of shape, munah) may sense of the imaginary form of an object after the object is no longer manifest
"Shape"
(tabnith) is
used
of physical
to the
senses and
in the
sense of natural
form
or essence. sense of
Maimonides isolates
one passage
in
"figure"
which
is
used
in the
similitude
(temunah)
God. The
Moses
word
"sim God's
as physical or
it is
used and
saw
shape,
for those
do
not
know the
other meanings of
the word
helpful, for it
similitude
know that
(te
know the
problem of
Moses'
indicates the
perfect
perfection of
apprehension of
God is
apprehends
by
his
by
"to
nor with
any
apprehension received
see"
notes
(habbit)
and
cases or
(hazoh). In explaining the sense of these terms Maimonides cites those in which God either sees or is seen by human beings. Whenever God sees
the terms are
is
seen
not
have
body
and, therefore,
has
no eyes as a
"seeing"
figurative way
indicating
that
God in
possesses
which
knowledge. Mai
seen
biblical
passages which
God is
by
hu
The
passages
in the Pentateuch
by
humans
Genesis 18:1, Exodus 24:10 and Numbers 12:8. Maimonides refers in both Chapters 3 and 4 of the Guide to the passage in Numbers 12; he thus gives us a
clue to
the importance
and
of
"similitude"
(temunah)
4 is
"to look
at"
(habbit)
occur together.
and
biblical passage; habbit, like temunah, is used figuratively. In Numbers 12:8 Moses does not actually see the form of God with his eyes; he apprehends the form of God with his intellect.
a single
Numbers 12 is
biblical
the superiority of
Moses'
prophecy over that of Aaron and Miriam. In Miriam and Aaron that Moses has been singled
ets at the
particular out to
and
in dark
speeches
(12:8);
Moses'
mouth"
perfection of
God is
The
contained
similitude of
behold."
passage at
Genesis 1:26-27, that God is corporeal. possible meanings of habbit and temunah, the dence of the perfection of apprehension
Moses'
is
understood as evi
God.
The theme
of
the
Moses'
Chapter 5
as well.
not a
study
The Guide
respect
of
the
13
to
Chapters 3
and
as
Chapter 2 functions
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
answers an objection to
and
Chapter 1 ; Chapter 5 answers an objection to Chapters 4. The latter propose that Moses apprehends God through the intellect
through the imagination. But how
can such apprehension of perfect
rather than
being
be
possible
after
an apprehension
is possible, Scripture
affirm
insist that In
the prophet
order
by having
a sense of shame.
Moses'
for Maimonides to
apprehen moral
sion, he
Scripture
reveals
perfection.
digression
on com ob
when account
he began to investigate
chief of
Maimonides'
in Guide I 5, the
the
be patient, which indicates that the student limitations and the difficulty of the subject. The
the student may require an improvement in
"chief
philosophers"
of
the
claims
character; the
desires
by
our attention
to the prophecy of
men upon
Moses; in
particular, Moses
humility
than other
12:3,
sion.
apprehension of
God because he
which
initially drew
refers
back from
such an apprehen
The incident to
Maimonides
knowl
God (Exodus 3:6). Later, in Numbers 12, Moses is honored as having received a more perfect apprehension of God than Miriam and Aaron, and
Moses is
was also said
to be the
or
granted, the
able
the
most perfect
intellect. He
was
thereby
the
result of
Adam's disobedience.
VI
Chapter 6
the use of
and
return
discusses
"sister"
"man"
('ish),
('ishshah),
at
"brother"
('ah)
and
Vahoth). Chapter 7
dren"
examines
(yalod). The
purpose of
Chapter 6 is
first
obscure
terms that it
easier
to establish
in any key passages we have studied. It is in fact the purpose of Chapter 6 if we begin with Chapter 7.
notion of
"to bear
the
chil
uses.
Yalod is
used
figuratively
to
mean
creation
14
of
Interpretation
mountains, the
of growth of
of
the
events of
the
day,
the
telling
lies
and
sense
the term is
used
in
biblical in his
5:3 Adam
passage
"bears"
a son
not
likeness
and
is
by
procreation
instructed his son, Seth, so that Seth bears the intellect of his father. The image of God in Adam that is passed on to his son is reason and not a physical shape.
Moreover, Seth is
the descendants
of
the first
son of
Adam
who
lence and, thus, did not resemble Adam. Therefore, it is only at the birth Seth that the text says that a son is born that is in the image of Adam.
Chapter 7, like the chapters before it, focuses upon a biblical passage, Gene sis 5:1-3. This passage is similar to Genesis 1:26-27 in that it uses the terms
"image"
(selem)
"likeness"
and
Maimonides'
refutation of
(demuth). But Genesis 5:1-3 is potentially a reading of Genesis 1:26-27 because it says that
and
Adam begat
of physical
"image"
a son
in his likeness
what
image. If
"begat"
means
son
shape,
is
is both
what
God
in Adam
same.
and what
be the
Hence,
the
may
suggest
that
God is has
the
corporeal.
Maimonides does
opposes
this conclusion
by
showing that
"begat"
several
usages,
is the
"Begat"
notions. sense of
"physical
in Genesis
5:3; it is
used
in
Let
utes
us now return
Every
chapter thus
contrib
might
same
"man"
is true
and
of
Chapter 6.
Maimonides'
central
statement
the terms
ness
is
is that they refer to human beings. Maleness and femalehuman distinction. He proceeds to say that animals possess this dis
well, and, thus,
"woman"
tinction
monides we are
as
they
too may be
Mai
leaves the
correct
student to
draw his
own conclusion
from this
statement.
If
Maimonides'
exploration of
is led to the
possible problem of
the origin
of sexual
differentiation. This
1:26-27
and
problem is indeed necessary in the exposition of Genesis Genesis 5:1-3 because in both passages it is possible that the
either maleness or
image
and
of
God in Adam is
femaleness
"woman."
or a combination of
"male"
the
however,
are
(zakar)
wishes
(neqebah),
"man"
and not
and
If Maimonides
Genesis
conform to
his
affirmation
"female"
that God is
are
incorporeal, he
"male"
and
of
and animals
God is
"man"
not
sexually determined
or circumscribed.
"male"
Maimonides
are
by
way
saying that
"female"
and
The Guide
"woman"
of
the
15
(Guide,
p. xxviii).
"female."
As God is
neither
nor
so
God is
not a
"male"
neither part of
nor
Sexuality
is
part of
is
equivalent
theme
of
God's incorporeality.
alerts us to
and
the
passage
in Genesis 5
continues
which
forms
part of
the
Genesis 1
mankind
3. Maimonides
to
maintain
that the
image
is
reason.
VII
of what at
of
In summary, the first seven chapters of the Guide begin with an examination first appear to be randomly selected biblical terms. Through a study
reader
is introduced to the
and
reader might
therefore conclude
been
out
simply because they suggest that God is incorporeal. But through these chapters there is a movement from the study of biblical terms to the
chosen
study of biblical passages, Genesis 1:26-27, 3:5-7, 5:1-3 and Numbers 12:8. The passages are identified as the reader becomes aware that the biblical terms
which are chosen specific
for
used
in
biblical
passages.
At the
same time
Maimonides diverts
are not
attention
away
in
from these
sages.
passages examines
by
in these
see"
particular pas
He
the terms
"shape,"
"to
and
"to
vision"
do
give
not occur
in any
of the
four
pas
the
appearance
purely lexical
"man,"
is
not
devoted to
and
specific passages.
Several
the
"woman,"
"brother"
"sister,"
are equivalents of
words used
terms, in
these
cific
passages.
The
to
confirm
the reading
of
these spe
biblical
are not
passages
but
also
deflect
attention
they
uses several
he is
that
as a reader
seeks to clarify the lexical study of the opening chapters of the Guide the treatise becomes an extensive commentary on specific biblical passages.
Maimonides'
reading
explore and
of
these
passages establishes
he
wishes to develop in the Guide. First, reason is the image of God in human beings; it is our highest perfection. Reason is what makes mankind most like God. Therefore the image of God in us is not corporeal being, for
God is Adam's
reason;
not
body
and
does
not
possess
bodily
parts of
or
organs.
Second,
and are
primordial most
disobedience
causes a
diminution
human beings
by
or
desires
and
imaginings
intemperate different
and even
bestial. Human
than of
what
"knowledge"
is
more often of
is true
false. This
"knowledge"
generally is of a different
had,
and
it is
of a
16
Interpretation
than
Moses'
order
apprehension of
able
to
apprehend
imagination,
after
the disobedience
by
the
or
the
senses.
granted
again,
perfection of
know God
by
way
the senses
and
imagination, in
parables, but
apprehends
God through
What is
reason.
so
has established,
boldly accomplished by these early chapters is that Maimonides by recourse to Scriptural exegesis, the validity and necessity of
investigation. He has
points shown
philosophical
condemn
philosophy, it
pursuing it. Moreover, the prophet Moses is not antagonistic to philosophy, but is himself a philosopher, that is, he has achieved the highest possible human intellectual
perfection.
In
brilliant
argument
reader, Maimonides
reveals
inquiry
of
Three
of
passages
chapters of the
Guide
these passages
Genesis. The
which
Maimonides
the Beginning. We
account of
the first
parable.
But
think the explanation of the first parable is complete. Maimonides has not re
solved all of we
the
problems our
in the
Genesis,
and
study of the Guide. We will need to be especially later chapters in the Guide modify any of these early
explains and conceals
This
inquiry
reveals
the full
import
of particular
biblical
It is
an
initial
Maimonides'
example of
esotericism
esotericism of our
Guide,
on the unless
even
humbling
of
as we
learn
basis
this preliminary
demanding on the student of the ignorance, but it does not seem, even investigation, that the Guide can be understood
is
Dante
and
Larry Peterman
University
of California, Davis
In
a previous article
on
Language
in Interpretation, I examined Machiavelli's Dialogue on the premise that its indictment of Dante places it in the modern
ancients and moderns. charge that
The
article emphasizes
the
dimension
of
Machiavelli's
rather
end
by
claiming
to write in a com
"courtly"
language
on
but in the
concluded that
linguistics
and
and politics
do
not
exhaust the
would
require a systematic
In the
present
article, I
return
to this unfinished
busi his
dispute
with
my Dante is
original premise.
Insofar
as
Machiavelli's
now
account of
differences, I
think it fair to
Situating the dialogue in the Dialogue as a whole is relatively simple. It is literally and figuratively the central of the tract's three divisions, following on the one side Machiavelli's negative assessment of arguments, including Dante's,
for
a common
vernacular,
and
preceding
on
ment on
language,
which amounts
competing native and foreign the language of the Divine Comedy meets the up
of
whether
requirements of a
Dantean courtly
particular
language
or
Comedy's language
arguments geneity. against
linguistic
more
Similarly, but
generally,
homogeneity by
reinforces
in favor
of
linguistic hetero
commonality and opens the way to his teaching contentiousness of all human matters. To
velli's appreciate
end of
Machia
teaching, it helps to begin with the intersection between Dante's linguis it would span all tic and political teachings. For Dante, a common vernacular
Italy
would
presumes
the
be its home
and
to
which other
Italian
political
divisions
cities, towns,
interpretation, Fall
18
Interpretation
would proposal
provinces
be
subject.
tied to his
what
that a
In this respect, Dante's teaching on language is world monarchy be established to serve the needs of
he
generis?
Dante's linguistic
that
human community the universalis civilitas humani argument thus becomes an extension of his argu
version of
ment
in favor
Church,
is,
that
temporally
the Christian
afterlife
in
From
the
a
Machiavelli's
triumph
of
perspective
the promise of
Christianity,
and of
the
rests
teaching
its
case
upon which
the respublica
Christiana,
for
demanding
For Machiavelli, in short, leading Dante's linguistic-political teaching demonstrates the bitter victory of the doc trines and the agents of what he calls "our and Dante's arguments
affairs.4
in
religion,"
of the papal
forces
responsible
for Italy's
political
animus
his presentation,
and
destructive analysis, of Dante's argument, then, is in some part a function of his better publicized antipathy to the Church and its This brings us to the specifics of the dialogue. Its first exchanges raise the question of the
spokesmen.5
place of
teaching
and
Dante's
world.
Machiavelli
opens
things
words
by asking Dante to give examples of his Lombard, Latin, and invented to support his disclaimer about using Florentine. Dante responds as re
his
use of
gards
Lombard
with passages
from
Purgatory
choices
and
fifty-two
can
tos later
6 Paradise 22.
Later, Machiavelli
purposes refers to
and
acknowledges
in these passages, but for our other way. The first passage
over
Dante's
the
here
telling in
an
momentous of
victory
of
the Church
Manfred,
the
King
of
Sicily
the last
effective
line
of
II,
at
Benevento in
1266,
to the
configuration
air"
in 1265. 7
The first
the
dialogue, in
as
the line
of
"the last
of
the Roman
emperors"
runs
It is
a matter
for
conjecture whether
Manfred's death
and
the exhaustion of
same
Frederick's line
Charlemagne's
victories and his crowning by in Machiavelli's account, Charlemagne's conquest of the Lombards disposes Italy.9 the last serious unified threat to papal dominance of The vantage seven centuries allows us
defeat
an
and
death
of
anachronism."10
We
Manfred in 1266, the Ghibelline (imperial) cause became can be more confident, on the other hand, that the
connecting of Manfred's death and Dante's birth by both Machiavelli and Dante by the dialogue's choice of passages and the Comedy's positioning of
Dante
cantos
and
Machiavelli
Dante's life
19
and
Church
ries'
predominance
account of
in Italian, and European, affairs. The Florentine Histo Manfred, for example, is consistent with Dante's treatment of
us
Frederick
and
in
"continuous
anxieties,"
to take
advantage of the
now
"quiet"
ensuing
period of
not cease
into
Italy
new men
and to stir
ness
up
new wars
which
This proc any other to ess eventually culminates in the ascendency of Nicholas III, whom both Machi avelli and Dante seem to hold responsible for the development of the modern
they
could not
possess.
Papacy."
Dante,
time
of
as
suggested,
this
assessment of
his birth, that is, that they hastened his world's deterioration and en couraged unforgiveable excesses. Compared to Machiavelli, of course, there are limits to his description of what follows Manfred's death. However, to the
extent that similar
he
can see or
to Machiavelli. The
foresees unfolding events, he describes them in terms Banquet, for example, reports that Manfred's death imperial
stage echoed perhaps
leaves
velli's
in Machia
and the
Comedy barely
continue
mentions
by
Manfred's
nephew
Conradin to
the
family
fight
against
the
Church.12
Nor is Dante particularly sympathetic to the Church at least any more than Machiavelli behavior Manfred. towards Although in the Comedy regarding its
he has Manfred
repentent
acknowledge
his "horrible
sins,"
he
which means
he
will
fred to be buried in
in the
dialogue.13
eventually enter denied Scripture in refusing to allow Man ground, the act recalled in the passage quoted
beginning
awareness
of
In sum, then, calling up Purgatory 3 and Paradise 22 at the the dialogue directs attention to Dante's and Machiavelli's mutual
by
papal
politics,
and not
for the
better.14
For Machiavelli, if
not
Dante,
the consequence of
living
in the
wake of
Manfred's death is that Dante's teaching bears the stamp of the Church, no matter how radical it appears to his own contemporaries: the Monarchy was
alleged
Averroism. In
other places
between Dante, the Church, and "our for which one looks in vain in Dante's writings. Machiavelli, for example, identifies the court of Dante's curiale language with the Court of Rome and at
makes connections end of
the
the Dialogue
exacts
Dante's
"confession"
for
having
erred.15
Machia
velli's treatment of
antitheological writers.
part of
his
posture, and
he displaces
for the
earlier
Using
Dante
himself
against
Church,
pit
which
ruining
20
Interpretation
and put
Italy,"
religion
in the
ranks of
the
premodern
thinkers.16
The
question of
religion and
the world
it
colors
further
unfolds as we go question's
deeper into the dialogue. In effect, Dante himself defines the terms when, in the sequel to the reference to his birth in Paradise
22, he
speaks of
his
"genius"
or
the
capabilities
his
stars
bestowed
us
upon
him.
By joining
this
comment
to his reference to
Manfred, he leads
to ask
how he
expects to make
unfortunate
his way between his natural and astral inheritance and the events that follow Manfred's failure: this is the Dialogue's and
of
Dante's
version relates
which
"nature in wholly
the
clines"
to the
which we walk
but for
accountable.17
The issue
of the
Church's impact
upon
upon
Dante
and perhaps
question
of religion's
impact deal
all of us
thereby
men
Machiavelli's Dante is
in this
matter.
We
see this
immediately
by
ize
as
in the
examples of
Latin
and
his Lombard
of the new.
best
The Latin
example
is the
word transhumanare
that Dante uses in Paradise 1 to express the change that takes place in him
he
ascends
from
Purgatory
reflexives that
Folco
of
Marseilles,
faith,
Transhumanization's
that
we
extrahuman character
recognize
it
by
comparing his
eats
change to what
On
a of
hand, Folco
underlines
exemplifies
improvement,
in the Heaven
Dante
by
putting him
Venus precisely because of their ability to alter their behavior on earth: Cunizza da Romano, who late in life turned away from youthful debauchery and acted
Ezzsoway that was a reproach to her infamous and bloodthirsty brother lino, introduces Dante to Folco, who, in turn, introduces Dante to Rahab, the
in
Whore
of
Jericho,
her
condition
to aid
Joshua.20
The
whole we
his
surroundings and
his conditions,
add, is best realized in the Heaven of Venus's most imposing fig Charles Martel. Charles, the promising son of Charles of Anjou who died ure, before he could realize his potential, delivers the Comedy's teaching on how to handle the intersection of character, or nature, and fortune, that is, its teaching
on
the
question
by linking
Manfred's death
and
Dante's
birth.21
Dante
In the
wake of
and
Machiavelli
21
his
examples of
may say that the charge, open or times submerged his genius or imprisoned him
of nature's
with
the
point.
The
problem
illustrates,
fortune is daunting, as Charles Mattel's untimely death rivalry but the Heaven of Venus demonstrates that it is not insurmountable.
of
At the level
faith
or
speculation, transhumanization
malign events or conditions of upon
supplies
the
ultimate
corrective to the
of whether
this
life,
the
teaching
and whether
it is the
power of grace or
we can escape
from
material or physical
cares.22
level,
our
on
the other
hand,
with
Folco
and at
his
heavenly
companions
demonstrate that
oppor rebirth
next.23
from,
although patterned
in the
By
and
of
providing glimpses of possibilities available at the levels of faith, intellect, morals, in short, Dante gives men cause to think that they are not captives
or
fate
fortune,
or even
half
us
of
fortune.24
At the
same
time, he
challenges
Machiavellianism
repeat the same
by leading
mistakes.25
In
a nice
instance
of
his artistry
and
responds own at
to Dante's opening
references
the end of the dialogue. The connection between the two arguments
obvious.
is
reasonably
In
place of
above
his
native vernacular
combine with other words to produce a curiale examples of the entine words.
claim men
all
Flor Dante's
refined
from the
Comedy defy
for the is then
to have written in a new language particularly suited the huomini litterati the
court.26
This
connection
reinforced
in
various ways.
manufactures
his
example of
Dante's
of
of
from
pieces
Inferno 26
and
Inferno
at
20,
which makes
example of
references
Dante's
clumsiness
but
the
same
to three kinds
of words at
both
ends of
linked
by
subject matter.
stars.
to Dante's
genius and
his
Specifically,
deceivers
Inferno 26 from
move
which of
Dante's
or evil affects
counselors
in Hell's
"virtue"
eighth circle.
Confronting
that
grievously
or
observes guide
he
"curb "good
(his)
genius"
lest it
it, because if
star"
something
22
even
Interpretation
"better"
has
granted
him
such a
boon
that
is,
genius
reasserts
he
it. In this sense, the fragment from Inferno 26 28 initially established through Paradise 22.
use
the associations
Their
common
a point
he drives home
Where Dante's
us
by
can never
examples point
ability to
of
nature."29
and
lead
to construe
of a na
genius or nature
in terms
ture that
potential, Machiavelli's raise the specter than liberates and is understood in terms of
than opportunities and potential.
necessi
ties, curbs,
short,
ral
limits
rather
Machiavelli, in
uses
his
examples
by
natu
necessity
to
rather
than defined
by
natural potential.
For
Machiavelli, Dante's
art.30
inability
"avoid"
Florentine
we can restate
repudiation of
Florence his
and
his
claim
to
language that
super
hers
vision of man as a
being
of natural poten
Conversely, Machiavelli may take hitherto unknown heights, but his argument
tiality.
to
Dante is in The
keeping
with
his
identification
of nature with
compelling
above
necessity.
effect of
Machiavelli's
audience needs
to redefine
necessity and freedom means moving in the direction in fortune for the idea that
or
rising
nature,
providence,
impels.31
It is
worth
Machiavelli's
the
Purgatory
of
from the Inferno, whereas Dante's come from in the first instance and the Paradise in the rest. For Machiavelli,
the Inferno
conveys an
idea
of nature as
teaching
look
the
rest of
the Comedy. To
see
constraining that is seditious of the the why and how of this, we need
Inferno
26, for
start,
adds
Dante's discussion
posed
of genius which
is
not apparent
in the
earlier
something to case. As op
to the
celebration of genius
need sometimes to
who put
keep
genius
in Paradise 22, Inferno 26 emphasizes the under wraps. About to enter the realm of those
keeping
talents
demand
their
betraying irony
as circum
evil coun
selors, who, to
cealment of
Grandgent, "applied
mind."32
their
burning
not
to the con
The
here is
surface.
Dante
conspires to veil
his
abilities
in
reaction
intentions
by
More to the point, Machiavelli's passage reveals utilizing their that Dante's self-acknowledged abilities notwithstanding, he admits that genius
fully
abilities.33
employs veils
in his teaching is
reinforced
by
the
pas-
Dante
sage
and
Machiavelli
23
from Inferno 20
Machiavelli's
manufactured quotation.
another transitional
moment
in the
journey
walking downward from the diviners to the barrators in circle eight. As they move they talk, which Dante mentions twice, but we are not told what they talk about. All Dante cares to say is that he and
are
Virgil
speak
"of
other
things
of which
my comedy does
not care
to
sing":
refusal
in
to
Dante's
remain
comedy,"
to
"my
he
emphasizes
his
velli's example
and
passages show
then maintaining
Why
right
that make up Machia Dante curbing his genius of his Dante is loath to
"sing"
intriguing
in Hell
in its
own
the
troublesome
position
of respected ancient
our context
it is secondary to the way Machiavelli combines these passages to give a new, and subtle, response to the question Dante poses at the dialogue's inception. Rather than handle the tension between
our potential genius and circumstances more
for development
avoided
and
problems
may be curbing
by
maintaining
reserve or of
Restraint
cal response
questions
Dante
raises at
the dialogue's
opening by bringing forward the reticent end of Dante's teaching at the dia logue's close. In effect, Machiavelli turns Dante's argument for artistic restraint
back his
upon
him have
by
using it to
course of
accuse
Dante
of
being
injudicious
or
indiscreet in
writing:
in the
what you
written."35
arguing Machiavelli tells Dante to "consider well Machiavelli rejects the open teaching of the Para
dise, in
presses
teaching
alter
or
the
teaching
on
discre sup
a
men
to be adaptable, Machiavelli
Dante's
of
argument own
that men
may
foretaste
his
teaching
A
that morally
neutral
artistry,
guided
by
morally
when
neutral prudence or
wisdom, is the
collide. new
key
fortune
the old
version of
teaching
such
on
deception
teaching
on
human
potential. modern
By
animal
in Machiavelli's
bestiary.36
is why Machiavelli calls attention to Dante's methods but will not apply them to Dante's ends. Presumably, he thinks that it would have been preferable for Dante to be more discreet about the teaching An
obvious next question represented
by
the examples
of
Glaucus
and
to tell us why
he thinks so, a silence that anticipates his silence ways. This matter brings into play the remaining
quotations
and the last from Dante in the Dialogue. The quotations, concluding set which finish off Machiavelli's demonstration that the Comedy is Florentine,
24
arise
Interpretation
in Inferno 28
and
respectively to Mahomet, who is in Hell as a sower of religious discord, and to Vanni Fucci, who is among the infamous Florentine thieves because of his involvement, in about 1293, in the looting of 25
and refer a
treasury in
the Church
of
as
Dante
in the
Comedy is
which
con
cerned, Machiavelli
hardly
describe Mahomet's
and
spilled entrails
"that
vividly
figs."37
swallowed"
both the
The
also,
however, carry
Dante's
bears
the question of
why Machiavelli
reveal
accepts
but
not
his
ends.
the difficulties in trying, like Dante, to join pagan Folco or, more broadly, to fashion an accommodation between Athens and Jerusalem: that Dante and Glaucus transhumanize in a canto which begins with
a call to reform
and
which commemorates
Folco 's
to the
begins
Beatrice's
reassurances
signals
Dante's
approach
problem.
In the
the
medieval
framework, Mahomet is
Christian
"scandal
or as and
"provocateur,"
a religious
Islam.38
either
in he
role of apostate
the founder of
schism"
In both
instances,
punished
stands
for
religious
and
is appropriately
for
creating disorder: he is hacked apart by a devil, thus the spilling of his entrails, and after he heals is hacked anew. The sacrilegious thief Vanni Fucci suffers
similarly: a snake's
he
regains
after
Phoenix,"
again.39
Even
and
such a
terrible pun
ishment does not, however, quell his "bloody gesture to God which marks him the
"obscene"
rage,"
he is
still capable of
"proud"
as
the most
spirit
Dante
encounters
in
Hell.40
In referring us to Mahomet and Vanni Fucci Machiavelli supplies a series of rejoinders to Dante's heavenly references. Vanni Fucci, for example, describes himself as more than a beast in a way that sets off Dante's becoming more than
human
at
the
gates of paradise.
Similarly, Mahomet's
tortured
form
acts as a
counterpoint
to Folco's
resplendence.41
velli's examples
deflect the
message
More to the point, however, Machia conveyed by Dante's. Whereas Dante and
Folco become something new in Paradise and on earth respectively, Mahomet and Vanni Fucci undergo repetitive transmutations but always return to their
original
are
hardly living
different than
to
on
earth, their
terrible
Mahomet
continues rebellious
sow
discord
by
"obscene"
to God
carries
Machiavelli's examples, then, carry an interconnected set of in Dante's opening. First, with
messages
a nod
that
toward
the
fifteenth
chapter of
the
Prince,
world
"incredible"
Dante
world of
and
Machiavelli
and
25
the
Paradise."
Mahomet,
discord,
Florence
Vanni
Fucci,
the impious
and
divisiveness
Dante's
attempted accommodations
secular and spiritual world we
renaissance and
Jerusalem,
ally the
impractical,
of
and
exposes
the
improbability
the
world we
heavenly
the
examples.44
In this latter
respect
thereby
as ancient
repeats
message on religion of
Discourses,
to
where,
Harvey
between
for it,
of
leading
and
moderns"
among the
provisional
disunity
political
producing
and
that
thereby
give
is merely
This
points
miscalculates
the
impact
upon
his
insta
bility and, by extension, fails to see that there is no educating his contempo raries. The best that can be hoped for is that they be manipulated. The covert
teaching
and
critical of
by
Vanni Fucci
one
among
at
important
to Dante-
tools.
By bringing forward
and and
Mahomet
Vanni Fucci
as rejoinders
Glaucus
Folco, Machiavelli
elevates
Dante's Hell
arts of
dise,
tion,
discretion
dissimula
facing
As
well as
conclusion of
Machiavelli lays
regions of
If it is
in his
world
lower
ments of
Hell
will compel
human affairs,
and
Aristotle's universe,
where natu
beneficence
world
things afresh,
is
lost.46
The
ancestors
standards, to
one should
later, it
will move
the
first
wave of
struggle over
out
having
condition.
Machiavelli's closing
counterbalance
Dante's opening
totelian
synthesis
that
late
medievalism.
Mahomet
and
26
Interpretation
Dante-Glaucus
and
combination of
Folco.
are
By
the same
and
token, Christian-Aris
manipulation
totelian
one's
ideas
of
human
potential
set
aside
artistic
of
fellows,
the
secrets of which
political
Machiavelli
attributes
to
Dante, becomes
in the
art of
triumph
it is
most
fully
realized
Machiavelli's
center of
apparent at
the
There, for example, Machia velli replies to Dante's opening claim to having used Lombard by citing a Florentine usage in Beatrice's Thomistic message to Christians to avoid worry
the dialogue
its
by being
In the immediate sequel to this, vowing in the first Dante, arguing that it is allowable to use a few foreign words in a long work, cites a Persian word in Virgil's account of Aeolus's sinking of Aeneas's fleet at
the urging
of
Juno.48
guides
Outside the linguistic issue, it follows, quotations from place Christian sentiment in favor of stripping vows of their
avoiding the unforeseen or unanticipated alongside paganism's helplessness before oftimes fickle and indifferent but always fear
The
central
section of the
said
to be
by
Christianity
repeats,
and
between
Dante's Beatrice
Virgil,
which
higher
level,
the competition
native and
foreign
elements
in Dante's
writing.
follow from
passages
Machiavelli
and
cites
imme
diately
stance
says
the
illuminating
confrontation of
Beatrice
Virgil. In this in
confession at
Dialogue,
that Dante
to using
and
Florentine in Inferno 10
when
23
by having
men recognize
him
as
Tuscan
are
Florentine
talking. The
characters
in
question
hero
and savior of
respectively Farinata degli Uberti, the Ghibelline Florence, and Catalano dei Malavolti and Loderingo degli
who
had
once ruled
characters parallels
Dante's teach
ad
ing,
the former
of
points
to the
incompatibility
mires, that
Catalano meeting
and
Farinata, and the dominant lifestyle Loderingo, who as friars and rulers
Dante's
of religion and
ground of a
his
Farinata,
hero
sculptures,"
is in Hell
for his Epicureanism. Despite this, but consistent with his oldfashioned bent, he is one of two figures in the Comedy Virgil is the other whom Dante,
after
Aristotle,
Characteristic
of
the magnanimous,
scorn of
Hell"
Farinata
and
ad-
is exceedingly proud,
Dante
and
Machiavelli
and
27
dresses Dante "half disdainfully."49 Conversely, the friars are sullen In contrast to s openness and self-aware greatness, they
Farinata'
fearful.
them.50
are always
looking
over
they worry
with
that Dante
will
scorn
Moreover,
punished
where
Farinata is
Epicureans
are
soul
die
the
body"
the
friars
identify
them to
selves
according to their
religious
wear
orders,
and
punishment
their monastic
they
leaden
versions of
cloaks and
cowls.51
Catalano
and
Farinata'
palace of
family,
the
Uberti,
As he
at
the instigation
the
Pope.52
exacts
trasting
pictures
Dante's confession, then, Machiavelli leads us to Dante's con of an Epicurean heretic who is the last representative of pagan
magnanimity and of religious hypocrites who are also Christian monastics and papal deputies. The initial conclusion that we draw from this is relatively sim ple, and not much different from that which Dante induces without Machia
velli's
help. In
a world of men
like the friars, Farinata's model, to which Dante As Beatrice's and Virgil's essential
suspect.53
in Machiavelli's
framework,
so
Catalano
Loderingo signify conditions unfriendly to a Farinata. The theoretical divi between Dante's guides repeats in the political and practical divisions be
level,
the friars
help destroy
the
Uberti,
level their
actions refute
identified does
is
with
can steer
resolve
to decide
whether we
Machiavelli, however,
not so generous.
version
He leads
of
to a decision
terological
over
Gresham's law,
by
Farinata. To this end, Machiavelli enlists the example of Count Ugolino, a Pisan contemporary of Dante and the central figure in the longest episode of the Inferno: Ugolino is in Antenora, the part of lowest Hell assigned to traitors to party and country, where he is punished by having endlessly to devour the
cleric,
Archbishop Ruggieri,
children.
who a
had brief
starved
him
so
terribly
that he canni
argument
After
change of
direction in his
admit
Machiavelli
causes
Dante to
ing
ting
of
reminding him that Ugolino addresses him as Florentine after overhear him talking to Virgil. Machiavelli overcomes Dante's resistance to admit
by
that
he
and
speaks
Tuscan
and
Florentine
on
the
basis
of
the examples of
Farinata Farinata
the
friars, in
other
Ugolino. Ugolino's
added
weight,
however,
also
tips the
balance
against
behavior
be
compelling for either Dante or Machiavelli's audience. For a start, Farinata, and to a lesser degree the friars, draw attention to Dante's provincial roots by
28
Interpretation
Tosco,"
initially
but Ugolino
greets
Dante
as a
Florentine.
out
pression
that
Florence, Dante's
intertwined
with
province;
and obscures
the ancestral
compelling than Tuscany, his sensibilities that for Dante and Dante's
more
Farinata his
province.54
are
Ugolino, in
"right"
the conditions that ultimately defeat Dante. Dante's collapse in the face of
example after
does
velli
not speak
and
himself
he
admission
that
Ugolino,
spokesman
sounds,"
the
si
Italy
Farinata,
who was
domi
nated
Florence from
are
by family being
more
by
(fu'io solo) responsible for saving the Ghibellines but whose cause, and goodness,
little
by
Dante's
own
time.55
Where Machiavelli
exposes
with
write
finis to the
dichotomy, he uses Farinata, the friars, and Ugolino to Farinatan, and Aristotelian, end of any potential ancient-mod
ern synthesis.
shows
his,
premachiavellian,
a short
"convincing"
objections
to
in
point
occurs
in
exchange
just before
purpose of
Dante that he
Florentine
by
has Dante
exchange
read
comparing his writing to that of a contemporary, Machia Morgante?6 sequentially from the Comedy and Luigi Pulci's
with
The
begins
middle
Machiavelli ordering Dante to read the first line of of the journey of our life, I came to myself in a dark
lost."
Next, he
asks,
not
orders, Dante to
read
ular
from the Morgante. In this instance, Machiavelli does not specify a partic reading, a failure Dante underlines by asking where he should begin.
replies
Machiavelli
caso.
is his
or
that
of
he
can choose at
random,
Dante
selects a not
beginning
one who
begins does
deserve merit, it is written in your Gospel, benign father."57 Machiavelli's argument here is that there is no difference in language in the
on
Dante reads, but the passages are also similar in another way. Both beginnings. On this subject, Dante and Machiavelli differ substan tially. Whereas Dante shares Aristotle's suspicion of beginnings, Machiavelli is
passages
focus
deservedly
gives
and
innovators.58
to the
Gospel
24 both fit
might
interesting
think, that
new.
Pulci's tone
lead
to
because
of
qualms about
the
Rather, it is
Dante
point
and
Machiavelli
29
being
that
we are
to commit ourselves
jectives because
but false
prophets:
"you
one
will
by
all nations
for my
. . .
name's sake
(many)
will
betray
another,
.
and will
hate
one another
false
end, he
be
saved"
but whoever perseveres to the astray (Matt. 24.9-13); "brother will hand over brother to
men
. .
lead
death,
who of
and
child.
children will
them to death
And
you will
be hated
by
rise up against parents and put all for my name's sake, but he
context
has
persevered
to the end
will
be
saved"
Dante's
suspicion of
innovation
a
and respect
passage and
he
chooses
Scripture
by
the expedient of
identifying
distrust
of
beginnings
with
Chris it is
Pulci, in
other words of
and occurs
in the thirty-third
the Dialogue's
exchanges and
conceals
faith
Scripture's
willingness
into Aristotle's
argument against
Dante
and
Pulci,
accepts and
it
as
opening new ways, at least in politics. The alliance between or Aristotle and Scripture, is uneasy, but Dante apparently the cost of mitigating a practical problem that sets apart Jerusalem
the clash between spiritual commitment and habitual respect for
Athens
tradition
without
employing Machiavelli's
more
acid
remedies.
Through
Pulci, Dante restates the ancient challenge to innovators, and to Machiavellian ism, and suggests a way to ease the strain between reason and revelation. At a critical moment in the dialogue, it follows, a fundamental of Dante's
and
Machiavelli's dispute
and
emerges.
For
reasons
implicit in his
respect
Vergil
Beatrice,
Dante
accepts
the
concessions
and uncertainties
of
world,
which of
includes
religion"
appreciation of what
because
the impact of
the
thinly
the
Machiavelli
says
here that he
"convince"
he
shows
uncertainties
tolerated,
welcomed,
by
Dante
with a
is true to his
greater project of
replacing them
certainty."59
hope,
velli's
as
it,
"which
approaches or equals
Machia
such
terms, is
the
face
having
said
journey
his
lost in
wood, Dante
it.60
immediately
admits that
he
cannot account
for
and
escape
from
It
appears
Dialogue's
comments on
and
liv
ing in uncertainty are mutually exclusive. To succeed in his purpose, and to provide dependable truths, he must overcome Dante, the last great medieval
spokesman
for
knowing.61
30
Interpretation
To the degree that Machiavelli
corrects and convinces
Dante, in
summary,
he
eases
for
surety.
Pulci,
on
the
other
hand, he
Machiavelli
by
combining
perseverence
and
steadfastness.
Machiavelli's
attempt to
Dante
a challenge
to Machiavelli's confidence in
or perhaps can come
Dante
comes
he
his
Christian- Aristotelian
relationship.
his
and
Machiavelli's
the
At their
one
hearts,
their teachings
modern
go
in
opposite
direc
deflects the
desire for
certitude and
feeds
it.62
returning to the specifics of the dialogue. According to what has been said, the dialogue turns on questions that divide ancients and moderns. At its center and the Dialogue's there is the contrast between Far
conclude
We
by
inata,
mous
at once an
Epicurean
man,
and
Catalano
and
heretic, the savior of Florence and the last magnani Loderingo, at once hypocritical men of the cloth,
These figures Virgil
on
are surrounded of
betrayors
of
Florence,
by
the
Beatrice
on vows and
the fickleness
and
beginning
the Morgante's
scripturally
and and of
supported
warning to
originators.
the
friars, in
this way, radiate outwards to the differences between pagan the gods and the
whole ancient and modern appreciations we
Christian
appreciations of
beginnings. Finally,
framing
at
dialogue,
influence
as a
find
opposed alterna
different
ways of
Looking looking
the
at
dialogue
human
possibilities
at
face
composed of
different
ways of
looking
follows: the contrasting psychological models or souls at the core of the dialogue become, through contact with different forms of belief, the contrasting moral types at its peripheries. Whichever way one takes Machia
be
restated as
velli's
argument,
however, it leads
is
a
function
of
modern views of
the
gods
and
God,
and
beginnings,
mediate
between the
belief in
human
flexibility
and growth
that most of us
identify
with
NOTES
1. "Machiavelli Machiavelli
versus
Dante: Language
are
and
il "Dialogo intorno
alia nostra
10 (1982), Pollidori, included in her Niccolo (Florence: Leo Olschki, 1978). The argument
on
Language,"
Dante
of
and
Machiavelli
his
31
on
view of
political associa
Florence, which is in turn governed by Aristotle's discussions of polis and politeia. In criticizing Dante, I consequently argue, Machiavelli opposes Aristotelianism and antici pates the modern state. At Dial. 34, Machiavelli assures that we be aware that the dialogue is
tions,
Tuscany
and
performed
and "I expressly dispensing with the "he 2. The Dialogue is carefully crafted. Its 52 paragraphs and exchanges, for example, are divided into an introductory paragraph and a 13-paragraph section, the dialogue, and a 13-paragraph section
by
said"
replied."
concluding paragraph. There still exists some controversy over the Dialogue's authenticity. Pollidori gives a compelling defense of Machiavelli's authorship in her edition and in her Nuove
and a
Riflessioni (Rome:
Salemo, 1981). For a recent note on the relevant literature, see Charles Davis, Dante Studies, 106(1988), 46 and n. 4. An adequate appraisal of "Dante, Machiavelli, and
Rome,"
special attention
be
given
to the
that occur in
occur
its in
supply the heavy weapons in Machiavelli's and Dante's struggle and density: nothing I know in Machiavelli compares with the dialogue in this respect.
They
22-26. See
Medieval
3. Monorchia, I.ii. 8, Pier Ricci ed. (Verona: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1965); Dial. 1-4, 9-10, Studies in Larry Peterman, "Dante's Monorchia and Aristotle's Political
Thought,"
and
delphia: Univ.
not
Renaissance History, 10(1973), 13-16. Charles Davis, in Dante and Italy (Phila of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 14-15, says that the absence of an Italian court does
foreclose
a common
once
had
Frederick II
and still
has
dispersed
the same
by
say,
by
language,"
by
quoting Pier Mengaldo to the end that the argument of the Vulgari Eloquentia accurately reflects the interconnection of the political activities of Frederick and Manfred, the formation of the Magna
Curia,
and
language."
4. On
interpenetration
of
theology
and politics
in
medieval
thought,
a good place
to begin
is Ernst Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies (Princeton: Princeton 5. Discourses, II. 3 [1.237]. Unless otherwise indicated, page
square
brackets,
vols.
are
to Tutte
Carlo Cordie
eds., 2
6. Dial. 35-36. Sinclair text 7. Dial. 35, Purg. 3.128, Para. 22.115. References to the Divine Comedy and translation, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961). 8. Convivio IV. iii. 6, G. Busnelli
no claimant and
to the John
G. Vandelli
eds.
the same place, Dante says that since the death of Frederick and his
worthy Ricci ed. (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1968). 9. Florentine Histories, 1.11 [11,24]: ".
emperors, the
emperor
time."
present
be
confirmed
by
the
began in his
election
acquired
princes,"
the temporal
trans. Laura
them, and by these means it kept increasing its authority Banfield and Harvey Mansfield, Jr. (Princeton: Princeton
"Machiavelli's Dante
and
Polity, 20 (Winter, 1987), 249-53. See, too, Conv. IV.ix.17. Marco Lombardo (Purg. 16.115-20) uses Frederick II as the dividing point between his country being full of
cortesia"
"valore
and
becoming
shameful. and
of
Kansas Press,
11. Flor. Hist., 1.22-23. [11.37-40]. See Flor. Hist., 11.10, 26 chapters later, where Nicholas shown to ruin Charles in the same manner that Charles had ruined Manfred. Nicholas III was,
account, not
benefit"
in Machiavelli's
to "honor and
pontiffs will places
his
own relatives.
only the first pope of open ambition, he was also the first to attempt Machiavelli says that after him mention of the relatives of
that is left is for
popes
fill
history
and all
to
try
Dante
Frederick among the simonists in Hell. The first portion of the dialogue (35-36, 41-42) is dominated by examples which point to the growth, and impact, of papal secular influence before Charand during Dante's time. To the reference to Manfred's defeat are added a reference to
32
Interpretation
of the
lemagne's defeat
Lombards
and
Thus, the
Italy
truly
is
serious secular
threat to the
Papacy
and
the
first
of
the
modern popes.
Commentary
(Princeton: Princeton
University Press,
1973), 59,
loved
and
Villani: "(Manfred) was generous, courteous, and debonair, so that he was much enjoyed great favor. But his whole life was Epicurean; he cared neither for God nor for
quotes
the saints,
and of monks.
but only for the delights of the flesh. He was an enemy of the Holy Church, of priests, Like his father, he occupied the churches; and he became even richer, for he had
of
the emperor
and of
his brother,
King
kingdom,
he lived, increasing its riches and power on land and 14. Cf. Purg. 3 and Para. 22.74-84. For Dante's
of
sea."
view of
degenerating
affairs after
the deaths
Manfred, see Vulg. Eloq. I. xii. 4-5. For a recent assessment of Dante's critique of the Papacy, see Peter Kaufman, "Foscolo, Dante, and the History of European Ideas, 12, No.2(1990), 211-20. More clearly than Dante, Machiavelli holds that the well-being of the Church 251 and of the secular community are inversely proportional. Peterman, "Machiavelli's
and
Papacy,"
Frederick
Dante,"
53.
15. Dial. 79. Dante does
"marvels"
not
attaches
to any
particular court
velli still
Dante's in the
comes
17. Para. 22.114, Prince XXV [1,80]. Cf. Dial. 22-24, lie" but claims that fortune "gives (Dante) the
"genius"
where
Machiavelli his
acknowledges
as regards
portrait of
Florence:
process
Machiavelli describes
on
Florence
incredible. See
the possibility of a
in Prince XXV,
18. Dial.
me").
Harvey Mansfield,
100.
Jr.
Machiavelli' ,
well-being that his own description be middle way between the choices Machiavelli lays out s New Modes and Orders (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
of such m'intuassi come
tu ti
immii, "were I in
was given
you as you
in
radical
"transfiguration"
(Para.,
143). Folco
life
Cistercian
spiritual
eventually the Bishop of Toulouse, in which office he life by taking a vigorous part in the persecution of the Dante's invented
reflexives
case of transhumanare ,
signify
what
adequately be
conveyed
by language,
For this
an
interpenetration
of minds or
"spiritual
telepathy"
characteristic of
Paradise,
see
Sinclair's
gloss on the
und
passage
such
20. Para. 9. 22-66, 109-26; Joshua 2:1, 3. Sinclair (p. 143) tranformation of human passion into "holy
ardour.'
Rahab's
that
will
creates problems for critics Dante is unclear about why he is in this but he fits nicely into our framework. Having died young and before his political be borne out "the world held me only a little time, and if I had lived longer, much be would not have (Para. 8.49-51) he becomes a good example of the
been"
ofttimes malign
influence
collide.
of
fortune in
nature and
on
fortune
Thus, he
also
becomes
fortune
moved which
"nature"
study in what can happen when for the warning that men must be nature: recollecting Aristotle, he says that men are be discordant with it will fail, from
a good source
"fortune"
he
concludes
in
order
to
foundation nature lays and build on it improve (121-48). See Peterman, "Machiavelli's 254-55. For Dante, we
Dante,"
Charles Martel 's death the overthrow of the White Guelphs and Dante's eventual exile from Florence are on a par with the long-term consequences the triumph of the Church and its party. Between them, in other of Manfred's death words,
should
add, the
short-term consequences of
Manfred
and
major political
problems,
i.e.,
an unrestrained
Church
and an
Dante
unstable ends of
and
Machiavelli
33
Florence. It is
interesting
in this
respect
thirty-nine cantos at the center of which Statius describes his remarkable change of life after
experiencing Christianity (cf. Purg. 3, Para. 8, Purg. 22). 22. Cf. Conv. II. xiii, xvi. 22. 23. The Heaven
with
of
Venus is it is
characterized
by
rhetoric at
which
is
consistent
Folco's
position that
a contact point
Folco is
end"
(Para. 9.107-20) tells Dante that in the Heaven of Venus "the and we "discern the good for which the world above turns
about your
of
As
rhetoric
path
between philosophy and politics, however imperfect, the Heaven the heavens and the earth. 24. There
text,
are
Venus
mediates
between
passages
by
Machiavelli. The
Lombard
and
invented
for example, belong to a sequence it includes Purg. 3, Manfred's canto; Purg. 16, Marco Lombardo's canto; Purg. 29, Dante's account of the chariot; Para. 9, Folco's canto; and Para. 22,
words,
Dante's birth
under
Gemini
his
place
be
8.115-48; Mon.l.ii. 2.
25. Disc. I.xi.end [1,128]. 26. Dial. 38. 27. Dial. 50; Inf. 26.130, 20.13; Polidori, p. 243, n. 81. To argue that describing the two is an oversight ignores the fact that Machiavelli refers correctly to the same place
at
passages as one
in Inferno 26
Dial.26.
explicit quotations
By counting the incorrect attribution as a single quotation, the number of in the Dial, totals twenty-six. Making two quotations one reminds of Machia
to give the Disc, the same
number of chapters as
Livy
has books.
as
used
28. Inf. 26.13-24, Para. 22.112-14. On the Dante, see Inferno, Singleton, vol. 2, 452. 29. Dial. 51.
significance of genius
(ingegno)
by
30. Dial. 50; Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, 111.: The Free Press, 1958), 241. 31. Strauss, Thoughts, 217-18. For a more conventional view of this subject, see Quentin
Skinner, Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 15. 32. La Divina Commedia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 227. The
selors create problems
evil coun
difficulties in reckoning their sins together. See, e.g., Mark Musa's comments, The Divine Comedy, 3 vols. (New York: Penguin, 1981), 1, 313-14. Other things being equal, the extraordinary abilities of the evil counselors are obvious. Sinclair, for
for
critics
because
of
gifts"
mental
and
their "higher
endowmen
and concludes
that
God's is treason
and utilizes
(Inferno,
is from
where
33. Here
comment on
Machiavelli
a greater sequence.
its
those of "good
intellect"
to note
under
the
(Dante's)
verses"
strange
"veil"
(61-63)
and
33
cantos
later
Purgatory 8,
where
Vincent Hopper, 34. Inf. 21.2, 16.128. In the Conv., Dante speaks of writing with discrezione, and allows himself and other writers room for dissimulazione within the discretionary purpose. See Peterman, Dante Studies, 103 (1985), 126-30; Inf. 31.54; Para. 12. 144. "Reading the
Convivio,"
(19-21). See, e.g., Medieval Number Symbolism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), 137.
are
"readers"
to penetrate the
over
Dante's
"truth"
35. Dial. 50. Machiavelli, of course, is shockingly forthright about utilizing lies. See "Letter to Guicciardini," 17 May 1521, in Allan Gilbert trans., The Letters of Machiavelli (New York: Capri
corn
36. Mansfield, Modes and Orders, 299. 37. Dial. 50; Inf. 28.27; Inf. 25.2. 38. Singleton, Inferno, 2, 503. 39. Inf. 24.97-108.
40. Vanni Fucci's
status
in Hell is
remarkable.
Machiavelli
compares
of
34
Interpretation
41. The
replacement of
Dante-Glaucus
and
Folco
by
Mahomet
and
Vanni Fucci
recalls
the
replacement of
the
God-Man Chiron
sect of
by
Thoughts, 78.
42. The heretical
time
the Apostolic
set
Brethren,
which
the
in
Comedy
is
Fucci's
is
associated with
(Inf. 28.55-60). See Grandgent, Commedia, 247, n. 55. Vanni that of the Black Devil of Inf. 21.29, to which Machiavelli refers in
see
the Castruccio
Commedia,"
Davy Carozza,
"The Motif
of
Maturation in the
Lectura Dantis Newberryana, 1(1988), 60-61. 43. At Dial. 26 Machiavelli notes the incredibility of Dante's
citizens
finding
Brutus in the
mouth of
prophesies the
was
deterioration for
a
of
and
successful
time, thereby
disrupting
On
Dante's accomodations, see, e.g., the statements on the documenta phylosophica and the documenta spiritualia and the Emperor and the Pope in Mon. III. xv. 7-18. Inf. 24.142-51, 28.55-57. For Machiavelli, perhaps, Dante's too rosy view is manifested in Folco's 42) of the imminent end of the corrupt government of the Church.
45. Disc. I.xi [1.127-28], Mansfield, Modes 46. See Strauss, Thoughts, 299.
or
and
prediction
(Para.
9.139-
Orders, 73.
47. Dial. 43, Para. 5.64. Machiavelli's point is that Dante utilizes the Florentine ciancie (light frivolous) rather than the Lombard zanze in Dante's text the word used is ciancia. See, too, The Review of Politics (Spring Larry Peterman, "Gravity and Piety: Machiavelli's Modern 1990), 189-214. 48. Dial. 43, Aen. 1.119. The Persian word is gaza, treasure. 49. Sinclair, 141. It is surprising that Singleton fails to mention the delicacy of Dante's han
Turn,"
dling
of magnanimity.
He
notes
its
opposition
(Inferno,
2, 30) but he is silent on the subject in his comments on Farinata. 50. Inf. 10.41; 23.92-93. Singleton (Inferno, 2, 398) reinforces
two cantos
by
noting that
both
mention
Frederick II.
friars'
on
51. Inf. 10.13-15, 23.61-66. Dante likens the cloaks to those which Frederick II had melted canto are underscored traitors. The religious, and particularly Christian, undertones of the
the inclusion in their ditch of Caiaphas and other New Testament Jews responsible
by
for
judging
and
delivering
weight of
up Jesus: they lie "crucified on the ground with three that passes over them, a punishment over which the every
load"
stakes"
and must
pagan
"feel the
Virgil
"marvels"
(109-26). 52. Inf. 23. 115-26; 108. 53. Machiavelli (Dial. 44-45) he
garbles mentions
his
account of
the
friars
54. Dante is
him to
"native"
a self-described
Farinata by name and correctly quotes his passage, but by having Dante hear Catalano rather than the reverse. of Tuscany and of Florence. Machiavelli likens
"citizen"
a parracida and
for turning
upon
course of
Tuscan
19.
versus
215-
55. Dial. 13, Inf. 33.79-80, 10.49-51, 91-93. 56. Dial. 46-49. The quotations from Pulci and Virgil
not arise
are
the only
ones
passage
quotation
from
contemporary poet,
Dante excepted, in the Dialogue. 57. Dial. 46-48. 58. We may also speculate that him that his innovativeness,
attempts
by having
which
Dante
recall
the Comedy's
beginning, Machiavelli
reminds of
is
comparable
viewpoints: Machiavelli earlier signifies the unsatisfactory remarking on the incredibility of the Comedy's accounts of Brutus, the five Florentine thieves, and Cacciaguida (Dial. 26). On the other hand, Dante, who acknowl edges that he is innovative but still warns about innovation's dangers, may remind Machiavelli through the Morgante that being new does not assure reward. Cf. Conv. I.x.1-3, Pol. 1268b25ff.
his
to
promote
traditional
by
Dante
60. Inf. 1.1-12.
certain"
and
Machiavelli
35
61. At Conv. I.x.2-4, Dante announces that he intends to take a "new and then bids his audience not to at the direction his apology not tell them not to wonder. Cf. Prince XV [1.48]. 62. On Dante and Machiavelli and certitude, see Larry Peterman, "Dante
"marvel"
path"
is "not
take
he does
and
the
Setting
for
and
Machiavellianism,"
American Political Science Review, 76, No. 3(1982), 632-35. 63. Other references and quotations in the dialogue (Dial. 39-42) suggest that Dante
agree about
Machiavelli
their worlds
being
dominated
by
the
Church,
and
that there
is
a connection
between that
and
Ugolino's fate.
The Empire
of
Progress: Bacon's
Many
projects
have
wondered whether
complicated
Recent
swer
students of the
Baconian
political writings
yes.
That
an
uto-
leads to
rest
new questions.
upon
How
humane
pianism guides
vellian
foundation
so
this
study.
examine with
or
apparently incompatible? That question care the four explicit treatments of Machia
and
doctrines in Essays
relies on
Counsels, Civil
Moral
and conclude
that
Bacon
attempts
improved
measures.
There is
another
difficulty
against
they doubt
How
can
or extensive plan.
Bacon
influential
formulation? A little
these views
and
will provide a
revisions.1
glancing intro
a new advo and
Bacon's
as a
Renaissance republican,
abstracts
arguments neglect
the primacy of
for the
"utilitarian
princes
Machiavelli),
and republics
between Aristotle's
character)
and
(which is partly attuned to diversity of ethical Machiavelli's republican state (which sets diverse passions of
mixed regime
tant
into managed conflict), and, among many other impor recommendation of a small city (for Aristotle's differences, quality of po litical life) and Machiavelli's of an expanding republican empire (for security
fear,
gain, and
ambition
managing faction within). Pocock's historical synthesizing is much more a self-conscious and complex theory of historical development. Machiavelli and his fellow Florentine intel
abroad and
lectuals
are said
to
advance an
Aristotelian
account of
interpretation, Fall
38
Interpretation
under special
man"
Christian
circumstances which
deny
lar
fulfilment;
the resulting
"civic"
humanism is
Pocock
core of and
this humanism. He
role of arms and
mentions
property"
government," virtue,"
"the
civic epochal.
He is
clearer about
achieve
clearly
moment"
which
This Florentine theorizing constituted a "Machia influenced the tradition; in particular it pro
"Atlantic"
formative
hostile to the
capitalism and
commercialism of
These
more
simplicities.
No
than Fink does Pocock confront the differences between Aristotle's doc
trines and
Machiavelli's,
counsels
and and
velli's obvious
his historicist theorizing gives us less of Machia more evasions and distortions. Pocock alludes
challenges
slightingly to the
political
on
contention
that Machiavelli
refers
the "great
tradition"
of
Machiavelli); he does
While
summa
rizing The Prince's chapters, he neglects the purpose: the critique, in chapter 15, of
and of an orientation seems
"imaginary"
by
directed
by
gentlemen and at
the
comes into existence from necessity but exists reviewing chapter 3 Pocock skips over Machia velli's introductory formulations of his own foundation: "it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire"; and only if men fail are they to be accused
city
Similarly,
while
of
"error
blame."
and
Machiavelli legitimates
acquisitiveness.
It is the
key
step
shared
should
by
utes
be absent, by definition, from the civic neoclassicism that Pocock attrib to Machiavelli. Also, Pocock misreads the character and importance of He continually inserts an into Machiavelli's advocacy of a republic that
republicanism.
"ideal"
Machiavelli's
participation elites
in
striving.
a warrant
republicanism.
elude or explain
destroy,
of
have doubts
array
about
interpretation that
Pocock's
bristling
and explicit
assump
tions and presumptions, not least the enormous assertion, a decayed Hegelian
ism,
lenic
mind"
created
and
its
own concepts a
it inherited,
thus, like
within,
self-inflated
blimp,
came to
Bacon's
Machiavelli's thought
it
was a
turn
are
ing
point.
Machiavelli
do."2
decisively
men
correct.
"We
much
beholden to Machiavel
to
do,
and
they
ought
This
much-quoted phrase
is
no
aside,
its
portent
is
39
It
occurs
in the
midst of
Bacon's
comprehensive
development
of moral
in the Advancement; it
Machiavelli's
15
philosophers'
by
what
is
in be
it
imaginary
orientation,
so
by
success one
managing the forces that really to how one should live that he
"For it is
lives
lets
go of what
what should
ruin rather
than his
presentation."3
what
Strauss
called
Machiavelli's "clarion
call"
founda
tion, finally in fear, for a new organization of human affairs, to provide not least for self-preservation. This is far from Bacon's only allusion to Machia
velli.
According during
to Richard
Kennington, Bacon's
no other so much as one
dented among
published
political
philosophers;
his lifetime
Bacon
refers
to Machiavelli ten
noted
times,
Commentators have
century, N.
and
the
family
Anthony
opportunism
Machiavellian than
says
"greatly
influenced
by
Machiavelli,"
according to Orsini. Abbott thought the Es as are "the whole of Bacon's political
observation: all
writings,"
and added an
impressive
"pre
schemes"
morality."5
Such
writers suggest
discarding
traditional
scruples and
ends,
and
some,
such as
Abbott,
even
truth,
Still,
be
of
so
other writers
have
seen
that
Machiavelli's'
Bacon
on
cannot
simply
to
affirmed.
Even the
explicit
deference to Machiavelli
the status
morality, in the
what men
Advancement, is
do
and not what
wisdom
accompanied
by
qualification: we should
attend
they
ought to
possible
to join the
The quali be perfectly acquainted with the nature of evil fication might seem in the spirit of the Bible, even if the final counsel, that men devote themselves to perfect knowledge of evil ways, gives pause.
except men
Such differences
are more massive
all
cloud
the
question of
Bacon's
Machiavellianism,
and
there
works and
differ visibly from anything Machiavelli ever wrote. The works on method, to take the obvious case, have no Machiavellian parallel. Suppos ing the descriptions of experimental method to be Bacon's chief contribution, his
works
Spedding's exam Spedding dismissed Abbot's contentions rather ple and biography have often been followed. Also, precisely the famous Baco nian features of the idea of progress are absent from Machiavelli's plans. Chap
James
airily.6
ter 15
of
do"
men
and
orders of
40
Interpretation
who
others,"
had "imagined
exist
that have
never
been
seen or
known to
of
in
truth."
advances an
imag
ined land
cal
future health, peace, affluence, and parentlike care, a technologi heaven on earth that had not been seen or known to exist. Even if Machia be thought to hide
of a prescription
velli might
for
beneath
historical examples, there are conspicuous differences between his prescriptions and Bacon's. The surface of Bacon's more practical works
descriptions
lacks the
ruthlessness
for
which
The Prince
and the
Discourses
are
infamous.
On the contrary, the Essays counsel humanity, appear businesslike and respect able, and are filled with quotations from traditional authorities. None of Ba
con's works exhibits
phor of war.
Machiavelli's
exhibit
strategy
and meta
Nor do they
and popular
Machiavelli's
characteristic or
themes: ruthless
princely decisiveness,
erty, patria,
public.
reminiscent of
Cesare Borgia
reminiscent
republicanism,
In short, Bacon defers to Machiavelli in ways that some consider fundamen tal, and yet differs from him in ways that others consider fundamental. This essay
addresses
the
difficulty by investigating
look
at
a selected number of
the Baco
or
nian references
to Machiavelli. I
the
references
in the Essays
Coun
sels, Civil
and
Moral alone,
which allows me
the
luxury
I
attend
of close examination
in
a work
that
is
nevertheless of
broad scope,
and
only to
references
to
Machiavelli
by
name.
The
price of
Machiavelli in
other works.
And
not
Bacon
not
Machiavelli
(if
least in the Essays! In particular, why does by name in the most visibly Machiavellian
Estates"
and essays
one
the two
central essays
we count
the 58
definitive 1625 edition) and the longest one, and its very examples are often drawn from Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius. Bacon prescribes a
rather popular militia
encouraged
wealth, population,
and naval
clergy reduced, and bent on growth in empire. However one may explain Bacon's reti
myself
which
Bacon
reasoning,
selection of
detail,
To
and subtle
differences four
doctrine. The
the authority
of
directly
of
and once
discussions
fundamentals
Troubles"
"Goodness
Goodness
and
of
Education"
(no. 13), "Of Sedition and (no. 39), and "Of Vicissitude
With
Things"
of
with
Machiavelli,
basis
of a
fundamen imperial
tal
agreement.
Machiavelli, Bacon
seems
impressed
with
the
41
be
the head
of a
conquering
political or
sect.
The thinking
man should
man,
not
the comprehensively
con
ensures preserva
tion, is his
that
an aura of
end.
Yet Bacon
corrects
Machiavelli's
calculations about
the sect
will glorify.
Essay
13
advises
the
adoption of a
humane
cause
that retains
rather
Christian
charity.
Essay 15 development,
encourages
and
kings to be parental,
in
general a management of
hopes
than
fears, is
Essay
39
criticizes
the way to undermine an old order and engender a new. Machiavelli's bloody words, suggesting instead revolution
through the
society that affords opportunities, especially in business. The last essay, number 58, links Bacon's vision of scientific progress to a series of growing and businesslike nation-states. Together such new na
customs of a civil
Christianity
that
Spain,
especially,
upheld
combination of civil
nation-state with
visionary
and
broadly
and
than Machiavelli's
rising
founder's ambition,
other-worldly
nate place within a
successful
Christian
vision of an
provider.
It incorporates Machiavellian
realpolitik
in
a subordi
Baconian
movement of enlightenment.
"And
one of the
doctors
of
Italy, Nicholas
given
Machiavel,"
"had the
confidence
plain
up
"
good men
terms, in prey to
13).7
unjust'
("Of Goodness
and
Goodness
of
Nature,"
of
no.
as a a
theological
The
irony barely
original
glosses
in fact it
occurs
Christianity. The
2.8
indictment
democratic
liberty
and
like
the
"bloody"
and
in
pagan
religion,
which celebrated
worldly glory,
as opposed
religion,"
which glorifies
does
a
abject,
Number 13
or pagan
whole,
quietly, as in
numbers
15
ferocity; neither does the Essays as and 29. True, Machiavelli indicates
in
population and private acqui
repeatedly that
sitions,
and
liberty
a means to growth
is
a tyrannical ruler.
He
plans a calcu
lated bold
liberty
But these
suggestions come
only
after
praise of
bold
militancy.
42
Interpretation
Bacon
veils
his
militancy.
He follows his
display
of
Machiavelli's
scan
dalous indictment, typically, by his own respectable-sounding "Which he spake, because indeed there was never law or sect or opinion did
much
explanation:
so
goodness as
the Christian
at
doth."
religion
"sect"
Apart from
identifying
essays
religion"
as,
appears
best,
a mere
16
17), Bacon
missed
to
withdraw
from Machiavelli's
if the
reader
has
his
substitution of goodness
Christianity
tue charity
for charity and his identification of than Christ. The essay begins with this sly
goodness
identification,
admits of no
goodness
to say that
"answers
to"
the theological
vir
for those
excess,
who
don't
ask questions
that charity
of
That
big
qualification of
the goodness
scandal
becomes thematic
Bacon
avoid
the
and
the
danger
ger of
both."
the
Christianity's
essays.
He
proceeds
in
an
but
few
Essay
13
exemplifies
his hard-nosed
other. of
Machiavellianism
and shows
is
revised
to
support
the
Accord
Bacon's
ing
to Howard White's
seminal and
moderation of science.
the imperial
politics and
Yet White's
accounts neglect
toward a this
social
fact White
.
development,
if he does
not make
it thematic He
to
of
eventually defines Baconian charity uncharitably, as "a political the "unwitting charity recruit followers and as "depersonalized
charity,"
weapo
the
spirit of
capitalism."9
Essay
Christian
of philanthropia abstracts
from the
distinctively
divine
soul.
and
from its
move
care
needs and
then very
delicately
Then Bacon
gifts,
and
for
"faces"
"fancies,"
men's
or one should
for
precious what
for
distribution
of
things.
or
That is,
disregard
men appear
to wish or say
they wish,
or mere
inequalities.
needs satisfied
by
common and
food,
guage
"barley-corn."
or perhaps
seed, such as
Bacon then
slips
in
self-regard as a
limit
upon regard
others.
is biblical, but the words are profound blasphemy. Having revamped the second commandment, Bacon replaces the first and fundamental commandment
with a
foundation in the
self.
"For
divinity
provision
maketh
pattern:
portraiture."
Love
of neighbor
for
God's
sake
has been
of
replaced
by
for human
necessities
for
one's
God, by love
of self. of
developed:
43
love, is
the point.
Concentrate
on
providing for
and
oneself
by
"vocation": "for
otherwise
in
feeding
fountain."
It is
Machiavellian, as ineffectual,
Orwin has
17
restatements,
chapter of
this criticism of
and
both Aristotelian
toward
humanity.10
liberality
this
movement
an unChristian
called
and
Machiavellian
focus
way from
The Prince.
must
be
governed more
relies
by
hope. Bacon
on
Essay 13 lacks that chapter's spectacular theme: men by cruelty than by humanity, because more by fear than more indirectly than Machiavelli on fear and more di
a show of so
rectly
hope,
13
while
Essay
contains a
humanity.
hidden
by its
show of
humanity
is that
or
"habit"
fewer
weigh
it. The
message
but bad
by
nature.
Whatever be the
of some natural
malignity."
deeper
sort of
and to engage
sort of malignancy is inclined to envy, and the no. 9) is inclined to slander things established ("Of envy mischief. men in other calamities in mere "Such men's are, as it
A deeper
were, in
season."
These "dispositions
are
nature"
so
deeply
does the
error of goodness go
"and
they
are
good shall
ordained to
is
what
be tossed; but not for building houses, that Richard Hooker called Machiavelli, a "wise
and
malignant."
He
advances
both
malignity,
and
both have
a place
in his
politics.
While
conspicuous
place, malignity is the foundation that shapes the Malignity accounts for the leader's humanity.
that
The profoundly
given
evil
teaching
barely
breaks the
surface of
essay 13 ap hath
of
hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to Yet "Of Marriage and Single virtue or
mischief."
(no.
7) discusses
various advantages of
marriage; "wife
children,"
and
humanity."
The
Similarly, "A
from
proceeded ualistic
childless not
austere
Yet Bacon
democratic
and
individ
family,
and
hierarchical but
engage
rather equal
"vocations"
indulgent.
Children generally
should
be bred to
"careers"
in
"courses"
and
"dispositions"
today, the
and roles cial
word might
be
rather than
of character or
useful vocations
ways of the
Lord.
Upbringing
and
is
reshaped
to foster mutually
("Of Custom
Education,"
policy, especially the policy of The occasional, more open statement Advancement's discussion of "active
comes
good,"
to passive good, be
on
the
grandest
this
divine
power
("the true
the-
44
Interpretation
which
omachy"),
is
a gigantic passion a
to form the
world
for
oneself
although
Bacon
finally
of
issues
foggy
qualification
determined")
on
behalf
"society."
it hath
an
active good any identity with the good of society, though in some incidence into it. For although it do many times bring forth acts of
beneficence,
yet
it is
to a
man's own
power, glory,
amplification,
continuance
For that
the troublers of the world, such as was Lucius Sylla and infinite model,
who would
in
smaller
have
all men
happy
to unhappy as
they
were
their friends or
own
humors (which it
recedeth
good, though
society,
greater.
(Advancement, II
The
1,
ed.
Wright)
conclusion of
good of society.
its
new sense of
essay 13 shows how one who would be politic can use the It may hint at Bacon's own use. The topic: what goodness, in Bacon about "a real needs, regard for
others'
"shows"
man."
(or exhibitions)
of goodness:
courtesy to
strangers and
fenses,
gratitude a
for
small
benefits,
and,
perfection,"
"wish to be
an anathema
brethren."
The
complex prose
test of goodness,
a condemnation of
Christ. This
whole.
confirms
Bacon's
of
procedure
in essay 13, indeed in the Essays as a quotes Christ's killer, Pilate, and jests
truth.
at
Christ's
to be witness to the
A very elliptical conclusion of essay 13 may intimate a new, humanitarian, faith: the place of goodness in building houses after tougher men have estab
lished he is
foundation. "If
a man
be
to strangers, it
shows
a citizen of
the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other
lands, but
afflictions
a continent that
of others.
joins to them. If he be
The language
compassionate
toward the
to
could remind of
the
hospitality
Bensalem, in Bacon's New Atlantis, by Stranger's House and Solomon's House. Christian Europeans, cast ashore, are converted from their old faith by the humanity of new ways: the hospitality, the medicines and hospitals, the affluence and parentlike provision of a civil land
strangers afforded on
of
the island
infused
the
with
humane
It is probably
not coincidence
The founder
of
Bensalem's
scientific
establishment,
with strangers
to progress: "join
are
humanity
and
policy
The
governor-father of
a parade
intimations that policy governs. the benevolent scientific establishment is first shown in narrator sees to be a While the great figure
"shew."
There
45
the appearance:
stronger
he has
"an
aspect as
if he
men."
pitied
The hint
is
in
a similar
phrase
from
an earlier
never published
Baconian work, the Refutation of Philosophies. Bacon this pungent little piece, perhaps, as Paolo Rossi suggests,
to master the envelopment of
of
because he had
yet
daring
plans
in the
mantle of
insinuation. A face
philosopher
"sages"
shows a
which
pity."12
Like Machiavelli, Bacon was impressed by Christ's worldly success. Like Machiavelli, he traces the success to Christ's promise of satisfaction, an indi
rect and
future
satisfaction
of
fear
of
Machiavelli, Bacon can supply an analogous vision of future fear but hope, he writes elsewhere, "is the most useful of all
The
management of wishes
satisfaction.
the
art of
and
the politics of
progress.
hopes,"
"Certainly,
men
Bacon
carrying
a poison.
says in the essay on "Seditions and from hopes to hopes, is one of the best
Troubles"
antidotes
the
as
discontentments."
poison of
Like many
an
antidote, it
its turn
Also,
make
as
Machiavel
noteth
well,
when
princes, that
a
ought
to be common parents,
by
uneven weight on
Henry
the Third of
and
extirpation of the
Protestants;
league
was
15)
Machiavelli for
a a statement misses
Bacon
praises
and
cannot
or
Discourses
mendation of
for
Machiavelli's 15
suggests
conspicuous recom
Essay
great
authority
from
teaching
or,
at
least,
of
hope. Thus
or
"shepherds
of
the
essay's
first words,
That
mover, also
one's own shows
for
a prince.
is,
for
glory the
benevolent
ence: sect
The essay
the
of class and
into
The
analogous
mutually Machiavellian
or
useful
labor
and advancement.
passages suggest
that
one should
deal
with a
disunited city by killing putting by 27); do not remain neutral in wars among join the
war
III,
but take
a side and
each of
46
Interpretation
Machiavelli
of
suspects
leading
on,
more established
(and less
Machiavellian)
Bacon's
brink,
the
other
hand,
are closer to
point.
prince
dealing
with a
disunited
free city may hold it as a benefactor by being an arbitrator between the parties, especially between plebs and nobles. Thus he will not drive them to union and
may favor the
not weaker so as
prudent adoption of
to
weaken
both,
and
do
to
religious sects.
by
contrast,
sets
forth
a sect.
It is from
start
to
finish
eventually
shown to
and
be
li
products of
centious
The
sign of
discourses (fraudesque in the Latin saying Bacon supplies), or females Bacon calls them. A Virgilian origin of fame, the rebellion of
the gods, is identified
or
by
but
Bacon
as
tion is inevitable
natural; it is
self-assertion of one's a
dominates,
being
form
of
domination
by
fame.
Tempests in states, Bacon says, are greatest "when things grow to equality"; the greatest is when the most honorable, sacred, or authoritatative acts of a "are taken in ill sense, and essays attempted. Bacon reduces the
state
traduced."
That
summarizes what
the
earlier
established
hierarchy
toward an equality;
he
illusion the
that do
old order's
devotions to
Nobility,"
divinity
no.
and
note of certain
respects."
not need a
nobility;
"utility
is their
14) bond,
pre
took
and not
Essay
much
diagnosis,
alien
of sedition
by
slander,
with a
first
scription: relax.
When confronting
and
teachings,
to avoid "too
can
severity"
too
"disputing."
much
Is this
If Bacon
passivity, despite
attacks upon
the supports of
royalty
lost"
and
religion, he accomplishes
In the
sequel, he
and
notes
both that
open
discords
He had
already insinuated a fundamental heresy or sedition; the topic is tempests of state, rather than blasphemies against God or treason against king and estates.
But how
can
kings
two
and estates
be
made so
of speech
dumb
to
as
to
be
so passive?
Bacon de
will suggest
ways:
blandness
Bacon
and
velopment to
insinuate it.
context corrects
Just in this
guided
rulers to expand
war.
by
war,
those ambitious
on conspiracies
by
hidden
Machiavelli's discourse
(III, 6),
and
the
longest in
the Dis
from ful
defending
princes to
against princes.
It turns quickly encouraging conspiracies, often violent conspiracies Machiavelli returned only briefly to urge upon princes a doubt
postpone action until
Troubles."
passivity:
let them
they
obtain
full knowledge.
Al
and his de euphemistically of "seditions and meanor throughout the essay is of a counsellor preventing troubles, not of a rebel stirring them up. His counsel is of unity, not violence; a prince should be common parent and avoid
being
a religious partisan.
less,
and
would separate
kings from
support of
suit.
church.
The
rest of
as
treasure
the
justice,
counsel,
government,"
forth
a general
diag
into
"general
preservatives"
that, in effect,
the old
pillars
for
of
Essay 15 discusses the materials, the causes and motives, and the remedies sedition. The crucial is neediness, less of the articulate few than of
"matter"
the many,
enter upon or
"discontentment,"
"fears."
and
the justice
state,"
or
Bacon does
not a
even and
their strength:
"prince,
fosters
quickly
inevitable forces.
While Machiavelli
a vague
in fear
of
insecurity
victories
and
acknowledges a
long
list
motives"
of
sedition,
which
and before, but includes "general of "advancement as central. He acknowledges slyly that a unworthy "just must answer to the "particular yet he sets forth "general now omits mentioned
persons" cure"
the justice
oppression"
disease,"
preservatives":
particular states.
This
prescription
may not solve particular problems of departs in principle from the Aristotelian
of
diagnosis
the
Politics,
had
which
had
examined
especially
remedies now
between democrats in
commended
different be the
for different
Instead, Bacon
advances a
familiar
revolution
General
preservatives
turn out to
general promise
institutions
of a progressive everywhere
to encompass
economy and movement, institutions that both the many and the few.
the first four encourage economic growth
prescribes
Of
four
nine
"general
preservatives,"
and regard
"moderate
liberty,"
and
the last
a politic
of
hope, especially in
"the
preservatives treat
material cause of
and consist
estate."
Bacon
waxes enthusiastic
in
praise of
trade,
population
growth,
idleness
faces: he
attacks
overgrown
"scholars."
economy sur "an "the multiplying of nobility and other degrees of an and excess of clergy, for they bring nothing to the
and waste.
political agenda of
stock,"
The
his
political
quality,"
Bacon
great
leisurely
or pious activities:
opus."
Work is gains, for "materiam superabit industry superior to the material and, the Baconian conclusion, "enricheth a state It is a worthy slogan for the political economists to come, as well as for natural
scientists
more."
bent
on
conquering
nature.
Essay
15
uses an example of a
democratic
48
Interpretation
recently freed from Christian Spain: the Low Countrymen have "the in the They are the same democracies alluded
world."
republic
best
to in essay 14.
The third
the
an
preservative
draws
a political conclusion.
"Above
things"
all
keep
is worthy
of
"treasure
monies"
and
of a state
from "few
hands."
The
reason
be
to
"money is like muck, not good except it Machiavelli himself had so praised republics: free peoples and lib
in
wealth and population.
According
Bacon, however,
thus
a means
itself be
and
democratization
of war.
can evolve as
if
by
chance,
Bacon rarely mentions democracies or republics and discusses the pos sibility warring for liberty only with the greatest reticence (no. 29). This, despite his clear awareness that the breakup of the old empire, Spanish or
of
Christian, will occasion great wars (no. 58). Later, thematically economic essays develop Bacon's
hopes dle
can of various new parties who can advance without
plan.
They
nourish
the
themselves,
and
becoming
"Of
(no.
or
independent
(no.
of
the
the
mid
Expense"
class.
28)
encourages self-made
vocations.
Estates"
29)
encourages
small
farmers
and
merchants,
as
well
as
"strangers"
immigrants
delicate
manufactures.
"Of
Plantations"
(no. 33) prescribes colonies of the very plain and the very indus devout trious, barely in name, lacking gentlemen, and given over to produc tion. Bacon encourages the rich, especially nobles, to invest their money in
such
foreign
of
ventures.
"Of
Usury"
(no.
41)
become
financiers
arts and
trade
and
manufactures,
not
least
young
and new
discoveries
Riches"
economy and new men. That is a theme in "Of for leisure, redistribution, or pleasure; they are
riches. The
capital
beginning
being
of
wealth-getting; the
remainder shows
"The fortune in
the first in
an
how really to pile it up. Among the means: invention or in a privilege doth cause
in
riches;
as
it
was with
man well
fit."
a man can
logician,
judgment
matters, especially if the times be Even the judgment of kings may be thus won to patronize the new logic of science as well as the new science of economics. "Of Empire" (no. 19) notes
great
as
invention, he may do
that that
can
kings, discontented
will
in their security, are moved to patronize distinguish them and bring them fame. Perhaps Bacon's new science
even
"toys"
be
Empire,"
19,
and
the Letter
"toy"
49
the
economic
and
technical
powers
that
undermine
kingly
power.
nine
deal
with
"removing
discontentments"
those,
strife safe
one might
say,
other
than
poverty.
The fourth quietly advances on politi policy: the few are chiefly to blame for
This shows,
we are
commonaltie."
told, "how
people.
good will of
the common
preservatives quickly and elliptically, perhaps because their revolutionary import is hard to hide. "Moderate is the central prescription, which qualifies his preliminary elevation of democracy. It
liberty"
Bacon
sets
also replaces
moderation, virtue,
and religion
in general, the
general preserva
tives advanced
rates more
by
how hopes it
be
managed
it is
a certain
signe,
of a wise when
government,
cannot
and
proceeding,
it
can
hold
men's
hearts
by
handle things, in such manner, as no evil shall appear so peremptory, but that it hath some outlet of Essay 15 stops there, reserving the revamping of visionary hope for "Of
hopes,
by
satisfaction,
and when
it
can
hope."
Prophecies"
(no.
35)
and
New
Atlantis,
and of such as
advancement,
and
True Greatness
of
Kingdoms
Estates"
(no. 29),
and
History
of the Reign of
King Henry
the Seventh.
preservatives
deal
with
They
of the
hopes
of
followers for
their own
prose
dictatorships
places, to
shows
a prince's need
for
a valiant
defender. The
"Princes"
is
that
unity,
need a
crusade as a war.
"military
spondence with
person,"
"the
state"
and
keep
corre
"other
great men
in the
state."
essays.
Essays 16
and
17 take
Christianity
factions,
such
king,
ancient
unity beneath the Church of England, such as the theologian Richard Hooker had sought in the 1590s. Bacon also keeps up correspondence with leaders of a
like
state of
mind,
including
great
scientists,
enlightened
kings,
and compre
hensive
Bacon
chiefs such as
Friends"
and
(no. 48),
saying few friends. Machiavelli's sharp speeches, however, drive from him the followers whom Bacon's project can satisfy, advance, and keep
presents a crucial
Machiavelli
as an example of
the advice to
Immediately after taking Machiavelli's advice, Bacon concludes friendship is only between "superior and inferior, whose fortunes may
that
compre-
50
Interpretation
other."
hend,
Bacon
means to comprehend
Machiavelli's
civil cru
sade within
his
progressive movement.
IV. CUSTOM AS THE BUSINESS OF REGULATED OPPORTUNITY And therefore, as Machiavel is no trusting to the force of
corroborate
well noteth
(though in
an evil-favored of
instance),
it be
there
bravery
the
words,
except
by
custom.
conspiracy,
resolute
achieving of a desperate the fierceness of any man's nature, or his hath had his hands
nor a
formerly
nor a
in
not of a yet
Friar
Clement,
holdeth
Ravillac,
Jauregay,
no.
nor a
Baltazar
Gerard;
his
rule
still that
engagement of
words,
are not so
forcible
as custom.
("Of Custom
and
39)
reference
This third
is the first to
criticize
Machiavelli
the
explicitly. of
Bacon
impiety
as a
and
immorality.
impiety Bloody
and
immorality, but
inefficacy
bloody
however,
In welcoming assassins as a matter of course, rather than desperate measure, Machiavelli had underestimated the power of other worldly assassins. The four that Bacon names were all Catholic assassins of
"desperate."
kings. Friar Clement, for example, murdered the politic Henry III of France, the very king Bacon mentioned in essay 15 when he used a similar
politic
"noteth
relieves
well"
to criticize a policy of
siding
with a sect.
Nevertheless, Bacon
Machiavelli
force
cism
of custom.
quence of
the responsibility Machiavelli erred about the force of a conse Still, devotion, his error about the force of hope. Bacon develops this implicit criti
of
and approves
his
general rule as to
correcting Machiavelli's rule to extol the force of In his quick and quiet way Bacon has involved us in one passages from a writer known for nastiness. Machiavelli calls
by
"custom."
of
the
nastiest
not exactly for different customs, but for men tried, experienced (isperimentati), in bloody deeds. Murdering a revered man, especially a religious man, is difficult; it is hard to be altogether bad. The context is again the discussion of conspiracies in
even accustomed
of some great
killers
are often
bewildered
by
the
"reverence"
and
enced"
requires men
"experi
in
such murders.
Machiavelli has
of
men
by
speech.
Confusion
brain
can
"Traitor!",
which warns
important;
experience
in murdering the revered is hard to come by and the first such murder hard to account for. Besides, Machiavelli immediately turns to conspirators who are
moved
by
words
include
two
disciples
tyrants
of
Plato,
the
with
aid
Pelopidas, who liberated his "native from ten one Chiron, adviser to tyrants. People may become
land"
51
by
ruthless
words
about
bloody deeds,
tyrants,
will
but the
be shrewdly
of
chosen so as not
to republican conspirators
help
an
and
followers to come,
more
not
least in overcoming
other
more and
power of custom.
to describe
"nature in
as and
but
body
with passion or
immediately
before
"Of Custom
scribed all
Education"); it may be the same as the universal nature de in the Plan for the Great Instauration and in the New Organon. If so,
that appears
distinctly
human is
.wholly
son.
If
our
deeds
invented, including speech or rea impulse, they are but the effect of some
Advancement of Learning is explicit as to Bacon's compared to Aristotle's (II xxii 8). The ambiguous
Education"
beginning
are much
to "Of Custom
and
may
their
imply
as much:
according to their
and
inclination;
discourse
to their
learning
problem
they have
Machia
been
accustomed."
The
velli
customs,
which
failed to
solve.
criticism of
is
now so well
men of
firm
butchers."
as
Five
examples of custom's
even
"reign
tyranny"
or
follow,
says,
all examples of
disdain
by
and
zealotry to
discussion
He
even
since custom
(not
God)
to
"is the
life, let
men
by
obtain good
While
useful,
essay 39 indicates chiefly how to make them mutual interaction what we and he call
usage.
young,
and
rely
on
"society."
Bacon may
originate
the
Effective
custom
is "custom
collegiate,"
and
because "there
glory
of
plined."
example
emulation
quickeneth,
raiseth."
After thus
hinting
at
the secrets
of
on the role of
"societies depend
disci
Governments
and commonwealths
mind are
What
societies
Bacon has in
the
churches:
desired."
left
obscure
in this essay,
now
except
for
an
implicit One
pursuits
dig
at
"the
most effectual
means, are
applied, to the
ends, least to be
Bacon
a
wishes
for
gain:
businesses. Useful
commends recurs
mer
discipline
people.
In
places word
Essays
chants, manufacturers,
santly.
and
financiers,
the
"business"
inces
mer
This
suspicion
is heightened
chant
is the
Nevertheless,
the
essays on custom
52
Interpretation
(no.
about companies or
enterprises.
What
Superstition,"
is based
on
wary
("Of
Nobility,"
no.
17),
is
rather
democratic
and
fosters
than a that he
a self-reliant opportunism?
world of calls
Bacon,
can
business. Businesses
discipline
us
in
a world of
business
If this is true, then much of Bacon's reformulation of religion, ethics, economics, and politics is designed to promote what we often take for granted as society or civil society. Perhaps later intellectuals slight the
artifice
"society."
"Of
custom:
(no.
40)
exhibits
the chief
opinion
the
mold of a man's
fortune is in his
as
own
hands. Self-reliance
"goodness"
be
customary.
he transformed
Here he
elaborates
self-reliance and
of goodness.
number of
"virtues,
do
or rather
faculties
customs,"
and or
make men
fortunate,
and
two
are crucial:
not
master, do
re
Machiavelli, Bacon
ability to
and
succeed.
encourages customs
that do not
scandalize,
to lose.
are and
however,
have "a
do
not
lead toward
as
wars
likely
easiness,"
They
slide and
"Of
puts
they
come
home to
men's
bosoms.
next
The
ism
and
businesslike
"Of
Usury"
One
connection
is the
art
or
nomics.
(no.
41)
shows
how the
author of an
himself
seven
by
is
showing
others
how to
advance
themselves. It begins
against
arguments,
in tenor,
rebuttal
an argument
from the
"necessities"
of
at
lending. Bacon
then
and
strictly from the viewpoint of economic progress, disadvantages advantages of lending at interest. Among the disadvantages are the damp
"invents,"
ing
of
"industries, improvements
of
and new
inventions"; among
and of
the advantages,
and profitable
the encouragement
improvements."
"young
our a
merchants"
"industrious
Before
eyes,
from
transforming
distaste for
necessity into
Age"
priority, Bacon
moneylenders and
invents
a comprehensive custom
for
civil society. em
"Of Youth
ployments"
and
(no. 42),
which
follows,
shows the
"compound
available
in the
new society.
the
inventive side, the older as young may be judicious before their time his examples are generals emperors but he confines himself to supposing that "heat and vivacity in
some
The young commonly will shine on executives or managers. Bacon indicates that
and
age
is
an excellent composition
for
business."
and
Machiavelli
the
praise
young
over
old, Bacon is
business
than of
daring
as
military
Accordingly, he favors
projects"
as combative
but
inventive
and open
to "new
or
"new
things."
53
as
may
show
part"
moral
the
older
for "the
His
example:
visions"
rather
than merely
new project of
progress,
as portrayed
in
the adven
world and
The Europeans in the story left from the far were prepared to sail, over uncharted seas, for a
edge of the
known
observation
that Machiavel
of
hath,
that the
jealousy
of sects
doth
much
extinguish the
memory
lay
to extinguish all
things; traducing Gregory the Great that he did what in heathen antiquities; I do not find that those zeals do
who
Things."
last long; as it appeared in the succession of Sabinian, any did revive the former antiquities. ("Of Vicissitude of no. 58)
great effects, nor
The fourth
and
last
reference
ing
and
essay.
This
second criticism
impiety
There is
name,
while
meets
difference. Pope
appears
defender
Gregory
the
Great
Machiavellian
event,
slanders.
The defense
is, in any
its truth,
name),
misleading. as a
and
defends it
barely closely viewed, He defends Christianity's efficacy for empire, sect, again tacitly denying its claim to be the
exists when
a pope
faith. He defends
(while
not
defending
the ecclesiasti
having
fundamentally
defends Christianity's
weakness
dealing
fying
things
one
Sabinian (also
former
of sect.
a pope whom
its predecessors, and by digni Bacon deprives of the name) for saving
with and
of a
Actually,
ing
the
ringing
bells
at canonical
hours
for
celebration of
the eucharist;
"revival"
alleged
of antiquities was
but the
of
Machiavelli, Bacon is
patronage of Greek and Roman philosophy and art. In ef Bacon adopts Machiavelli's treatment of Christianity in Discourses II, 5, fect, except for adding a fraudulent retraction that itself mirrors Machiavelli's hints
popes'
about the
impotence
Bacon
of
the
unarmed conqueror.
Besides,
after a
two-paragraph
intermission,
has just
The
asserts what
is
close
questioned:
is the
religions.
For these
orbs rule
in
The
paragraphs
between dubious
correction and
imitative
paraphrase are
Ba
Machiavelli. As Machiavelli
an old
overestimated
Chris
sect, he
underestimated
its capacity
54
Interpretation
new science able
to
find the
causes
in
nature
for
effects useful
to
man.
This invention
earth.
can
be
pre
sented as
leading by
The
regular progress
to a new heaven on
natural science
Like Machia
to
science,
however,
Bacon's
is
the
world.
sequel reveals
is the
how
political science of
causing "new
sects."
The first
of
these
intervening
paragraphs
is
"I's."
studded with
It
shows
to learn causes of useful effects, rather than alleged causes of eternal nature,
such as shows
Plato's
supposition of natural
cycles,
or
Aristotle's
prime mover.
Bacon
himself observing useful causes and effects and then generalizing about them. In such generalizations will be found the true prime for man intimated in
essay 15: he
ple,
correction:
can move nature
can predict
floods, for
exam
and control
advantage of
Bacon's But
it
can
influence
Machiavelli
could not.
human sects,
not natural
disasters,
Empire"
for getting glory by manipulating hope, a tool that (no. 19) had suggested that kings, however
to provide against an
were of arts or
mind:
"toys"
established,
"toy"
seek
The illustrations
Essay
58
suggests a
tion. In
another
"fortune-teller"; he discredits
tune, however, learned.
The two
both the
the
paragraphs are
by
the old
learning,
as are
Organon,
project of
attracts the
statesman,
in
powerful
advancing in knowledge is to
and studious.
Bacon
provides a niche
for those
fall for
mind
principle"
appeared
"is
by
profiting in
Glory
science
not
things, knowledge
than
by
as
scientist.
of the rules and rites of Solomon's House, the Bensalem, begins with "two very long and fair best inventions, the other for "statua's of all principal ment
description
in
scientific establish
one
galleries,"
inventors."
Every
reward
inven
and a
tion
earns
liberal
of
statue,
which
may be
of a
degree
gold."
By
serving
mankind
the scientist
the
of
largess, especially
knowledge. The
leading
and so
scientists
diseases,
plagues,"
55
art of prediction
can
that is the
scientists'
power,
care
and
by
Bacon
of
to
put
his
chief
language
velli
the learned. Machiavelli did not, except for chapter titles. Machia
change of
not.
blamed
language for
oblivion of memories
version of
Essay
58 does
a
the Essays is
quotations,
bar to the
but
a charm
helps Machiavelli
ates
contribute
to the
oblivion of
the Greek
language, he insinu
learned. In
an
power of
Latin
as of
into the
circles of the
ironic dedication, he
of
assures the
Duke
volume"
the
last"
Essays, being in "the universal may last as long "as books than an English kingdom and its dukes. longer, presumably,
compare essay 58 as a whole to the corresponding Machia discussion in Discourses, 11,5. 16 Both are among their most writings, probably because in both shocking statements cover more
authors'
language,"
It is difficult to
vellian cryptic
shocking intimations. The pioneering study of Bacon's mix of state and by Howard White; he sets forth a Baconian "imperialism of the human
that
and
wins
sect
is
mind"
by
"subversion."
White
goes on
the absence
of political
coercion,
aggressive
commerce,
and or
hospitality, imperialism,
state."17
community"
"world
Yet White
prominent
acknowledges
merchants,
at new and
terrible weapons,
and at
industrial
and scien
is
needed
White's thesis, Richard Kennington has argued that an imperial to overcome the world of independent nation states; "world
utopia
is imposed
by
imperial
power."
Yet Bacon
reduces
humanitarianism to has
shown a
and empire
in essay 13,
and no one
Baco
writing that
Essay 58,
upon which
White
and
Kennington do
not
comment,
suggests what
and
I believe to be Bacon's
states, advancing
declining
useful
progressive civilization
devoted to
Amidst discourse
religions, that
is, Machiavelli's
men's minds.
Bacon's essay each invents a new sect or civilization to rule Machiavelli is more nearly direct in title and text. The title: "That
and
changes
of sects
languages,
together
things"
with
the
accident
of
floods
and
plagues,
destroy
the
memories of
start of
his
argument
he
confronts
appear only in from Seneca, Plato, and, a nasty cut, an abstruse astrologer who reads rather like Aristotle. He finally confutes Plato, however, twice and ex pressly. Contrary to Plato, Bacon, like Machiavelli, maintains that immortality world. of
philosophers'"
Greek philosophy to
quotations
must
be
made or conquered.
matter
is in
56
Interpretation
perpetual
flux,
stay."
and never at a
Bacon takes up
after
change of
sects,
by
which
his
name
immortal, only
that Machiavelli
puts second.
cause of
Like Machiavelli, Bacon touches preliminarily upon floods as the oblivion, whose effect is to extinguish the memory of things. He
from this
esting, his
account
Indies"
biblically
significant attribution a
some sur
the past to
get
himself
More inter
blaming
of
blaming
fires. Instances
follow, in
the inhabitants to be
Andes"),
asserts
people,"
and alludes
to the At
coherent message
may be discerned? Bacon seems to be rebutting old myths that have a supernatural tint, myths that his rivals for empire over the mind, Plato and the Bible, had set forth. He intimates a new myth that promotes belief in his new project. Specifically, he
turns to observations, to what might
be
examined
in
a particular place
and
purpose
is to imagine
cial
tells a
broadly
similar
tale
of
flood
and
ica,"
fabulous"
equated with "Amer surviving mountaineers, similar down to "West which is inhabited by a "young He explicitly calls "poetical and the divine or religious features of Plato's Atlantis. The drama of the
people."18
Indies,"
biblical drama:
of progress.
by
Bacon's
art
Christian Europeans
accomplished
convert to
faith in
land
The
conversion who
is
for
most of
the
Europeans
by
a priest
(by "vocation")
be known
looks
after strangers
(by
of
"office").
"our
state
The Europeans
business"
ask about
island know
and
unknown of
but
not
by
connotations of an
or
knower,
even
implications
not of a
"magicians"
of
"spirits
the
air,"
"angelical"
He tells
divinely
but
one
of an ancient
time
As their norm,
may infer, Europeans should look to the power politics set forth in "Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and (no. 29). Yet all these empires and
Estates"
Bensalem's. Bacon can present restoring the old ways. Peru attacked Greece and was never heard from again. Mexico attacked Bensalem but was captured by Altabin, ingen
all
disappeared,
except
himself
iously
rest of
and without
force,
and
home
and
industrial
and
interpretation of the relevant parts. Bacon hints, I be his to spread his new ways to the new world. The land of the lieve, strategy title, the new Atlantis vanquished by Bensalem's new ways, is America. Ba
shall venture some at con's
puzzling
those
of Mex-
57
variety
of states
may
nevertheless
exist
in the
Unlike the
Greek
political
ways, Bacon's
will
be humane to
conquered
lands. Altabin's extraordinary mixture of ingenuity and humanity is not easy to interpret as a feat of real generalship. Might it symbolize Bacon's mode of
conquering his
and a great practical-spiritual
"a
wise man
warrior,"
he
will
spiritual
handle the Spaniards, whose forces in Europe and empire, "so as to cut off their land-forces from their
power on
theirs, both
and
by
sea and
both their navy and their camp with a greater Could Bacon refer to British navies
land."
than
seas
the
expanding British plantations in the New World? Essay 29 urges a naval power; essay 33, industrious plantations. The Christian empire may eventually
render
stroke."
Perhaps the
will
undermine
spirituality
within
the
father
should no more
bear
him,"
arms against
"only dismissing
58
with
they
new
strategy humane
combines vision
summon soon
forth
with wars
the
New Atlantis
propounds.
Essay
and
intimates
involv
ing
and
the
Spaniards, but
even
life
reader
many other tough secrets of state farther from the visionary surface of New Atlantis. may be excused for wondering whether these scattered allusions to
to a Baconian plan for
and
world empire.
Atlantis
exist
amount
Yet
similar allusions
elsewhere,
they
bizarre "Of
Prophecies"
(no.
35)
contains
the only
other reference
in the Essays
a philosopher
"Atlanticus."
It intimates that
of may act the poet ("Seneca the Tragedian") to provide "natural for which human nature hungers. The disease and floods, the phrase reminds of the scientists in Bacon's poetic Bensalem; during their cir
"divinations"
predictions
cuits
divinations"
essay
to Seneca's alleged
diseases, floods, etc. The end of the prophecy, in his Medea, of new worlds. Bacon
of of
the
discovery
of
of such a prophecy:
lay
might
Atlanticus"
distorting
Bacon
emphasis). makes
be demonstrated, and "the tradition in Plato's Ti (Bacon misnames the Critias, perhaps to awaken us to These books encouraged Seneca to invent a
appear
"prediction."
What Bacon
makes
Seneca
to
in
America; its
poetic
how to
master
discredits false prophecy of a traditional sort, it also the art. It indicates that apprehension, the desire to know
dangers to come, is the cash value of natural divination. The essay ends by predicting political dangers. By the end of a catalogue of some fourteen fool
ishnesses,
prophecies
("in the
58
Interpretation
"Judea,"
East,"
of are no
etc.),
better than
modern
prophecy.
The
account moves
Rome to
kings
and empires.
from prophecy in Greece and The Spanish Armada is the only subject of
greatest
of any fleet ever. Catholic Spain remains, the great empire and the great vehicle of Christ's em pire. Against these Bacon contrives a plot in which he can also embroil and was
"the
in
strength"
and perhaps
the French
kingdoms (which
are
threatened
by
Guiding
Atlantis,
in the
as well as
its
poetic
humanity, is
policy.
allusion of comparable
King Henry
other
the
occurs
History
out as a
"memorable
and praises
following
Plato's
antiquities"
ecies"
seems
"Seneca's prophecies, or (Works, 11:293-94; 6:196-97). The likeness to "Of Proph too close for coincidence. A bit of dark prose presents Cabot's
than prior
such as
"conjectures"
effort as
inspired by Columbus's, which is itself curiously reinterpreted. Co lumbus only rediscovered America; the original discovery had been related by a Spanish pilot who died in Columbus's house. Columbus suppressed the ac
enterprise the child of
his
fortune."
science and
Bacon
praises
of
Cabot's
knowledge: he
obtained
his fleet
must
by
tell
ing Henry
son
"an island
rich
commodities."
There
be
a rea
for these
elaborate oddities.
Bacon
elsewhere compared
himself to Colum
adept at
inspiring
(New Organon I 92, in Works, 8:129; 4:91). Is he showing followers how to woo kings? Or is he evoking his own promise of a future land of health,
wealth,
and peace? whose
Or
might
he hint
at a
borrowing
navigator),
influence
will
die,
nevertheless, in the
land
produced
by
Bacon's However
science and
fortune?
obscurities, it is
clear
History encourages investing of unknown particularly of North America. While Bacon praises Henry VII for in confronting immediate dangers, he tasks him for lacking "providence to pre vent and remove [dangers] afar off (Works, 11:364; 6:244). Bacon insinuates
English kings to
patronize
that the
"the
discovery
lands,"
and
"dexterity"
his
own providence
as tacit
explicitly
remedied.
The
account of
remedy for a defect explicitly noted but Cabot's discoveries occurs expressly
Bacon
a
never out of
puts
it
immediately
after
the
king's defeat
of
line
of pretenders whom
Bacon
tions away from supernatural remedies. It appears the king's unending desire for security
instrument,
enemy, to
The
remainder of
Essay
58
outlines
Bacon's
greatest policy.
of new
Counsels
civil
to the "causes
sects."
Ostensibly
gives for-
to
"revolutions,"
such great
Bacon mainly
59
from the
for producing them. This Machiavellian science, of averting oblivion most powerful selves, is the greatest science. Bacon discusses in turn
founding
of new
sects, two
necessary properties and then a third, and three manners of The three properties of a successful sect are opposition to existing authority, provision of license to pleasure, and if "speculative the "help of
heresies"
occasions."
"plantations."
civil
Bacon's
authority,
although not as
new sect, like Machiavelli's, will oppose existing directly. Like Machiavelli, Bacon removes the tradi virtues, although for a liberty more moderated by and
Clizia
portend.
is comprehensively planned and not merely anti-establishment Indeed, Bacon's is more attuned to speculation or learning, and
can spread
if linked
Essays
of
Kingdoms
Estates"
and
(no.
29)
growing
can
lightly
33)
suggests expansion
by
"plan
colonies."
tation of
colony.
"Of
Plantations"
(no.
Nobles
invest
and
patronize;
industry
will
People
thus
"planted";
the population
wealth
is the
means
and
power,
and colonies
growing in
rival,
and perhaps
gold-digging
Eventually
"it is time to
plant with
women as well as
into
generations."
Bacon
regulations, except,
as
is
also clear
from New Atlantis, for the sake of population growth. "The sinfullest thing in the is to forsake, not God, but a plantation. He may be even more sly. Does he anticipate the inde Once he calls what has been planted a
world"
"country."
pendence
from the
old world's
kings
and nobles
tions
are
likely
58,
to demand?
In essay
the three
always
without
Bacon has
a more comprehensive
type of
plantation
in
mind.
Of
methods of
founding, he
Atheism,"
he
appears one of
the "great
no.
feeling"
("Of
16). He treats
almost
means,
"by
wisdom of speech
handling holy things, but invisibly the second and Yet deep
through reform,
persuasion."
to stop
them than to
enrage
them
by
violence and
bitter
He
would
into
opportunity for rising. It is his general strategy for a civil society. Behind the counsel of moderation, however, is a strategy of war. Virtually the whole remainder of the essay is about war. Bacon shows his followers the
with
strategy
the
by
A little
of
sign:
he
substitutes
comprehensive
term
"war"
"the
60
Interpretation
This
war
sword."
is
conducted
in
good part
by
"eloquence
in
persuasion,"
speech and
later
generations
would
a war of
ideas, ideology,
Bacon
expects
to
rise
by the
northern powers
(perhaps
weather
including
makes ence
North
in wealth,
will
Cold
he
notes
the differ
that
makes.
Wars
rise
of a great state
(Spain is his last example), and when a state grows to a great over did. We recall that power, it is sure to overflow. The"ancient northern Bacon plans many ways to increase population, and not least by what he men
and empire
people"
Will modern northern here, growth in "means of life and peoples increase, forcing some to overflow into colonies abroad? Abruptly, Bacon notes that rich states tend to become soft and vulnerable,
tions
whereupon
sustentation."
he turns to the
effect of
weapons,
of
technology,
upon
military
strength.
Does he
imply
increasing
One
courses
wonders whether
guns of
II, 17, is actually about how to spike and the church. The sequel intimates the use of
of old was waged more
big by
strategy
of simulation and
dissimulation. Warfare
"number
rather cion
by
is
more
rather competent
than
force
of numbers.
Bacon's
next
step
that he is subtly
intimating
followers his
and
sect will
have: he
an
rise
fall
of
learning. Even
when
merchandise"
arts and
age,
of
rise, especially its youth, the learning of its middle the two. Striking. Does this mean that the economic cast
as well as
of replace
fall
"mechanical
the arms
Baconian states, the prominence given to merchants, the soft affluence trayed in Bensalem, are causes of downfall? Is Bacon's compassionate
economic
por and
consciously corrupting appeal? Or must we not re member the emphasis of essay 29 upon growth in power, a warlike population, and occasions for war? That is a tough element of Bacon's civil teaching, a
appeal, then,
a
slight variation on
Machiavellian toughness.
suggests
Nevertheless, Bacon
decline
and exhibits a
that
of
inevitably
learn
further type
empire,
of
One
state of
ing
nor,
can exist
in
variety
of civil states.
There
the ordinary
who
father,
secrets
is
regulated
scientist-father,
of
keeps
from
state
by a institutions,
then
beneath variety
"cloth
state"
can
be
rising
and
declining,
finite.
the science of
progress.
even
61
an
infancy,
youth,
a strength of
years,
an old age.
Proba
science
bly
had
Bacon
alludes
developed
earlier
and applied.
exhaust."
and
last."
Bacon
He knows uncertainty whether "the world should limits to progress, even his own progress in enduring. At this point, he coun sels averting the eyes from such "turning wheels of lest they make
an
vicissitude,"
intimated
"giddy."
us
Bacon
is
steadfast
cannot
himself endure, while knowing that he has been accurate, Bacon's steadfastness
for
our progress.
NOTES
1. Fink, The Classical Republicans (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1962) pp. 1021; Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); my discus
sion
is drawn from
efforts
in
a recent popular
University Press,
1989).
A "perfect
republic"
is the "point
of
conventional"
according to de Grazia. That does not prevent him from in his religious practice and faith, possessed of
Christian"
ideas
of
human
nature and
fall,
and an
philosophy"
"radically
new political
with a
"rhetoric
of
which
"destabi
lizes the
xxi
morality"
conventional
of
kings.
ed.
1900), II
of
Harvey
London: The
University
p.
Chi
cago
of
Bacon,"
unpublished
paper,
1983,
2.
and
Theory
about
Francis Bacon: An Account of His Life and Works (London: Macmillan & Co., 1885), esp. pp. 457-60; Orsini, Bacone e Machiavelli (Genoa: E. degli Orfini, 1936), p. 9; Raab, The English
Face of Machiavelli (London and Toronto: Routledge & Kegan Paul, University of Toronto Press, 1964), pp. 73-76; White, Peace Among the Willows (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968); Rossi, Francis Bacon (Chicago:
troit: Wayne State
University of Chicago Press, 1968); Marwil, The Trials University Press, 1976); Quinton, Francis Bacon (New York:
and
1980).
Theory
His Times (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1878); cf. "The Latest 27 (1875-76):653-78, and Abbott's reply, same title and journal, vol. 28, 141-68. Thomas Fowler's reply to Abbott is more airy and contains nothing beyond Spedding's, Bacon's Novum Organum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889), pp. xiii-xviii.
6. Francis Bacon
about
Bacon,"
Contemporary Review,
7. I generally quote from The Essays of Francis Bacon, ed. Clark Sutherland Northup (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1936). The original spelling and orthography may be found in The Essays or Counsells, Civill and Morall, ed. Michael Kiernan (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1985). 8. Alan Gilbert, ed. and trans., Machiavelli, The Chief Works and Others (Durham: Duke University Press, 1965), 3 vols., vol. 1. I tend to translate from // Principe e Discorsi, ed. Sergio
Bertelli (Milano: Feltrinelli Editore, 1960). 9. Howard B. White, Peace Among "Bacon's Humanitarian Revision of Politics: Francis Bacon
and
the
Willows,
pp.
pp.
Machiavelli,"
17-39, 42, 197. See also Kennington, 7-12; J. Weinberger, Science, Faith, and
Cornell
University
Press: 1985),
pp.
17-39.
62
Interpretation
10. "Machiavelli's UnChristian
Charity,"
(1978),
1217-28. 11. In a letter to the heir to the throne, 1623, reprinted in James Spedding, ed. , The Letters and The Life of Francis Bacon (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1874), 7:436-37. I owe the reference to Michael Kiernan's edition of Essayes or Counsels, p. 200. 12. Trans. Benjamin Farrington, in The
Philosophy
Chicago Press, 1964), p. 104. Rossi, Francis Bacon, From Magic of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 88-97.
13. Historiae Vitae
et
Mortis,
para.
Bacon,
ed.
James Spedding,
Robert Leslie Ellis, and Dennis Denon Heath (Boston: Brown and Taggard, 1861), 15 vols., 3:426; (London: Longman & Co., 1861), 14 vols., 2:172. 14. History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh, Works 11:319; 6:213-14. 15. New Atlantis, ed. Alfred B. Gough (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 16. I have been helped here as elsewhere by Harvey Mansfield's
pp.
s
46-47.
New Modes
and
Machiavelli'
Orders (Ithaca
17. Peace 18. The 25.
and
London: Cornell
the
University Press,
pp.
1979).
also
Among
of
Willows,
and
itarian Revision
Machiavelli,"
pp.
14-26,
quotations
in this
the
Gough,
pp.
16-
Review
Essay
University
of Alaska, Anchorage
R. G. Collingwood, Essays in Political Philosophy. Edited (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990, ix + 237 pp., $55.00).
Almost half Professor
of
by
David Boucher
a century Metaphysical
appeared.
on politics
has
of R. G. Collingwood, Waynflete a new volume of his writings Oxford, Philosophy Edited by David Boucher, author of a recent study of
after the
death
at
Collingwood's
political
thought,1
Essays in Political
Philosophy
makes avail
from his
Eight
journal articles, while ten appear in print here for the first time; of these, seven are drawn from lecture notes and three from other manuscripts among the Collingwood papers in the Bodleian Library. To these
his
are appended a
from books
1918
reader's report on
which
Collingwood's
after
unpublished
manuscript of
"Truth
Contradiction,"
and
he destroyed
the appearance
politics penned
Autobiography in the late 1930s, and parts of three letters on current by Collingwood to his student T. M. Knox between 1937 and 1940. The earliest selection was written during the First World War and the latest during the Second: the essays here collected thus span the whole of Col lingwood's life as a mature writer. Despite the curious stipulation required by
Collingwood's daughter "that
no
item
should
be
reproduced
in its
entirety"
(3
cf.
managed
to fashion a
readable and
in
complements and
only offers material never before published but illuminates Collingwood's other political writings.
also
After the
parts.
editor's
introduction, Collingwood's
into two
The first,
"Political
Activity
and
the Forms
Practical
Reason,"
begins
with an sophical
essay, originally
published as a
investigation
of economic action.
a philo
success
of
"the
economics,"
science of
Collingwood finds it
attained great
by
pose some
which
induction from the study of economic facts; yet economists presup "fundamental conceptions, such as value, wealth, and the they rarely define or ponder (58). Collingwood finds the clue to under
conceptions
standing these
in the idea
of economic
action,
which
discerns
interpretation, Fall
64
Interpretation
economic
facts
rather
than simply
describing them,
a special
as of
His
"thesis"
is "that there is
epithets as
type
action,
which we and
profitable,
the
expedient, useful,
type of action
or economic
is
fundamental fact
is
concerned"
(59). Col
a child
lingwood distinguishes
who
economic action
from
action
done
on
impulse
or "an angry man kicking a "runs shouting round the (61, 62) in that economic action involves calculation. Unlike impulsive action, which follows desire "without more (61), economic action has an end that
ado"
garden"
chair"
is
"immediately
desired"
and a means
end"
necessary
hedonist"
the
that "is only mediately desired, as the (63). Collingwood is unpersuaded by "the
economic action and a
difference between
as
impulsive
ac
tion,
since everyone
difference between
sake of some an element
simply
doing
what you
and
doing
thing
else
action always
involves
is missing in impulsive action. A like distinction must be made, according to Collingwood, between eco nomic and moral action. Borrowing in effect Kant's distinction between hypo
of prudence that
imperatives, he argues that we act morally when we set do expediency something simply because it is right. Of course one do the right for prudential reasons may thing obeying a rule for fear of being or caught, treating others decently for reputation's sake but those actions
thetical and categorical
aside
and
have
an economic rather
Only
when considerations of
utility
of
are
"subordinated to
is
an action moral.
Again, Collingwood is
the grounds
unpersuaded
by
"the
since
utilitarian"
expediency,
chosen:
has
every prudent man chooses means in relation to an end he for there is a difference between the duality of ends and means in
means, though
unity": we aim
unity in distinguishable as in
and
moral
action
end and a
the
economic
action,
"merged in
fresh
being being Collingwood, though not without a doubt as to whether this taxon omy is exhaustive (62), distinguishes actions into the three categories of impul
good
"to be good;
is
good"
(63). Thus
sive, economic,
and moral.
Economic
sion and
action
is
marked
by
pleasure,
or aver
desire. In the
exchange, for
instance,
one gives
up one good in return for a good that individual preference for those oranges
give
Since it is the
man
to
up his
apples
of
the exchange
for oranges, Collingwood understands this transaction one man's apples for another man's oranges, but as one for
oranges and another man's other useful
not of
not as man's
exchange of apples
apples.
Each
of
man
finds the
he
the better
preference
the exchange
what
for in making the exchange, but each gets the other because of his own subjective
exchange of oranges
for
he
gives up.
man
has to
exchange
Collingwood'
Embattled Liberalism
market.
65
one good
for
another
of
the
Preferences
change
from hour to hour, so market values alter. If he sets too high a price on the good he wants to exchange for another good, then his preference is ineffectual
and
he fails to find
to have been
price
on
it,
then he
finds
market
seen
price
that a
vendor
"ought to have
price"
asked
is the is
him be
highest
pay"
will
value
subjective
forces him to
deny
from calling any willing exchange unfair (66). Even the who finds no choice but to sell his labor, perhaps, for
said
buys dear
cannot
a pittance
to strike a bad
bargain,
we
since
he only
claim
chooses
for
another
that seems better to him. Such a purchase may "offend our moral
consciousness,"
but then
really
"that this
case
an act of
exchange, but
gift,"
an act of
which would
an economic
Collingwood
some
kinds
of exchanges which
prostitution), his
argument
ought not
to be made (for
cannot
instance,
any (69
since
it"
the gambler
from the
4). Yet
universal whether
judgment
of empirical economists
Collingwood's
in
economic action
is
finally
In the
consistent with
his insistence
on
impulsive.
second
by
asking
which
ture, is "that
we suffer goodness
the goodness of a
a previous
lec
chosen"
(78). Here
thus that
from the
omission of
but, presupposing
is
no more
we choose
what we choose.
of
Sometimes
have
no conscious reason
goatishness.2
never
any
chooses
(79),
is
capricious.
holds that
sons
for preferring one to another. When we can explain why we chose as we (i.e., tau did, he calls our choice rational, though he dismisses as because it was we chose explanation that the good, or something tological)
"unreal"
pleasant,
since
he
understands goodness as
nothing but
what we
choose, and
choice"
pleasure as
"a
constituent of
activity, a
presupposition of
(84-85). Real
and
explanations, he
argues
here, may be
the
reduced
to three: utility,
"useful" "prudent"
right,
or as
duty.
We have already
called the eration
of
encountered
it may be
our consid
"expedient,"
"profitable,"
the
(86)
in
66
Interpretation
involves
ends and means.
which
Action
is consciously
understood to action: a
which and a
in fact
belong
or
to
all
"preparatory
the logical
phase"
preliminary
sequence of
"completing
or
crowning
phase"
means, come
first; but in
comes part of
sequence of a man's
desiring,
argument resembles
that of
The
which
have
noticed
that the
taxonomy
correspond with
cious, utilitarian,
second,
actions.
which
and caprice, or between economics and utility as but his distinction between right and duty, asserted but not explained motives; in the second essay (86; cf. 86 n. 5), modifies the taxonomy of the first. That
this
of
main
theme
a new
Boucher's introduction. He
offers as a
justification for
"illuminate far
or
in the
short
fact that Collingwood's previously unpublished essays clearly than the cursory discussion in An Autobiography, expositions in The New Leviathan, the distinctions he wished to
more
duty"
between utility, right, and goods and of the motives for rational
make
of
action suggests
the
first
part of
Essays in Political Philosophy, which the editor chose to mirror Collingwood's own order of argument. The first two essays distinguish utility from caprice;
the remaining essays of the first part
explain
how right
with
and
duty
first two
which
motives and
from
each
other,
beginning
five
essays on politics.
In the first
of these essays
Collingwood looks
state,
he finds ordinarily the focus of political theory, to study politics "from a different (92). He finds politics not only in states but also in churches,
angle"
with
Since sovereignty belongs to all political action, it inheres in all of these associations, not only in states (106-7). A focus on states leaves the observer
perplexed when practical problems arise whose solutions
con
fines
of state
sovereignty
action, just
for
lingwood
considers political as
and economic
Nations. Instead, Col instance, action, arguing that it differs from moral action they differ from each other. While moral action is
the League
of
performed out of
duty
wealth,
political action
(such
as a
reason"
instance, in making a law) is performed "for (95; cf. 117). Political goodness con
which so as
laws,"
Collingwood describes
as princi
"really
worked out
in thought
as
to apply to a particular region of that region, and really obeyed or in the English
"singular"
binding
within
(96). He finds
practice of
he has
not seen
"in any
country"
other
Collingwood'
Embattled Liberalism
67
but
which exemplifies
the
choice of
"a
orderliness, regularity,
submission
to a rule
which applies
equally to
persons."
Again, if
you came
threatening
on
.
inter
fere,
though both
sort of
of
feeling
like
have this
thing going
political
that,"
shooting
people
then
your not
motive would
be
(97-98).
According
to
Collingwood,
sort of
you
do
you
really
answer
you can't
have this
it"
thing, for if
did in
have
a utilitarian motive
instead. The
political motive
the Greeks
who confuse
difference, for in
rulers
stance, between
fine (99).
claim
Contrary to
do
not rule n.
Thrasymachus'
of
Plato's Republic,
are not
for their
own
benefit;
is to
or,
acting
as rulers
(100
1). To
along
with
that of
rules
others
(101). While
made
civilized men
follow
they have
themselves. Collingwood
that
may
and a
develop
"the law
unintentionally, citing as
and custom of
both the
rules within a n.
family
just
as
the British
Constitution"
(103
political
action,
or
regulation, as
sake of
the
in
economic action
is for the
prosperity, the
sake of
promul
in
political action
"its
own
(108). But if
political action
has
after all
end, to
which
it
by
for
well-chosen
economic action
in
its
concern
in
word, for
utility?
Hobbes,
who
in the first
part
important
end of political
regulation"
life. Collingwood's
that "politi
is essentially
of
importance
supposes.
(100) follows Hobbes in diminishing the and the controversy over justice that it pre
political good and reduce
By denying
form
of
any
standard of good
drain disputable
regularian
content out of
the
law.
action we makes us
In
a second
make and
essay on politics, Collingwood argues that in political follow a plan. Some would claim that following a plan
but "the unfree, but they are mistaken: "we are always free to break the more ra a real a plan is power to follow out power, something involving tionality and therefore more freedom than the simple power to do what we like
moment"
rule,"
at
any
given
(111-12). Such
a plan
sion of
"seditious
publications,"
or obscene view
which
ince
of
of
(113),
"as the
establishment
the Principate
by
Augustus"
begins
to
by denying
that
it
recognizes
rule"
(118): to do
one's
(112). Collingwood's third essay on politics any "form of goodness except conformity moral duty cannot be part of a political intention.
68
The
Interpretation
state makes room
for
private conscience
property"
the security
of person and of
only as part of its provision "for (119). The citizen's part is to comport
themselves,
Kant, by
the very
presupposes
laws they break: a forger depends on a banking system that honesty even as he tells himself that dishonesty is justified by his
(121-22).
of crime anticipates
desperate
this part,
need
the
last two
essays on politics
in
take up the
question of punishment.
Collingwood begins
to
by
and a
opposing
punishment
are attributed
God
by
Bible, they
seem contradictory:
if
punishment
is
duty,
ness
then forgiveness
seems
weakness"
is
duty,
both
consciousness."
argues that
not
Punishment
be
understood
is
a second crime
published
duty.)
and
a moral duty. (In this early essay, first in 1916, Collingwood does not yet distinguish between right and Nor should punishment be understood as deterrence, "as a means of selfsociety"
the "state
revenge,"
since revenge
preservation on
the part
of
(126). Such
view, compounding
"cruelty
selfishness,"
allows us
"a
marauder nailed
in terrorem to the
ment
is
retribution
"giving
(128). There
is actually no contradiction between punishment and forgiveness: the pain we inflict by punishment aims at no more than evoking the criminal's "self-con demnation
repentance,"
or moral
which
in turn
makes
it
possible
for
us
to
incidental
without
any
to a properly
brought-up
tremely
The
brutalized"
Collingwood admits, however, that "ex criminals will have to be punished by less
a
"perfect"
(131).
on
second
essay
lecture
written
in 1929,
asks whether
its
purpose
is
deterrence,
or reformation.
inflict
suffering"
on someone cannot
deterrence
retribution.
simply "for the sake of frightening other be justified unless it is simply the effect of punishment
since
people,"
as
Likewise,
forcing
a man
to amend
his
ways
are such
that he deserves to be
wish
hurt,"
reformation can
to achieve
which
deterrence
or reforma
leads easily to
punishments,
with
may be
avoided
reining the
since an
punishment
just
retribution.
only Collingwood
by
ac
knowledges that
angry
be carefully
purged of
anger,
man
is
unfit
what a criminal
draws
determining
The
assessing
moral guilt.
court
Collingwood'
Embattled Liberalism
69
simply tries to determine whether a man "has broken the law, and if so, what delinquencies" (135). Hence some "moral amongst which Collingwood
law"
lists greed, laziness, ill temper, drunkenness, and adultery offenses; but "they are punished elsewhere than in the
political
courts"
(136). In its
society conformity (like the length of women's skirts) enforced by fashion and others by the courts. The good man will be concerned about the moral guilt of the prisoner in
the
life
purity but
at
to rules, some
dock;
the good
judge,
as
such,
will
ask
only
whether
the
prisoner
has
part of
the book
concludes with
taken from these, "Monks and Collingwood's account of a yacht trip to the Greek islands in 1939, is the most charming of the essays. Together with some of his students from Oxford, he
on ethics.
The first
Morals,"
had
n.
visited
on
Santorini (144
1). What
monks was
music, grace,
devotion, dignity,
utilitarian
and of
hospitality;
that
these
thinking
they
of
could
upbringing."
treason to their
monks'
way find them appealing only by what "seemed a kind of His students could not but admire the beauty of
were ashamed of their admiration:
elements were so
foreign to their
the
way
They
idle,
best selfishly
by
forsaking
They had,
whereas a vicious
be saved, and from another point of view a man doing his best, like most men, to have a good time, a virtuous monk was a man irremediably sunk in the deadliest of moral errors: a man who had renounced the primary duty
of
helping
his fellow men, and had thus corrupted the best thing in human nature, itself, into the worst, a purely individual and self-centred quest
(144)
The students, no crude materialists, were willing to grant the social utility of music. But the monks were removed from society. What good was beautiful
music without an audience to
after
living
for
students
had found
and
"moral
faults"
monks
After the
to
Santorini,
yacht, Collingwood
sions.
conversed with
especially during the night watch on the his students about their contrary impres
the Santorin music.
mathematics was worth
For
instance, they
that pure
even
if the
pure mathematician
If
others
found
pure
while
and
were
proud
to
have its
practitioners
in their
midst, then
they felt
what
was of some
Greeks
way
of
around
the monastery clearly held that view about the monks and their
life. But
if their
admiration was
simply
superstition?
view
70
that
Interpretation
"utility is
But the merely
goodness"
the only
contradicts
world of
the
utilitarian, reasoning
cedes.
about ends re
be
good
for
be
sought
to something
useful
bankruptcy"
for if
ends
disappear altogether,
choiceworthy.
then
means are no
longer
for anything
intrinsically
Col
moral
people one
purchasing
living"
by
its
then "life
is
not worth
(148).
way,"
trust our impression "that the Santorin way of life is a good their honored monks, then
we
including
may find
ourselves obliged
to defend
Protestant,
secular,
utilitarian
world,
even at
the risk of
Oxford "of corrupting its young during being their nocturnal dialogue. But, after all, he asks, "What is the use of travel if it doesn't broaden your mind? And how can it do that except by showing you the Collingwood's
accused at
men"
goodness of ways of
home,
ought
to
be
bad?"
prejudices you
have learned
his
at
of
Collingwood lays
rational action.
out
peculiar
motives
for
Any
sort of ra which
obliges one
to give up "the
particular
kind
of
freedom
belongs to
action,"
capricious
for "obligation in
one
general
of
do something that contributes (150). To act usefully to one's end; to act rightly one is obliged to obey a rule. Yet both utility and (151): one can choose which means to lightness still allow a "relic of
caprice"
is
obliged
to
caprice"
use or of
how to
act within
the law.
Moreover,
nor
why
end,
does
regularianism explain
why
to
one rec
Only
duty, according
kinds
Colling
wood, does the element of caprice still present in disappear altogether. Hence "duty is completely that "a
person who
other
rational"
(152),
duty
has
no
option; he has
got
to do exactly
he does; he has
tion that allows
as a practical
choice"
no
no
(151). Collingwood
understands
duty
as an obliga
from "the
situation
in which,
agent, I find
to the agent
not
(153). Both
unanalysed
situation and
individuality"
action
(154).3
appear
in their "unbroken
clear
or
But it is
immediately
might appear
why
duty
as
has to it
point
inexorably
appeared
to a
single
action;
and
it
to the reader,
must
have
to his
students when
Collingwood
lecture,
got
that this un
it"
derstanding
action
of
duty
to do
(153).
Collingwood is his
seeks
by
connecting dutiful
to a theme that might surprise us but for the fact that The Idea of History
most
history,"
thing
called
he
writes
here,
and
"every Briefly
situation which
individual
situation"
(155).
he
summarizes
historical
Collingwood'
Embattled Liberalism
71
and can only happen once; that the men who made history did because of their situation; and that the historian's view is they determined by his own historical situation. He concludes that "the conscious
event
is individual
acted as
ness of
duty
is thus identical
with
the historical
consciousness"
(157). Though
the individual
historical study is
or regularian actions of men
still confined
by
of
historians
who
fail to
duty
allows us to understand
in
history
he
"Granted,"
as rational.
for instance,
that Gladstone was the man he was, conscious of himself as standing in the
situation
in
which
himself
as
his life, to
pursue
as an
end,
to
pursue
it,
And these
questions are
historically
events of
answerable.
(158)
can under
Instead
stand
of
imagining
the
history
as
ciously chose to recognize a certain rule, and to obey it in a certain way, "the historian may hope to show that he recognized that rule because he had to
recognize
it in that
unique
in that
unique way"(158).
Collingwood's understanding of duty, the crowning element of his political philosophy, thus depends on his philosophy of history. That philosophy, which owes much to Hegel, bids us believe that the choices men make in history are really contingent upon their own willing, and thus that Gladstone had to pursue Irish Home Rule, Augustus had to found the Principate, and the French revolutionaries had to wield the guillotine. All of these actions appear to Col
not
by duty
on
the
men who
in
denying
seems and
that the
men who
actions might
have
chosen otherwise.
By
attributing to
to
duty
many historical
actions
dutiful, it
excuse or our an
justify
actions
it belies
rather than
ordinary understanding that duty has a moral or religious basis historical one. Aside from these moral drawbacks, Colling
wood's view of
history
leads to the
men
unwelcome conclusion
duty
is to
understand
the
he
studies not as
they
understood
but
in a unique way imposed upon him by lingwood's insistence on deprecating the freedom
what
caprice"
has happened
we give
since.
Despite Col
up
by forsaking
"the
residue of
in
other
kinds
of action
in
order
to do
our
duty, he leaves
ment
in
which we act.
entirely subject to the accident of the historical mo One can hardly help wondering whether this understand
philosophy to the
well-worn paths of our own
freely.4
ing
of
duty,
era, does
Certainly
political
by duty
not
to
conform
to the
fashion
apocalyptic
72
Interpretation
which might almost
An Autobiography,
considered
be
called a
jeremiad
against what
he
the
increasing
acceptance of
of
the late
1930s,
in
finds
the
in
several of
second appendix of
part of
Essays in Political
Philosophy
(232- 34). 5
The
and
essays
the second
the
book,
which
the
editor calls
"Civilization
mies,"
show and
about
facing
the
the civilized
world.
these essays,
Philosophy,"
of a
by
can contribute
on
intractable
social
by dictating
the correct
but
soluble"
a conviction
"that
in
princi
he avers, there is
the
provide
a great
temptation simply to
conclude
ble"
"that the
special problems of
inherently
is
a
can
insolu
(168). What
that
all
philosophy to
are made
this
so
conviction
growing
no evils
assurance
human things
by
men,
that
"there
be
obstacles
cure"
will
cannot
assurance
is based
"conceived
natural
lifted
clean out of nature nor yet as the and sharing to an eminent inward essence of all
forces, but
second
sharing,
degree,
(170).
things"
In his
as a
brief essay of this part, "The Rules of lecture in 1933, Collingwood announces a practical
purpose
Life,"
originally
rather
written
an aca
than
demic
with
in his
pedagogy:
"I have
not
materials
Schools."
paper
deciding
how they
He describes their
"whose
chief
While their parents singularity is that nothing in it can be trusted to stand were brought up in a framework of institutions that seemed certain to last, "this 6 framework has (171). The older generation can never "entirely
collapsed"
themselves"
adjust customed
darkness."
can only "grope uneasily in the unac Collingwood describes two unsuccessful tacks they took:
first they
treme
good
embarked on a
bootless
attempt
of
"to
rebuild what
finally destroyed";
time."
then,
despairing
success,
"they
rushed
and plundered
they lived,
and called
having
It is up to his students to make themselves "at home in that dark and to learn to find their way there. Amid the ruins of the old system have been born new movements, both religious and political (amongst which
ness"
fascism), all of them sharing "a spirit of he deprecates the growing popular clamor Gently for a leader, suggesting that a worthy follower would have to have a defensible way of life before he professed allegiance to any leader (172). Collingwood lays down three rules that his students might follow: (1) "know
communism and
work."
Collingwood includes
serious constructive
yourself,
which
(2)
is the only way to find the independence that a man needs to be happy; "respect which means not to give in to a reductionism that belityourself,"
Collingwood'
Embattled Liberalism
73
and
a proportion
between the He
body
and
the soul;
(3)
"orientate
yourself,"
to rise above
fear
to
treat love as
concludes
students'
world"
to their children
by
In his 1927
to Ruggiero's
History
of European
Liberalism,
repro
duced here
as
as
defines liberalism
and achieve
his
(175), discerning
ignorant democracy.
liberalism is
happy Combining
a
on
mean
a
human
liberty"
with an authoritarian
government,"
insistence
practised
enemies"
now under
"the necessity for skilful and attack from "powerful and danger
of
ous
(176). That
Politics,"
attack upon
which
the
following
liberalism
essay, "Modern
is taken from
"Man Goes
as
Mad."
of
"the idea
of a
community
governing itself by
to a
fostering
unity."
of opinions
simply means, and not indispen for sable means at that, assuring that opinion is freely expressed on political questions (177). This free expression of opinions is to be not just tolerated but
and parliamentarism are
actually fostered,
education
since
it improves the
to
citizens.
life has
im
been developing,
portant
with
"France, England,
even
and
the United
the
the
most
contributors.
Collingwood judges it
civilization,
though
achievements"
of our eralism
"certainly it is hardly
it
one
of
greatest
is
would not
be
chosen
by
a nation
in
acute
danger from
crime,
which
has
an urgent need
and more
force. is
attacked
Liberal
and calls
were
government
which rues
its
inefficiency
emergency Collingwood
the power
for
resolute action
by
powerful experts
as
if
a state of
the
fears that
even
of parliament
civil service.
in England, "the home of the parliamentary is giving way to government by the cabinet
principles of
system,"
and
the permanent
most precious
But the
man
liberal
government of
"are the
possession
ment
that
has
ever acquired
in the field
politics";
over
and
free
govern crimi
is
possible
only
when government
"can appeal,
the heads of
nals, to
the
body
of public opinion
acts"
wisdom of
their
brutalize
the populace
sufficiently educated in politics to understand (180). To take away the right of public debate is so to as to leave them unable to do more than "to throw up
another"
(181). Liberal
government
is
also at
left,
which claims
beneath
the
Within the
capitalist sys
occurs
74
the
Interpretation
exploited class can
ples;7
by waging war upon their oppressors and establishing the temporary dictatorship of the proletariat. Collingwood is friendlier to this attack from the left, since it aims to vindicate liberal princi method of the socialists (182), who have but he rues the
redress
find
only
"anti-liberal"
on
Universal
and
History"
the idea
of a revolution
millenium,"
from Hegel
socialists
a glorification of class
"obsolete"
that
by arguing "they
are,"
in fact, "un
thought"
ideology
in the
stomach
of socialist
(184). It is
"madness"
to abandon
of
to blame ideologues
liberal principles; but liberals are perhaps too apt the left and right for the ills that have come over them.
tone that
Collingwood
argues
in
a moderate
"nothing
is
gained
by blame:
some
thing
perhaps,
not
itself for
to
understand"
generous principles
established
in domestic his
politics.
It
would
be easy to
miss
a moderation
its founders
millenialism
would
have thought
realistic:
argument
is
case of
more
foreign affairs, he
our neglect
has left
"weapons
destructive,
wars more
expensive,
smoul was
govern
and national
dering
everywhere."
hatred (a thing hardly known in the seventeenth century) Within the body politic, this "external
private realm of
illiberalism"
mirrored
in the
business,
which was
held
exempt
from
men
Only other by
Adam Smith's
"extraordinary
doctrine"
that
actually
serving themselves kept them from seeing the truth in the life in liberal society (185). Thus liberals themselves, must reap the harvest of "the failure of our grand That
socialists'
critique of
according
fathers"
to
Collingwood,
failure, however,
against
hardly
from left
and
right, "not
the
incomplete
selves"
against
(186). essay
of
The
central
the
for the
the
appeal of
another cause of
decline from
of
its
at
the
heart,
which comes
religion.
John
Stuart Mill's
he
argues
civilization"
heritors "lost
underpinnings ceeded
liberalism is threatened
which,
of after a vital
by
(187). For
Collingwood, Greco-Roman
youth,
by Christianity,
suffered a curious
fate
during
residue
(188). An
"Illuminism"
75
men,
who
did
not scruple
to
disguise their
hostility
towards
religion.
The
was, in "distilled" Collingwood's view, from Christianity; but it disdained the religious beliefs that might have helped to sustain it (189). Christianity seems to him the
speech and
real source of
political principle of
"free
everyone"
man
has "infinite
dignity
worth,"
or man
which
in
turn is the ground of our liberal rights; these gifts came to each
because
of
us and the
intercession liberal
of
view of
principles survived
long
after
Christianity
fascism
countries which
have
succumbed to
Nazism,
most people
believe in "liberal-democratic
power,
can
a psychological
ideals."
and
driving
with
dynamism,"
nents
hardly
be troubled to defend
men, but
of
liberalism,
the fas
cists seem
fight
the power
not of
Marxist it is the
success
claim
nor
creature of
big business,
nor
the
publicist's confidence
to propaganda is
our
sustained
by
while
liberal
argu
and
ments, in
that
makes
which
'Leader,'"
his thoughts may be (192). Fascism, "harks back consciously to the Roman and its "worship of a appeals to what Collingwood calls "the pagan that have
though
Empire"
with
his
blood,"
"silly"
survivals"
been
allowed
by Christianity
is
in
Italy
and
Germany
Our itarian
magic,
neglect of emotion
also
a manuscript called
"Fairy
Tales,"
civilization."
Collingwood
observes
that our
thoroughgoing
which expresses
businesslike";
them
we
emotion, leaves us proud to be "sensible, rational, hold that every act is justified by its utility (197). What is not
We
are afraid
finding
As
we are apt
to discredit its
expression of
in
art and
We
misunderstand
the customs
they
must
be based
that moves
and
Yet if
magic
helps
to
"resolve
conflicts"
emotional
practical ourselves
lives,
(199).
may
prevent us
from understanding
essay of the second part, extracted from an address to Belgian in 1919, considers what Collingwood calls "the Prussian distin (202). He begins by denying that imperialism "is fundamentally The
seventh students
evil,"
philosophy"
guishing instead between "right imperialism the which he calls "a necessary over the less
mankind"
rule of element
the
civilized,"
in the
and
the "false
imperialism"
and evil
of
the
Germans,
Great War, but he finds its genesis in the Prussian philosophy, diminishes the individual and exalts the state. "This strange
76
Interpretation
but
not embraced
was expressed
by Hegel,
his
who
"was too
great a
thinker to
believe in it Hegel's
entirely."
Marx
made
proletarian
rational
state.
will
imperialistic"; its
in Nietzsche's
disease,"
"very
which
formula"
for the
"crude
message"
(202-3).
a
Schopenhauer's
claims
Collingwood
disease"
attributes
Prussians
were
"spiritual
that "this
spiritual
theory"
caused could
that
"only
the
eradication of
this
bring
peace
(203). The
error of
is in its he
belief in the
Even the
unlimited power of
have limits.
power of
limited
by
recommends
international
when
law
and
the
League
warns
of
proper antidotes
(204). But he
again, it
will
not
crushed";
of
it rises (205).
threaten "disaster
death,
the destruction
civilization"
In the
gium)
nations'
civilized
must
of
be
Collingwood
by
pos ab
ing
this
"mutual
service and
devotion,
self,
of
of
class,
of
race, nation,
or we
and
language in the
a
service of civili
world,"
the
with
desert,
third
silent, unpeopled,
uncultivated; riddled
fumes
gases."
of poisonous
In his
alternative"
view
no
(206).
Collingwood's
penultimate
essay
second part
by considering what he calls "three laws of delivered as a Hobhouse Memorial Lecture, it served as the basis for what nally Collingwood later published, in less readable form, as the twenty-fifth chapter
of
politics
leads up Origi
The New
Leviathan.9
He defines
will
society as a community whose members live. The first law of politics is that there are
a
ruled, those
explains
who make
laws
and
those
who
law
and ruled
At
a minimum
it
must
be
so
because
of
the
fact
of
death,
(210).
which means
that the
ruling
rulers.
body
must replenish
itself or be
ruled
extinguished
can
competent persons
from the
class"
Since, however,
own ranks as
the ruling
matically, it
ruled
into its
does not supply these vacancies auto for accepting people who begin among the (211). The third law is that rulers are those who take
class
the
initiative,
In
a
original
meaning
of
the Greek
word arche.
The
to
be imitated
by his
subjects
(212).
wood
long but tersely written digression by this digressive writer, Colling illuminates what he means by the three laws. The digression begins by
considering Harold Laski's complaint against T. H. Green, who refused to call Tsarist Russia a state because of its strong inclination to despotism. Colling-
Collingwood'
Embattled Liberalism
What he
11
Laski, arguing
meaning
that Green
"state"
"confused."
was
confused
the
"scientific"
of
with
Russia
ought
statements,"
Green,
when
whose
with of
facts ("scientific
scientific acted
statements").
his
bent"
because he
who,
thinking
meat';
men
abhorrent,
like
someone
"what
sort of meat
had been
offered
is
perfectly
beastly
sort of
telling
him,"
his
practical reaction to
last,"
it
is."
Collingwood
"stick to his
and
a condemnation of
Russia. At the
time, he
an
mentions
government concealed
"the horrors
deception"
the concentration
camp"
from the
public
war."
"to
prevent
flaring
ruled,
up into
the
inopportune
not,
and
hopeless
He
asks whether
which reminds us of
the
division between
ruler and
for the
rulers
to recruit from
among the ruled, and of the importance of examples set by the rulers (213-14). Collingwood seems to be hinting that Chamberlain and his men were wrong to
try
to hide the villainy of the Nazis from people who would later have to fight
them mies,
that
as
they
can
be faulted
not
ene
the
failing
lingwood's
conclusion seems
to be that
be held to different
standards.
very murky,
perhaps
because it
After
a
would
be hard to
digression
more scientific
second
the meaning
point
the
"state,"
word
in
which
Collingwood
realization
turning
in its
history
was
Machiavelli's
that
(215), Col
lingwood
asks
ascendancy over their subjects. Though supe rational basis for rule, "H. G. Wells wrote a fantas
that, although in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man should rule, the blindness of the many might keep them from acknowledging the superior fitness of the one-eyed man (217). Madness com
story"
tically
unpleasant
to show
petes with
of
rationality in claiming the right to rule madness that puts Orthodox Christians in mind
most of all of
the creative
kind
rant
has the
appeal of
Politics,"
by
of
requires
the
by
his
example.
exertion:
"it is
much
easier
crazily than to do it intelligently; you just let yourself go, and there you The impressionable democratic mob finds new leaders who carry the madness
to
new
extremes; shouting
admits
with a mob
"is the
do"
easiest
thing anybody
can
(221). Collingwood
French in 1940. In retrospect, he finds its cause in the legacy of the French weakness for Napoleon, which divides them from England and makes them
78
Interpretation
blandishments
of
susceptible to the
leaders
German tyr
was
anny (222). He
gether
concludes
the essay
by
"alto
for
neutral"
between
political
ity
War,
then in progress. As
German
like Hegel
The
future,
be
"more fools
they."
and Marx, who thought they could foretell the future, Collingwood assures his readers, "has to
hearts"
made
by
us,
by
(223).
The book's final essay is
a
draft
preface
to The New
Leviathan, Colling
civilization"
he took to be "the
replaced
revolt against
own
by
the
in
1942.) He
and
understands civilization
as a condition of
under
peace."
order, prosperity,
win
Civilized
men
live
"definite
come to
rules";
they
their livelihood
without
and
they
fellows
rather
(224). Rebels
against civilization
left,
that it
fails to
others; from the right, since only civilized cowards forbear from exploiting their fellows (225). Germany, which prefers barbarism on ac count of the latter claim, is "fighting for the destruction of Eng
live up to its own ideal by allowing that "the very ideal of civilization is
civilization."
land fights
The
against
we are
fighting for,
to defeat the
knows."
nobody
enemy,"
government says
fighting
of
which
is
hardly
illuminating. Collingwood
answer.
In
order
what
fighting
in defence
civilization,"
he has to know
is. To
answer
that question
forces him to
must
ask what a
before he
the brief
revolt
society, he
know
what a man
New Leviathan
limn
theory
in the
and
of
but only in
compass required
against
civilization,
a civilized
society
reader
might
do to defend
not
itself.
By
is
a piece of war
writing, though
what
war propaganda:
Collingwood
means
to offer
his
"just
the present
He concludes the draft preface by paying emergency demands, and no homage to Hobbes, whose "Leviathan was the first book in which the idea of a
expounded"
more."
civilized
society
was
consciously
and
systematically
(228). Ac
by its editor, the new volume of Collingwood's The New Leviathan begins, encouraging us to embark
Boucher, in turn,
of
makes
Collingwood's final he
The
centerpiece of
his
own
study
Collingwood's
to the
political
book here
re
(3
n.
10). is to be
commended
The
editor
for
having brought
essays of student
Collingwood's
a
par-
T. M. Knox did
Collingwood'
Embattled Liberalism
with
79
tiality
while ern and
may be forgiven he concludes his own study have warned us "of the dangers "many
that
academics"
civilization,"
no one
incisively,
be
as
R. G.
Collingwood.""
passionately Collingwood
com
must
more modest.
the
new
volume, he
account of
bines
and
variations on
James Mill's
utility, Hobbes's
more
right,
Hegel's
account of
duty
in
a welter of
ideas
consistent.
In the
part, he advances
the dangers
convince some such
facing
the
reader
that he
as
was a serious
thinker
judgment
Henry
and
Jones
wrote
in his
now
reader's report on
Collingwood's
as well:
manuscript
"Truth
Contradiction,"
published
appendix to this
book,
might well
be
applied
to Essays in
Political
I have
Philosophy
read
every
word of
it,
and
done
so with
lively interest;
its
which
is
as good a
testimonial as I could give to a book. But I cannot feel that I have a clear estimate
of
its
worth.
nor that
its
contradictory
qualities.
(230)
NOTES
1. The Social
and
University
Press, 1989).
2. One
pretend notable
feature
is Collingwood's
critique of psychology.
Psychologists
but he sternly confines their empirical science to describing the actions of men insofar as they are not determined by reason. Though Collingwood dismisses the psychologist's argument that our reasons for choice are all unconscious,
to offer a comprehensive account of human action, that the psychologist may be able to help a man to understand and correct "capricious if they "are actions, that is to say actions that interfere with the life he is trying to (81; cf. 58-59). Unfortunately, however, psychology can alter healthy actions as easily as morbid ones, just as a surgeon can amputate a healthy limb; so "for everyone except those who
he
admits
actions"
'morbid'
lead"
suffer
from really
serious psychological
sensible advice
alone'"
your mind
from
experience:
that he
consid
"took psychology seriously enough to undergo a full 50 it" (81 n. 3). ering himself qualified to comment on
3. One
concludes necessary: should compare
man's
sessions of psychoanalysis
before
of
duty
that "a
duty
is the
act which
inevitable,
if he has
Civilization,
4.
do": The New Leviathan, Barbarism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942), 124.
should
freely
will
to
Man, Society,
by
the adequacy of Collingwood's understanding of history was suggested The Review of Metaphysics 5, no. 4 Leo Strauss, "On Collingwood's Philosophy of (June 1952), 559-86. daylight" 5. Collingwood's account of his life ends with a ringing promise to "fight in the
My
argument about
History,"
against
fascist irrationalism: An
Autobiography
of
6. Compare the
second paragraph
Churchill's
Churchill, My Early Life: A Roving Commission (London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1930), 9.
80
Interpretation
1. See his famous
remark
I began reading Marx": An Autobiography, 152; but Essays in Political Philosophy, Boucher's convincing argument
whenever about
that a part of him "used to stand up and cheer, in a sleepy voice, see also, in the introduction to
against
the common
view
"that
Autobiography his
of
political views
the
left"
(7-30).
History,"
8. See Strauss, "On Collingwood's Philosophy 9. See The New Leviathan, 184-91. 10. The text
11.
"it"
563.
reads
here in
and
"is,"
Book Review
Tibor
Machan, Individuals and Their Rights (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1989), 250 pp., cloth $32.95, paper $16.95.
Nino Langiulli
St. Francis
College, Brooklyn
Had the
munism
collapse,
theoretically
not
and
practically,
of
Com
in Central
occurred
Eastern
Europe,
fragility
in China
would
before Professor Machan's book had been published, he have been able to offer the reader a less pessimistic, more truthful,
though no
serve as and
his
epigram.
says
Forgetting,
the
Kun-
Yes, say
place.
They
had
for
brand
in
find his
a
The
Communists'
opponents
had
dream;
they had
was
[sic]
few
moral
principles,
stale and of
lifeless to
So,
lost
all.
no time
turning
their dream
into
idyll
of
justice for
As
an escapee
might even
have
celebrated
opponents
without
the grandiose
all,"
dream,
longer
social
without
moralistic and
dreamlike
rhetoric of
"justice for
but
few
the
love
of
liberty,
won out
in the
The China
demonstrated that
all
the Communist
Utopians
ever was
anything else,
not of
justice,
of
not
power,
a
authority, just
those
brute force.
more espe
Machan's book is
defense
few
and
principles, but
cially
on
that
liberty
both
of
presupposed
by
time it is a defense
the necessary
condition
for the
the
happiness. It
is,
and
to say
it
somewhat
of
archly,
defense
of
attempt
to rescue the
mechanis-
life, liberty,
associations with
interpretation, Fall
82
Interpretation
tic materialism and empiricism and to join them instead to a certain kind of
moral
individualism
which
he
calls
"classical
egoism."
ethical
It is
an attempt
basis,
Thomas
and
and
laboriously
takes
into
account what
he
calls
"the
the
cognitivism, egoism,
count of
critics of
meta-ethical
naturalism, ethical
capitalism."
His taking
of
ac
an affirmation of
those
very
positions
in
a unified
texture
his
affirma
an
over
the course
of seven
instructive
ideas developed in the book, Machan tells his readers, were such other forums as philosophical and political journals
volumes to which
Many "partially
as well as
of
the
aired"
in
in two
also
of which
he is
the
editor,
and
Ideology
American Experience.
A In
to discuss classical ethical egoism
order
philosophically
and not
merely
and on
ideologically,
tological
he
believes, issue, an
,
issue,
foundationalism, i.e.
speak
ing
the truth
means
speaking necessarily
impossible)
dispelling
The
application
wishes
rights truthfully and soundly without having at the same time to imply that the truthful definition is "some final, unalterable timeless statement that corre sponds to some final, unalterable, timeless (p. 1). Rather, the truth of the
fact"
definition
In the case of rights, like many other truths, is "context the definition of rights, the contextual boundary is that of social morality, poli tics, and law. Correlatively, it is bound to that wider "context of human reality
of
bound."
in which not all that one wishes for is available just by wishing (p. 1). But to say that definitions are relational is not to deprive them of their objectivity. Just as a right not existing apart from a context of persons
within a world
it"
living
ple,
together is
not
deprived
holds
exam
conditionally Machan
ever
yet objectively,
//the
pigment, for
(p. 2).
they
now
have, how
clearly
or
unclearly this
known, from
human beings
Book Review
began to
ence and exist.
83
Here he
addresses
himself to the
a
knowledge
by Kantian-Platonic/Cartesian model of knowing is a kind of timeless, changeless, entailment relation. Referring to knowledge accounts in the work of Keith Lehrer and Stuart Hampshire, Machan answers the first by asserting that con
of such
knowledge
which
rights
holds that
mutual-
textual aspects of
and sufficient
knowledge
should
be
admitted
of
necessary
wherein
conditions,
and
merely
serve
conceivable
a
(i.e., logically
of
really possible)
scenarios not
to defeat
definition
'knowledge'
be
rejected
because
to
do
a
so
concept of
which can
knowledge
attained
altogether
by requiring
"fantastic"
be
He
sense
answers
Hampshire
by
asserting:
or not
it,
although
he
can choose
use a particular
rules of
language
but
develop
as
recognition of their
suitability
a
and effective
ness,
is the
tools.
(3) Language is
whereas
language is
seem
basic have
tool"
and others
like him
to
reversed
analogy,
which
the rules
life
and not
Hampshire is
to
(4) The model of knowledge invoked by means "to be unaltera Lehrer's, i.e., "to know that
p"
bly, forever
Machan
certain, beyond
that
a shadow of conceivable
doubt in
p"
about
(p. 6).
self-
repeats
such a requirement
and one
defeating. To
pendent of
seek
"an
independently
identifiable
and
reality,"
inde
to
show
actual ground of
being
possible, is to require
infallibility,
(p. 5).
a more
incorrigibiMty,
At this
and perfection
the qualities of
divinity
not
humanity
rules of
point
in his
epistemological
appropriate conception of
knowledge
by
regarding the
language the
way Aristotle did in one of his formulations of the principle of noncontradic tion: "It won't be possible for the same things to be and not to be [not] just [as]
a matter of the word
but he
where
it's
a matter of the
on
thing"
more,
although
Machan does
what
not
impose
or
himself
or
his
readers
ment of
meeting
calls a
knowledge,
cal ples of
he does
not
leave himself
any
epistemologi princi
foundations. He
settles on and
view of
the basic
substantive rather
reality (noncontradiction, identity and excluded middle) understood in a than in a purely formal sense. The fact that there are mathe
to the principle of excluded middle
matical objections
does
not vitiate
Aris
totle's basic
concepts
metaphysical
in this
includes those
"individual"
"rights"
of confirmed
and
resting
on such principles
and
repeatedly in
all
action,"
thought
perception"
processes of
sensory
84
Interpretation
In
addition
to a proper
epistemological
argument about
ontological
"indi
viduals"
"rights,"
and
to the
issue,
have
the nature
of
human beings. He
that if it
is the
case
that individuals
rights,
grounded
only
on either
convention, contract, or
presuppose
something that human beings are, such that the conventions, contracts, and
occur or exist.
Machan is
deaf to the
criticism
individual"
is recent,
however,
did
did
have
ontological
the alternative of
priority in medieval or ancient discussions. He mentions "the having ontological priority in these discussions
family"
other
things,
due to
inadequate development
of the concept of
of what was
of our
concep
recent so-called
invention
a
the individual
then
be
not an
invention but
discovery
implicit in the
'family.'
concept of
alism"
addresses
has been
the
associated with
those
rejection of
concept of
nature.
He formulates
exists and
to the
following
has
or
existed, in
which case
rights;
individuals
to have such
rights"
first, he says, in arguing that individualism has had an inadequate philosophical base, presumably Locke's and more recently Sartre's, and then in finding the adequate one, Aristotle's, which reconciles individuality
and human nature in such a nonreductivist way as to offer a conception of human beings who, while being members of a species, are the cause of some of their own actions. Thus they would possess not merely numerical individuality but, through choosing some of their behavior, individuality in the significant political sense of
dilemma lies
possessing individual natural rights (p. 9). Machan proceeds, then, to consider, and to discard by way
various ontological positions which
of sound argu
ments, the
deny
human
choice or views
freedom.
such as
Among
not
mechanistic and
scientific
behaviorism,
In the
Darwinian
natural
selection,
and
than
hints that he
with a
considers a
teleological
incompatible
rigorous
preparatory
groundwork
for his
and
is the
"is"
metaethical one of
"ought,"
the
"distinction"
between facts be
values, between
and
between
Although he
congenial
does
not put
it in the
following
the
way, my formulation
to
him, namely
It is the dogmatic
not.
that
one
the world of
but
Book Review
world with
85
pair.
interrelated
it this
aspects.
One interrelated
pair
is the kinds
"fact-value"
Machan
puts
way:
Values may be
regarded as
of
fact
and
many
facts
must
awareness.
be inferred, especially those not immediately accessible to sensory He then proposes a theory to explain how values are indeed a spe fact. The theory
existence.
the
emergence of
of
living
things,
moral
into existence,
and
the emergence
human life,
values come
into
Since
living
bad
of
or
so
identical. Nor
of
are
by
the
being
is the kind
of
kinds
"adapt"
it (i.e. free choice) and thereby take advantage of and create a number of options to forge a successful life. Morality, then, is the set of general principles
that
members of
must
discover in
a
order
to live a successful
concept of value or
Machan
are
means of
Good
and
bad
features
by living
fact-based
human being.
"They
are objec
tive
relational
features
living"
or aspects of
(pp. 18-19).
Having established the groundwork for his central thesis, Machan, in the body of his book, proceeds to develop the argument through a set of proposals
which
he defends
which
against
his
thesis,
We
is
worth
quoting in its
as
human individuals
are responsible
for
doing
well at
living
our
lives. This,
when
implies,
morally, that
live rationally
conduct,
as a
chosen
everyone must
from,
short,
own
against, intrusions
by
others.
must be left with a rightful, defensible sphere of authority to make his or her for example, play it safe or take risks, develop or falter, stay way in life apart from others or join with them when this is mutually agreeable. All this rests on a conception of ethics as a firmly-based yet contextual system of guidelines required
by
(instinctual)
prompters
be
argued
for how to carry on with their lives successfully. In what follows it will that the human self ought to be understood along not Hobbesian but
egoism
that emerges
will prove
to
be the best
(P.
and
27)
this
It is equally
worth
summary especially the novel points expressed in the last two The individualism which Machan defends is that
so as
examining in somewhat greater detail to illuminate further not only the thesis as a
some parts of
whole
but
it
also and
sentences.
conception of
which
he
86
Interpretation
to
collectivism. of of
opposes
To Marx's
notion that
"the human
essence
man,"
collectivity
true
of
Machan
opposes
the
notion
essence
individuality
in
man"
main reason
he
gives
human beings
are
distinguished from
possess,
thought
living beings
form
the form
of consciousness
they
and since
this
of consciousness
namely
implies the
capacity for creative original thought, individual not a collectivity which is individual brain is do
necessary individual human beings who
collectivities none of these. a
are
then
it is
correct
to argue that
it is
that
an
capable of original
prerequisite.
Machan
adds
the
it is
born, live,
enjoy, suffer,
die,
whereas
The
rational and
free
a creative role
in governing the
wrongfully as well as rightfully in sustaining and morality. Since individuals spend most of their time
moral principles
which sustain
individuals,
must also
the
a
and enhance
individual lives
be
guide to public and economic policy. The rules that govern communities, there
fore,
must
be
such
This is done
they
must
individuals to flourish in the best way best, according to Machan, not by rules telling individ do for and to one another but what they must not do to and
that
they
enable
for
one another.
protect
individuals from
chosen con
and against
interference
they
engage
in their
duct. The
name
for the
power
life
so as to sustain
government
life is "natural
right."
The
name
to
protect of
is "negative
right."
Most
one
rights doctrine
of
and
Locke
on
or
hand
and
self-interest
is
by
egoism
he defends he
of
originality
he
ity,
not
since
merely a crutch for libertarian politics or capitalist economies. Indeed, Machan considers ethics as conceptually prior to politics or economics,
he expressly admits that he would abandon negative liberty and libertarian poli tics if classical egoism were to demand their abandonment. This admission is
qualified with the admonition
that
a
rational
self-development,
i.e.,
classical ego
author
ism, is
hardly
conceivable
in
society
where some
ity
of
separating
a version of egoism
ethics and
for
capitalism without
having
it
collapse
and
Machan knows
ethical solecisms of
formulations
of
the Hobbes-Lockean
version offered
by
Milton Friedman
and
George Stigler.
Book Review
every individual serves his own history have served their "private
. . .
87
private
interest.
as
The
great
Saints
of
interest'
just
has
served
private
interest is
whatever
it is that drives
an
or
Machan
totle's
replaces
the isolated
and atomistic
individual
with what
he
calls
Aris
being"
because it is know
"sensible"
more
what we
about
human
beings"
(P- 31).
which
point of
ethical
machean
is from the
chapter of
Ethics.
a man were always anxious or
...
if
justly, temperately,
were always
in
accordance with
to
try
to secure
himself, above all things, should act any other of the virtues, and in general for himself the honorable course, no one will call such
lover
of
that he
a man a
lover
of self or
blame him.
self; at
all events
But
he
assigns to
best
and gratifies
the most
as a
authoritative element
and
in
this;
with
and
just
city
or
any
most
properly identified
element
in it,
so
is
man; and therefore the man who loves this and gratifies it is
most of all a
lover
of self.
37)
arise
Machan is
of
not oblivious
immediately
In
about
this use
second
Aristotelian
material as
for
ethical egoism.
fact,
in the
this
quotation, he asks:
"Why
'egoism'
call
in this way a most obvious objection. Aris totle appears to be contrasting the moral individual with the egoistic one. The moral individual performs noble actions and obeys reason, the most authorita
He
anticipates
in the first
place?"
tive
element
in him,
The
end
for the
sake of
performed,
they be
of
actions
derived from
self-
such actions
one's
may
require
interest,
such as or
risking
life to
save another's.
If
self-interest
is
not some
times denied
into those
In
versions of and
it that Machan
wishes
to avoid, as
Milton Friedman
an
George Stigler.
page
endnote on
214, in
which
interpretations
of
it, he
use of
ends.
The
objection
is
one of
the
present
quotes
from Jack
88
Interpretation
of
Wheeler's essay "Rand and Aristotle: A Comparison totelian in which Wheeler rightly says:
Ethics,"
Objectivist
and
Aris
In
a certain
sense,
no
Greek
can
be labeled
an egoist
any
more
than an
altruist.
The
whole
issue
is
modem.
Indeed,
attempting to society
of man.
interests
with
benevolence
and
interest
of
as a whole seems
the Hobbesian
view
Machan does
individual
thought is
this
not answer
response
that the
notion of
the
emerged
to the question
ultimate
'egoism'?"
Machan's
replies that
or she will
"the
moral conduct
be"
be the best
person
can
(p. 37). He
morality is to
sometimes
give
human beings
"a
guide to
doing
all
in life, to
as
living
rightly."
But
these,
involve
self-denial or
self-sacrifice.
egoism
because the
it
lustful,
and, in general,
which entails
behavior
good
with
morality
generosity,
will,
objection
inability
fact is
for
classical egoism
inasmuch
as
in this
version
in
The thrust
of classical
do the morally wrong thing (p. 33). ethical egoism is that "everyone ought to
possible"
strive to
not abide
being
some
individuals the
"resources"
may be inherently human, says must be a matter of choice (p. 61). In this way, whatever is morally dubious in egoism disappears for him. Ethical egoism or individualism, he repeats, is not
an ethics of
for others, however. While "social Machan, i.e., implicit in human nature, it
greed, ambition,
or
of self-development.
Its
politi
self-
form, rights, is concerned with the development in as peaceful, "though not necessarily fraternal ner as can be obtained (p. 61).
cal
expansion of
familial,"
or
man
problem
must
be
noted
here
with
Machan's Aristotelianism. It
would
that he disregards the singularly characteristic line of Aristotle's Poli a line which does not mean tics, "Man is a political animal by merely that human beings are social by nature but rather that individuals become hu man in and through the city. This means that the kind of life the city makes
appear
nature,"
possible
is precisely the human life (i.e., the life cannot be thought of solely as
condition
of reason and
liberty). Hence
but
as a
a matter of choice
necessary
for
human life. It is
no sin to
be
selective
in
one's
Aris
totelianism, however.
Book Review
Machan's
politics
89
politics are
wish
and
desire
are
to relate this
Locke
that
should
This is to say that "eudaimonistic guide human conduct prior to the consideration
individualism"
is the
ethics
of civil
Machan
ment
substitutes Aristotelian ethics understood as an egoism of self-develop for Lockean ethics, whereby every man is an executive and an execu tioner of the law of nature. The problem may be one of an appropriate fit here.
The Lockean
place of
ethic
fits
with
Hobbesian
The Aristotelian
ethics
fits
with
is primarily
of natural
cooperative
in
character, starting
it does
with
fear that
Locke's doctrine
rights fits
com
fortably
with
Locke's
political
understood even as a
benevolent egoism, seems to be ill fitted for a Hobbes-Lockean politics. This is not to say that Machan's attempt to provide a sound and even hu
mane moral
interesting. He
says
that every
individual
life,
then
it,
are
for justice (p. 123). Ethical egoism, he con be treated in such a way that their right to acquire
not
domain
of personal
be difficult if
authority,
expression of
liberty, and jurisdiction. The respect for the domain justice, while the domain itself is concretely
"property"
expressed
authority is an in the
person,
such
that the
individual,
not
others,
be the
or
"anything
tradable or to per
[items,
skills,
or other
of value
(p. 140).
again admits at this point
were
Machan
period
in his
individuals
the
same
thought of
by
whole,
while at
time
personal
privacy
critics
property did
But he
rejects
the
view
of
notions of
the
they
sovereignty discoveries based on a better understanding later point in history. But he readily admits that
are and of private
his
moral
inventions. He,
of
however,
asserts reached
human life
extreme
doctrines
of
individualism
as
property,
i.e.,
entirely
from
everyone
else,
capable of
which
isolated
self-
sufficiency,
are unwarranted.
The
concept of
privacy
is
he defends is that
autonomy, in the
sense of self-direction or
90
Interpretation
for
private
moral presupposition
property
such
that an individual
possesses nat
urally the authority to keep, use, or give away the things which belong to him and such that he (not others) is responsible for whichever choice he makes as to their disposition (p. 141). Machan finds a medieval suggestion of his view in
the thought
of
William
of
Ockham
(who,
is
placed
in
have held that "private property is a that "natural right [being] nothing other than
a power
to
conform
to
right
of
reason"
modern
(p. 141). It may be no accident, but it is mildly ironic that hints capitalism can be found in an English medieval Franciscan.
rational moral
At any rate,
alternatives.
life
requires a reflective
deliberation
on available
responsibility for the decisions or choices made from these Of course, deliberation about and choice from alternatives implies jurisdiction over the alternatives. In a totalitarian regime of a socialistic kind,
alternatives and then
both deliberation
could clear
be
its
members
(p. 144). Without a his actions, "Nothing is up to rightly say distinction between what is ours and what belongs to someone else, says
moral confusion sets quotes
Machan,
in
leading
a moral
life is
in the Politics concerning common in the tragedy of common own and says that what is tragic ultimately property ership is that even if an individual were determined to fulfill his responsibili ties, it could not and would not be clear what his responsibilities are (p. 144).
Aristotle's
Hence property rights are necessary for the practice of the moral life (p. 147). A political economy which permits and guarantees to its participants not only
the ownership of property but the derivative right to exchange
wish or use
it
as
they
is
one which
is best
moral
life. That
for
such a
for the possibility of human individuals living a political economy does not at the same time guarantee
suited
failures is
be
ground
government to
property in the name of The coercive power of government exists, precisely in the forms of defense and crime fighting, to protect the lives and property of its members so that they may engage in a rational pursuit of self-development (pp. 150-51). Machan's defense of property rights and a free enterprise political economy is a disavowal of Marx's conception of private property and human individuals
on one
saying:
disregard property rights altogether or to redistribute a moral imperative to redress economic inequalities.
hand
and of
defenders
of capitalism on
The
right of man to
same
arbitrarily,
without regard
right
dispose
of
the
other men,
independently
right of selfishness.
(P.
153)
that Marx is speaking of the worst
pessimistic view of
Then he correctly
private
points out
property
and an
inordinately
are
arguments against
both
Book Review
Machan's
italism
more
91
interesting
"scientific,"
criticisms are directed at those champions of cap pretending to be value-free social scientists. In at in a false albeit not falsifiable positivist
economists who
market presuppose a
the
good
(p. 154).
of the
free
market
system,
superiority
of private
property
Machan,
when
efficiency for producing what people want (p. 155). He edly value-free posture is so transparently false that the ism trade it to discredit the transparently best discipline which studies it (p. 154).
on
the
however,
he
con
though,
in taking the Lockean theory of rights as entailing the view of the individual as essentially an isolated monad and the view of the relationships between individ
uals as
by
it is joined to
classical egoism or
is in the
is
responsible
for his
her
liberty,
and of
property
are not
instruments
existence required
by
man's nature
for his
proper
"nature"
The
words within
"proper"
and
are
however,
the
quotation
"proper"
with
moral weight
"own."
bear
lengthy
foun
by Machan
dation he
needs.
to
to fit his
As Rand
puts
it,
the logical transition from the principles
'Rights'
guiding
individual's
actions
individual morality in a social context the the legal code of a society, between
(P. 172)
This
not say enough in order to establish what it claims to estab transition from the principles guiding an individual's logical "the lish, namely, If there were a actions to the principles guiding his relationship to passage
does
others."
mention or suggestion of
have
reason
to hope for
support
respecting the rights of others, then Machan would from Rand. There is no mention of how the
society is to be forged. The moral code of the individual may involve only self-interest in a purely hedonistic sense, and the legal code may mean merely the coercion link between the
moral code of an
individual
and
of a
that the
government
may employ to
keep
people
from
interfering
with each
92
Interpretation
Without the
concept of
other's pleasure.
duty
as
its
rights
cannot
Machan
considers
or politically.
such as
that offered
which
by
Alan
to
Gewirth,
secure equal
who
he
calls
the "supportive
of
state"
is
supposed
for
each
freedom
and well-being.
Everyone is
in possessing these rights. But in the attempt to reconcile the right to liberty with the right to well-being, Gewirth, according to Machan, does not it is
vital
prove
that well-being is something others must provide an individual, only that for the individual's life (p. 197). Furthermore, Gewirth 's defense of a
welfare-state ence
theory
values
of rights
between
only
fails to take account, says Machan, of the differ for the individual and those which
exists not
because autonomy is something that an individual possesses if take it away. Freedom cannot be given, only taken and regained.
do
Well-being
not
is
in
different, according
do
or
what others
don't do to
or
dispute, regarding it
impose laws for the
on
right is
a mistake.
would
individuals
legally
as
enforceable
not
have. The
imposition
would substitute
concept of
Rawls'
justice
legitimacy
theory
John
version of
the
welfare-state raise
are mor as
ally
as
and
legally
are
justified if they
those
off,
far
needs
concerned
(i.e.,
the economically
disadvantaged),
to a higher
one
standard of
living
The
is
paradoxical at
deserves his in
Machan
capacity
favorable starting is
place
society."
state, therefore,
remedy the
must
says
theory
tially
obtained
by
accident.
deny
at
itly
because
character
is
not obtained
by
accident.
then,
asks
Machan,
of value
by
improv
to
ing
out
poor and
needy,
makes
as
theory
of
requires. of
The
who
appeal
Rawls
those
have lost
in life
must
fall
on
deaf
ears
unless,
not on moral
grounds
but
on sheer
force
of government
which, in turn, is understood as the only index of fairness. Machan concludes that the welfare state promotes rights
which are
keyed to
system
government
capitalist
a harsh rights formulated first by Locke and defended by himself and other libertarians limits individual rights to those of life, liberty, and property. These rights are derived from a conception of human nature as having a moral aspect. This is to say that each human individ-
need
interventions because the individuals equalizing forces to remedy both nature and
A doctrine
of natural
socioeconomic system.
Book Review
ual
93
other
has the responsibility to pursue the best possible life for himself and that individuals may not interfere with either the effort or lack of it to meet
of
groups"
remedying the inequalities and harshness of life be the responsibility of "voluntary cooperating individuals and (p. 203). The worry that individuals will not accept this responsibility cannot be relieved by the appeal to a coercive state which, experience has now taught
everyone
but the
most
dogmatic
of
ideologues,
produces
ities
and greater
suffering,
natural rights
defended
by
expectation
which protects
the rights of
life, liberty,
and
that
will
be prosperous, decent,
will produce a
society
in
written a
book that is
excellent
in every
respect
but
the nagging
mind of
thesis,
ethics.
basis for
He is
lying
more argu
implicit in
concept of
ancient
by
modern
the individual
by
an ethical egoism
is
that
is
Epicureanism than
the libertarian
with
Aristotelianism.
the individual
Stretching
between
the
to
redeem
concept of
is
even more
dubious. Just
as
the
opposition
is
between individualism
state) is
and
the
and
Apology
Crito
as well as
becomes
human,
Aristotle's Politics, it is evident that the human individual i.e., leads a human life, only in and through the city. This is
characteristic sentence of
nature."
a of
by
This is the
purport of
line
without
inquiry
is
not a
human
It is the burden
not
the speech
of
"The
Laws"
stood as natural
but
as of
in the Crito, the city is only higher worth than the individual inasmuch
wherein
under as
the
city.
In the
the
ancient
individuality
nor a
are probable,
according to Plato
must
and
Aristotle. Tribes do
not manage
not achieve
civilization.
societies, do
a
to generate the
kind
of
freedom
individual
have to lead
Machan does
mention
not attend
it,
review.
to the
of
second
in the
of
context of
issue
the priority
the
family
responding to those critics who raise the to the individual and those other critics who
94
Interpretation
concept of the
not altogether
individual is
a modern
attends
non-
satisfactorily, for
while
he is
correct about a
individual
lying implicitly
in both
modern
formed
an
within
the context of
and
In this trans
abstraction,
formation
by
as
Hobbes is the
and
Locke "the
The
is just
as much an
artifice,
the
state.
appearance of concreteness
is
created
by
attribut
ing
for
desires
fears
of a person
to the
abstraction of
"the
individual."
In
the Hobbes-Lockean
and with
social over
decisive
preoccupation
himself
belongs
by
social consent.
and selfish
an ancient
individual
by
which he any Machan tries to remedy this concept of the abstract releasing it from its modem context and by tying it to
which
in turn he
calls an ethical
egoism.
dubious
Rawls
believing
no need of
grounding for ethics, we must assume tic atomism of Hobbes-Lockean individualism for the teleological individualism
should
of
Aristotle. He
says
as
let
go of
much, but in this case he must and He cannot do so, however, because the
notion of egoism
is tied to the
notion of
rights,
and got
Machan may
not
be
pre
along fairly it. And giving up the notion of rights means giving up the libertarian concep tion of polity. While Machan does replace a modem view of ethics with an
pared to yield the notion of ancient
with an
well without
one, he
ancient
can
hardly
be
expected
to replace the
of
modem view of
polity
one
without
being
accused
worse,
little,
at
least to
understand
that
is
not so untroublesome
a basis for ethics. Not only is the irrelevant for Aristotelian ethics, it is simply irrelevant. If either egoism or altruism it is a false disjunction disjunction
egoism-
because
the
sometimes a person
may
choose
for himself,
of
sometimes
for
others on
grounds of a
different
a
that
would
virtue, but it
duty
or
itself. Still
further, if interests
are
limited to the
self
as
by
the
(for how
else could
they be defined in
an egoistic sys
tem), then it is not evident how the person could distinguish between right and wrong on one hand and self-interest on the other, especially since the self does
not
irrevocably
not
surrender
its
natural rights.
Last but
least,
not
even
if this
self-interest
is
of
insists
on
doing,
does
argue,
by
way
self-interest
reason sometimes
fails
us
in
moral
kind,
over
in those
Book Review
These
enter criticisms are not meant to a
95
denigrate
with
a splendid
into
brief
philosophical
discussion
many libertarians, is not only conscious of the weaknesses of the position but attempts to save it from those weaknesses. The effort is especially laudable and
timely, for
as millions of
the
shedding the
shackles of col
lectivism,
for
and
whether
political,
economic or
rhetorical,
on
they
appear
to
be yearning
choosing
a political
economy based
liberty.
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