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Article

Machiavellis il Principe and

the Politics of Glory*

European Journal of Political Theory

0(0) 120
! The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885114567346
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David Owen
Politics and International Relations, University of Southampton,
Southampton, UK

Abstract
This article offers a reading of Machiavellis il Principe and its relationship to his Discorsi
which defends, first, the coherence of Machiavellis appeal to the figure of the one-man
ordinatore and, second, a republican interpretation of il Principe. Its particular focus is on
the pivotal role played in Machiavellis text-act by love of worldly glory. It is argued,
first, that it is through love of glory that Machiavelli can coherently aim to produce an
effective one-man ordinatore and, second, that the political education that il Principe
provides to this figure leads them ineluctably to the conclusion that lasting glory can
only be achieved through the foundation of a republic.
Keywords
Machiavelli, prince, glory, love of glory, humanism, rhetoric, republic, virtu`, Christianity

Gloria is a central term in Machiavellis political lexicon. Alongside near synonyms

like fama, onore, laude, stima and riputazione, and antonyms such as vergogna,
ignominia, disonore and infamia, it plays a pivotal role in the textual performance
that is Machiavellis il Principe.1 My purpose in this essay is to explore what we
may call the politics of glory enacted in this literary act of political intervention.
I approach this task by framing this act within the terms of a problem given succinct and sharply etched expression in Machiavellis Discorsi where he writes in
respect of contexts in which republican politics has broken down:
Because the reordering of a city for a political way of life presupposes a good man
(uomo buono), and becoming prince of a republic by violence presupposes an evil man
(uomo cattivo), one will nd it rarely happens that someone good (uno buono) wishes
to become prince by evil ways, even though his end be good (per vie cattive, ancora che

Corresponding author:
David Owen, Politics and International Relations, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK.
Email: dowen@soton.ac.uk

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il ne suo fusse buono voglia devintare principe) and that someone wicked (uno reo),
having become prince, wishes to work well, and that it will ever occur to his mind to
use well the authority that he has acquired badly. (D I.18. Translation adjusted)

In the type of context specied by this passage, a plausible example of such a

rare type is Sulla but the general problem to which Machiavelli draws attention
in this passage has wider scope than contexts in which a republic requires refounding, being acutely present in any context of political founding and re-founding and potentially present in any context of political agency. This is the problem
of the rarity, the exceptionality, of political agents who will act as necessary,
where this is liable to entail the use of evil ways, but will only use such methods
to the extent necessary for good ends. Such innovators seem, to borrow
Nietzsches apposite phrase, to occur only as lucky strikes2 such as Lucius
Cornelius Sulla Felix.3 The fundamental task of any political text that addresses
contexts of innovation most fundamentally, of founding and re-founding is
thus, put most basically, a task of production: to act to generate such agents.
Meeting the demands of this task requires that a political text motivate and
educate political agents as to the requirements of, and constraints on, appropriate
and eective political agency in such contexts and act constitutively towards the
generation of a political culture that reproduces political agents who are disposed
to such motivation and education.
To frame an engagement with il Principe in this way is also, inevitably, to adopt
a stance towards two of the most vexed questions concerning Machiavellis work.
The rst is that of Machiavellis apparent appeal to the gure of the one-man
ordinatore that I have adopted as the frame for my account. Recently Brenner
(2013: 320) has suggested that this appeal poses one of the deepest puzzles about
the Discorsi. Her point is that, given Machiavellis view of human nature, it is hard
to conceive how he could have thought that there were rare and wonderful exceptions almost superhuman men who may be trusted to act prudently at every turn.
She concludes: If this is the conviction that links Machiavellis Discourses and
Prince, it presents nothing short of a mind-boggling paradox. (Brenner, 2013:
320). The argument that I propose may be seen as an attempt to dissolve this
paradox by showing that through a political education in glory as a political
good, Machiavelli can coherently seek to cultivate such rare and exceptional individuals. The second is that of the relationship of the text-act il Principe to
Machiavellis own republican commitments or, more specically, to the political
outlook expressed in the Discorsi, responses framed most prominently in recent
debates in political theory by the opposition between claims of trapping or
taming the prince (see, e.g. Dietz, 1986; Fallon, 1992; Langton and Dietz,
1987). To anticipate, the argument oered shares Mary Dietzs conclusion that il
Principe acts to trap its addressees, however, in contrast to Dietzs argument,
I locate Machiavellis trap not in an act of deception but, rather, in one of political
education, of a political education concerning the conditions of worldly glory.
More precisely, I argue that Machiavellis text is concerned to educate his reader
as to the demands that are made in the political realm by a commitment to love of

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worldly glory. Glory is the pivot on which, I claim, Machiavellis textual act turns
and his appeal to the one-man ordinatore coherently links il Principe and Discorsi.
The opening section of this essay oers an orientation in respect of Machiavellis
use and understanding of the concept of glory. The next two sections of the essay
address il Principe in terms of what I have called the task of production. The
second section engages the rhetorical strategy of il Principe under the aspect of
ethical re-formation. My focus here is on the relationship of glory, and more particularly of love of worldly glory, to the production of political agents who are
disposed to act immorally when necessary but only when necessary. The third
section takes up the rhetorical strategy of Machiavellis text under the aspect of
political education foregrounding, following the recent work of Peter Breiner
(2008), the way in which Machiavellis text teaches an art of judgment by locating
its readeractor within the matrix of forces that dene the space of action of il
principe nuovo. It departs from, or rather develops, Breiners argument, however, in
reconnecting the relationship of Machiavellis text to the motivation of the reader
actor, their pursuit of glory, in order to draw out an answer to the question of what
Machiavellis text is designed to do. I conclude by elucidating the salience of these
discussions for consideration of the relationship of il Principe to Machiavellis
Discorsi.

The Rhetorical Construction of Glory

Machiavellis rhetorical construction of glory as a political good has three
dimensions that it is helpful to distinguish. The rst dimension is his construction of an evaluative distinction between civic religion and Christianity that
works to undermine the appeal of the latter. The second is his rhetorical construction of the scope and attribution of glory. The third is his rhetorical construction of the politics of glory in terms of the superiority of a republican
people to a prince. To orient our discussion, let us start by sketching out
each of these dimensions.
The rst dimension of Machiavellis rhetorical construction of glory as a political good is concerned to stress the incompatibility of Christianity with the
republican tradition of civic religion by drawing attention to their distinct relationships to glory. Thus, in his Discorsi, Machiavelli constructs a sharp contrast
between the outlook of Christianity and that of the civic religion of the ancient
world:
. . . the old religion did not beatify men unless they were replete with worldly glory
(mondana gloria): army commanders, for instance, and rulers of republics. Our religion has gloried humble and contemplative men, rather than men of action. It has
assigned as mans highest good humility, abnegation, and contempt of the world
(dispregio delle cose umane), whereas the other identied it with greatness of spirit,
bodily strength, and everything else that conduces to make men very bold. And if our
religion demands that in you there be strength, what it asks for is strength to suer
rather than strength to do bold things. (D II: 2. Translation adjusted)

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In contrast to humanist authors who sought to reconcile Classical and Christian

outlooks, Machiavellis view of Christianity and its relationship to Classical
thought mirrors that of scholastic thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and Giles of
Rome but inverts the evaluation oered by the Scholastics. We will see in the
next section how Machiavellis writing in il Principe exploits the humanist turn
for his own purposes but the more general point to be made here is that
Machiavellis rhetorical construction of glory as a political good is designed to
persuade his audience that Christianity as a way of life unts one for politics in
respect of both the disposition and capacities that it cultivates, and it does so
because, as an outlook, it glories spiritual grace rather than worldly endeavours
and achievements. Notice the asymmetry here: although Christianity glories those
who are judged to have achieved a state of spiritual grace through institutions such
as sainthood, being thus gloried cannot be a coherent motivation for anyone
whose achievements would legitimately qualify them for such glorication since
such a motivation would entail failing to exhibit the disposition (humility, abnegation, contempt for world things) required for a state of spiritual grace; by contrast, those who are gloried by civic religion can coherently be motivated by the
love of glory. Christianity is thus a problem for political culture because it devalues
worldly glory, subordinating it to spiritual grace an act of subordination that is
given material and symbolic expression through the artistic and institutional glorication of saints. The political eect of the ideological hegemony of Christianity is,
Machiavelli charges, to have made the world weak, and to have handed it over as
prey to the wicked (D II.2). Note this last phrase prey to the wicked:
Machiavellis charge here is that Christianity has the political eect of empowering
predatory agents and the political form that attends such agents, the principality,
whereas civic religions empower the people and the political form of the republic.4
The second dimension of Machiavellis specically republican shaping of the
criteria for the attribution of glory is that of guiding his audiences interpretation
of classical texts and, more specically, their interpretation of gures most notably Julius Caesar who appear to be accorded glory in those texts. Political
founders and re-founders stand only behind the founders of religion in
Machiavellis initial description of those to whom most glory is accorded and
provide exemplars to be emulated. However, Machiavelli notes, political actors
seeking to emulate such exemplars may be deceived by a false good or a false
glory (D I.10) and turn to tyranny. This danger is exacerbated by the fact that
there are exemplars of false glory who appear in our inheritance of the classical
texts to be exemplars of glory and, hence, Machiavelli instructs his audience in the
requirement to read between the lines of ancient authors attending to the position
of those writing:
Nor should anyone deceive himself because of the glory of Caesar, hearing him especially celebrated by the writers; for those who praise him are corrupted by his fortune
and awed by the duration of the empire, that ruling under that name, did not permit
writers to speak freely of him. But whoever wishes to know what the writers would say
of him if they were free should see what they say of Catiline. Caesar is much more

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detestable as he who has done an evil is more to blame than he who has wished to do
one. He should also see with how much praise they celebrate Brutus, as though unable
to blame Caesar because of his power, they celebrate his enemy. (D I.10)

Political glory cannot accrue to those who destroy republics (Caesar) or who
rule as self-serving tyrants (Agathocles) because they undermine the security and
well-being of the citizens and subjects of these types of polity. Having distinguished
glory and false glory, Machiavelli rubs in the point when stressing that the greatest
opportunity for glory comes with the chance to re-found or re-order a corrupt city:
And truly, if a prince seeks the glory of the world, he ought to desire to possess a
corrupt city not to spoil it entirely as did Caesar but to reorder it as did Romulus.
And truly the heavens cannot give to men a greater opportunity for glory, nor can
men desire any greater. (D I. 10)

This passage links the problem of founding and re-founding that I have taken to
orient this article to the theme of glory which will play a pivotal role in this argument but it also alerts us to a link to il Principe in that any principality is a corrupt
city, one in which the free political life of republican citizens is not available. We
will return to this important point from the perspective of the actorreader of il
Principe in the third section of this essay.
The third dimension of glory as a political good in Machiavellis rhetorical
construction continues the republican theme by stressing that the people are superior in goodness and in glory compared to princes (D I.58). This is Machiavellis
variant on Aristotles doctrine of the wisdom of the multitude and is laid out in
Book I Chapter 58 of his Discorsi in which Machiavelli rebuts Livys view of the
people as ckle political beings. However, it is important to note one exception or
qualication to this view of the superiority of the people and it is one that is central to
the argument I oer, contra Brenner (2013), in this essay. The exception or qualication is stated, in a context in which Machiavelli is glorifying the people, thus:
If princes are superior to peoples in ordering laws, forming civil lives, and ordering
new statutes and orders, people are so much superior in maintaining things ordered
that without doubt they attain the glory of those who order them. (D I.58)

This passage, perhaps especially because of its context, supports three important
points for our concerns. First, in Machiavellis view, the job of founding or refounding is one (the only one?) in which the princely prince is superior to the
people. Second, both the prince and the people gain glory through the peoples
maintenance of the regime that the prince has established; the people as maintaining and the prince as originator of what is maintained. Third, and consequently, the
problem of producing political agents who will be able to act in the ways required
for required for re-founding a corrupt city, the problem with which I opened this
essay, is both a fundamental issue for Machiavellis political thought and an issue
directly tied to glory as a political good.

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These reections on the rhetorical construction of glory in Machiavellis Discorsi

provide an orientation point for the reading of il Principe that follows in which I
trace out the relationship of glory to this text-act. My presumption in beginning in
this way is that Machiavellis thinking about politics, political agency and glory is
continuous across these texts. However, the only way to vindicate this presumption
is through a reading of il Principe which demonstrates its republican commitments
but also vindicates the signicance of the exceptional political agent and it is to
this task that I now turn.

Ethical Reformation and the Love of Worldly Glory

As Pocock (1975: 156) has brilliantly demonstrated, il Principe is an analytic study
of innovation and its consequences in which Machiavelli adopts the authorial
persona of adviser to il principe nuovo rather than counsellor to an established
ruler (as typical of the humanist speculum principis genre). In taking up this
stance, however, it is equally important to note that, in contrast to the classical
and contemporary works those claims he will satirise, works which exhibit the
demonstrative (epideictic) rhetorical mode, Machiavelli combines demonstrative
and deliberative rhetoric. As Tinkler (1988) has argued, this insertion of deliberative rhetoric into the demonstrative rhetoric that was dictated by the humanist
tradition of the speculum principis was a key part of Machiavellis strategy because
it allowed him to insinuate issues of utile into a rhetorical context in which conventionally it had no place. Tinklers (1988: 204) cogent suggestion is that much of
the expressive power of il Principe for its humanist audience derives from its transgression of rhetorical decorum because Machiavelli introduces the criterion of
success into what is intended to be an exhortation to virtue. Ill return to the
issue of the performative role of Machiavellis rhetoric briey later in this section
but, for the moment, let us focus on the point that Machiavellis is engaged in a
work of political persuasion oriented to success in the traditional form of a work of
exhortation oriented to virtue or, as we may put it, abstracting from the terms of
classical rhetoric, he is engaged in a work of production.
Like Plato and Nietzsche, Machiavellis aim demands much from his prose.
Aristotle reecting on the limits of argument had written:
Now if arguments were in themselves enough to make men good, they would justly, as
Theognis says, have won very great rewards, and such rewards should have been
provided; but as things are, while they seem to have power to encourage and stimulate
the generous-minded among our youth, and to make a character that is well-bred, and
a true lover of what is noble, ready to be possessed by virtue, they are not able to
encourage the many to nobility and goodness. For these do not by nature obey the
sense of shame, but only fear, and do not abstain from bad acts because of their
baseness but through fear of punishment; living by passion they pursue the pleasures
appropriate to their character and the means to them, and avoid the opposite pains,
and have not even a conception of what is noble and truly pleasant, since they have
never tasted it. What argument would remould such people? . . . The character, then,

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must somehow be there already with a kinship to virtue, loving what is noble and
hating what is base. (Aristotle, 2009, 1179b4-31)

Commenting on this passage elsewhere (Owen, 2008), I have noted that with this
argument, Aristotle is delimiting the audience for his philosophical reections on
ethics, while also preparing the way for the transition from ethics to politics. In
other words, Aristotles lectures are taken by him to be oriented to, and necessarily
limited to, those who can be brought to value what is noble, but who have not
acquired a reective understanding of the value of what is noble of the kind that
he will attempt to supply. At the same time, in making this case, Aristotle is directing us to an important aspect of the role of politics, namely, to support an
ethical culture that cultivates the valuing what is noble and acting in accordance
with this valuing. But what of a context in which those to be addressed by philosophical reection on ethics are not so oriented and lack appropriate ethical dispositions or beliefs? This may, of course, be Aristotles understanding of his own
context5 and it is a very mild way of describing the later context in which a gure
such as Nietzsche takes himself to write a context in which the project of a reevaluation of values demands not only compelling arguments but specic modes of
rhetorical engagement with his audience to create the aective conditions under
which the force of his arguments can be eective in re-orienting his audience to
what is noble. The suggestion of this current discussion of Machiavelli is that he,
like Nietzsche, is concerned with such a task of rhetorical re-orientation but it is a
project of political education which this task serves. Machiavelli takes Christianity
to have accomplished a re-evaluation of political values in which glory is devalued
and whose outcome is render the people vulnerable to princely predators, his work
directs itself to a critical overcoming of Christianity in this sphere.
Now any task of production aimed at re-orientation is constrained to begin with
the materials available and, for Machiavelli, this entails that the act of ethical
formation that his prose aims to perform must be an act of ethical re-formation in
which some existing feature(s) of the ethical composition of his audience is mobilised to transform their composition. In other words, Machiavellis mode of argumentation must persuasively utilise the resources oered by the ethical composition
of his audience, while subverting the obstacles that their current ethical composition poses to the formation of the type of political actor that is the goal of his
literary intervention. The ethical feature on which Machiavelli hinges his eorts is
that love of worldly glory that humanism had rehabilitated as a worthy human end
in the context of its attempts at reconciling classical ethics and Christian morality.
It is worth briey noting that this stance of the humanists contrasted with the view
taken by the scholastic philosophers of this period such as Giles of Rome and St.
Thomas Aquinas who insisted on the inappropriateness of love of glory on the
grounds that the good man should exhibit contempt for wordly glory. As Skinner
(2002: 122) remarks:
Among the many contrasts between the schoolmen and the humanists, one of the
most revealing is that the latter never exhibit any such guilt or anxiety about world

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glory or its pursuit. On the contrary, we nd Petrarch declaring that his whole purpose
in oering advice to Francesco da Carrara is to lead you to immediate fame and
future glory in the best possible way. Petrarch accepts that rulers ought to cultivate
those qualities which serve not merely as means to glory but also as steps to heaven at
the same time. But this concession represents his whole acknowledgment of the
deeply rooted Christian suspicion of gloria mundi and those who aspire to it.

Humanists simply assume that virtuous princes will be loyal members of the
Church. This assumption is undoubtedly aided by the central place occupied by
Ciceros De Ociis in humanist thought from Petrarchs inuential De Republica
Optime Administranda through to authors in the speculum principis genre who are
more contemporary to Machiavelli such as Pontano who species the ideal of the
prince in terms of the exercise of justice, piety, liberality and clemency, qualities
which Pontano assures his reader will secure him the love of his people and, hence,
fame and glory (Skinner, 2002: 137). It is this whole-hearted embrace of love of
glory on the part of humanist writers that provides Machiavelli with the pivot on
which to engage in his own act of innovation (indeed, transvaluation), for in
retaining the conceptual relationship characteristic of humanist scholarship
between glory and virtu` (Skinner, 1978) Machiavelli can anchor his transguration
of virtu` in his audiences assumption of, and commitment to, the value of
worldly glory.
Throughout Machiavellis discussions in il Principe, the sine qua non for such
political glory is successful political (re-)founding where this entails not only the
acquisition and maintenance of the state during the life of the ruler but, critically,
its persistence beyond their personal rule. And Machiavelli seeks rhetorically to
bolster love of political glory, for example, in chapter 24 of il Principe, by stressing
the special relationship of worldly glory and political innovation, and holding out
the prospect of double glory (duplicata gloria). This specic linking of worldly
glory and political innovation leads Machiavelli away from the humanist view of
the glory pertaining to political writing (such as the speculum princeps genre) which
is construed in terms of the act of writing something memorable to a conception of
glorious political prose as writing which opens out to, and guides the production
of, actions that are memorable., where this novel construal of political writing
entails innovations in rhetorical strategy (such as those mentioned above).6 Let
us then consider the work to which Machiavelli puts the love of worldly glory in
seeking to re-shape the ethical outlook of his audiences and to winnow out from
that audience those who are his addressees.
Two initial questions must be dealt with in order to advance the argument. The
rst is this: what is the characteristic of love of glory that allows it to serve as the
basis for re-shaping the conduct of a political actor? The second is: who are
Machiavellis addressees?
In response to the rst query, it will suce for the moment to note that worldly
glory is an agent-specic trans-historical good, that is to say, it is a good that
constructs a practical relation to self on the part of the political agent which
involves an imagined relationship between their individual conduct and an

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audience of future generations. The lover of glory is, in this sense, always an actor
on a stage before a future audience on whom his achievement of glory depends. His
actions are constitutively open to their interpretations and judgment. At the very
least, this entails that the lover of glory must be concerned that his deeds are
remembered (hence Machiavellis advice to support the arts) and that the type of
memorialisation (e.g. historiography) stand in the right relationship to glory. In
response to the second query, we can note that Machiavellis audience can be
construed as all those who take themselves to be lovers of glory. There are two
points to note about this fact. First, it excludes two groups who have contempt for
glory: on the one hand, those such as the scholastics who take love of glory to be
incompatible with a Christian life and, on the other hand, those criminals such as
Agathocles interested only in personal power. Second, between these extremes
stand a wide range of ethical types from the good man who is reluctant to act
immorally to the bad man who is reluctant to aim at good ends. Thus Machiavellis
audience is ethically indeterminate, a fact that is signicant for the rhetorical strategy that he adopts in two ways. The rst is that Machiavellis textual performance
needs to be capable of persuasively engaging both good and bad men. The second
is that it must both guide and, in doing so test, the commitment of his audience to
love of glory in order to winnow out, from that audience, his true addressees.
It is this ethical indeterminancy of Machiavellis audience that accounts not only
for much of the shifts of tone within Machiavellis text but, more specically, the
otherwise puzzling changes of emphasis between chapters 1618 and chapters
1920 of il Principe (as well as within these chapters) In the former,
Machiavellis rhetoric appears to be initially directed at a readeractor who must
be persuaded of the priority of utile over honestum in respect of the secure foundation of a state; in the latter, Machiavellis rhetoric appears to be directed at a
readeractor who must be persuaded to restrain his own conduct in order to ensure
the secure foundation of a state. Let us consider this contrast and thereby also
attend to way in which the practical relation to self that is articulated through love
of glory is constructed and deployed by Machiavelli.
Chapters 1618 of il Principe in which Machiavelli reverses and subverts the
claims of Cicero concerning generosity (chapter 16) and keeping ones promises
(chapter 18) and of Seneca concerning cruelty (chapter 17) most clearly exemplify
Machiavellis rhetorical strategy for persuading those humanist readers who
remain committed to classical accounts of political virtue of the need to act immorally when necessary. His strategy is to deploy the formal structure of the humanist
claim that glory is intrinsically connected to virtuous/virtuoso agency in conjunction with rhetorical exercises in paradistole. What is characteristic of each of these
rhetorical exercises is that they recast the exercise of virtue in its political mode as
encompassing its eects on the political eld within which the actor is situated (i.e.
they introduce the criterion of success into the specication of virtue) and, through
sharply drawn examples whose aective force is generated by their (intellectual or
historical) proximity to his audience, oer compelling reasons to hold that what
appears to the actor as virtuous (generosity, promise-keeping) or vicious (cruelty)
conduct is liable not to appear so when judged from the standpoint of a future

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audience who are able to judge the eects of such conduct for the secure maintenance of the state. Precisely because Machiavelli maintains the conceptual relationship between glory and virtu`, the ironic paradoxes that Machiavelli deploys
destabilise the humanist account of virtues and vices, not by decreeing that generosity and promise-keeping are political vices or that cruelty is a political virtue but
by showing that they can be so under a non-trivial range of political circumstances.
Machiavelli, thereby, subverts the thought that what constitutes virtu` can be specied independently and in advance of the specic and contingent circumstances in
which the political actor is situated and the motivations that they bring to these
circumstances.
In these chapters, Machiavellis rhetoric also paves the way for two further steps
directed at the education of the good readeractor. The rst step develops from
the distinction that he has constructed between the appearance of virtu` as judged
by the contemporary humanist audience of the new prince and virtu` as judged by
the audience of future generations. Once this distinction is established, the fact that
the appearance of the new prince as virtuous to his contemporary audience is
consequential for his capacity to sustain his rule and build the foundation of a state
that will persist beyond him ineluctably entails that a prince who is constrained by
circumstance to act immorally must maintain the appearance of moral virtue in its
humanist guise (at least until the political culture is transformed7). The second step
develops from the examples that Machiavelli has provided which portray human
beings, at least in these circumstances, as ckle, untrustworthy and unlikely to
behave well unless given prudential reasons to do so and argues that the new
prince must be prepared to practice force and fraud. As Skinner (1988: xix) has
noted, each of these developments are performed through satirising arguments
advanced in the demonstrative mode by Cicero in De Ociis. In relation to the
rst, Cicero insists that true glory can never be gained by the use of dissimulation
(Skinner, 1988: xix). Machiavelli pours scorn on this contention as an empirical
claim but notably has already undermined its conceptual basis since it is precisely
because the new prince is concerned with the audience of future generations that
he is constrained to dissimulate to his contemporary audience. In relation to the
second, Cicero asserts that there are two approaches to attaining ones ends
through argument, which is appropriate to men, or through force, which is appropriate to beasts and that bestial agency must (as far as possible) be avoided
(Skinner, 1988: xix). Machiavelli punctures this piety by noting that, as Aristotle
(2009: 1179b4-31, 1981: 1311a-b) had, that argument is often ineective and hence
acting as a beast is likely to be necessary. Notably Cicero had rhetorically widened
the beastly mode to encompass both force and fraud represented by the gures of
the lion and the fox (Skinner, 1988: xix) and Machiavelli takes over this imagery as
a way of inverting Ciceros argument:8 Since a ruler, then, must know how to act
like a beast, he should imitate both the fox and the lion, for the lion is liable to be
trapped, whereas the fox cannot ward o wolves. (P ch.18). Machiavelli reinforces
this point by referring to the example of the Roman Emperor Lucius Septimus
Severus of whom it must be concluded that he was a very erce lion and a very
cunning fox, who was feared and respected by everyone, and not hated by his

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soldiers (P ch.19) but it seems probable also, for his educated humanist audience,
that Machiavelli means to juxtapose Ciceros demonstrative exhortation with the
gure and achievements of Sulla who is reported by Plutarch (Life of Sulla) to
have been described by his rival, Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, as having the cunning of
a fox and the courage of a lion. Perhaps too, there is a further level of irony here to
which Machiavelli may be drawing attention, namely, that it was Sullas reforms
and the promotion of the equestrian class within those reforms that created the
conditions under which Cicero could have the career that he did.
Before summing up this discussion, we need to consider a central issue in reading Machiavelli on virtu` for any commentary on il Principe, namely, the relationship of chapters 7 and 8 of il Principe in which Machiavelli considers, respectively,
the cases of Cesare Borgia and Agathocles. The problem is that Machiavelli
appears to praise Borgia for acting in ways that exhibit force, fraud and cruelty
which are not notably distinct from the ways for which Agathocles is apparently
criticized. The argument presented thus far suggests that what counts as virtu` is
highly circumstance-dependent but this case suggests that we need to spell out the
nature of this dependence more fully. Brenner (2013), for example, argues that the
criticism of Agathocles is genuine and is designed to draw the readers reections
back in more sceptical vein to the presentation of Borgia. In doing so, she claims
that Machiavellis is rhetorically disclosing that in his use of the concept of virtu`,
its sense as virtuosity is bounded by its sense as moral virtue (2013: 89121). By
contrast Kahn (1986) claims that the discussion of Agathocles is a rhetorical imitation in prose of the example provided by Borgias public display of the executed
body of his own agent Remirro. Borgias act was a piece of dissimulation designed
to deect hatred and re-assure Borgias subjects of his benevolence, Machiavellis
textual act is a piece of dissimulation designed to deect hatred and re-assure his
readership, or more specically his non-princely readership who fail to discern the
nature of Machiavellis performance, of Machiavellis moral credentials. I incline
to the second of these accounts but with a further twist. The example of
Agathocles does, as Kahn argues, demonstrate that the new prince may be
required to use cruelty well as both Borgia and Agathocles do, but the examples
of Borgia and Agathocles also exemplify a distinction between the lover of glory
and the lover of power. Here, picking up a point made by Lefort (2012), I take
seriously the point that it is in chapter VIII that Machiavelli rst introduces the
theme of gloria into his text and, hence, ties the discussion to the issues of founding
and of representation. The signicant dierence between Borgia and Agathocles as
Machiavelli represents them is that the latter, unlike the former, for all the virtuosity to which Machiavelli draws attention, is not engaged in the activity of
founding, that is, in seeking to establish a stable state that will persist beyond
his own life. This explains not least why, in contrast to Borgia, Agathocles is
unconcerned to dissimulate, to disguise his cruelty, to pay public virtue its due.
While both of their actions may be necessary to secure their rule, it is only Borgias
act as a double act of cruelty and of dissimulation that can be represented as
necessary for founding, expressive of a love of glory and hence open by vindication
by future generations.

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Love of glory thus acts as a hinge on which Machiavellis attempt to persuade

the good man to act immorally when necessary swings by providing such a reader
actor with internal reasons to do so, reasons that would hardly be required by an
actor who is anyway disposed to act immorally. But it is notable that Machiavelli is
not simply seeking to persuade but also to challenge his audience, to test their
commitment to love of glory, that is, their ranking of it within the range of
values or goods to which they take themselves to be committed. Machiavellis
moral audience begin their encounter with his text from an ethical position in
which virtu` oriented to worldly glory and Christian morality oriented to personal
salvation are, through the eorts of the humanist authors in the speculum principis
genre, seen as compatible. However, as the argument proceeds, Machiavelli drives
a wedge between virtu` and Christian morality such that the exercise of virtu` that is
a necessary requirement of the achievement of worldly glory is demonstrated to be
orthogonal to Christian morality. Those for whom love of glory is subordinate to
personal salvation will fail this test; they will be winnowed out from Machiavellis
addressees. We may further note, as Cox (1997) has plausibly argued, that
Machiavellis concern to subvert the Renaissance humanist eorts at reconciling
the ethical outlooks of antiquity and Christianity is repeated in the rhetorical form
of his text in which he not only adopts a deliberative mode but one which, within
the terms of this rhetorical mode, contests the Ciceronian stress on the priority of
honestum to utile and, via the model of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, re-instates a
non-moralised outlook that echoes the Aristotelian approach to deliberative rhetoric against which Ciceros De inventione had explicitly directed itself. This alignment of Machiavellis argument with Aristotle is re-enforced substantively in
chapter 19 as Machiavellis rhetorical focus turns from persuading a presumptively
moral audience of the need to act immorally when necessary to that of persuading a
presumptively immoral audience of the need to avoid acting immorally (at least in
certain respects) when not necessary.
Before we turn to chapter 19, though, we should note that the reading of chapters 1618 oered thus far is incomplete in one important respect. I have argued
that each of these chapters oers a specic demonstration for the good reader of
the claim that concludes chapter 15:
for if one considers everything well one will nd that something that appears to be
virtu`, which if pursued, would be ones ruin; and something else appears to be vice,
which if pursued results in ones security and well being (P ch.15, translation
adjusted).

For the good reader who understands virtu` as moral virtue, this provides an
education in the paradoxes of moral virtue that acts to destabilise the humanist
account of virtue. However, it is also the case that within each of these chapters
Machiavelli is utilising the semantic ambiguity of virtu` as virtue/virtuousity. For
the bad reader who understands virtu` as virtuosity, these chapters provides an
education that foreshadows what becomes utterly explicit in chapter 19, namely,
that conduct such as cruelty which may appear prudentially appropriate can

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lead to ruin in the forms of generating hatred and contempt on the part of the
people.
In targeting this audience of bad men, Machiavelli continues his rhetorical
strategy of incorporating factors liable to aect success into the concept of virtu`
by arguing that acting immorally only when necessary is the prudent strategy for
those who would aim at the (re-)foundation of the state. This strategy is most
obviously present in his repeated stress on the need for the ruler to avoid hatred
and contempt on the part of his subjects if he wishes to maintain his state. Thus in
chapter 19 which specically focuses on this topic, Machiavelli simply echoes
Aristotles argument that to avoid hatred, the ruler must restrain himself from
appropriating the property or the women of his subjects, while passing silently
over the Roman moralist argument, most eloquently advanced by Seneca, and to
which Machiavelli has already responded, that the avoidance of hatred also
requires the avoidance of cruelty (Skinner, 1988: xxii). In respect of contempt,
Machiavelli (P ch.19) argues that contempt can be avoided by il principe nuovo if
his actions display grandeur, courage, seriousness and strength and he engages in
undertaking schemes of a kind that keep the entire populace in a state of perpetual
wonder and amazement (Skinner, 1988: xxiii). Maintaining the goodwill and
respect of ones subjects, at least in this minimal sense, is thus, Machiavelli
urges, prudentially necessary for the maintenance of the state. This message is,
then, reiterated in the seemingly disconnected following chapter, chapter 20, on
whether fortresses are useful with Machiavelli acknowledging that if a ruler is
more afraid of his own subjects than foreigners, he should build fortresses
(P ch.20) before radically delimiting the value of such a strategy:
. . . the best fortress a ruler can have is not to be hated by the people: for if you possess
fortresses and the people hate you, having fortresses will not save you, since if the
people rise up there will never be any lack of foreign powers ready to help them.
(P ch.20)

He concludes sharply: I criticise anyone who relies upon fortresses, and does
not worry about incurring the hatred of the people. (P ch.20). In this discussion,
Machiavelli is, with typical psychological acuteness, anticipating and responding to
the sceptical temptation liable to occur to the bad readeractor, not least in the
light of Machiavellis own earlier arguments, namely, that hatred generated by the
appropriation of ones subjects property or women could be handled by the use of
force. Notice that once again Machiavelli is challenging his audience but this time
his challenge is directed at those for whom the primary causes of hatred by ones
subjects represent standing temptations and the test of their commitment to love of
glory is the exercise of self-restraint. Those in Machiavellis audience whose love of
glory is not sucient for the relevant exercise of such self-restraint are thus winnowed from his addressees.
It should be noted, however, Machiavellis text also performs a second strategy
that addresses a more global and subtle threat to the capacity of love of glory to
constrain the bad readeractor. The achievement of glory is predicated on how

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ones achievements appear to future generations but then why should a lover of
glory be constrained in their immorality if they are suciently skilled in dissimulation? If the contemporary political audience can be gulled, why not assume that
the same applies to the future audience? Machiavellis response here is performed
by his text both in the chapter in question (One present day ruler, whom it is well
to leave unnamed, is always preaching peace and trust, although he is really very
hostile to both; . . . (P ch.18)) and throughout il Principe. The rhetorical construction of his authorial persona as the acute dispassionate observer removed from
current political events piercing the veils of dissimulation erected by rulers oers a
demonstration of the point that while the new prince may be able to gull his present
audience, his deceptions will be discerned by skilled observers such as Machiavelli
who enjoy critical distance from the events in question and, more pertinently, the
future audience informed by commentators such as Machiavelli on whose judgment the princes achievement of glory rests.
If these reections are cogent, Machiavellis appeal to love of glory can act as a
pivot on which to re-shape the ethical conduct of il principe nuovo such that this
gure is willing to act immorally when necessary but only when necessary and it
can do so irrespective of the moral disposition of the readeractor as long as they
are practically committed to love of glory as the highest human good.9 Notice
further that this argument also connects the advice form in which the writing is
performed to the political education that it enacts. For the rhetorical form of the
text shifts the readers perspective so that, with necessities and limitations for
achieving political glory in mind, the reader is attuned to the political education
of judgment the work provides.

Political Judgment and the Conditions of Glory

The second aspect under which we will address the task of production is that of
political education. Machiavelli is not simply concerned to reshape the ethical
orientation of his addressees but to teach an art of judgment. Yet it is a notable
feature of il Principe that it oers no complete exemplar of il principe nuovo. The
puzzle, as Breiner (2008: 67) notes, is that the concept of the new prince as innovator drives the whole account of what a prince must do to acquire, secure and
found a state; yet this gure is disaggregated into a variety of examples which do
not coalesce to produce a composite of the new prince.. Breiners (2008: 67) cogent
proposal is that:
the reason for this glaring discrepancy in il Principe between the paradigmatic gure of
the new prince in a new state and the impossibility of exemplifying him rests on a
problem that the text seeks to raise but not resolve: namely, given the impossibility for
a new prince to ever get beyond the moment of original acquisition of a state . . . there
can be no overall theoretical resolution to this tension, and thus no closure to this text.
Rather, the text draws us into this dilemma, and then forces us to use our imaginative
capacity to understand the way it is working itself out in our own
situation. . . . Machiavellis text addresses a readeractor who has to assemble the

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maxims and examples by him/herself under the pressure of the recurring nagging
necessities governing the primordial origin of all states.

To see the value of this proposal, we need rst to explicate the problem raised in
the text, second to consider the rhetorical strategy through which Machiavelli aims
to guide the readeractor in acquiring the art of judgment that he aims to teach,
and third, moving beyond Breiners own argument, to consider how a readeractor
who has acquired this art of judgment is drawn to make inferences from it concerning the conditions of realising glory.
The problem that il Principe raises but cannot resolve within the text derives
from what Machiavelli takes to be a fundamental fact about political societies:
namely, the desire of the nobles to dominate and oppress the people, and the desire
of the people not to be dominated or oppressed by the nobles (P ch.9; Breiner,
2008: 72). The relationship of these two dispositions, Machiavelli argues, can
give rise to three political outcomes in cities: principality, republic, or anarchy.
The specic problem raised in il Principe for the gure of il principe nuovo can
be put thus:
The desire of ordinary people to change masters, to escape domination and rule,
provides the prince with the occasion to seize power. However, once having successfully won the support of the people to displace the previous rulers and impose his own
rule, he has to convince the people that his rule will be dierent a claim on which he
cannot make good while facing enemies whom he has injured, particularly among
the nobles, who would like nothing better than to exact revenge. The result is that he
invariably has erce enemies and weak, indeed disappointed, supporters. So the very
condition that allows the prince to seize lo stato the desire of the people to change
masters provides the conditions for another prince to overthrow the new prince. This
problem is increased exponentially for the new prince seeking to be the founder of a
new order, for he must convince the people of the benets of new laws and institutions
before they have experienced the benets while the few who benet from the old laws
know precisely what they are losing and oppose the prince as innovator or inventor of
a new state with corresponding intensity. (Breiner, 2008: 71)

As Breiner (2008: 71) notes: The same problem recurs throughout The Prince,
always with the same intractable set of necessities. However, the problem is expansive adding new problems and new actors to this paradigmatic necessity.
Against this backdrop, let turn to consider the rhetorical strategy through which
Machiavelli attempts to educate his readeractor. We can start by drawing attention to the grammatical character of il Principe which rotates around factual and
hypothetical conditionals of the kind, whoever seeks to acquire stato (command
over human beings in a territory) must do x, or x and y but avoid z (Breiner,
2008: 75). One way to think about the point of this grammatical structure is to
consider Machiavellis text as a politics simulator, by analogy with a ight simulator, in which the readeractor is, through the literary ction of il principe nuovo,
successively situated in a range of scenarios varying according to type of state,

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means of acquisition, dilemmas of military strength and problems of civil rule

which test the virtu of the readeractor by requiring him, guided by
Machiavellis examples, to engage imaginatively with each scenario and train his
political judgment through it. The fundamental political problem Machiavellis text
raises is expressed in and through the rules that dynamically generate the content of
these diverse scenarios.
Notice, on this account, that Machiavelli is doing two things. The rst is providing a training in the art of political judgment appropriate to a new prince who is
liable to face some of the types of scenario laid out in il Principe such that they can
respond to the specic situations that they face. The second is guiding the reader
actor to recognition of the recurrent generative problem that il principe nuovo
confronts in these various scenarios. It is this second feature on which I want to
concentrate in order to advance the discussion, but to do so we need to return once
again to the role of glory.
Glory, as I have already stressed, involves a relationship between the agent and
their acts, on the one hand, and the judgments of an audience of future generations,
on the other. The issue of the audience-dependency and, indeed, possible audiencerelativity of glory, in turn, shapes those acts and achievements that are liable to be
accorded glory because the stable or enduring achievement of glory requires that
the excellence of the act or achievement be recognised as such across future generations. Hence those acts or achievements that can most plausibly be assured of
glory are those that are constitutive of the non-instrumentally valuable identities of
future generations. This is the reason that in his Discorsi, Machiavelli claims that
founders of religions are accorded most glory followed by political founders. The
secure (re-)foundation of a state is a necessary condition of the highest political
glory not simply because it is a demonstration of political virtuosity but because it
is constitutive of the non-instrumentally valuable identity of the future audience on
whose judgment the political glory of the agent depends.
Yet for the astute readeractor of il Principe, this relationship of glory and the
secure foundation of a state now represents a problem. In learning Machiavellis
lesson that the new prince is perpetually thrust back into dynamics of the original
moment of acquisition, in coming to recognise that while Machiavellis advice can
enable the virtuoso prince to improvise eectively, the need for such improvisation
is never-ceasing, this readeractor is brought to acknowledge both the near impossibility of securely founding a principality that will endure beyond the individual
virtuoso performance of il principe nuovo and that just this achievement is the
condition of enduring political glory. To account for the existence of hereditary
principalities, Machiavelli must acknowledge as he does that the secure foundation of a principality can occur but it is clear that such events are to be seen as
products of exceptional good fortune. (Given enough spins, a coin will produce a
run of ten heads in a row but that is no reason to stake ones reputation on this
happening in the next ten spins.)
This point is rubbed in further by Machiavellis discussion of fortuna in chapter
24 in which having alerted the readeractor to the capabilities and limits of virtuoso
action when confronted by external fortune, Machiavelli extends the realm of

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fortuna from the eld in which the prince is situated to the personal constitution of
the prince. Here Machiavelli points to a disjuncture between the constant requirements of maintaining a state (the ability to be exible under changing circumstances, to vary ones tactics as required) and the inability of human beings,
either in virtue of natural constitution or in virtue of cognitive biases, to exhibit
such exibility. It is not simply that the new prince cannot have any faith that their
rule will endure beyond them; they also cannot have any secure condence that
their rule will be sustainable through their own lives.
Here we nd Machiavellis last test of his remaining audiences love of glory and
his powers of political judgment, for Machiavelli has already indicated a plausible
alternative to the attentive readeractor in chapter 9 when noting that another
possible outcome of clash of nobles and populace is a republic. And Machiavelli
has also already drawn attention to the resilience of the collective memory of a
republican people in chapter 5 when presenting the impossibility of ruling such a
people as a limit-case for the new princes virtuosity. Indeed, republics, as
Machiavellis audience know well from their reading of the Roman historians,
are communities of historical memory in which the highest glory is granted to
founders and re-founders. This is, of course, also a point stressed by
Machiavellis Discorsi. Thus, the last lesson of il Principe is simply this: a commitment to love of worldly political glory on the part of the prince nds its most secure
realization in the gure of the new prince who acquires a state and founds a republic.
As Brenner (2013: 317) puts this point:
The most virtuoso prince is thus one who makes himself redundant qua prince in the
usual monarchical sense. Voluntary self-elimination is the most logical means of
achieving a reectively prudent princes ends . . . Princely rule defeats itself unless it
transcends itself.

The factors that generate the fundamental problem confronted by il principe

nuovo structure Machiavellis innovative re-casting of the politics of the republic
away from a classical stress on harmony to an agonic republic whose endurance is
grounded in the institutionalization of the mutually limiting conict of the people
and the nobles. Whereas the new prince is caught within and between the conict
between the people and the nobles such that he must perpetually improvise to
sustain his rule, the institutionalisation of this conict through, for example, a
senate and a tribunate in a republic can generate relatively enduring conditions
of political stability.

Conclusion
As Hampton (1990: 45) remarks perhaps to a greater extent than those of any
other period, the texts of the Renaissance stress the importance of their relationship
to their readers . . . one might say that it is in fact from their relationships to their
readers and to the space in which those readers dene themselves through action
that Renaissance texts derive their structure and rhetorical strategies. This, I have

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argued, is certainly the case with Machiavellis il Principe whose complex rhetorical
performance pivots around its construction of a relationship to its readeractor as
a lover of worldly glory. In introducing this reading I suggested that its denouement leads me to agree with Mary Dietz that it is a trap for the would-be new
prince albeit one that is predicated on education rather than deception, but it is a
trap only in the sense that it leads Machiavellis addressees to a conclusion that
they would not have embraced at the start of their encounter with his text and
there is another better name for such a trap, it is enlightenment.
Acknowledgements
*An earlier version of this essay was presented at the American Political Science Association
annual conference in Chicago, 2013 alongside the papers by Tracy Strong and Patchen
Markell with Sharon Krause acting as discussant. I am grateful to Tracy, Patchen and
particularly Sharon, as well as the audience, for helpful criticisms and comments. I owe a
particular debt to Peter Breiner for commenting insightfully on at least two versions of this
paper and I also owe signicant debts to Jill Frank and to Erica Brenner for acute readings
and extremely helpful suggestions for revision.

Notes
1. For a classic and still valuable discussion, see Price (1977).
2. We may note that Nietzsches (2005) concern here is with how to produce great individuals not as accidents of fortune but as the regular and predictable outcomes of cultural
institutions. Machiavellis objections to Christianity suggest a related concern albeit one
with more restricted scope.
3. Although it should be noted that Sulla is not a fully successful example of such a prince in
Machiavellis terms.
4. There is a second political reason for Machiavelli to attempt to weaken the ideological
grip of Christianity that concerns the disastrous political situation in Italy and the role of
the Church in obstructing any resolution to this situation. While Cesare Borgia exhibits
many of the traits required of il Principe nuovo, his great failing was not to control the
Papacy when he had the opportunity (P ch.7, cf. Scott and Sullivan, 1994). Machiavellis
attempt in il Principe to weaken the ideological power of Christianity may be read also an
effort to enhance the prospect of his readeractor being prepared to do whatever is
necessary to subordinate the temporal power of the Church.
5. I thank Jill Frank for helping me to see this point.
6. I am grateful to Peter Breiner for helping me to see this point.
7. How does the text of il Principe act constitutively towards the generation of a political
culture that reproduces political agents who are disposed to such motivation and education. It does so to the extent that it supports an alternative order of rank to that of
Christianity, a task which it addresses through its effects to the degree that it is successful
in the production of political agents characterised by love of glory who can stand as
exemplars of such a re-evaluation of values, but which it also contributes to as a cultural
text that itself exemplifies such a re-evaluation. il Principe attempts both in its substance
and through its rhetorical form to exploit and explode the rapprochement that renaissance humanism sought between classical and Christian outlooks. It performs this task
not by directly criticising Christianity but by simultaneously exalting love of worldly
glory and attacking those Roman moralist arguments about both politics and rhetoric

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that are crucial to the attempt to reconcile Christianity and classical thought. This fits
with Machiavellis wider anti-Christian agenda as noted in section I of this essay.
8. There is some controversy on this issue, for an overview and a distinctive intervention, see
Lukes (2001).
9. We can note the distinctiveness of Machiavellis argument by contrasting it with a contemporary attempt to address the problem that political conduct is liable to require acting
immorally. In Politics and Moral Character, Bernard Williams (1978: 64) argues that the
ineluctability of this problem entails that one should look for moral politicians on
the (intuitively plausible) grounds that only those who are reluctant or disinclined to
do the morally disagreeable when it is really necessary have much chance of not doing it
when it is not necessary. This argument, however, both understates the problem and in
doing so surrenders to it. The point is not only that we need politicians who will not act
immorally simply when it is expedient, but that we also need politicians that will act
immorally when it is necessary and here Williams has little to offer. Consider that I may
be a political agent who believes that there are certain actions that are, and will remain,
morally abhorrent but that can, nevertheless, be politically justified under specific circumstances. However, although the fact that I have a moral disposition combined with a
belief that moral considerations can, at a cost, be overridden by political necessity makes
it likely that I will not engage in morally disagreeable actions when they are not necessary,
it does not license the conclusion that I will act immorally when it is necessary. There is a
significant difference between my having the belief that it would be justified to act immorally in these political circumstances, even that it is politically necessary, and my being
willing so to act. Ironically, the inadequacy of Williams argument hangs on a point that
he has rightly made much of elsewhere, namely, it can be an ethically salient feature of my
evaluation of an act that I did it or, in the case of prior deliberation, that it would be me
that has done it (recall his discussion of Ajaxs suicide). Just this ethical feature, the fact
that I did it, however, is turned by Machiavelli into a resource for stating and resolving
the problem that Williams avoids by introducing love of glory as the hinge of which his
rhetorical strategy swings.

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