Anyone who teaches political philosophy knows the joy of reading and teaching The Prince by Machiavelli. Years ago, in just such a class I had this joyful experience:

The 1986 World Exposition on Transportation and Communication, or simply Expo ’86, was a World’s Fair held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from Friday, May 2 until Monday, October 13, 1986. The fair, the theme of which was “Transportation and Communication: World in Motion – World in Touch”, coincided with Vancouver’s centennial and was held on the north shore of False Creek. It was the second time that Canada held a World’s Fair, the first being Expo 67 in Montreal (during the Canadian Centennial). It was also the third World’s Fair to be held in the Pacific Northwest in the last 26 years as of 1986 and as of 2014 it still stands as the latest World’s Fair to be held in North America.

At the time, the Social Credit Party was in power in BC. Bill Bennett was Premier, following in the footsteps of his father, longtime Premier W.A.C Bennett, aka, “Wacky Bennett.” There was a great deal of labour unrest in the province at the time: strikes, rallies, rhetoric flying back and forth between the provincial labour leaders and the government of the day. Teachers were pissed off. The lumber industry was in turmoil. Shut downs threatened the peace and stability of the corporations of the province.

I was teaching a political philosophy class and we were early in the term studying “The Prince” by Machiavelli. I set as a paper topic an essay – “Imagine the ghost of Machiavelli is speaking through you to a modern-day Prince who is losing political support in his region, and facing serious difficulties from teachers, and workers of all stripes. There is fear that he may lose power. You (as Machiavelli) are to give political advice to the “prince” that will enable him to stay in power and calm his subjects.”

A couple of days after handing out the assignment I received a phone call from a colleague at the college who told me that I was in trouble. “I was on a tour with the local Socred Party leaders and someone was handing out your assignment to everyone. Most of the folks were angry feeling you were out of line to be suggesting that their leader was a prince, was losing support, needed advice on how to stay in power and so forth.”

Soon I received a phone call from the president,  Bruce Fraser. Dr. Fraser told me that the College Board had discussed my assignment and were unhappy and wanted to teach me a lesson. I explained my approach. He asked if he could attend the class. “Of course,” said I, “it’s one of those three-hour night classes – so be prepared.”

He came to class. I had marked those papers and selected three or four to be read in class. Students read their papers. To rounds of applause. All of them connected  Expo 86 to the advice given by Machiavelli: “In trouble, dear Prince ? host a tournament or a large fair.” And more than just the Fair; they had read the text closely and related it to present day beautifully. [Source]

One of the problems with the text is what sort of text is it? Is it straight forward advice to a prince? Bristling with real politic advice worthy of a modern day seeker of power or a satire on those very bits of “advice”.  One interesting approach to the text is this: “My take on this book is representative of a widely held (but distinctly minority) view of The Prince, namely, that the book is, first and foremost, a satire, so that many of the things we find in it which are contradictory, morally absurd, and specious are there quite deliberately in order to ridicule two things—first, the Medici family itself and, second, the very notion of tyrannical rule embodied in the government of the Prince (hence, the satire has a firm moral purpose—to expose tyranny and promote republican government). Such a way of reading this text, it should be clear, is distinctly at odds with any reading which assumes that Machiavelli’s analysis and text are totally without ironical undercurrents which qualify, indeed contradict, his literal “message.”” [Source]

Others, of course, read the text unironically, in an attempt to attach Machiavelli’s advice to some moral vision similar to utilitarianism – suggesting that Machiavelli is urging the Prince to think of the greatest good for the greatest number of people. But, of course, he is never clear about such a program, and the tactics proposed seem not to care much at all about the overall welfare of the people.

Even his worst critics doubted that Machiavelli could be taken at face value. In one of the first reactions to the Prince on record, Cardinal Reginald Pole declares that its devil’s-spawn author can’t seriously be recommending deception and oath-breaking and the like, since any prince who does these things will make swarms of enemies and self-destruct. To Pole, what later generations would call Machiavellian realism looked utterly unrealistic. Then during the Napoleonic Wars, amoral realist readings started to drive out rival interpretations. German philosophers like Fichte and Hegel invoked Machiavelli as an early champion of national unification, if necessary by means of blood and iron. Italian nationalists of the left and right soon followed. Since then, almost everyone has read Machiavelli through some sort of national-ends-justify-amoral-means prism. Some scholars stress his otherwise moral republicanism. Others insist that he was indifferent to any moral good other than that of personal or collective survival. But it’s become very, very hard to question the ‘realpolitik in the last instance’ reading.

 

Nowadays this reading appeals to people for lots of reasons. It sounds bold and sexily subversive to anyone who’s sceptical about all sorts of ‘traditional’ moralities. It’s more fun to teach (or take) university courses on political philosophy from Plato to Nato if you can throw an amoral Machiavelli into the mix, challenging all previous political ethics. And then there are his texts. Machiavelli provides a wealth of quotable quotes that can easily be worked up into a theory of realpolitik. Since men generally are ‘ungrateful, fickle pretenders and dissemblers, and evaders of danger,’ for example, princes have to know ‘how not to be good,’ or they’ll fall prey to unscrupulous others. If you focus on jump-off-page statements like these and take them for the essence of Machiavelli’s thought, it seems fair enough to assume that he’s some sort of amoral ‘realist.’ [Source]

Erica Benner has written the most comprehensive book yet arguing that The Prince is full throated satire. [Read an interview with her at 3:AM Magazine] Her book takes one on a journey into late 15^th and early 16 century Europe where we discover Machiavelli firmly located in his place and time. Benner argues forcefully that satire is the genre most familiar to Machiavelli and that he really does not deserve the usual connotations of his name: manipulator, schemer, wheeler-dealer, exploiter.

What she has written is “A myth-shattering portrait of one of history’s most celebrated, most notorious political thinkers: Niccolo Machiavelli.

Since the publication of The Prince five centuries ago, Niccolo Machiavelli has become a byword for political amorality. But in Be Like The Fox, Erica Benner reveals instead an ardent republican whose life was a passionate struggle to restore the democratic freedoms of his beloved Florence, a city wrecked by greed, power and decades of conflict.

This intimate, ground-breaking new book takes us on a journey into Machiavelli’s world and into his mind. Machiavelli was a man with a great love of life: entertaining, tolerant, charismatic – and above all, wise and deeply humane. In exploring his encounters, relationships and, in particular, his conversations, Benner shows how he developed some of the most influential political ideas of all time.

Teach The Prince for sure! And supplement the text with Benner’s book. Enjoy!

 

© 2017 Bob Lane

 

Bob Lane is emeritus professor of philosophy at Vancouver Island University.