Machiavelli is a fascinating figure, and I have been trying to figure him out ever since we were assigned "The Prince" as a senior in high school.
However, a few years ago I stumbled on to a philosopher, Sir Isaiah Berlin, who has some very interesting essays reflecting on Machiavelli. It was the first time I was introduced to the concept of pluralism in philosophy (what Berlin calls "objective pluralism- which he explains). I was transfixed the first time I read those essays. I finally was able to start to make sense of ethics and it created a useful framework and model from which to think about ethics for me. Later, I learned that this idea of pluralism was also present in many of the classic American pragmatists as well, such as William James and John Dewey. But no one puts it better than Isaiah Berlin (I apologize for quoting at length, but I think this is so insightful that that is necessary):
"What was common to all these outlooks was the belief that solutions to the central problems existed, that one could discover them, and, with sufficient selfless effort, realise them on earth.They all believed that the essence of human beings was to be able to choose how to live: societies could be transformed in the lightof true ideals believed in with enough fervour and dedication...
At some point I realised that what all these views had in common was a Platonic ideal: in the first place that, as in the sciences, all genuine questions must have one true answer and one only, all the rest being necessarily errors; in the second place that there must be a dependable path towards the discovery of these truths; in the third place that the true answers, when found, must necessarily be compatible with one another and form a single whole, for one truth cannot be incompatible with another – that we knew a priori.... True, we might never get to this condition of perfect knowledge – we may be too feeble-witted, or too weak or corruptor sinful, to achieve this. The obstacles, both intellectual and those of external nature, may be too many. Moreover, opinions, as I say, had widely differed about the right path to pursue – some found it in Churches, some in laboratories; some believed in intuition, others in experiment, or in mystical visions, or in mathematical calculation. But even if we could not ourselves reach these true answers, or indeed, the final system that interweaves them all, the answers must exist – else the questions were not real. The answers must be known to someone: perhaps Adam in Paradise knew; perhaps we shall only reach them at the end of days; if men cannot know them, perhaps the angels know; and if not the angels, thenGod knows. The timeless truths must in principle be knowable....
At a certain stage in my reading, I naturally met with the principal works of Machiavelli. They made a deep and lasting impression [8]upon me, and shook my earlier faith. I derived from them not the most obvious teachings – on how to acquire and retain political power, or by what force or guile rulers must act if they are to regenerate their societies...But Machiavelli also sets side by side with this the notion ofChristian virtues – humility, acceptance of suffering, unworldliness, the hope of salvation in an afterlife – and here marks that if, as he plainly himself favours, a State of a Roman type is to be established, these qualities will not promote it: those who live by the precepts of Christian morality are bound to betrampled on by the ruthless pursuit of power on the part of men who alone can re-create and dominate the republic which he wants to see. He does not condemn Christian virtues. He merely points out that the two moralities are incompatible, and he does not recognise an overarching criterion whereby we are enabled to decide the right life for men. The combination of virtù andChristian values is for him an impossibility. He simply leaves youto choose – he knows which he himself prefers.The idea that this planted in my mind was the realisation, which came as something of a shock, that not all the supreme [9] values pursued by mankind now and in the past were necessarily compatible with one another. It undermined my earlier assumption, based on the philosophia perennis, that there could be no conflict between true ends, true answers to the central problems of life...." (see next post)
