Machiavelli's Ethics

by Benner, Erica

• ISBN13: 9781400831845
• ISBN10: 1400831849
• Copyright: 2009-11-25
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Machiavelli's Ethicschallenges the most entrenched understandings of Machiavelli, arguing that he was a moral and political philosopher who consistently favored the rule of law over that of men, that he had a coherent theory of justice, and that he did not defend the "Machiavellian" maxim that the ends justify the means. By carefully reconstructing the principled foundations of his political theory, Erica Benner gives the most complete account yet of Machiavelli's thought. She argues that his difficult and puzzling style of writing owes far more to ancient Greek sources than is usually recognized, as does his chief aim: to teach readers not how to produce deceptive political appearances and rhetoric, but how to see through them. Drawing on a close reading of Greek authors--including Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, and Plutarch--Benner identifies a powerful and neglected key to understanding Machiavelli.This important new interpretation is based on the most comprehensive study of Machiavelli's writings to date, including a detailed examination of all of his major works:The Prince, The Discourses, The Art of War,andFlorentine Histories. It helps explain why readers such as Bacon and Rousseau could see Machiavelli as a fellow moral philosopher, and how they could viewThe Princeas an ethical and republican text. By identifying a rigorous structure of principles behind Machiavelli's historical examples, the book should also open up fresh debates about his relationship to later philosophers, including Rousseau, Hobbes, and Kant.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Abbreviations	p. xv
Introduction	p. 1
Arguments: Philosophical ethics and the rule of law	p. 5
Sources: Greek ethics	p. 8
Contexts
Civil Reasonings: Machiavelli's Practical Filosofia	p. 15
Florentine Histories: Decent words, indecent deeds	p. 16
Flawed remedies: Rhetoric and power politics	p. 25
Flawed analyses: Self-celebratory versus self-critical histories	p. 30
Philosophy and the vita activa in Florentine humanism	p. 37
What is, has been, and can reasonably be: Machiavelli's correspondence	p. 43
The Socratic tradition of philosophical politics	p. 49
Forming republics in writing and in practice: The Discursus	p. 54
Ancient Sources: Dissimulation in Greek Ethics	p. 63
Constructive dissimulation: Writing as civil "medicine"	p. 64
Inoculation for citizens: Words and deeds in Xenophon's Cyropaedia	p. 71
Conversations with rulers: Plutarch and Xenophon on purging tyranny	p. 78
Dissimulating about deception: Xenophon's Cambyses	p. 84
Dissimulating about justice: Thucydides' Diodotus	p. 88
Foundations
Imitation and Knowledge	p. 101
The ancient tradition of imitating ancients	p. 101
Inadequate imitation: The "unreasonable praise of antiquity"	p. 107
Historical judgment: Criticism of sources and self-examination	p. 111
The Socratic metaphor of hunting	p. 116
Ethical judgment: The "true knowledge of histories"	p. 124
Machiavelli's dangerous new reasonings	p. 132
N ecessity and Virtue	p. 135
The rhetoric of necessity	p. 136
Necessita as an excuse	p. 140
Necessita as a pretext	p. 142
Imposing and removing necessita	p. 147
Virtu as reflective prudence: Taking stock of ordinary constraints	p. 150
Under- and overassertive responses to necessity	p. 153
Virtu as self-responsibility: Authorizing constraints on one's own forces	p. 156
Virtu as autonomy: Imposing one's own orders and laws	p. 161
Necessita and fortuna	p. 166
Human Nature and Human Orders	p. 169
Fortune and free will	p. 170
How to manage fortuna: Impetuosity and respetto	p. 175
Practical theology: Heavenly judgments and human reasons	p. 180
Practical prophecies: Foreseeing the future by "natural virtues"	p. 184
Moral psychology: The malignita of human nature and the discipline of virtu	p. 190
Human zoology: The ways of men and beasts	p. 197
Human cities, where modes are neither delicate nor too harsh	p. 201
Who is responsible for the laws? Human reasoning and civilita	p. 206
Principles
Free Agency and Desires for Freedom	p. 213
The Discourses on desires for freedom in and among cities	p. 214
The Florentine Histories on freedom and the need for self-restraint	p. 221
Are desires for freedom universal?	p. 226
Inadequate conceptions of freedom	p. 231
The rhetoric of liberta in republics	p. 239
Free will and free agency	p. 244
Free Orders	p. 254
Priorities I: Respect for free agency as a condition for stable orders	p. 255
Priorities II: Willing authorization as the foundation of free orders	p. 259
Conditions I: Universal security	p. 262
Conditions II: Transparency and publicity	p. 266
Conditions III: Equal opportunity	p. 269
Foundations of political freedom: Procedural constraints and the rule of law	p. 279
Persuasions: Why should people choose free orders?	p. 287
Justice and Injustice	p. 290
Justice as the basis of order and liberta	p. 291
Partisan accounts of justice	p. 299
Non-partisan persuasions toward justice	p. 306
Why it is dangerous to violate the law of nations	p. 309
Forms of justice: Promises, punishments, and distributions	p. 314
Ignorance of justice: Who is responsible for upholding just orders?	p. 320
Ends and Means	p. 325
Responsibility for bad outcomes: The dangers of giving counsel	p. 326
Judging wars by post facto outcomes	p. 331
Judging wars by anticipated outcomes	p. 335
Reflective consequentialism or deontology?	p. 340
Problem 1: Unjust means corrupt good ends	p. 343
Problem 2: Who can be trusted to foresee effects?	p. 347
Problem 3: Who can be trusted to identify good ends?	p. 351
Problem 4: Corrupting examples	p. 357
Corrupt judgments: Means and ends in the Prince	p. 360
Politics
Ordinary and Extraordinary Authority	p. 367
The antithesis between ordinary and extraordinary modes	p. 367
Are conspiracies ever justified?	p. 373
Extraordinary and ordinary ways to renovate corrupt cities	p. 380
Unreasonable uses of religion: Easy ways to acquire authority	p. 386
Reasonable uses of religion: Fear of God and fear of human justice	p. 394
Folk religion and civil reasoning	p. 400
Legislators and Princes	p. 407
Spartan founders and refounders: Lycurgus, Agis, and Cleomenes	p. 408
Roman founders and legislators: Romulus and Aeneas	p. 418
God's executors and modes of free building: Moses	p. 424
Ordinary mortals and the ancient ideal of the one-man legislator	p. 432
Persuasion in the Prince: On maintaining one's own arms	p. 437
Princely knowledge and the "knowledge of peoples"	p. 447
E xpansion and Empire	p. 451
Why republics must expand: The defects of non-expansionist republics	p. 451
Three modes: Equal partnership, subjection to one, and the Roman mode	p. 454
The Roman "middle way": Making subjects or partners	p. 458
Bad Roman modes, good Roman orders: The choice between extremes	p. 464
Why Roman imperio became pernicious: The wars with Carthage	p. 468
Expansion by partnership: The forgotten Tuscan league	p. 475
Should Florence imitate Rome?	p. 478
Conclusions	p. 484
This interpretation and others	p. 490
Machiavelli and the ethical foundations of political philosophy	p. 496
Bibliography	p. 499
Index	p. 509
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.