Further Thoughts on I 1

So, I said I wanted to keep all comments on a given chapter in a single post, but that’s not going to work out. Sorry.

Let’s start with the title. Mansfield (p. 33) says that it asks question but I read it more as a declarative. Machiavelli is going to tell us “what have been universally the beginnings of any city, and what was that of Rome.” General to particular, I also note.

Regarding the friend/enemy distinction, Machiavelli uses his first “I say” (dico). Whereas there had been three “I believe”s (creda/credo) in the proem: 1) he “believes” he can bring common benefit to everyone; 2) he “believes” that the reason no one in his time imitates ancient deeds is owning “not so much to the weakness into which the present religion has led the world,” etc.; and 3) he “believes” that he can carry his enterprise far enough so that someone else can complete it with relative ease. I note that the central use refers to Christianity being the main cause of the world’s present troubles. 
What he “says” here is that all cites are built by foreigners and natives. The phrase “I say” obviously draws attention to Machiavelli himself, presumably to emphasize that he is here setting himself apart, presumably from the common opinion or the tradition or both. Although the statement in and of itself is inoffensive and almost tautological. Of course all cities must be built by natives for foreigners. Once you’ve divided the human race based on where they were born, native v. foreigner turn out to be exhaustive categories. So why distinguish this point at all?

I suspect he is trying to indicate the differences between his teaching and the classical/Biblical tradition. I made this point earlier in the discussion of Genesis 11. To elaborate that a bit, according to the Bible, God is the cause of political division. Man in His original creation is united. They anger him with their presumption. The Tower episode reminds us of Eden; they try to reach God or come to know what God does not want them to know (though it does not appear that they violated any express command). Interestingly, too, God’s concern about united man is that they appear to be capable of anything. On seeing the Tower, God says to Himself “now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” So He divides them and then, in the next chapter, chooses one of them to be the patriarch of His chosen people. 
But also, when Machiavelli “says” that all cities are built by natives or foreigners, the implication is that the friend/enemy distinction is truly fundamental and NOT, as the classical philosophers would have it, a fundamental lie. There is no brotherhood of man. Division is not merely endemic but essential to the human condition.

Of the three reasons Machiavelli cites for the building of cities by foreigners—1) to relieve lands of inhabitants, 2) to defend a conquered territory; 3) for a prince’s glory—the first two relate to the common good whereas the third is a private good (though it may incidentally turn out to be good for the inhabitants).

There is a difficulty with the example of Florence, which is give as an example of a city built by foreigners. Either it was built by soldiers of Sulla or by people in the mountains above Fiesole: Machiavelli does not know or at least does not take a position. Either way, it had a foreign beginning. This is curious for at least two reasons. First, in Machiavelli’s account, Florence was built in the 1st century BC, when Rome had long (for centuries) held Tuscany. So in what sense were these people “foreign”?

Presumably the soldiers of Sulla were Roman citizens. One result of the Social War (91-88 BC) was to grant all Italians Roman citizenship. Be this as it may, even if they were not legally citizens, “foreigner” seems a stretch. I note also that Florence in NM’s account here was not built for any of those three reasons (relieve the lands, defend conquest, prince’s glory). Which brings me to the second reason why this example is curious: when NM spoke of Athens and Venice as cities built by natives, he says that they have to move, presumably not far, but move nonetheless to a site that is more advantageous to live in and easier to defend. Now, the builders of Florence in his account did not move for these reasons; at least not the latter reason, because the plain is harder to defend than the mountains, though it is a more advantageous place to live. But neither did they move very far. It’s barely five miles from the mountains above Fiesole to the plain of the Arno. So, again, how were they “foreigners”? Perhaps the answer lies in the clause “it was built under the Roman Empire.” That is, in what he has said so far, NM implies that all cities built by natives are free, whereas those built by foreigners may be dependent or free. In other words, all dependent cities are built by foreigners. But with that clause, perhaps NM is taking that back. The key point about Florence—no matter who built it—was that it was built under the Empire. It was not free, even if natives built it. Hence even native beginnings can be unfree. 

I can’t answer this definitively but I can suggest some reasons for what Nick is doing here. Machiavelli wants to do at least two things here. 1) Introduce Florence, which he will use with frequency as his representative of weak Christian modernity. So it’s in keeping with this that he gives Florence a rather pathetic beginning, not constrained by any necessity, not guided by and great virtue, it just sort of happened; hence it was ripe for the takeover by Christianity (?). Speculating as to that last part but the rest seems correct. Second, he wants to introduce the idea of men drifting into the plain. As noted, the three reasons he has stated so far (defense, overpopulation, preserve a conquest, prince’s glory) don’t exhaust the reasons why cities get built. He will shortly add three more reasons (disease, hunger, war) that also do not capture what happened in Florence. Sometimes cities are built just by chance or happenstance. Especially when times are good (“the long peace born in the world under Octavian”).

So, as noted, all told in this chapter, we are given seven reasons why cities are built:

1. Defense
2. Relieve overpopulation
3. Hold a conquest
4. For the prince’s glory
5. Fleeing disease
6. Fleeing hunger
7. Fleeing war

Five out of the seven might be said to be “negative” or at best solutions to problems. You could even say six, if you count holding a conquest, which is after all a solution to a problem if, in the terminology of our time, a “high class” problem. Only the central reason, “for a prince’s glory,” is an unmixed good that solves no problem. Machiavelli will later deny that there exists any unmixed good. But—assuming that this is at least in part a sly reference to himself—can we cite this as another example of Machiavelli’s confusion about himself, about philosophy’s place and role, that we noted in the dedication? He seems to think his enterprise is an unmixed good in the same way that the classical philosophers believed philosophy to be (perhaps the only) unmixed good. Strauss’ conclusion (insofar as I understand him) is that this fundamental contradiction is Machiavelli’s fundamental error. 

In any case, I do think it is safe to say that Machiavelli is thinking at least in part about himself, who builds through writing and who writes not merely for the common benefit of each but also for his own glory. There are several Biblical passages where God says that he created the world for His own glory. Remember that the example of a prince building for his glory is Alexander, so we shall have to look for instances where Alexander might be used as a stand-in for God or Christ, as he is in Prince 4.

We will have to look carefully as the book unfolds at Machiavelli’s discussion of nature. A variant makes its third appearance in this chapter, where NM discusses countries that are “naturally harsh and sterile.” The context is whether it is better to choose a fertile or sterile site. The advantage of sterility is that the necessity it imposes to be industrious will reduce discord and increase unity. So nature taketh away with one hand and giveth with the other. Nature is both flinty and benevolent at the same time. Conversely, a fertile site makes men indolent. In that case, nature gives all that man needs—and more—but in so doing corrupts him and makes him less for politics (and also less human?).

So we have here two conceptions of nature, but in both cases man seems to have what he needs to live. Absent (so far) is any conception of nature as a miserly enemy. Or is it? Interestingly, the bounteous version of nature seems to be harmful to man—that is, to his nature as a political being—while the flinty version is good for him, the opposite of what one would expect. In advising builders to choose the fertile site, NM is in effect advising them to choose the bad. 

Also, the teaching that a good builder chooses fertility and then replaces the necessity imposed by sterility with the laws foreshadows I 3, where he says that “where a thing works well on its own without the law, the law is not necessary.” The harshness of sterility acts in the same way as the Tarquins. And the remedy for its absence is the same: law.

So we notice, contra the classics, a denigration of law in Machiavelli. Law is a secondary consideration, necessary only “where a thing” does not work well. Human or political life can work very well without law. The classics did not believe this, except in the highest case, the rule of philosopher kings. Machiavelli is emphatically NOT talking about the highest case.