I 1: Mansfield

On p. 29, discussing the example of Florence as a city built by foreigners, Mansfield concludes that “Machiavelli implies that Florence learned to make advances regardless of the courtesy of the prince.” I don’t see that Machiavelli implies this at all. 

Mansfield makes the following puzzling statement (p. 30).  First he notes that NM tells us, at the beginning of the chapter, not to marvel at Rome’s success.  Presumably, NM’s point is that to understand Rome’s success, it is not necessary to have recourse to the divine (a la Livy).  It’s all perfectly understandable on rational grounds accessible to human reason.  (Cf. the comparison between the opening of the Cyropaedeia—rule is inherently marvelous—with P 4—one should not marvel at Darius’ success.)  Later NM says that with free cities, one can know the virtue of the builder and fortune of what is built, which is more or less marvelous as the one who was the beginning of it was more or less virtuous.  I’ve always wondered if that “and” should not be “in”?  Wouldn’t the sentence make more sense that way?  Since the topic of this paragraph specifies free cities, I suppose NM might mean that only with free beginnings can one know the virtue of the builder because with unfree beginnings the city is not the result of the builder’s action, hence his virtue is not visible.  This is in keeping with the later suggestion (I 8) about commissioner Guicciardini, who was not in charge of the army and thus could be neither praised nor blamed for its outcome. 

In any event, the Italian is “and.”  So Mansfield takes this to mean that we are “required to marvel.”  Odd, no?  Trying to unpack here.  NM says that the more virtuous the builder, the more marvelous the fortune of the building.  If one takes “marvelous” simply to be a synonym for “good” then this makes perfect sense.  However, if one takes “marvelous” more literally, as something to marvel or wonder at—something mysterious—then it makes less sense.  We should NOT marvel that a virtuous builder builds something that goes on to have a successful life (fortune).  It should be expected to be successful, unless bad fortune gets in the way.  But in what sense are we “required” to marvel? Is it simply that, as noted, the success should be rational and obvious yet NM calls it “marvelous,” implying that there is something inherently mysterious at work?  Mansfield goes on to say that the puzzle is solved by thinking of NM’s own enterprise.  He is the builder here.  His enterprise is the building.  How does that resolve the difficulty, which is, again, that we are “required” to marvel at something known.  Is it that we are actually required to marvel at something unknown, viz., Machiavelli’s enterprise?  Which is not yet known to us? 

He also notes here that Machiavelli uses the term “bearer of laws” rather than legislator (he also does this in the preface).  HM suggests this refers to someone higher than a mere legislator, and perhaps to a teacher of legislators. 

Mansfield (p. 31) notes the strangeness of NM’s appeal, in a passage on necessity, to the “apparently unnecessary human wish to seek to master others.”  He then compares this wish to original sin: NM, he says, wants men to have their cake and eat it.  Choosing a fertile site means to choose the Garden of Eden.  Choosing to live under laws is to choose “the divine punishment” that was the consequence of the fall.  So is the (unnecessary?) wish to master others NM’s replacement for original sin?  Except that NM does not present it as a choice, which original sin definitely was.  For NM, there was no fall, we are bad from the beginning.  But what does this mean: “his choice is fully compatible with his necessity and his natural desire to bring what he believes to be the common benefit of everyone coincides with the human wish to master others”? 

Another odd Mansfield passage here.  He says that the legislator must “legislate against the natural attractions of their ‘countries’,” which makes sense.  Then he adds “or perhaps of their own poetry.”  Huh?  I assume this is a reference back to a point he made in footnote 3 on p. 29, where he says that in Plato’s Laws the Athenian Stranger says that poetic tales make men forgetful of the dangers (natural cataclysm?) of living in the plain.  The purpose is to encourage men to live in the plain, or in NM’s terms, to choose the fertile site, which is both more desirable and therefore harder to defend.  So, “to legislate against their own poetry” perhaps means 1) that HM is taking a cue from Shelly—“poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”—and 2) that having encouraged men to live in fat sites or in the plain with poetic tales of ease and grace, the poet/legislator must take care not allow men to take such tales so literally that they become lazy.  Is NM then a kind of poet whose advice to choose a fertile site is the equivalent of the Stranger’s poetic tales?  Certainly HM considers NM a legislator, or a “bearer of laws,” a kind of teacher of legislators or supra-legislator.

When Mansfield says (also p. 31) that NM “avoids giving the political lesson that could be shown in the conflict of choice and necessity,” what lesson does he mean? 

Finally, I note a cute, and very small, example of esoteric writing.  On page 31, Mansfield says the following (p.32): “The mention of Alexander for the third time in this chapter makes us think of the builder (as opposed to the architect) who was Machiavelli’s chief rival.”  “Alexander” here is Alexander the Great. There is a footnote to two pages in Strauss, one to the text, the other to a footnote. The textual reference is a paragraph culminating in Strauss’ suggestion that Machiavelli is a builder who constructs a new philosophical edifice. In other words, Mansfield is citing Strauss for support and, likely, to acknowledge that he learned the argument of “Machiavelli-as-builder” from someone else.  Strauss’s footnote makes the same point as Mansfield’s text but makes a puzzling reference to Solomon. Strauss notes that Alexander later appears in two chapters in the Discourses paired with Solomon, another great builder, but NM is silent on Solomon here.  So was it “Solomon” whom Mansfield has in mind as “Machiavelli’s chief rival”? I had not thought so. My conclusion was that he meant Aristotle. Aristotle was not only another “philosophic builder” but also a teacher of princes, in fact, the teacher of Alexander the Great (who is here mentioned three times). But Aristotle is not mentioned here.  Lo, however, look up Aristotle in the index and a reference is given to page 32