Machiavelli and the Decay of Western Civilization
Paul Eidelberg
Machiavelli is the father of Modernity
and Democracy and the creator of Secular Man par excellence. His deceptively
simple book The Prince, so often trivialized, marks the Copernican
revolution in politics.1 In
that sibylline work Machiavelli undertook the world-historical task of
destroying nothing less than the two pillars of Western civilization, classical
Greek philosophy and Christianity, whose ethics, whether derived from Nature or
nature’s God, derogate from the complete autonomy of human will and desire.
The key to modernity will be found in
Chapter 15 of The Prince.2
There Machiavelli lists ten pairs of qualities for which men, especially rulers,
are praised or blamed – qualities which a ruler, “if he wishes to maintain
himself,” must be able to “use” and “not use” “according to necessity.”3
Some rulers, he declares, “are held liberal, some miserly...[and/or] rapacious;
some cruel, others full of pity; the one faithless, the other faithful; the one
effeminate and pusillanimous, the other fierce and spirited; the one human, the
other proud; the one lascivious, the other chaste; the one open, the other
cunning; the one hard, the other easy; the one grave, the other light; the one
religious, the other skeptical, and the like.”
Machiavelli elaborates in Chapter 18 of
The Prince:
It is not necessary for a prince to have in
fact all of the qualities written above, but it is indeed necessary to appear to
have them. I shall rather dare to say this: that having them and observing them
always, they are harmful, but in appearing to have them, they are useful – so as
to appear to be full of pity, faithful, human, open, religious, and to
be so, but with one’s mind constructed in such a mode that when the need
not to be arises, you can, and know how to, change to the contrary.4
A mind so “constructed” must be virtually
devoid of all emotion, save the desire for power. To harbor emotions is to be
susceptible to habits, and it is precisely habits that prevent a ruler
from being a Machiavellian, which is to say, a perfect opportunist. To be
a perfect opportunist, a ruler must change his “nature” with the times and
circumstances, which means he must have no emotional predispositions (other than
the desire to maintain and increase his power). This would be possible only if
man is nothing more than a creature of habits – habits that can be conquered by
men of the caliber of Machiavelli. (Long before Rousseau and twentieth-century
behaviorists, Machiavelli let it be known that human nature – if man can be said
to have a nature – is plastic or malleable.)
But if human nature is malleable, then
it should be theoretically possible to shape the mentality of an age!
This is precisely what Machiavelli set out
to do in The Prince and its companion work The Discourses.
Notice that in his list of qualities that bring rulers praise, Machiavelli
excludes the four cardinal virtues of Greek political philosophy: wisdom,
justice, moderation, and courage! Moreover, religion (paired with
skepticism) is placed last, inverting the Decalogue. Consistent therewith, the
central and most significant pair of qualities is designated as “human” and
“pride.” One would have expected “pride” (the Christian vice) to be paired with
“humility” (the Christian virtue), but Machiavelli deliberately omits humility
from the list of qualities for which men and princes are praised. Humility is at
once the virtue of the weak and the guise of the “proud” – the priests who
denigrate pagan virtu, i.e., manliness, while lording it over the people
in the name of godliness – a devious and impotent form of homotheism.5
To complete the process of man’s deification, the creator of Secular Man simply
eliminated every semblance or pretense of godliness, rendering man entirely
“human.” The seed of Humanism was thus planted in Chapter 15 of The
Prince. In that seminal chapter Machiavelli advanced Christianity’s historic
function, which was to destroy primitive idolatry on the one hand, while
facilitating the secularization of mankind on the other.
With justice omitted from the qualities for
which rulers are praised, a radically new political science appeared on the
stage of world history, one that sanctifies the commonplace, not to say
vulgarity, in the name of “realism.”6
In opposition to classical political philosophy, modern political science takes
its bearing not from how man should live, but from how men do live
– from the is, not from the ought. Again Chapter 15: “... there is
such a distance between how one lives and how one should live that he who lets
go that which is done for that which ought to be done learns his ruin rather
than his preservation...Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to
maintain himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use it and not use
it according to necessity.” This separation of morality from politics is the
historical consequence of the Christian separation of church and state.
Henceforth there are no moral limits as to what man may do. Man is at last fully
autonomous. He stands, as Nietzsche was to say, “beyond good and evil”.
Furthermore, in direct opposition to the
biblical tradition, which exalts truth and truthfulness the creator of Secular
Man teaches would-be rulers to practice deceit and dissimulation constantly. “A
prince ought to take great care...that he appears to be, when one sees and hears
him, all pity, all faith, all integrity, all humanity, and all religion.... For
men, universally, judge more by the eyes than by the hands...Everyone sees what
you seem to be, but few touch what you are.”7
We have here a politics keyed to the sense of touch, the most dynamic and erotic
of the senses. For unlike sight and hearing – passive receptors of the written
and spoken word – the sense of touch, especially in the hands, connects to the
will – the will to power.
The greatest manifestation of the will to
power is not the state but the founding of an entirely new “state.” To establish
such a state a founder must create “new modes and orders”: he must make the
“high” low and the “low” high.8
To do this he must radically alter people’s inherited beliefs as to what is
deserving of praise and blame. This will require not only great force but
monumental fraud or deception. Hence the founder must possess virtu,
greatness of mind and body. Extraordinary cunning and fierceness – even terror –
are essential in the founding of an entirely new state. In no other way can the
founder perpetuate his “new modes and orders.” Clearly, the “state” – Nietzsche
will later say “philosophy” – is a construct of the mind and will of the
“prince.”9
Since all new states originate in force,
hence in revolutionary violence, their founders are, and by definition must be,
“criminals.” Only after they have established new “orders” do they become
“legitimate” and respectable. Accordingly, what is decisive in the study of
politics is not laws or legal institutions but the dynamics of power, on which
alone all laws are ultimately based. Indeed, laws are obligatory only insofar as
they can be enforced; otherwise they are mere words having no “effectual truth”
– like the best regimes in theory imagined by the philosophers of antiquity. In
Chapter 12 of The Prince, Machiavelli writes: “The principal foundations
which all states have, whether new, old, or mixed, are good laws and good arms.
And because there cannot be good laws where there are not good arms, and where
there are good arms there must be good laws, I shall omit reasoning on
laws and speak of arms.” Arms are the counterpart of the “effectual truth”
mentioned in Chapter 15. There is no such thing as just or unjust laws or just
and unjust regimes.
This is precisely the doctrine of legal
realism or positivism that identifies the just with the legal, a doctrine that
dominates law schools in the democratic world and makes it easier for
democracies to recognize and have truck with tyrannies. But to deny the
distinction between just and unjust laws is to reject the concept of the “common
good,” a concept which appears nowhere in The Prince.10
Neither does the word “tyrant” (in a book that commends Hiero, Agathocles,
Cesare Borgia and others of their ilk as “princes”).11
The term “justice” appears only in Chapter 19 of The Prince. There ten
Roman emperors are mentioned, only two of which die a natural death – the just
and gentle Marcus Aurelius and the unjust and ferocious Septimius Severus. This
means that justice is irrelevant in the world of politics (as implied by its
omission in Chapter 15). We have in Machiavelli the Deification of Egoism, the
modern euphemism of which is Individualism.
Although Marcus Aurelius’ rule was just,
whereas Severus’ rule was tyrannical, Machiavelli praises both as “virtuous.”
Why? Because the ultimate criterion of “virtue”, as of praise and blame, is
success (of which more in a moment). This silent denial of the classical
distinction between kingship and tyranny is one of the cornerstones of
contemporary political science (which propagates the moral equivalence one hears
so much about nowadays). A political science that rejects the traditional
distinction between kingship and tyranny can take no account of, in fact must
deny, the distinction between the good man and the good citizen. The good
citizen is of course the patriot who fights for his country and obeys its laws.
His country, however, and therefore its laws, may be unjust – from the
traditional point of view. But this means that the good citizen may be a bad
man. From which it follows that contemporary political science denies the
distinction between good men and bad men – which is why democratic journalists
(and only democratic journalists) can publicly proclaim that “one man’s
terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” These relativists (and their
academic mentors) are examples of tamed or democratized Machiavellians.
This leveling of moral distinctions is
rooted in a leveling of the distinction between man and beast. The successful
ruler, says Machiavelli in Chapter 18 of The Prince, will combine, in
varying proportions (depending on circumstances), the cunning of the fox and the
fierceness of a lion.12 And
just as it would be absurd to condemn a lion for devouring a lamb, so it would
be absurd to condemn a “prince” (by calling him a “tyrant”) for ravaging or
subjugating a nation. As Machiavelli puts it in Chapter 3 of The Prince:
“It is a thing truly very natural and ordinary to desire to acquire [note the
deliberate redundancy]; and when men who are able to do so do it, they are always
praised or not blamed...” This precept follows an account of Louis XII of France
who “was brought into Italy by the ambition of the Venetians...I do not want to
blame the part taken by the King for wanting to begin gaining a foothold in
Italy...” Machiavelli, the founder of a “value-free” political science, actually
shows in Chapter 3 how to conquer his own country! The ultimate criterion of
praise and blame is not right and wrong, but success and failure.
We must now ask, what is the
world-historical goal of Secular Man? The answer to this question will be found
in Chapter 25 of The Prince. There Machiavelli subtly equates God with
chance (fortuna). He then identifies chance with “woman” and playfully
proclaims that man’s task is to conquer her. What he means is this. “Woman”
signifies nature, and man’s ultimate goal is to conquer nature, which will
require the overcoming of traditional views of human nature. This is why the
word “soul” (anima) never appears either in The Prince or The
Discourses. We are given to understand, therefore, that man’s nature is
plastic, is unbound by any moral laws or by “conscience” (another deliberately
omitted word in The Prince).13
And so, just as the “Philosopher” replaced the Olympian pantheon with a new
conception of nature, so the “Prince” replaces nature (and nature’s God) with a
new conception of man. This requires elaboration.
The conquest of chance involves the
overcoming of God and of all those who have traditionally diminished man by
despising the merely “human.” The enemy is the “proud”: Not only the priests,
who denigrate the body, but the philosophers who exalt kingship and aristocracy.
To conquer chance, therefore, one must lower the goals of human life. For the
higher the goals of man the more he is exposed to chance and accident. Turn now
to Secular Man diluted, an inevitable bi-product of the undiluted Promethean.
Lowering the goals of human life
corresponds to leveling the distinction between man and beast on the one hand,
and denying the existence of the soul on the other. Abolish the soul and human
reason will have nothing to serve but the wants of the body or sensuality, and
such external goods as wealth, power, and prestige. To deny the soul, therefore,
is to deify, in effect, the “human, all-too-human” – what the priests referred
to, pejoratively, as “human nature.”
Machiavelli’s deification of the merely “human” is the unembellished meaning of
humanism; it is the true source of Individualism and Capitalism, of
Socialism and Communism, of Fascism and Nazism.
The prerequisites for the Machiavellian
conquest of nature can now be more fully appreciated. The first thing needed is
a new science of politics, a politics that liberates man’s acquisitive instincts
in opposition to classical moderation and Christian asceticism. However, the
liberation of acquisitiveness necessitates a rejection of priests, nobles, and
kings in favor of the people. Commentators tend to minimize if not
overlook Machiavelli’s democratic “bias” (which is actually a world-historical
project). Machiavelli’s political science had to be democratic if he was
to create a new dispensation for mankind. In other words, he had to destroy
classical political science, which is essentially aristocratic, if he was to
create a democratic era. Machiavelli is in fact the first philosopher
to contend that democracy is the best regime.
In The Discourses he challenges all
previous political philosophy by claiming that, “[A]s regards prudence and
stability, I say that the people are more prudent and stable, and have better
judgment than a prince” (I, 58). And in The Prince he boldly declares:
“The end of the people is more honest than that of the great.14
Moreover, in overturning the Great Tradition, which praises agrarian as
opposed to commercial societies as more conducive to virtue, Machiavelli
praises commercial republics because such republics, like Rome, are more
powerful, are more capable of dominion. Machiavelli’s political science
therefore liberates acquisitiveness and prepares the ground for capitalism (and,
for much more, as we shall see later). He is indeed the father of modernity.
The Prince must thus be understood
as a conspiratorial as well as a Copernican work. (Incidentally, its longest
chapter, like that of The Discourses, is on conspiracy.) Far from being a
tract for the times (as some have foolishly believed), this masterpiece of
cunning may be regarded as philosophically-armed propaganda addressed to
thinkers who might be tempted to make common cause with the “people” and create
a new dispensation for mankind. Needed were “collaborators” who would come after
Machiavelli and bring to completion his world-historical project. And they were
forthcoming. Before discussing his collaborators, allow me to amuse the reader
by the following digression.
Machiavelli’s Use of “Gematria”
Machiavelli was superficially acquainted
with Gematria, the system by which the Hebrew alphabet is translated into
numbers. For example, and as Leo Strauss discerned, Machiavelli makes systematic
use of the number 13 (and its multiples) both in The Prince and in The
Discourses.15 It so
happens that 13 is the numerical value of the Hebrew word meaning “one”
– echad. The
“prince” is the one par excellence. The “prince,” from the Latin principi,
denotes the “first thing,” the “beginning,” something radically “new.” “A New
Prince Must Make Everything New” is the title of chapter 26 of The Discourses,
where Machiavelli subtly indicates that a new prince must imitate God. It can
hardly be a coincidence that The Prince consists of 26 chapters: 26 is
the numerical value of the four Hebrew letters comprising the Tetragrammaton,
the Ineffable Name of God.16
Turn, now, to Chapter 13 of The Prince,
the inconspicuous center of the book, and to the very last sentence. Referring
to great conquerors and how they “armed and ordered themselves,” Machiavelli
confides, “to which orders, I, in all things, consign myself” (italics
added). Thus, in language borrowed from religion, Machiavelli confesses his
faith: he bows to one god only, the god of power. (In the chapter’s central
episode, that of David and Goliath, the knife replaces God.)
But let us go back to the beginning. In
Chapter 1, Machiavelli outlines, with remarkable brevity, 13 different modes by
which “principates” are acquired. He completes the treatment of the subject in
Chapter 11. The central chapter of this group is of course 6. Accordingly, he
there decides to “bring forward the greatest examples of new principates
founded by new princes, men who possessed extraordinary
‘virtue’ (a term used 13
times in this chapter). There he mentions Moses in the same breath, as it were,
with three pagan law-givers. One of the pagans is Romulus, the mythical founder
of Rome, who murdered his twin-brother Remus in order to be “alone,” a “first
thing,” a “new beginning” – a “prince” in the profoundest sense of the term.17
The discussion is largely symbolic. To be a creator of “new modes and orders”
one must destroy or overcome what is nearest and dearest – one’s fraternal
loyalties, one’s subordination to ancestral beliefs and moral convictions.
Now ponder what Machiavelli says in The
Discourses (I, 9): “Where the act [Romulus’ fratricide] accuses, the effect
excuses.” The act of murdering one’s brother accuses only because the
denunciation of that act represents the established morality – ordinary
morality. But the effect excuses because it inaugurates a new morality –
an extraordinary morality. With success, however, the extraordinary
eventually becomes the ordinary. And so Machiavelli, a “prince” – a “first
thing” – destroys the established religious and aristocratic morality and
establishes a secular and democratic morality. Nietzsche’s creator of new
values, the ubermensch, is but the descendant of the “Prince.”
Returning to Chapter 6 of The
Prince, by linking Romulus and Moses, Machiavelli prompts the reader to
recall that both Romulus and Moses were abandoned as infants. This blurring of
distinctions between Romulus (who murdered his brother) and Moses (who saved his
brother) – this moral leveling, is diabolically methodical. The number 6
represents the six directions (north, east, south, west, up and down), hence the
physical world. Also, the world was created in six days. It is doubly revealing,
therefore, that exactly in Chapter 6 of The Prince will be found
Machiavelli’s first reference to God!
It may now be asked: Why does Machiavelli
invert the Decalogue in Chapter 15 and not elsewhere? The number 15 reduces to 6
(1+5). Man was created on the sixth day. Man, in the person of Machiavelli,
becomes the creator in Chapter 15. In fact, 15 is the Gematria for
another name of God: Yod Hei. Moreover, this is the only chapter of
The Prince in which Machiavelli does not use historical examples to convey
his radically new political science!18
In this chapter he comes into his own as a new prince, a new first thing, a
creator of new values.
To be sure, Chapter 24 also reduces to 6
(2+4). It ends with the statement: “And only those defenses are good, are
certain, are durable, which depend on you yourself and on your virtue”
(italics added). God has no place in the world of men. This is an appropriate
transition to Chapter 25 where, as we saw, Machiavelli equates God with chance.
The number 25 reduces, of course, to 7 (2+5). To many, the number 7 signifies
luck or chance. (Interestingly, Chapter 7 deals with Cesare Borgia who obtained
power by chance and lost it by chance.) To others the number 7 symbolizes
completion or perfection, for it was on the seventh day that God rested from His
creation.
Although Machiavelli can be adequately
understood without Gematria or numerology, his use of the latter is
indicative of the great subtlety and painstaking care with which The Prince
and The Discourses were composed. But what is perhaps most significant
about his use of numerology is this. By employing numbers and numerical
sequences to modulate the communication of his revolutionary thoughts, less room
was left to chance. Numerology added spice to his new science of politics and
therefore made it more tempting to his unknown “collaborators.”
Machiavelli’s “Collaborators”
Machiavelli died in 1527. His fellow
Florentine, Galileo was born in 1564. Without the conquest of nature made
possible by Galilean science, Machiavelli’s world-historical project would
probably have died with him. While Machiavelli fathered a democratic political
science, Galileo fathered the democratic cosmology needed to fashion a new
dispensation for man. Galileo’s mathematization of
nature – his synthesis of astronomy and physics –
overthrew the hierarchically ordered and finite
universe of classical (and medieval) philosophy. Heaven and earth now manifested
the Idea of Equality. In the mechanistic world inaugurated by Galileo (and
perfected by Newton), man can no longer rely on nature or on God for objective
and universally valid standards as to how man should live. All ideas on this
crucial subject were made equal. Hobbes, who had admired and visited Galileo,
saw the consequences of the new “value-free” science: A war of every man against
every man, wherein “nothing can be unjust” because in war “the notions of right
and wrong, justice and injustice have no place.”
In such condition [writes Hobbes], there is
no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently
no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of commodities that may be
imported by sea; no commodious building...no knowledge of the face of the earth;
no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all,
continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short.19
Men would resemble so many bodies in
ceaseless motion or collision. Accordingly, Hobbes believed that only the most
powerful instinct of the human heart, the fear of violent death – Hobbes’
summum malum – could provide a solid, natural foundation for
political life. No wonder Hobbes regarded self-preservation as the fundamental
law of nature. Only in this debased respect does nature provide a standard for
mankind and even dictate a moral imperative: seek peace. Peace requires
that men renounce their claims to moral or political superiority; it demands
equality. It also requires the recognition that:
Good, and evil, are
names that signify our appetites and aversions; which in different tempers,
customs, and doctrines of men, are different; and diverse men, differ not only
in their judgment, on the sense of what is pleasant, and unpleasant to the
taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight; but also of what is conformable,
or disagreeable to reason, in the actions of common life.20
Notice that good and evil, according to
Hobbes, have no more rational or objective basis than those secondary qualities
of which Galileo said, “I do not believe [that they] are anything but names.”
By dispelling men’s illusions that their
ideas of good and evil have any divine sanction or are rooted in nature, Hobbes
would turn mankind’s energies away from devastating religious conflicts – his
current disciples say “ideological” disputes – to the peaceful conquest of
nature. For this purpose he constructed a utilitarian morality based on
political hedonism (in contradistinction to the apolitical hedonism of
Epicurus).
Kant, who accepted the Galilean-Newtonian
physics, preferred a morality based not on men’s inclinations or some
pleasure-pain calculus, but on the concept of the free moral will. His
categorical imperative – “Act only according to that maxim which you can at the
same time will that it should become a universal law”21
– should be understood as an attempt to substitute categories of reason for the
two sources of morality undermined by the new physics: nature and God.
Fundamentally egalitarian, Kantian morality is a form of secularized
Christianity. Like Christianity, it is intended for men of ordinary reason:
But the most remarkable thing about ordinary
reason in its practical concern is that it may have as much hope as any
philosopher of hitting the mark. In fact, it is almost more certain to do so
than the philosopher, because he has no principle which the common understanding
lacks, while his judgment is easily confused by a mass of irrelevant
considerations, so that it easily turn aside from the correct way. Would it not,
therefore, be wiser in moral matters to acquiesce in the common rational
judgment, or at most to call in philosophy in order to make the system of morals
more complete and comprehensible and its rules more convenient for use...?22
Did not
Machiavelli say (quoted above): “[A]s regards prudence and stability, I
say that the people are more prudent and stable, and have better judgment than a
prince”?
With God and nature having been eliminated
as sources of morality, man must find the source of morality in himself. He has
tried to do so; every effort has resulted in dismal failure. Bringing heaven
down to earth by way of Galileo’s cosmic uniformity has leveled mankind.
Now for a rapid survey of some of
Machaivelli’s “collaborators” (discussed at greater length in my book
Jerusalem vs. Athens). Francis Bacon was a sympathetic reader of
Machiavelli. His work, Of the Interpretation of Nature, linked science to
technology.23 The purpose of
the new science? To alleviate the human condition. For the first time in
history, science, divorced from philosophy (the preserve of the Few, i.e., the
“proud”), was to serve the Many.
Bearing in mind that the philosophers of
modernity regarded religion in general, and Christianity in particular, as their
sole competitor as well as the greatest barrier to the conquest of nature and to
human progress, Hobbes and Locke engaged in a subtle attack on the Bible. To
convey their atheism with some subtlety, Hobbes interspersed references to God
by saying everything is matter in motion, while Locke paid homage to the deity
by proclaiming that human labor is the source of all value. (By the way, the
“state of nature” of these two philosophers is nothing more than a hypothetical
construction – really a fiction – on which to propagate a secular, political
society.) Influenced by Locke’s exaltation of commerce, Adam Smith produced the
Wealth of Nations, the bible of Capitalism, in which he also propagated
the novel idea that war could be replaced by economic competition (a prejudice
that even two World Wars has yet to dispel).24
In Benedict Spinoza, Machiavelli had another
collaborator. As may be seen in his Theological-political Treatise,
Spinoza was the first philosopher who was both a democrat and a liberal; he is
also the father of “biblical criticism.”25
His Treatise exalts democracy as “the most natural form of government,”
for there “every man may think what he likes, and say what he thinks.”26
Jean-Jacque Rousseau, a philosopher of
democracy who nonetheless opposed the commercial society, advanced the
Machiavellian idea that man’s nature is infinitely malleable, a product of
historical accident. But whereas Machiavelli said that man is by nature “bad,”
meaning egoistic, Rousseau held that man is by nature benevolent, that human
conflict can be overcome by a “social contract” based on the “general will.”
Karl Marx went further. As I have written in Demophrenia:
Marx not only rejected all hitherto existing
morality, but also the belief in the naturalistic foundation of egoism.
According to Marx, egoism, no less than morality, is an historical product. And
only with the simultaneous disappearance of egoism and morality will man achieve
true freedom and equality, meaning genuine as opposed to a factitious democracy.
How is this to be understood?
Marx believed that man’s exploitation of man
is rooted not in any defect of human nature but in the poverty of physical
nature. Nature simply does not provide sufficiently for human needs. In other
words, not egoism but economic scarcity is the original cause of human conflict
and servitude, of human misery and inequality. But with the abolition of private
property and the scientific conquest of nature, human exploitation will come to
an end. Egoism, which is but a consequence of history, will dissolve, as will
morality, which has ever been the morality of the ruling and exploiting class.
Henceforth man will be animated by his “generic consciousness,” which alone
distinguishes human nature from that of mere animals.27
What will replace egoism and the restraints
of morality will be a spontaneous fraternal disinterestedness. This, for Marx,
is the only true humanism, the only true democracy.
Democracy and the Degradation of Man
Thanks to
Machiavelli and his philosophical successors, Democracy has become the religion
– the idolatry – of modernity, more immune to questioning than any
revealed religion. Democracy, which until Machiavelli, and even well into the
eighteenth century, was deemed a bad form of government, is today firmly
established as the only good from of government – even though it is the seedbed
of moral relativism. Still, it may be argued that the freedom and equality which
thrive in democracy have facilitated the conquest of
nature enjoined by the Torah: “...replenish the earth and subdue it”
(Genesis 1:28). This was not to be expected of Greek political philosophy,
given its aristocratic and agrarian orientation, nor of Christianity, given its
otherworldliness and asceticism. But this means that the Greco-Christian
tradition had to be overcome to facilitate man’s conquest of nature. Consider
the positive consequences.
The conquest
of nature liberated countless men, women, and children from stultifying toil and
suffering. Of course, much stultifying toil and suffering were exacted in the
process, especially in the early stages of Capitalism. But even Marx, in his
fusillades against the bourgeoisie, had to admit that Capitalism, despite its
“naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation,”
has
been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has
accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and
Gothic cathedrals. It has created enormous cities and has thus rescued a
considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.28
Meanwhile,
liberal democracy has liberated countless people from political bondage. By
virtue of equality of opportunity, it opened the door to hitherto suppressed
talents. Also, it introduced humane penal codes. The Idea of Equality destroyed
much good but also contributed to human progress – or so it may be argued. It
may also be argued, however, that democracy represents not the progress so much
as the degradation of man! Let us explore this hypothesis.
No less a
friend of democracy than Alfred North Whitehead has written – and this was
before the soul-shattering and stupefying effects of television: “So far as
sheer individual freedom is concerned, there was more diffused freedom in the
City of London in the year 1663, when Charles the First was King, than there is
today in any industrial city in the world.”29
Industrial democracy breeds its own kind of bondage.
True,
Democracy put an end to human slavery; but human slavery in the past was not, in
all instances, the unmitigated evil it is made out to be, even though its
abolition in modern times was certainly justified. Paradoxical as it may seem,
the demise of slavery was not the result of moral progress so much as the result
of moral decline.30
Of course,
there have always been masters unworthy of having slaves. Nevertheless, when
individuals were historically important, were of the caliber of a King David or
of a Plato, it was fit and proper that they should be served by lesser men.
Indeed, it was an honor to serve such great personages, to behold their virtues,
to imbibe their words of wisdom.
But when the
importance of leading individuals declined and they were no longer worthy of
human servitude, Divine Providence brought about the rise of Democracy and
Science on the one hand, and the eradication of slavery on the other. The
process was gradual. The less man merited slave labor, the more he had to rely
on animal and hired labor. Eventually, mankind sunk to so low a level as to be
unworthy even of animal labor. (Only consider how biologists began to exult in
tracing their genealogy to apes and to be offended by the idea of a higher
origin!) Providence therefore accelerated the development of science and
technology so that animals could be replaced by machines, progressively
automated (and now very much geared to the gratification of paltry desires). In
other words, given the increasing selfishness and hedonism of modernity, man no
longer merits being served by any living thing.31
However,
concomitant with the moral decline of the individual, there has been an outward
improvement in the character of society. This dichotomy is not paradoxical. The
progress of science and technology, the hallmark of Western civilization, was
actually the result of egoism or moral decline (facilitated by Machiavelli’s
corrosive attack on Greco-Christian morality). Rousseau writes in his First
Discourse, “our souls have been corrupted in proportion to the advancement
of our sciences and arts toward perfection.”32
Rousseau was not merely referring to the moral depravity of his own times, the
peak of the “Enlightenment.” He regarded the relationship between corruption and
the progress of the arts and sciences as if it were a law of history, a
phenomenon, he says, that “has been observed in all times and in all places.”33
By corruption Rousseau had in mind the decline of civic virtue, of dedication to
the common good, in other words, the ascendancy of egoism. But as we have seen,
egoism is the basis of Machiavelli’s godless political science to whose
advancement Rousseau contributed.
This political
science, whose skepticism or agnosticism underlies all the social sciences and
humanities, has thoroughly secularized man, stripped him of sapiential wisdom,
while atomizing society. The intellectual functions of Secular Man are limited
to the operations of pragmatic reason placed at the service of a welter of
desires. The once ordered soul is now the disordered “self.” All the emotions of
the self, love included, are self-regarding – as the sexual revolution has made
clear.34
The only “natural” good is the private good.35
Thus Machiavelli.
And now
consider the negative aspects of his offspring. Democracy, which enlarged
freedom of expression, is witnessing an appalling decline of intellectual
standards. Democracy, which elevated the principle of equality, has engendered a
leveling of all moral distinctions. Democracy, which championed human dignity,
is now yielding to abject vulgarity.
In the process
of this degradation, however, Democracy, with its all-pervasive moral
relativism, is destroying all ideological competitors to the Torah – including
democracy itself!36
The truth is:
Democracy
is nothing more than Machiavelli’s own creation; it has no intrinsic validity.
Democratic freedom and equality have no rational foundation and can have no
rational foundation when severed from the Torah and man’s creation in the image
of God.
The same may
be said of the Sovereign State, another offspring of Machiavelli. If Louis XIV
said L’etat c’est moi, he was only echoing Machiavelli’s reference to
Louis XII as “France” in Chapter 3 of The Prince. The State is simply a
human creation, in which respect there is no difference between L’etat c’est
moi and Vox populi vox Dei. In both cases law is dependent solely on the
will of the sovereign, be it the One, the Few, or the Many. The jurisprudent
Isaac Breuer draws the only sensible conclusion: As long as states insist on
their sovereignty and recognize no higher authority than their own laws, there
can be no social or international peace. “The anarchy of mankind shows itself in
continuously recurring historical catastrophes, foretold with tremendous
insistence by all the Prophets, to which only the law of God can put an end.”37
The experience of six decades of the misnamed United Nations – a frequent
instigator of conflict – lends weight to this conclusion. But then, is not the
UN General Assembly, which renders all nations equal regardless of their moral
and intellectual character, the pinnacle of relativism?
Decadence and Disillusionment
Relativism will be the epitaph on the
gravestone of the West. Ironically, the prevalence of relativism is largely a
consequence of the West’s greatest intellectual achievement: mathematical
physics. The West is trapped in a fundamental dilemma. On the one hand, it
regards mathematical physics as the paradigm of knowledge. On the other hand,
mathematical physics can tell us nothing about how man should live. The
reduction of science to quantitative analysis renders it incapable of telling us
anything about moral values.
Although Nietzsche was a relativist, he
recognized that relativism is symptomatic of decadence. His paradoxical position
may be summarized as follows: Relativism is true but deadly, therefore
relativism is false! Why? Because relativism stifles any incentive to pursue a
world-historical goal, a psychological precondition of which is belief in the
absolute worth of that goal. In other words, relativism undermines the will to
creativity on a monumental scale. Hence relativism is deadly, contrary to Life –
logically true but existentially false, for Life transcends logic.
Relativism permeates democracy because
democracy’s two organizing principles, freedom and equality, lack ethical and
rational constraints. The West boasts of democracy, ignorant of how it
constitutes a basic cause of western decadence. I define decadence as a retreat
from life to death resulting from an inability to confront evil, since evil
itself is linked to death. “I have placed before you today life and good, and
death and evil...” (Deuteronomy 30:15). Unless the ethical is derived from
the transcendental, there is no escape from Hume’s skepticism and relativistic
epistemology.
And so, disgusted with the moral decay of
modernity, many people in the West are “returning” to traditional values, either
to Christianity or to the “natural right” doctrine of classical Greek
philosophy. But modernity is itself the outgrowth of the secular ingredients of
the Greco-Christian tradition. The contemporary phenomenon of Christian
fundamentalism, to be applauded as a moral force, lacks the fecundity required
for a renaissance of Western civilization. As may be seen in contemporary art,
music, architecture, economics, literature, the professions, entertainment,
Christianity is conspicuous by its absence.
As for the classics, although Jonathan
Swift was correct when he likened the ancients to the Brobdingnagians and the
moderns to the Lilliputians, the philosophic foundations of the classics are
hopelessly obsolete. Newtonian mechanics (fully adequate for macro-objects
moving below the speed of light) has relegated to the dust heap of history
Aristotle’s organic, teleological, and hierarchic conception of nature – exactly
Machiavelli’s own objective. But to refute Aristotle’s conception of nature is
to eliminate from serious consideration any return to his source of morality.
If this were not enough, the classics are
also burdened by the cosmology of an eternal and cyclical (as opposed to a
created and “linear”) cosmology. In this most crucial respect there is no
difference between Aristotle and Machiavelli who also posited an eternal
universe.38 Classical
cosmology harbors a fundamental dichotomy: whereas Nature is purposive, History
is purposeless. Existentialists also regard history as devoid of purpose.
Following the mode of thought inaugurated by Machiavelli and advanced by
Nietzsche, existentialism holds that man has no nature, no fixed or permanent
nature. Hence there are no immutable standards by which to determine how man
should live. Man, i.e., the individual, must choose his own ends or values to
endow life with meaning. But this leads to the nihilism deplored by
traditionalists who find their (noble but inadequate) standards of criticism in
classical political philosophy.
If history is purposeless or meaningless,
if humanity is bound to eternal cyclicality, then Plato and Aristotle’s
political philosophy is nothing more than a “noble lie,” a myth – as it may well
have been so understood by one or both of these intellectual giants. In that
case, in the quarrel between ancients and moderns, the moderns have at least the
advantage of candor, however deadly the consequences. And what consequences! The
road from Machiavelli’s Prince is strewn with innumerable casualties
seeking meaning in drugs, sex, violence, cults – anything that may help the
liberated self escape loneliness, anomie, angst, madness, and self-destruction.
That torturous road is viewed, however,
from the vantage of a Jewish philosophy of history which denies that history is
purposeless or meaningless. This philosophy affords no grounds for pessimism,
Weapons of Mass Destruction notwithstanding. For while man acts in freedom and
pays the consequences, every act and consequence, good and bad, moves the system
of history forward to an end ordained by a just and gracious God.
Consistent with Nietzsche’s dialectical
philosophy, Rabbi Kook writes: “The arising of contradictions broadens the scope
of existence. Good accentuates Evil and Evil deepens Good, delineating and
strengthening it.” “Just as wine cannot be without dregs, so the world cannot be
without wicked people. And Just as the dregs serve to preserve the wine, so the
coarse will of the wicked strengthens the existence of the flow of life...”39
Two world wars, the bloodiest in human
history, led to the restoration of the State of Israel. A third world war will
lead to Israel’s final redemption.
Endnotes
1 |
All
references to The Prince are from the brilliantly annotated and
literal translation of Leo Paul de Alvarez, The Prince. The present
essay is very much indebted to the author’s teacher, Professor Leo
Strauss. |
2 |
Ibid., pp.
93-94. |
3 |
Actually,
eleven vices are mentioned, since “miserliness” and “rapaciousness” are
listed in opposition to “liberality.” See Leo Strauss, Thoughts on
Machiavelli, pp. 311n63, 338n139 (cited hereafter as Thoughts).
This is by far the most profound work on Machiavelli. |
4 |
The
Prince, p. 108 (emphasis added). |
5 |
See de
Alvarez, pp. xi-xiv; Strauss, Thoughts, pp. 179, 207-208. |
6 |
A smiling
Machiavelli would remind us from the grave that when Mao Tze-tung and Chou
En-lai died, Western statesmen and intellectuals praised these tyrants as
“great men.” The author of The Prince writes in Chapter 18:
“And with respect to all human actions, and especially those of princes
where there is no judge to whom to appeal, one looks to the end. Let a
prince then win and maintain the state – the means will always be judged
honorable and will be praised by everyone; for the vulgar are always taken
in by the appearance and the outcome of a thing, and in this world there
is no one but the vulgar.” Among the most notable adulators of Mao
Tze-tung and Chou En-lai – the two must be held responsible for the
slaughter of millions of Chinese – were an American President and his
professorial Secretary of State. |
7 |
The
Prince, ch. 18 (italics added). See de Alvarez, pp. vi-vii.
|
8 |
See
Machiavelli, The Discourses, I, 26. |
9 |
See de
Alvarez, pp. ix-x. Founding an entirely new state must be the work of only
one man. See note below. |
10 |
10 See
Strauss, Thoughts, pp. 26, 29. Although the concept of the common
good appears in The Discourses, I, 2, Machiavelli asserts that the
origin of justice is force. Incidentally, this chapter reveals what
Machiavelli thought of Aristotle’s classification of regimes. For a
defense of the concept of
the common in opposition to behavioral political science, see my
Discourse on Statesmanship, pp. 9-14. |
11 |
See
Strauss, Thoughts, pp. 26, 29. Note that whereas The Prince
is dedicated to a ruler, The Discourses, which does refer to Hiero
as a “tyrant,” is dedicated to two subjects. See de Alvarez, pp. xv-xix,
and Harvey Mansfield, Jr., Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders, pp.
21-23. |
12 |
See The
Prince, ch. 18. Contrast The Ethics of the Fathers: “Be the
tail among lions rather than the head among foxes” (4:20). |
13 |
See
Strauss, Thoughts, p. 26. |
14 |
The
Prince, ch. 9. Machiavelli explains in the sequel that whereas the
great want to oppress, the people only want not to be oppressed. By no
means does he regard the people as honest per se. “For one can say this
generally of men: that they are ungrateful, fickle, hypocrites and
dissemblers, evaders of dangers [and] lovers of gain...” (ibid., ch. 17).
Of course, only a “prince” can found a state; but thereafter Machiavelli
takes the side of the people – as he must if he himself is to be a
“founder,” that is, of new modes and orders. Accordingly, his best regime
is a commercial and imperialistic republic, reversing classical and
medieval political philosophy. See The Discourses, I, 6, and
Mansfield, pp. 152-155, 243. |
15 |
See
Strauss, Thoughts, pp. 312n22, 313n24, 326n183; Mansfield, pp.
32n12, 67n8, 73n9. |
16 |
The Gematria of a word is
the sum of the numerical values of the letters that compose it. For
example: the letter Y (yod) represents the number 10; the
letter H (hei) 5; the letter V (vav) 6. Hence
the Gematria of the Ineffable Name YHVH is 10+5+6+5 = 26. |
17 |
Machiavelli
defends Romulus’ fratricide in The Discourses, I, 9, entitled “To
Found a New Republic...Must Be The Work Of One Man Only.” |
18 |
See
Strauss, Thoughts, p. 59. |
19 |
Leviathan, pp. 82, 83. |
20 |
Ibid., p.
104 (italics added). |
21 |
Emanuel
Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, p. 80, L. W. Beck,
trans. |
22 |
Ibid., p.
65. |
23 |
For a
discussion of Bacon, see Jerusalem vs. Athens, pp. 176-177. |
24 |
Shimon
Peres still believes there is an economic solution to conflict between
Israel and its Arab neighbors. Which reminds me of Orwell’s bon mot: “A
generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of
corpses.” |
25 |
See
Strauss, Liberalism Ancient & Modern, p. 244. As Strauss notes,
Spinoza hated Judaism as well as Jews, an attitude Hermann Cohen deemed
“unnatural” and even as a humanly incomprehensible act of treason.” I
mention this in passing because one may find a similar phenomenon among
certain Jews in Israel today. |
26 |
The
Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (Dover: 1951), I, 207, 257, 263,
265. As others have noted, Spinoza’s Ethics implicitly identifies
God with “nature.” |
27 |
Demophrenia, p. 30. I refute Marx in ibid., pp. 31-32. |
28 |
Marx and
Engels, The Communist Manifesto, pp. 12-14. |
29 |
Whitehead,
Science and Philosophy, pp. 165-166. |
30 |
See
Zimmerman, Torah and Reason, pp. 147-151, on which this historical
view of slavery is based. |
31 |
See Alexis
de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, II, 104, who attributes the
spread of selfishness to democratic individualism:
Individualism is a novel expression, to which
a novel idea has given birth. Our fathers were only acquainted with
egoisme (selfishness). Selfishness is a passionate and exaggerated
love of self, which leads a man to connect everything with himself and
to prefer himself to everything in the world. Individualism is a mature
and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever
himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family,
so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he
willingly leaves society at large to itself. Selfishness originates in
blind instinct; individualism proceeds from erroneous judgment more than
from depraved feelings; it originates as much in deficiencies of mind as
in perversity of heart.
Selfishness blights the germ of all virtue; individualism, at first,
only saps the virtues of public life, but in the long run it attacks and
destroys all others and is at length absorbed in downright selfishness.
Selfishness is a vice as old as the world, which does not belong to one
form of society more than to another; individualism is of democratic
origin, and it threatens to spread in the same ratio as the equality of
conditions.
|
32 |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, First Discourse, The First and Second
Discourses, p. 39, R.D. Masters, ed., J.R. Masters, trans.
|
33 |
Ibid., p.
40. |
34 |
When Hobbes
wrote that “desire and love are the same thing,” and when Freud reduced
love to the merely physical, they were cultivating ground prepared by
Machiavelli, who writes, “men forget more quickly the death of a father
than the loss of patrimony.” Which means that filial affection is weaker
than the desire for property. See Leviathan, p. 32; The Prince,
p. 101. |
35 |
Doing good
or pleasing others is to be understood simply as a means of gaining
reputation and power. No wonder success in achieving the object of
one’s desires is the ultimate criterion of praise and blame – a vulgar
teaching. |
36 |
This
applies to Jewish movements that have abandoned the Torah. |
37 |
Breuer,
Concepts of Judaism, p. 91. |
38 |
See
Mansfield, pp. 202-203, commenting on The Discourses, II, 5.
|
39 |
Kook,
Orot, pp. 110, 195-196. “Formal Logic fails to accommodate the
contraries and insists on their separation. In reality, however, opposites
combine to fertilize one another, especially in the intellectual context.”
Yaron, The Philosophy of Rabbi Kook, p. 87. |