The main point of this middle chapter is to consider how, after the delinking of practical decision making from good judgment, technical knowledge comes to dominate our thinking and action. The “Great Reversal” of the judgmental and technical then follows from the new modern capacity to focus on human ends freed from the spiritual concerns that limited the practice of medieval Christian prudence. In a sense, the modernized prudence is a product of technical knowledge that allows us to begin the enterprise of ordering and controlling both the natural world and human nature.
What we get from the Christian treatments of prudence is a strict division between the sacred and the profane and the spirit and the flesh. Mediating between these two realms, good judgment is put into service to control our sinful nature. The hermit is lionized because he is the most able to discipline his body, controlling his passions, appetites, and human nature itself. We could say that Aquinas understands politics as a communal effort towards the same, controlling and ordering the whole of the population towards their spiritual welfare.
Of course, controlling and ordering nature is also one of the key ideas of the modern era. But rather than being motivated by an effort to deliver divine moral principles into this world, modernity is characterized by the effort to satisfy decidedly temporal ends. This shift in focus from the otherworldly to the worldly was an element of a larger cultural and philosophical movement called “humanism.” In part, humanism was prompted by a series of crises in the western Catholic Church about a century after Aquinas’s death.1 This led to an effort at change within the Church, including Martin Luther’s provocative Ninety-five Theses (1517) that incited the Reformation and the eventual end of Catholic domination of Western Europe. But, these events also led many people to search for ethical guidance in places outside of religion. There was a new exploration of a secular humanism that challenged the Christian view of humans as sinners in need of salvation. Reason rather than faith, scientific investigation rather than solitary meditation, and a curiosity about reality rather than the divine became the central features of the effort to recover and revive the intellectual and cultural capacities of human beings that had been lost since the onset of the Dark Ages, which began centuries earlier with the sacking of Rome and St Augustine’s call to turn away from the things of this world.
In fact, because of his emphasis on rationality, politics, and law, it is often argued that Aquinas was himself a humanist. While Aquinas did recognize a certain freedom in human affairs and choices, he viewed the goals and achievements of humanity as still hierarchically subordinate to God. The humanism that spurred the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and modernity itself, however, went further. This change is well expressed by the infamous Italian political thinker and leading humanist Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) when he observes in The Prince (1516):
As I am well aware, many have believed and now believe human affairs so controlled by Fortune and by God that men with prudence cannot manage them – yes, more, that men have no recourse against the world’s variations. Such believers therefore decide that they need not sweat over man’s activities but can let Chance govern them. This belief has been the more firmly held in our times by reason of the great variations in affairs that we have seen in the past and now see every day beyond human prediction. Thinking of these variations, I myself now and then incline in some respects to their belief. Nonetheless, in order not to annul our free will, I judge it true that Fortune may be mistress to one half our actions but that even she leaves the other half, or almost, under our control.2
Considering his reputation as an arch-realist and the father of modern power politics, what is most surprising about this passage is Machiavelli’s acceptance of the still large role played by God or “Fortune” in the actions of men. Rather than completely casting off the limitations placed on human achievement associated with medieval thought, Machiavelli instead presents a conflict between the goals of men and the authority of God. In this sense, he is a transitional figure straddling the medieval and modern eras. The transition, though, is momentous in that humanity is no longer subordinate to the divine but “almost” on an equal footing.
This conflict between the manoeuvrings of fortune, or fortuna, and the human practice of the virtue, or virtù, of prudence is an underlying theme of The Prince. Because Italy at the time was subject to such “great variations in affairs,” including the invasion of foreign armies and shifting political leadership, it appeared to many Italians that the future direction of their communities was out of their control. It may have seemed that the spinning wheel of the goddess Fortuna had turned against them, leaving them helpless in the face of overwhelming circumstances “beyond human prediction.” As a political treatise, The Prince instructs that this turmoil actually presents an opportunity for change; that fortune could be turned in the Italians’ favour. A strong leader with the right skill and strategy could defeat the foreign invaders, establish political stability, and take control of Italy for the Italian people.
Taken this way, the concept of fortuna becomes more difficult to understand, indicating sometimes an unknowable, transcendent godlike force that is impervious to human influence and at other times merely a set of contingencies that with enough foresight and skill can be anticipated and neutralized. Whether fortuna is one or the other seems to depend on the practice of virtù. Instead of the Greek or Christian virtue, we have Machiavelli’s novel virtù: not a set of principles, morals, or ethics but more simply the capacity to act towards a desired end, whatever it may be. For Machiavelli, if you are very virtuous then you will be able to achieve your goals most often, and chance, bad luck, and unfortunate circumstances will have less of a role in the direction of your life. If you have little virtue, it may seem that you have no say in the path your life takes and are helpless in the face of forces greater than you. So, there is no strict division between the realms of fortuna and virtù, but instead a constant battle for territory between them.3
Notably, the virtù under consideration in the passage above is prudence or prudenza in the original Italian. This secular definition of judgment, cut off from the guiding influence of either “the good” or God, owes its existence to the millennium-old splitting of prudence into two. Machiavellian virtù is Augustinian “prudence of the flesh” freed from its dour partner “prudence of the spirit.” And, unlike Aquinian prudentia, prudenza is cut loose from the guiding influence of synderesis, freeing human action to work towards strictly human ends. Now, the tremendous energy put into material, political, and moral projects to uncover God’s divine plans and conform the world to them is put into the service of the strictly human enterprise of quantifying and controlling the world, bending it to conform to the will of men.
So, while they might think they are powerless, Machiavelli is urging the Italian people to be prudent. The Romans, he reminds his readers, were successful and powerful because they were able to foresee and direct the flow of future events:
In these instances the Romans did what all wise princes do: these take thought not merely for present discords but also for future ones, and the latter they forestall with every sort of ingenuity; when foreseen far ahead, discords easily can be remedied, but when you wait until they are upon you, the medicine is not in time; they have grown incurable. It is the same as with the hectic fever; the physicians say that when the disease begins it is easy to cure but hard to recognize, but in the course of time, when not recognized and treated at the beginning, it becomes easy to recognize and hard to cure. So it is in things of state; on early recognition (which is granted only to a prudent man), the maladies that spring up in a state can be healed speedily; but when, not being recognized, they are allowed to increase in such a way that everybody recognizes them, they can no longer by remedied.4
This description of the Romans as doctors and their empire as prone to disease is similar to Plato’s discussion of the techno-polis from chapter 2. Machiavelli also employs the metaphor of the chronically ill patient to describe the political community and the strong leader as a cure. Here, though, rather than trying to craft a just city and happy citizenry, Machiavelli is more concerned with conquering people and keeping territory. He realizes that because human beings are definitely not political animals, we require a strong dose of “medicine” in order to live peaceably together under common laws and leaders. As he explains, “Because we can say this about men in general: they are ungrateful, changeable, simulators and dissimulators, runaways in danger, eager for gain.”5 Therefore, this remedy must somehow transform naturally selfish individuals into obedient citizens. It is with this in mind that Machiavelli provides a host of means to con, cajole, and coerce individuals to acquiesce to state power. Left to our own devices, free of this cure, the disease will quickly return and we will fall back on our natural instincts, resulting in the fracturing of the state and the death of the patient. Because the Romans were prudent in this way, they were able to gain and maintain a vast empire.6
This then is prudenza – the capacity to diagnose and treat, to foresee and forestall, the self-interested and malevolent tendencies of human beings. Clearly, this prudenza remedy is not concerned with bringing out the best in the citizenry, allowing them fulfil some personal telos, but, in a dramatic lowering of expectations, seeks to prevent the worst – political disorder, insecurity, and violence. And while he never actually writes the well-known turn of phrase, this encapsulates the Machiavellian notion that “the ends justify the means.” Now it really does not matter if our habits are good or bad, but only if they deliver us a desired end. Machiavelli even states that a prudent prince must “acquire the power to be not good.”7 Now, because the “good” or “God” are no longer targets for our actions, control and manipulation of the world around us and our fellow human beings become the keys to political success and personal fulfilment. In this way, Machiavelli’s pragmatic political leader, his Prince, is much like Plato’s technites-king; only that now, instead of the construction of good citizens, he is interested only in the pursuit of power. Because there is no higher order, first principle, or divine stamp to guide the individual to right judgments, decision making is reconceived as a technical skill that reflects strategy and tactics rather than ethics. This is an important change because it dismisses supranatural or external standards to guide the application of technical knowledge to both nature and human nature. At this point, with no standard beyond the boundless desire to gain and maintain power to guide it, we see technology unleashed from its ethical chains to do whatever we want or whatever it will.
Just as Aristotle’s ancient technician imposes form onto matter to arrest the movement of nature,8 the Prince uses politics to reform and mould individuals to become loyal subjects. For Machiavelli, politics is techne. Thus, politics is no longer a practice that is an end in itself, but an external efficient cause for the creation of some other product. He writes, “We see that [prudent leaders] had from Fortune nothing more than opportunity, which gave them matter into which they introduce whatever form they choose.”9 All things considered, this is a remarkable change in attitude. The natural world and all of humanity is reconceived as mere material, waiting for a purpose to be imposed upon it by a powerful and prudent leader.
Of course, this can only be taken so far. While Machiavelli may have set up the massive modern project to reorganize the planet and everything on it to deliver human ends, he thinks that we can only be in command of half of everything. The other half still remains outside our power.
The English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), however, thinks that we can control all of it. For him, there is no fundamental barrier to our domination of nature and human nature. There is no concept of the good, no counsel from God, and no battle with fortuna. There are only technical limitations. The reason why Hobbes thinks we have as of yet been unable to gain this total control is our stubborn reliance on the fallible judgments, the unreliable decision making of human beings. So, while Augustine, Aquinas, and Machiavelli seek to diminish, narrow, and transform the virtue, Hobbes wages an all-out attack on prudence.
Hobbes was the archetypal polymath. Fluent in Latin and ancient Greek, he was a respected translator of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War. A student of Francis Bacon, he was an accomplished natural scientist. Hobbes was also a respected inventor, working in the area of lenses and optics. Appropriately, he became friends with Galileo Galilei. But he is best known for his political philosophy. Even in his seventeenth-century English, his ideas sound surprisingly up to date. We more or less agree with Hobbes that scientific facts are superior to the imperfect judgments of friends, neighbours, and colleagues. We agree that the advice of a twenty-first-century phronimos (if there even is such a thing) can at best be considered folksy wisdom when compared to the accepted verdicts of the scientific establishment. We likely concur that it is foolhardy and even dangerous to reject clinically proven treatments and therapies for our problems, viewing traditional remedies as antiquated and haphazard.
And yet Hobbes’s definition of prudence initially seems quite similar to ancient phronesis. He writes, “But this is certain: by how much one man has more experience of things past than another; by so much also he is more prudent, and his expectations the seldomer fail him.”10 Like Aristotle, he understands life experience as the foundation for the development of good judgment. But, unlike Aristotle, he does not hold this capacity in high esteem. According to Hobbes, a prudent man is nothing more than a good guesser: “He that is most versed and studied in the matters he guesses at: for he hath most Signes to guesse by.”11 Critical of both ancient and Christian conceptions, for him “signes of prudence are all uncertain; because to observe by experience, and remember all circumstances that may alter the successe, is impossible. But in any businesse, whereof a man has not infallible Science to proceed by; to forsake his own natural judgement … is a signe of folly.”12 We rely on human judgments only when “a man has not infallible Science to proceed by.” Now science comes first. Prudence is plainly second rate. What Hobbes is describing then is nothing less than the Great Reversal of the hierarchy between the virtues of phronesis and techne. The technites-king dethrones the phronimos. From here on the increasing power of technical knowledge continues to subordinate the weakening authority of human judgments.
This Great Reversal of phronesis and techne was by no means limited to Hobbesian political philosophy, but spanned the whole of Western civilization and ultimately the entire planet. The Scientific Revolution, including the paradigm-shifting work of Galileo and Newton, provided evidence that the universe was nothing more than a complicated mechanical system that could be rationally understood and explained under a precise set of laws.13 New techniques allowed for the wider exploitation of nature. Inventions such as the steam engine mechanized labour and drove forward massive industrialization, economic growth, and social upheaval. More and more, the promise of technology rather than the judgments of men pushed the direction of society.
The point is that these revolutions in science and industry would not have occurred without a commensurate change in how we relate to others and the world around us. Because the Great Reversal articulated by Hobbes indicates the new primacy of technical thinking over the judgments of human beings, it follows that life experience simply does not provide anyone with the competence to make proper decisions or understand how the world truly works. Instead, true knowledge requires what Hobbes’s old teacher Francis Bacon calls a “skilful minister” that is able to “apply force to matter” and “torture and vex” nature so that it reveals its secrets. Bacon is describing the new scientific method that becomes the foundation for an ever-widening experimentation on the natural world – unlocking the hidden qualities and energies of matter that go on to power the scientific and industrial revolutions.
The novelty of this way of understanding nature is well illustrated by the renowned debate spurred by Galileo’s proofs regarding the heliocentric universe. While the controversy stemmed from what was perceived as a conflict between Galileo’s findings and sacred scripture, the idea that the earth orbits the sun also defies common-sense experience. Anyone watching a sunrise will be led to believe that it is the sun that is moving. “Ignorance of remote causes,” Hobbes decides, “disposeth men to attribute all events, to the causes immediate.”14 Because the “remote cause” of the sunrise is hidden from immediate view, we attribute it to the wrong source. In the same way, everyday living and observation leads us to incorrect conclusions about most of the inner workings of our world and thus provides no grounding in the way things really work. The phronimos merely can guess, whereas the scientist actually knows because only he is able to unearth the hidden laws of nature.
The same is true of politics. Rather than understanding the remote causes of human behaviour, politicians in Hobbes’s day merely could guess what goes on the minds of their citizens. He advised that experts who understand humanity on a technical level should instead run government. He calls upon “good counselors” to use their expert knowledge to design bureaucratic institutions that will allow the state to run like an automatic mechanism or machine. At first, these modern political scientists, these counsellors, bear a similarity to a phronimos because they require “a great knowledge of the disposition of Man-kind … And the Strength, Commodities, Places both of their own Country, and their Neighbours; as also of the inclination, and designes of all Nations.”15 But, unlike an education in ancient political science, all of this experience and training is not directed towards the development of a good leadership, practical wisdom, or even good citizens. Instead, Hobbes expounds the importance of this experience and training because it leads to a grasp of an administration based on “Infallible rules, (as in Engines, and Edifices, the rules of Geometry,).”16 He continues: “All the experience of the world cannot equall his Counsell, that has learnt, or found out the Rule.” So, it is not the particular life of the good counsellor that makes him an invaluable element of the state but his or her scientific knowledge or understanding of the “infallible rules.”
Just as the natural scientist is able to reveal and exploit the hidden qualities of the natural world, Hobbes argues that this new kind of political scientist can do the same with the political world. Again, the obstacle has been our stubborn reliance on the very flawed virtue of prudence. If an exact technique of politics could be discovered to replace it, we would no longer have to rely on the whimsical decisions of the political elite nor would we have to contend with the unpredictable movements of the masses. So, prudence actually presents Hobbes with two related problems. The first is the ignorance of political leaders and the irrational judgments they make based on their less-than-reliable life experiences. The second and even more perplexing problem is the varied judgments of the citizenry. Because prudence is derived from a diversity of personal experiences rather than universal rules of reason, no two people can be expected to have the same reaction or make the same decision in any given circumstance.17 Prudence not only makes for bad leaders but also makes it nearly impossible to predict and control the thoughts and actions of people. There are simply too many contingencies to deal with. Recall that Aristotle thinks a purely technical knowledge of politics is implausible due to the sheer complexity of human beings. Even Machiavelli demurs at the bold claim that a prince could completely predict and control human nature. Hobbes decides that this is not insurmountable truth but merely an assailable technical limitation.
He recognizes that a science of human management will not be easy. But he remains confident that just as the exact rules of geometry were uncovered through hard work and study, so too will the exact rules of politics, although he admits, “Politiques is the harder study of the two.”18 If the rules of politics were structured like the rules of geometry or physics, political life would be predictable and not subject to turmoil and violence. In his new age of discovery, Hobbes asserts that just as other long-held problems and superstitions had been solved or dispelled, so too could this enduring problem. It is just a matter of time and industry:
Time, and Industry, produce every day new knowledge. And as the art of well building, is derived from Principles of Reason, observed by industrious men, that long studied the nature of materials, and the divers effects of figure, and proportion, long after mankind began (though poorly) to build: So, long after men have begun to constitute Common-wealths, imperfect, and apt to relapse into disorder, there may, Principles of Reason be found out, by industrious meditation, to make their constitution (excepting by externall violence) everlasting.19
In this extraordinary passage Hobbes not only compares statecraft to the technique of building, but he also suggests that, if constructed according to the “Principles of Reason,” his commonwealth would be perfect, held together with a “constitution everlasting” that will perpetually resist the internal forces of disorder that have ripped apart every political community hitherto. Just as the house builder imposes the form of a house onto his materials, the state builder must impose the form of the state onto human beings. But, whereas even the best built house will not last forever, Hobbes seeks to create something that will.
For the modern state builder, the key is to fully understand the nature of his materials: human beings. Aristotle’s earlier reservations about the portrayal of humans as mere choregia or “human material” stemmed from the false belief that human beings living together in a polis would be too difficult to control in a technical way. In turn, the polis in the Politics was “imperfect and apt to relapse into disorder,” a product of an earlier ignorant age. But, because man has now accumulated enough new knowledge through “industrious meditation,” this ignorance can be pushed aside and the perfect political community can finally be made. This is why Hobbes colours all earlier political traditions as simply inferior, less-informed versions of his present project.
Aristotle’s mistake was to think that the role of the state was the fulfilment of the citizen’s personal telos, bringing him to the final end of eudemonia. Instead, Hobbes concludes that all humans are fundamentally equal because they share a “similitude of the passions” or sameness of the senses. Because this equality allows for a common perception of pain and pleasure, the sovereign state or “visible Power” can effectively control every citizen through the threat of punishment:
The finall Cause, End, or Designe of men, (who naturally love Liberty, and Dominion over others,) in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, (in which wee see them live in Common-wealths,) is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of Warre, which is necessarily consequent (as hath been shewn) to the naturall Passions of men, when there is no visible Power to keep them in awe, and tye them by feare of punishment to the performance of their Covenants.20
Rather than pleasure or happiness, the tangible fear of pain, our mutual “Fear of Death, and Wounds,”21 is the glue that holds the modern nation state together. We are not obliged to follow the laws of the state or perform our “Covenants” out of a sense of virtue or loyalty but at bottom out of our common sense of self-preservation. Like trained rats in a scientist’s laboratory, we can be shocked and prodded to move one way or the other, following this law and avoiding that prohibition. Hobbes takes this idea a step further to argue that “the Common-peoples minds … are like clean paper, fit to receive whatsoever by Publique Authority shall be imprinted in them.”22 So, the modern state builder not only is able to control how we act, but also seeks control of what we think. In turn, Hobbes promotes propaganda and censorship as well as the silencing of “vainglorious” challengers to power as familiar and effective methods for the consolidation of the state’s authority over the citizenry.
In order to succeed, all the unpredictable passions, desires, and irrationalities of human beings must be quantified and controlled. In chapter 7 of Leviathan, Hobbes worries about an “excess of passion” that pushes men to seditious thought and actions. And this worry leads him to put all citizens under suspicion of revolt. As he describes, “For the Thoughts, are to the Desires, as Scouts, and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.”23 From this we can gather that Hobbes takes the passions to be a clandestine source for our behaviour. It is the task of a good government to locate and contain any dangerous elements (i.e., “Scouts and Spies”) of human thought and action that could potentially disrupt the proper running of the state. In all, the state is directed towards the manipulation of human nature through greater scientific understanding of the passions and the implementation of that understanding in the design of laws and public institutions. For Hobbes, they are the instruments of external control. Rather than completing human nature, politics is concerned with manipulating the appetites. As he explains: “But as men, for the atteyning of peace, and conservation of themselves thereby, have made an Artificiall Man, which we call a Common-wealth; so also have they made Artificiall Chains, called Civill Lawes.”24 The better these laws and institutions control and limit our natural inclination, the greater opportunity there is for domestic peace and stability. So, from the very start of Leviathan, Hobbes sets us off on a course wholly different from the understanding presented by the classical thinkers. In disregarding the possibility that the passions lead us towards a natural and teleological good, Hobbes dismisses Aristotle’s description of the hierarchical relationship between the appetites and the virtues. For Hobbes, the state manipulates our nature through artifice. Where in the classical conception virtue moderates the appetites, in Hobbes all we are is appetites.
Because the specific objects of pleasure differ so much between men, Hobbes bases the manipulation of the appetites on our common aversion to pain (i.e., “Fear of Death, and Wounds”).25 As it is based on an alleviation of pain and not a fulfilment of pleasure, politics is cut off from satisfying the passions, or is de-eroticized. The desire for pleasure, the initial spur for all activity in classical thought, is confined, held down, limited to acquisition and wealth. The Leviathan then is something of an instruction manual for the modern practice of kingly techne or a blueprint for the ultimate building of the techno-polis. Of course, just as Plato’s city seemed abhorrent, Hobbes’s insertion of political control into the intimate recesses of our minds and bodies makes his political philosophy seem not the inspiration for the modern nation-state in general but rather the Orwellian realms of Stalin’s Soviet Union or Mao’s China.
But unpredictably, Hobbes actually baulks at the idea of a totalitarian technical control of humanity. In what seems a major step down, he concedes that, “For seeing there in no Common-wealth in the world, where in there be Rules enough set down, for the regulation of all the actions, and words of men, (as being a thing impossible:) It followeth necessarily … by laws praetermitted, men have the Liberty, of what their own reason shall suggest, for the most profitable to themselves.”26 Rather than total control, he seems to accept that as long as individual citizens follow the stated laws, they will and should remain at liberty to pursue whatever pleasures and satisfy whatever appetites they want in their private lives. So, while politics is purged of the unreliable judgments of human beings, we remain free to make our own (often irrational) choices outside of the public realm. This again makes Hobbes sound quite up to date in that most citizens today spend their time pursing personal economic goods with little concern for the common good.
Still, it is not clear why at this point Hobbes claims that it is “impossible” to have a commonwealth that completely masters the actions and words of its citizens in both their public and private lives. Is this simply the consequence of some remaining technical limitation? This seems the most likely answer. Because it so difficult, a complete and proper method of “Politiques” may require something still beyond the knowledge of men: “Neither Plato, nor any other Philosopher hitherto, hath put into order, and sufficiently, or probably proved all the Theorems of Morall doctrine, that men may learn thereby, both how to govern, and how to obey; I recover some hope, that one time or other, this writing of mine, may fall into the hands of a Soveraign, who will … convert this Truth of Speculation, into the Utility of Practice.”27
He holds out the hope that a statesman may someday come to this full understanding and apply a complete science of society.28 But, is Hobbes actually calling for a completely mechanical, and thus predictable, understanding of humans or is he instead arguing that humans maintain something uncertain, outside of mechanical explanation?
Only because politics has yet to be understood in the same way as physics or geometry does it require a different approach that includes consideration of ambiguous human subjectivity, desires, and rights. That is to say, rather than being able to fundamentally alter human nature, the state must keep a vigilant watch for insurrection against state power. Arguably, this is only for a lack of technical expertise. If a blueprint of human thought and psychology could be constructed, then a purely objective approach to the citizenry would suffice, as they would be nothing more than malleable objects or material. And as it is left at the end of his description of his new, modern commonwealth, Hobbes waits for that day. It is only in the next century, during the period known as the Enlightenment, that we see that day arrive.