Indeed, it is evident that the philosophy of nature is indispensable.
Leo Strauss1
What is the difference between right and wrong? Can we know anything about justice and morality in the sense that we know truths in physics or chemistry? Because modern science seems to create a gulf between facts and values, these perennial questions have become particularly acute.
We live in a time marked by a lack of consensus on moral or legal principles. “Cultural diversity” has come to symbolize not merely respect for others, but an inability to explain why some forms of behavior are superior to others. “Just Do It”—a popular motto on T-shirts in some places—has become the tacit standard of many in business, politics, law, and everyday life. For the terrorist as for the literary deconstructionist, commitment is the measure of right and wrong.
Most of us, of course, continue to respect moral standards and legal obligations. But the reasons for what we do seem unclear. For every practical issue, politicians and preachers proclaim diametrically opposed views with equal fervor. Is it a question of abortion? For some, the answer is a fetus’s “right to life”; for others, it is a woman’s “right to choose.” Should we pay taxes? For some, governmental activity is always inherently suspect and “no new taxes” an almost sacred refrain; for others, social obligation extends to a guarantee of equal opportunity if not equal success to all.
Since antiquity, such issues have been the focus of serious thought about human nature and society. In private life, the ordinary person confronts similar issues, often wondering why social norms and laws exist. Little wonder that theologians and political philosophers have offered diverse answers to the questions asked by every growing child, not to mention every intelligent citizen.
In the Western tradition, the concept of human nature has generally been central to the religious doctrines and secular theories that explain society, law, and morality. The origins and character of our species have also been a matter of scientific study since the ancient Greeks. As a result, issues of moral and political thought touch on the findings of natural science as well as on philosophic theories and religious doctrines.
Since Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1858, the need to relate questions of human nature and society to the natural sciences has become even more obvious. This century has seen unparalleled advances in the scientific understanding of evolution and human biology: we know more today about our species’ nature than ever before. Paradoxically, however, this century has also seen an unparalleled division between the study of nature and the study of morality, law, and politics.
My book is part of a growing concern to respond to this situation. Over the last twenty years, along with other scholars, I have suggested a return to the naturalistic tradition of Western thought, in which a scientific study of human life is directly relevant to questions of morality and law.
In my own teaching, research, and publication I have tried to integrate evolutionary biology, political psychology, political philosophy, law, and human ethology. The organization of the present book, while unorthodox, thus reflects an effort to bring together two traditions that have drifted apart over the last century.
To explore the issues of political philosophy as they have been articulated in the past, I set out to focus on a single thinker—Niccolò Machiavelli. This great and subtle Florentine is often said to have founded a modern “scientific” study of human affairs. To assess the truth of Machiavelli’s theories, however, we must consider what is known, today, about hominid evolution and the natural factors influencing social behavior. This procedure is particularly necessary now that Darwinian evolutionary theory is generally accepted within the scientific community as the explanation of human origins.
To compare Machiavelli’s theories with scientific findings, it is first necessary to state his theories accurately. This turns out to be more difficult than might first appear. Scholars have proposed very different interpretations of The Prince, Discourses on Titus Livy, and other works by Machiavelli. It is, therefore, necessary to read the texts carefully in order to define Machiavelli’s theory of human nature before we can test it against the latest scientific research. In so doing, I realized that scholars have ignored some critical evidence.
At the outset of The Prince, Machiavelli tells us that his knowledge is based on his “long experience of modern things” as well as “continuous reading of ancient ones.” When reading and interpreting his work, particular attention therefore needs to be given to Machiavelli’s political career. Machiavelli held high office in the Florentine Republic from 1498 until the overthrow of Piero Soderini’s regime in 1512. I now believe that his thought was particularly shaped by an event in this career: Machiavelli’s meeting, during his mission to the court of Cesare Borgia in 1502, with Leonardo da Vinci (who at that time was serving as Borgia’s architect and military engineer).
After giving the Covey Lectures on which this book is based, I discovered, almost by accident, that the lives of Machiavelli and Leonardo intersected. Although Leonardo’s biographers and many art historians believe they became close friends in 1502, the extent of their contacts has been questioned by intellectual historians. Most political theorists have been unaware that Machiavelli’s thought might have been influenced by the most extraordinary artist, engineer, and scientific innovator of the Renaissance. When I came across the statement that they were friends (while looking at a book on Leonardo at the Chicago Art Institute bookshop), I did not expect how difficult it would be to establish the truth of the story.
Neither Machiavelli nor Leonardo mentions the other by name in writings or letters that have survived; this is not conclusive, however, since both were legendary for their elusiveness or deviousness. Leonardo’s Notebooks contain amazing things—including passages that seemingly relate to Machiavelli’s works—but no conclusive evidence. Machiavelli’s secondary works, including poems written before The Prince as well as The Art of War, provide little more than tantalizing hints. Only after completing an account pieced together from secondary sources did I discover that many relevant documents, although published in Italian, have never been translated into English or analyzed with adequate care by Machiavelli’s biographers.
As Second Chancellor of the Florentine Signoria and Secretary to the Committee known as the Ten of War, Machiavelli wrote extensive letters and memoranda that are still in the Florentine archives. His dispatches from the court of Cesare Borgia in 1502–1503, the so-called Legations to Valentino, refer to conversations with an unnamed “friend” or “first secretary” of Cesare.
This purely circumstantial evidence was immeasurably strengthened by the discovery of additional documents reproduced below. Letters and archival materials prove that between 1503 and 1506, Machiavelli’s responsibilities included four projects on which Leonardo da Vinci was involved. One of these, an attempt to divert the Arno River during the siege of Pisa, is especially important: a letter from the field proves that Leonardo visited the site on 23 July 1503 and played a role in the adoption of the project (Appendix I.2). Machiavelli’s dispatches from Florence demonstrate that he took an active role in supervising the attempted diversion (Appendix I.4). As I will show, this experience had a lasting impact on Machiavelli, whose writings echo views of science, warfare, and technology found only in Leonardo’s Notebooks. This influence is of the greatest importance because Leonardo himself had worked out visionary plans for a political system that foreshadowed modern industrial societies.
Chapter one introduces the argument by setting forth the historical evidence concerning the relationship between Leonardo da Vinci and Machiavelli. I trace the careers of Leonardo and Machiavelli, with particular emphasis on the period between 1502 and 1508 when they were most likely to have met and talked with each other. While many points remain uncertain and we cannot be sure that their acquaintance ever constituted close friendship, the documents establish that Machiavelli knew Leonardo to some degree.2 As a result, no comprehensive account of Machiavelli’s political thought can ignore his political experiences between 1500 and 1512.
Based on this historical account, the next two chapters set forth an interpretation of Machiavelli’s political teaching that is not shared by all commentators and scholars. When the Florentine Republic fell in 1512, Machiavelli was arrested and tortured on charges of conspiring against the new Medici rulers. These circumstances, too often neglected when reading and interpreting The Prince, confirm the old view that Machiavelli was an exceptionally deceptive writer who often “hid” his republican principles.
Chapter two is devoted to the problem of how to read Machiavelli’s Prince. In it, I briefly describe Machiavelli’s political career and the context in which he wrote, contrast The Prince with the Discourses on Titus Livy, and examine his own statements of his “intention.” Both correspondence and published works confirm the view that he wrote in what he himself called a “covert” manner. To avoid the criticism that such an interpretation is impossible to prove, I will suggest specific criteria for discovering implicit meanings in a theoretical text, and show that Machiavelli’s writings meet these standards of evidence.
The substance of Machiavelli’s political philosophy is summarized in chapter three. Focusing on a careful reading of The Prince, I explain why he repeatedly suggested that he had found a “new way” of thinking about human life, abandoning otherworldly piety and transforming ancient political philosophy in the light of the needs of political practice. But while challenging both pagan Greek rationalism and Christian faith, Machiavelli somehow preserves and builds on both traditions.
Machiavelli’s “new way” can properly claim to open the possibility of what came to be called modern thought and politics. He bases political and moral principles on a secular or pagan view of human nature, substituting observation of the world for biblical revelation as the means to knowledge. But he does not simply go back to the conception of human virtue and morality that Western tradition had derived from philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. Instead, Machiavelli’s understanding is also shaped by a reflection on the primacy of political practice and an awareness of the new scientific perspective explored by Leonardo da Vinci.
The result is a this-worldly view of history, opening the hope that events can be partly controlled or shaped by human intelligence, art, and choice. Our world of science and technology seems but a development of this perspective, according to which humans can create new things just as, in Genesis, Yahweh created the heavens, the earth, and all living things.
In the Bible, Moses and the Israelites are saved by God’s parting of the Red Sea. As a Florentine political official, in 1503–1504 Machiavelli consulted Leonardo on the engineering plans for diverting the Arno River to defeat Pisa; this experience, and Leonardo’s writings, suggest that Machiavelli had both theoretical and practical reasons to think that human science and technology could be used to achieve ends once sought only by prayer. Although Machiavelli’s experience of working with Leonardo could have indicated such a transformation of values would be possible, it also revealed its dangers if science and technology were not controlled by political prudence.
A superficial reading of The Prince not only obscures these deeper insights, but even confuses Machiavelli’s judgments in political matters. By considering the text carefully and relating it to the Discourses on Titus Livy, it will become evident that Machiavelli’s principles lead to an emphasis on a government of “law” primarily dependent on the “people” and backed by “force.” In a profound sense, he laid the foundation of modern “constitutional” or “democratic” political regimes. If so, we are entitled to ask whether Machiavelli’s science of power is valid in the light of contemporary natural science.
Because Machiavelli professed to base his political understanding on the “effectual truth of the thing” and claimed that successful leaders must “use” both the “beast” and the “man,” it is especially appropriate to confront his remarks about human nature with the scientific understanding of our species’ evolution and biology. The nature of animal social behavior is now a subject of extensive study, both in field and laboratory research. A reconsideration of Machiavelli’s theories in the light of these studies is especially appropriate because biologists now describe the capacity for deception and social manipulation in monkeys and apes as “Machiavellian intelligence.” The next three chapters therefore survey the findings of the life sciences as they relate to the emergence of social cooperation, law, and political leadership in human affairs.
Chapter four, “Using the Beast: Animal Dominance and Human Leadership,” begins from a famous passage in chapter eighteen of The Prince. There, Machiavelli distinguishes between the “nature” of “man” and “beast,” and counsels the leader—the individual Machiavelli calls “the prince” (il principe)—to “pick” the “lion” and the “fox” to control the “wolves.” What does Machiavelli mean when using the “lion,” the “fox,” and the “wolves” as symbols of the basic social and political problems facing humans?3 What do we know about animal social behavior, and how does it relate to problems of leadership and social cooperation in our own species? Clearly we cannot know the natural foundations of society without understanding the origins of the social behavior exhibited by lions, foxes, and wolves—not to mention birds, bees, and whales.4
Chapter five turns to the specifically human institution of governments and the centralized state. Machiavelli is famed not only for his concept of the prince, but for an emphasis on “the state” (lo stato). Knowing the roots of dominance and status among animals does not resolve the question of how centralized governments arise in human affairs.5 To assess Machiavelli’s theory of the state, it is necessary to reconsider the assumption of human selfishness in the philosophic tradition from the Greek Sophists to modern social contract theories, relating the origin of government to contemporary models in rational choice or game theory as well as evolutionary biology.6
Chapter six considers Machiavelli’s view of the relations between leaders and led in the light of observational studies of animal social behavior, with emphasis on the role of television in contemporary Western societies. The Machiavellian “economy of power,” resting on the triad of love, hate, and fear, corresponds to the essential components in the behavioral repertoire of primates; facial displays of the emotions and social signals corresponding to these three motives play a central role in human leadership. An examination of the average citizen’s emotions and judgments when watching leaders reveals the central role of the mode of communication between the leaders and led, and leads to a surprising reconsideration of Machiavelli as political thinker.
In effect, over the last two centuries Machiavelli has had a popular reputation as a teacher of evil.7 At a time when political life was conceptualized in terms of individual “rights,” Machiavelli seemed somewhat anachronistic. Even for those who view him as a republican, Machiavelli’s concerns are often reduced to the narrow question of how far effective leaders need to violate the social norms of an established, stable society.
By focusing on the mode of communication between leaders and citizens, we gain a better idea of the reasons for these interpretations of Machiavelli. The constitutional regimes characteristic of modernity, particularly after the revolutions of the late eighteenth century in the United States and France, relied on the newspapers as the essential mode of political communication; the result was the emergence of the political party, an institution not predicted by Machiavelli. In a political universe dominated by political discourse based on printing Machiavelli’s teaching seemed to many obsolete.
Television, by profoundly changing the mode of communication, has recreated—on the larger scale of the nation-state—many of the issues characteristic of the Renaissance cities of Italy. In returning to what appears to be a more direct or unmediated interaction between leaders and led, television seems to have returned us to the era of Machiavellian politics.
In chapter seven, I reconsider the extent to which Machiavelli’s thought can clarify contemporary life. To understand modernity and its crisis, or even to ascertain the extent to which Machiavelli can be called a modern, it is necessary to define the central attribute of our epoch. This characteristic can be found, I argue, in the integration of scientific theory, technological innovation, commerce, industry, and politics. Whereas theory and practice were divorced, albeit for different reasons, in antiquity and the Middle Ages, after the Renaissance there came to be a close reciprocal relationship between scientific theories and technological or social practice.
Chapter seven then summarizes the way Leonardo da Vinci and Machiavelli contributed to this specifically modern view of science, technology, and politics. I show that Leonardo’s life and work were focused on radical innovations, everywhere challenging the distinction between theory and practice inherited from the past. In domains as diverse as painting, mathematics, physics, hydraulics, military engineering, architecture, and comparative anatomy, Leonardo introduced concepts and practices often centuries before they were fully realized in the modern West. More to the point, Leonardo extended these concepts to the study of human nature, society, and law, foreseeing a modern community based on private property and scientific technology.
These developments help explain why Machiavelli would have been influenced by his encounter with Leonardo. Whether the two men were once close friends or merely contemporaries whose direct contact was limited to consultation on official projects, their work can be said to symbolize the origins of modernity. To cite but one example, both Leonardo and Machiavelli saw how artillery had changed the nature of warfare by giving a strategic advantage to the offense, ending the defensive invulnerability of the feudal castle, and requiring substantial changes in military architecture and planning. From this, as can be seen in The Prince and Discourses as well as The Art of War, Machiavelli saw the necessity for a new political form, which he called “the state” (lo stato), based on a citizen army, prudent leadership, and effective laws.
Although Leonardo and Machiavelli both innovated in important ways, neither developed fully the political implications of the modern view of theory and practice. As an illustration of the further transformations that occurred to make possible our highly technological civilization, with its conquest of the globe and its never-ending revolutions of scientific theory, technology, and socio-economic change, I will show how Hobbes radicalized Machiavelli’s view of human potentiality. Machiavelli’s famous image of fortune as a river, which at one level might refer to the ill-fated project to redirect the Arno, illustrates the possibility of a partial control of human history; for Machiavelli himself, theory can never be a complete guide to practice.
Hobbes moves far beyond this by seeking a geometrical certainty in the scientific theory that is to guide practice. The consequences were not only the origins of liberalism in the concept that all men have an equal “natural right” to life and liberty, but a thoroughgoing integration of theory and practice. In place of the need for prudent legislators and leaders, Hobbes and those who follow in this tradition seek universal enlightenment. The consequences are a society of never-ending change, devoted to the myth of progress and subject to the dangers of ideological tyranny and technological disaster.
My conclusion assesses the continued value of Machiavelli’s perspective. The contemporary predicament could be described as an impossibility either to continue the modern quest for a limitless conquest of nature or to return to the earlier perspectives of classical antiquity and medieval Christianity. The civilization of the West has, since the sixteenth century, been based on a creative tension between a modern science of technological power, ancient traditions of reasoned justice, and religious beliefs in the limitations of human activity. Since Bacon spoke of the “conquest of nature,” we have been dedicated to using the power of science to resolve social conflict. In assessing the depth of the contemporary crisis, I suggest it may be beneficial to reconsider Machiavelli’s science of power as a means of integrating the wisdom of the ancients with the effectual realities of the present.
In reassessing the contemporary condition in the light of Machiavelli’s contribution to modernity, I would be failing in my duties should I neglect to thank Loyola University of Chicago for providing the occasion for the lectures that gave rise to this book. Since human institutions cannot be divorced from the individuals who animate them, I have a particular debt to the late Professor Richard Hartigan, whose invitation to present the Covey Lectures in Political Analysis was the stimulus for relating Machiavelli’s thought to recent scientific studies of human nature. As one who taught and wrote wisely on the necessity for a return to the naturalistic tradition in political philosophy, Dick provided both friendship and support for those like myself who shared in the quest for rational standards of justice and law. His loss has been widely felt; it is a great sadness that he did not live to see the final fruit of the lectures he encouraged me to give.
After beginning to write this book, as I have noted, I discovered the evidence that Machiavelli worked with Leonardo da Vinci and was probably influenced by this experience. In exploring this relationship, and in countless other ways, special thanks are due my former student John T. Scott, now a scholar who often teaches his former professor. In addition to commenting critically on the drafts of this essay, John has been indefatigable in locating valuable references on the relations between Machiavelli and Leonardo, and in focusing my attention on the fundamental issues.
When the first draft of this book was almost completed, William Connell provided a model of vigorous but informed scholarly criticism of an earlier draft chapter, presenting firmly the case against the supposed friendship of Machiavelli and Leonardo. In a subsequent letter, he most generously alerted me to Denis Fachard’s study of Machiavelli’s assistant and friend, Biagio Buonaccorsi, published in France almost twenty years ago, as well as to John M. Najemy’s recent analysis of the Machiavelli-Vettori correspondence. These works, which do much to bring Machiavelli’s political career to life, were invaluable and, combined with more thorough research of my own, led me to the documents reproduced in Appendix I. At a time when anonymous reviewers all too frequently indulge in hasty reading and prejudiced evaluation, Professor Connell demonstrated that the best traditions of fair-minded intellectual inquiry are very much alive.
As these remarks indicate, no scholar works alone. Today more than ever, thought and reflection entail obligations to others. Among those to whom I am particularly indebted, but who should not be held responsible for my errors, are (in addition to those just mentioned): Richard Alexander, Larry Arnhart, E. Donald Elliott, Wolfgang Fikentscher, Robert Frank, Siegfried Frey, Margaret Gruter, Michael T. McGuire, Heinrich Meier, Thomas Pangle, Michael Platt, William Rodgers, Jr., Glendon Schubert, Denis G. Sullivan, Lionel Tiger, Robert Trivers, and Edward O. Wilson. Two dear friends, Allan Bloom and Henry Ehrmann, contributed greatly to my understanding but did not live to correct my most recent errors.
Last but far from least, scholars have obligations to individuals and institutions who play a critical role in the support of the endeavor of writing. This work was completed while enjoying the leisure of a Senior Faculty Fellowship from Dartmouth College. The time and resources thereby made available would, however, not have been of use without the love and support of my wife Sandy. To all these, my thanks and appreciation.