3.26. Machiavelli's Discorsi 3.26.

Machiavellis Discorsi

Hans Baron on Machiavelli's intellectual development

Machiavelli's Prince and the Discourses

Hans Baron
Ernst Cassirer
Garrett Mattingly
Mansfield / Tarcov
Quentin Skinner
Maurizio Viroli

Introduction

In his article "Machiavelli the Republican Citizen and Author of The Prince," (In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism,
Princeton UP 1988, vol II, p. 101-51), Hans Baron poses the classical question on the relationship between Machiavelli's
Prince and his Discourses: "how could the faithful secretary of the Florentine republic, the author of the Discourses on the
First Ten Books of Titus Livy, also be the author of The Prince?" (101). What follows is a series of excerpts from the above-
mentioned article.

[...] When, after so many attempts to reconstruct the allegedly harmonious relationship between Machiavelli's two major
works, we return to a reading of the Discourses, we still find ourselves facing the undisguised values of a republican citizen,
who is just as far from indifferent to the political and historical role of freedom as eighteenth-century readers had believed him
to be. Although it is true that the extension of the rules and maxims of the Prince to the life of republics is one of the features
of the Discourses, it is a different world of values to which the teaching of "Machiavellianism" is here applied - a world that
often looks as if it had been conceived by another author. (109)

[...]

The closer the comparison of the two works, the more absurd seems the idea that they should be two harmonious halves of
one and the same political philosophy, applicable under different conditions. The author of The Prince does not favor
restrictions on a ruler in the name of liberty; he does not think of the people as an active force - the central concern of the
author of the Discourses when leadership is the issue. So the puzzle of the relationship between Machiavelli's two works
remains, and unless we are prepared to return to the eighteenth-century suspicion that The Prince has a hidden meaning
which differs from what it appears to say, there is only one alternative: in the time which elapsed between the creation of
these two profoundly divergent views of the political world, something in the author's thinking must have changed. (116-17)

[...]

Could Machiavelli really have had in mind the tyrannical solution offered in The Prince when he considered in chapter
eighteen of Discourses I how the political health of a republic might be restored by a reformer in a time of decadence? It is
argued there, to be sure, that when civic spirit has been corrupted, regeneration demands force and violence. A potential
reformer, before anything else, would thus have to make himself a principe in his republic. Yet the aim of the chapter is
definitely not to present the usurper prince as a sometimes necessary remedy in the history of a republic. The author of
chapter eighteen of Discourses I is too firmly convinced that anyone ready to become an autocratic ruler in a time of crisis will
not act for the good of the people. "Reorganization of the constitutional life of a republic," he says, "presupposes a good man,
and recourse to violence in order to make oneself prince in a republic presupposes a bad man. Hence, a good man will rarely
be found who is willing, even with a good end in view, to use evil means to make himself prince, or a wicked man who is
willing to act benevolently once he has become a prince." This is, of course, never a consideration in The Prince, where the
principe nuovo is taught the art of "using the beast" in man whenever he so wishes. (122-23)

Hans Baron: "Machiavelli the Republican Citizen and Author of The Prince," In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism, 2 vols.
(Princeton UP 1988), vol II, p. 101-51.

See also Hans Baron on Discorsi I.18 and The Prince Hans Baron on Discorsi I.18 and The Prince
© 2003 Mikael Hörnqvist Mikael Hörnqvist - Welcome page
Den florentinska renässansen
http://www2.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/flor-mach-baron.htm

Machiavellis Fursten - text och kontext: 2. Staters grundade

Hans Baron on Discorsi I.18 and The Prince

The heart of [Federico] Chabod's thesis and that of the large Italian school under his influence is that the Discourses is a
biographical document - like a diary, reflecting successive changes in a writer's outlook and evaluations ... Chapters like
[Discourses I 16-18 and 26-27], in Chabod's eyes, are not digressions but suggest that in the course of writing, the
republican confidence of the preceding chapters gave way to the mood which The Prince was composed.

It is possible to identify the cause of this transformation, Chabod thought. After discussing Rome's foundation and the rise
and fall of its civic energies, Machiavelli, in the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters of Discourses I, recalls the conditions of
his own day, stating that in a phase in which civic virtue was totally corrupted, it would be very difficult, perhaps impossible, to
"maintain or restore" a republic. Whoever wants to rebuild the state in such a phase "must of necessity resort to extraordinary
methods, such as the use of force and an appeal to arms; before he can achieve anything, he must become a prince in the
state." Thus, Chabod concludes, "we have The Prince." In other words, at this point Machiavelli must have interrupted his
work on the Discourses and begun to write The Prince, until finally frustrated and disillusioned, he returned to the Discourses,
completing it in accordance with the original character of the work.

One might object to this ingenious construction by pointing out that in chapter eighteen, Machiavelli eventually reaches the
conclusion that for many reasons, such a princely position would be extremely difficult, perhaps even impossible, to
establish; but a book of Chabod's school, by Gennaro Sasso, has skillfully shown that the theory can be adapted to this
objection: Although the skepticism of the eighteenth chapter is not in accord with the standpoint of The Prince, Sasso argues,
it shows the writer in an immediately preceeding phase; it gives us a glimpse of the doubt and despair that caused
Machiavelli to excogitate the ruthless means by which one who is unafraid to commit crimes may achieve what seems
virtually impossible. (pp. 118-20)

Could Machiavelli really have had in mind the tyrannical solution offered in The Prince when he considered in chapter
eighteen of Discourses I how the political health of a republic might be restored by a reformer in a time of decadence? It is
argued there, to be sure, that when civic spirit has been corrupted, regeneration demands force and viloence. A potential
reformer, before anything else, would thus have to make himself a principe in his republic. Yet the aim of the chapter is
definitely not to present the usurper prince as a sometimes necessary remedy in the history of a republic. The author of
chapter eighteen of Discourses I is too firmly convinced that anyone ready to become an autocratic ruler in a time of crisis will
not act for the good of the people. (pp. 122-23)

Moreover, in chapter eighteen of Discourses I, the argument is headed in an entirely different direction from that of replacing
a republic by a principe nuovo, despite the fact that in both cases Machiavelli advocates recourse to force by the transformer
of the institutions of the state. Chapter eighteen of the first book of the Discourses ends, after all, with the counsel that those
who "are called upon to create or maintain a republic" in a period of corruption should strengthen the authoritative,
monarchical element within the constitution by modifying existing laws "in the direction of a regal rather than a democratic
order." (pp. 123-24)

This clearly repudiates a program of salvation through the ruthlessness of a princely usurper in the manner recommended in
The Prince. (p. 124)

Hans Baron: "Machiavelli the Republican Citizen and Author of The Prince," In Search of Civic Humanism: Essays on The
Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1988), II, 118-24.
RENÄSSANSENS FLORENS 3. Den florentinska renässansen: Innehåll

Hans Baron on Machiavelli's intellectual development Hans Baron on Machiavelli's intellectual development
© 2003 Mikael Hörnqvist Mikael Hörnqvist - Welcome page
Machivallis Fursten - text och kontext

http://www2.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/flor-mach-d18-baron.htm

Hans Baron's Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance is widely considered one of the most important works in Italian
Renaissance studies. Princeton University Press published this seminal book in 1955. Now the Press makes available a two-
volume collection of eighteen of Professor Baron's essays, most of them thoroughly revised, unpublished, or presented in
English for the first time. Spanning the larger part of his career, they provide a continuation of, and complement to, the earlier
book. The essays demonstrate that, contemporaneously with the revolution in art, modern humanistic thought developed in
the city-state climate of early Renaissance Florence to a far greater extent than has generally been assumed. The publication
of these volumes is a major scholarly event: a reinforcement and amplification of the author's conception of civic Humanism.

The book includes studies of medieval antecedents and special studies of Petrarch, Leonardo Bruni, and Leon Battista
Alberti. It offers a thoroughly re-conceived profile of Machiavelli, drawn against the background of civic Humanism, as well as
essays presenting evidence that French and English Humanism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was closely tied
to Italian civic thought of the fifteenth. The work culminates in a reassessment of Jacob Burckhardt's pioneering thought on
the Renaissance.

Originally published in 1988.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print
books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of
these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to
vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press
since its founding in 1905.

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Publication information: Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1988.
ISBN: 0691055122 (alk. paper : v. 1) :
ISBN: 0691055130 (alk. paper : v. 2) :
Language: English
Record ID: 1990977
Format: Regular Print Book
Date acquired: Not available
More creator details: Hans Baron.

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