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Welcome to Church, Brother
Niccolo
By Davis
Bitton
Few
people in history have a worse reputation than
Niccolo Machiavelli. Author of The Prince,
he became in his own lifetime a symbol of cruelty and cynicism.
His little book supposedly served as a handbook for Thomas Cromwell,
Napoleon Bonaparte, and eventually Adolph Hitler. At least
that’s the rap.
But not so fast.
What one says and how someone else interprets
it may be two different things. It is not fair to blame
Machiavelli for the gas chambers of Auschwitz
any more than it is fair to blame the Bible. I don’t
think modern dictators had to read a book from the sixteenth century
to form their own ruthless philosophy of rulership.
When
I was a graduate student, we gathered one evening to hear a speaker
from Columbia University. Garrett Mattingly, a charming and stimulating man,
best known for his later compelling study of the Spanish Armada,
talked to us about Machiavelli's life.
A
secretary of the Florentine
Republic at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, Niccolo Machiavelli worked tirelessly to preserve his
small Italian city-state, to prevent its conquest or its domination
by superpowers from the outside.
In
1512, when the papal armies restored the Medici to power in Florence, Niccolo was out of a job. Suspected of a conspiracy to overthrow
the Medici and bring back republican government, he suffered turns
on the rack. Then he spent many years in retirement, writing
books, hoping to be employed by the government.
In view of all this, Mattingly put forth
the possibility that The Prince was a satire. At
the very least, we should be cautious in judging.
I
am not so brash as to pronounce this Renaissance thinker a Latter-day
Saint. It would do the Church no good to be
identified with a thinker who, however unfairly, has become
associated with evil.
But in imagination I see
myself at the front door of our chapel welcoming this visitor
from the past. “Thanks for coming,” I would say. “I
have no idea whether you might find our teachings appealing, but
we do have some beliefs and attitudes in common. At the
very least you will understand us better.”
Let
us consider just three questions and see whether Machiavelli and
the Mormons have anything in common.
The
Church of His Day
Machiavelli
had the reputation of being irreligious, an atheist. But
many of the “irreligious” passages that won for him the label
of being opposed to Christianity turn out, upon closer scrutiny,
to be critical of the Catholic Christianity of his day as he knew
it. What he saw in practice, exemplified especially by Pope
Julius II, was the supposed head of Christendom
corrupted by wealth, heavily involved in Italy’s power politics, and
willing to use force, even to lead troops in the field.
If this was Christianity, Machiavelli was not impressed.
Power
and gain and priestcraft — those marks of a fatally flawed religion,
denounced by the prophets — were dominant in the church as Machiavelli
witnessed it. True enough, this was not the whole story,
but Machiavelli was not alone in his gloomy prognostication.
A visitor to Rome who came away with much the same impression was an Augustinian
friar named Luther.
Such
religion might be said to “teach for doctrine the commandments
of men” or, in Isaiah's powerful expression, to “draw near to
me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
Machiavelli
had little respect for such religion. But
what about a pure religion? We can only guess.
Human
Nature
One
of Machiavelli’s most famous pieces of advice to the prince had
to do with keeping his word. “A prudent ruler,” he
wrote, “ought not to keep faith when by so doing it would be against
his interest, and when the reasons which made him bind himself
no longer exist. If men were all good, this precept would
not be a good one; but as they are bad, and would not observe
their faith with you, so you are not bound to keep faith with
them.”
Year
after year, in my Renaissance classes I would solicit student
reaction to such Machiavellian advice. With very few exceptions
students agreed with him in saying that
he was describing the real world. To succeed in modern politics
or even in business, they said, you have to think and act like
this. I have always resisted this dismal conclusion, but
confess there must be some truth to it.
Not
that Machiavelli wanted his ruler to lie, cheat, and steal and
use every opportunity to wreak death and destruction. That
would be evil. That would be immoral. No. The
prince should keep his word, should be moral in other words, as
far as he can be. But he should
also be prepared to be immoral if necessary. His actions
should be governed by the realities of the situation — moral
or immoral, as the case required. Hence,
the common description of Machiavelli’s philosophy as “amoral.”
But why? What does
this piece of advice tell us about his view of human nature?
Does it not fit quite well with the recognition that humans —
natural man before a spiritual rebirth — are carnal, sensual, and devilish?
The Latter-day Saints who were driven from their
homes in Missouri and forced to flee to Illinois might agree with Niccolo.
Agency
Machiavelli
did not see life as totally determined, mechanistically predictable.
Fortune (that which is beyond our control) he likened to “an impetuous
river that, when turbulent, inundates the plains, casts down trees
and buildings, removes earth from this side and places it on the
other; everyone flees before it, and everything yields to its
fury.”
Yet
with this river quiet men “can make provision
against it by dykes and banks, so that when it rises it will either
go into a canal or its rush will not be so wild and dangerous.”
You do what you can. You try to protect yourself. Then you
deal with circumstances as they come. Brigham Young said
about the same thing.
We
cannot know how Niccolo Machiavelli would evaluate the Constitution
of the United States, but we do know
that he favored mixed government. After discussing Aristotle’s
traditional division of governments into three kinds, each of
which had its perverted form, Machiavelli said, “When there is
combined under the same constitution a prince, a
nobility, and the power of the people, then these three
powers will watch and keep each other reciprocally in check.”
Our
Founders did not invent the idea of checks and balances.
And Machiavelli did not really advocate
monarchy, much less dictatorship, as the best form of government.
Much
more can be said about this early modern political thinker.
Machiavelli is interesting because he was involved in important
affairs during a crucial generation and reflected on history and
human interaction. He is interesting because he is complex.
One must not stop with The Prince but must read his Discourses
on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius as well as his other
surviving writings. But I have
said enough to suggest that in some areas we Latter-day Saints
might find ourselves agreeing with him.
But let’s face it, some
of his views do not comport readily with gospel understandings.
I can’t really think it quite right for a ruler to pretend to
be religious. The important thing, said
our Florentine, is that he seems to be virtuous and seems
to be religious. Although we can well believe that
some political consultants think along these same lines, Latter-day
Saints cannot subscribe to such manipulation and deception.
Maybe
we’ll just leave the judgment of Machiavelli to God.
“Now it is better that a man should be judged of God than of man,
for the judgments of God are always just, but the judgments of
man are not always just” (Mosiah 29:12).
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