Machiavelli's Virtue by Harvey Mansfield Jr

Author:Harvey Mansfield Jr. [Mansfield, Harvey Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, History & Theory, Political Science, History, Political, Politics, General, History & Surveys
ISBN: 9780226503721
Google: Q4EULB2IM50C
Goodreads: 11832523
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1996-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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This chapter was originally published as “An Introduction to The Prince," in The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). Copyright © 1985 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

EIGHT

AN INTRODUCTION

TO MACHIAVELLI’S

ART OF WAR

Machiavelli’s Art of War does not appear to be as Machiavellian as his other major prose works. The Prince, the Discourses on Livy, and the Florentine Histories, all first published in 1531 and 1532, after Machiavelli’s death in 1527, are studded with wicked sayings—some of them pungent, some bland, all of them memorable. For examples: “Men forget the death of a father more quickly than the loss of a patrimony” (P 17); “When the act accuses, the result excuses” (D I 9); “Faithful servants are always servants and good men are always poor” (PH III 13). But beauties such as these do not occur in the Art of War, published in 1521.

There is, to be sure, a list in Book VI of thirty-three deceits that a captain might find necessary (AW VI 482–90), supplemented by a list in Book VII of tricks that those besieged in a town might have to expect from their besiegers (AW VII 505–11). But these “Machiavellian” sections of the Art of War are relatively mild, exuding none of the venom that Machiavelli can produce when he wants to. Moreover, their wickedness is excused by the context of war, and thus limited. In the circumstances of war good men are of course compelled to commit wrongs they would not conceive of doing when at peace. Machiavelli does not attempt to extend the utility of evil practices from the battlefield into peacetime politics, as he does in his other works. Rather than being proposed as weapons for all those on the make, they seem to remain deplorable necessities for those who must fight.

Most striking, however, is the modest view taken of the art of war in Machiavelli’s Art of War. In The Prince Machiavelli pronounces that the art of war is the “only art which is of concern to one who commands’:

A prince should have no other object, nor any other thought, nor take anything else as his art but the art of war and its discipline, for that is the only art which is of concern to one who commands. (P 14)

And, he goes on to say, a prince who has the art but no state will often gain a state, while a prince who has a state but not the art will lose his state. Indeed, for a prince to be “armed” means not that he holds a weapon or has an army but that he knows the art of war. Machiavelli cites the case of Francesco Sforza, who, because he was “armed,” became duke of Milan from a “private individual.” All he needed was to learn to be a military professional, it seems; the knowledge he had of war enabled him to succeed in politics. That knowledge is not only the sovereign but also the comprehensive art; no other knowledge is required, perhaps only good fortune.

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