Performing Political Theory by John Uhr

Author:John Uhr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Singapore, Singapore

The New Prince at the End of The Prince

Students new to The Prince like to compare the opening Letter with the last chapter which seems to carry the hot fervour of Machiavelli’s call for a new prince (Machiavelli 1998, 101–105; Strauss 1984, 62–69). Viroli’s Redeeming the Prince makes great use of this final chapter to prove that it is not a late-addition to a previously completed work but is, in fact, the rhetorical culmination of the whole work (Viroli 2014, 108–112). This last chapter is entitled in part an ‘Exhortation’ which allows students to see Machiavelli advocating in his most extreme form—and thereby revealing to his readers much that they should know about turning theory into practice. The full title refers to an exhortation to ‘seize Italy’ and ‘to free her from the barbarians’. The practical focus might tempt readers to think that Machiavelli’s ‘rhetoric’ in the end comes down to a form of patriotism or what was later called nationalism. The term ‘Italy’ never really came to national fruition until the nineteenth century, so the usual description is of Machiavelli being a forerunner of Italian nationalism. The reference to ‘barbarians’ seems usually understood by new students of The Prince to mean ‘non-Italians’: academic teachers can easily get some distance with this patriotic interpretation.

Yet many critics see something more. Viroli , for instance, notes that The Prince ‘ends with Machiavelli’s silence’ (Viroli 2014, 110). He means in part that the end of this final chapter is a quotation from Petrarch’s My Italy calling on a revival of Italian valour and virtue (Machiavelli 1998, 105). Viroli also means that Machiavelli leaves unsaid what he himself really identifies as the cause or greater purpose of valour and virtue: Italian nationalism might well be that greater purpose but there is very little praise for Italian nationality in the preceding 25 chapters in The Prince. Most of the preceding discussion has been about a form of government (principalities) and a form of ruler (princes). A prominent theme has been this idea of a ‘new prince’ where that is presented as a new idea about princes and not simply yet another new occupant of a princely office (Mansfield 1996, 31–36).

It can help students if they see that this last chapter contains two quotations: the final one from Petrarch and an earlier one from Livy , used when Machiavelli wants to summon up the justice of the cause facing the ‘new prince’ who will redeem Italy from the ‘barbarous cruelties and insults’ (Machiavelli 1998, 102–103). The Livy quote includes the statement that ‘war is just to whom it is necessary’ and goes on to say that ‘arms are pious when there is not hope but in arms’. The story which follows in the next few sentences adapts the struggle of Moses as a convincing account of what can be achieved if there is ‘very great readiness’ to tackle ‘extraordinary things’. Although Machiavelli addresses this to ‘your illustrious house’ of the Medici (a phrase used four times

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