Machiavellian Rhetoric by Victoria Kahn;

Author:Victoria Kahn; [Kahn;, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781400821280
Publisher: Princeton UP
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

MILTON

MILTON provides one of the best challenges to the usual histories of Renaissance Machiavellism and one of the best examples of the revised definition of Machiavellism proposed in this book. In the usual account, Milton figures as one of the happy few who read Machiavelli as a theorist of republicanism rather than as the arch-hypocrite, rhetorician, and atheist we know as the paradigmatic Machiavel.1 Among the texts adduced to support this view are Milton’s commonplace book, which includes numerous references to Machiavelli’s Art of War and Discourses; the possible allusion to Machiavelli in the sonnet to Vane; the discussions of republics and mixed commonwealths in the prose, such as in The Ready and Easy Way; and, finally, Aubrey’s much-quoted remark that Milton was a republican because he was “so conversant in Livy and the Roman authors, and the greatness he saw done by the Roman commonwealth.”2 And yet the standard equation of classical republicanism with secular political theory would seem to make it inapplicable to Milton above all.3 Nor can the usual histories of Machiavellism fully account for the fact that the Machiavel and the republican—far from being decorously distinguished—are conspicuously linked in Milton’s work, most obviously in the Satan of Paradise Lost.

The discussion of the doctrine of things indifferent in part 2 of this book suggests a different approach to Milton’s Machiavellism, one that is compatible with his theological and rhetorical concerns. In the following pages I argue that if we take seriously Milton’s intervention in the ongoing debate regarding things indifferent, as well as his portrayal of Satan as Machiavel and rhetorician, we are in a better position to understand Milton’s republicanism in the later prose works and in Paradise Lost. As we will see, Milton was Machiavellian in a way Machiavelli would have appreciated: he understood the rhetorical dimension of politics exemplified by Machiavelli’s Prince and Discourses; and much of his work can be seen as an extended meditation on the relation of rhetoric and faith not only to virtue but also to virtù. In turn, Milton the radical puritan and rhetorician helps us further to revise the usual histories of Machiavellism as secular political thought in the English Renaissance.

Specifically, Milton understood that the rhetorical politics embodied in the doctrine of things indifferent was at once a condition of Christian liberty and a threat to its realization. From Comus to Areopagitica to Paradise Lost, Milton enlarged the sphere of indifference in order to enlarge the role of rhetorical debate and individual discretion, as well as the possibilities for individual virtù. He thus gradually articulated a defense of Christian liberty, as well as the presuppositions that would eventually lead him to argue in favor of republicanism. At the same time, he was acutely aware of the Machiavellian underside of such a defense. In particular, Milton’s conception of truth as “knowledge in the making” seemed at times even to him to be the product of a stereotypically Machiavellian hubris or self-aggrandizement. Two conclusions follow from this analysis. The

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.