![]() They did not give ordinary Romans formal institutional political power out of charity. Notice this wasn't done out of the kindness of their hearts. To keep the peace internally, and to then defeat the enemy externally, the patricians allowed for the instituting of the people's tribunate. The patrician class feared external enemies, but also feared internal revolts by the people. The people's tribunate, an institution that Machiavelli thought good, was founded on this principle. Machiavelli provides several "case studies" he takes from Livy's history of Rome to praise the power of metus hostilis in producing virtue. One example Pedulla provides is the concept of metus hostilis or "fear of the enemy." Pedulla interprets this "imposition of virtue" as an imposition of circumstances. So where does virtue come from in Machiavelli's view? He has a wholly modern view, one may say even materialist ala Marx, that virtue is "imposed." This sounds authoritarian, but it's not necessarily so. The only difference may be that a learned man is likely to be able to hide it better, and perhaps even justify to himself that his self-interested behavior is actually for the common good when it isn't. It is only through education that someone can develop the prudence, self-control, and foresight to look after the "common good," as opposed to base animalistic self-interest.Īccording to Pedulla, Machiavelli starts from the assumption that all people, no matter how learned they are, will appeal to their base self-interest. Virtue for them is something known by learned men, the republic's best men. Plato, Aristotle, and indeed most of Machiavelli's contemporaries, had an aristocratic notion of virtue which also partly justified their tendency to favor aristocratic republics. In a book I've recently read titled "Machiavelli in Tumults", Gabriele Pedulla provides an argument that Machiavelli's ideas of virtue were a bit more complex than that. Many scholars identify Machiavelli's "virtu," as you do here, with strength and cunning. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2022
Categories |