owen, machiavelli il principe politics of glory

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E J P TArticle

Machiavelli’s il Principe andthe Politics of Glory*

David OwenPolitics and International Relations, University of Southampton,

Southampton, UK

Abstract

This article offers a reading of Machiavelli’s il Principe and its relationship to his Discorsi

which defends, first, the coherence of Machiavelli’s appeal to the figure of the one-man

ordinatore and, second, a republican interpretation of il Principe. Its particular focus is on

the pivotal role played in Machiavelli’s text-act by ‘love of worldly glory’. It is argued,

first, that it is through love of glory that Machiavelli can coherently aim to produce an

effective one-man ordinatore and, second, that the political education that il Principe

provides to this figure leads them ineluctably to the conclusion that lasting glory can

only be achieved through the foundation of a republic.

Keywords

Machiavelli, prince, glory, love of glory, humanism, rhetoric, republic, virtu, Christianity

Gloria is a central term in Machiavelli’s political lexicon. Alongside near synonymslike fama, onore, laude, stima and riputazione, and antonyms such as vergogna,ignominia, disonore and infamia, it plays a pivotal role in the textual performancethat is Machiavelli’s il Principe.1 My purpose in this essay is to explore what wemay call ‘the politics of glory’ enacted in this literary act of political intervention.I approach this task by framing this act within the terms of a problem given suc-cinct and sharply etched expression in Machiavelli’s Discorsi where he writes inrespect of contexts in which republican politics has broken down:

Because the reordering of a city for a political way of life presupposes a good man

(uomo buono), and becoming prince of a republic by violence presupposes an evil man

(uomo cattivo), one will find it rarely happens that someone good (uno buono) wishes

to become prince by evil ways, even though his end be good (per vie cattive, ancora che

Corresponding author:

David Owen, Politics and International Relations, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK.

Email: [email protected]

at UNIVERSITAET OSNABRUECK on February 13, 2016ept.sagepub.comDownloaded from

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il fine suo fusse buono voglia devintare principe) and that someone wicked (uno reo),

having become prince, wishes to work well, and that it will ever occur to his mind to

use well the authority that he has acquired badly. (D I.18. Translation adjusted)

In the type of context specified by this passage, a plausible example of such arare type is Sulla – but the general problem to which Machiavelli draws attentionin this passage has wider scope than contexts in which a republic requires re-founding, being acutely present in any context of political founding and re-found-ing and potentially present in any context of political agency. This is the problemof the rarity, the exceptionality, of political agents who will act as necessary,where this is liable to entail the use of ‘evil ways’, but will only use such methodsto the extent necessary for good ends. Such innovators seem, to borrowNietzsche’s apposite phrase, to occur only as ‘lucky strikes’2 such as LuciusCornelius Sulla Felix.3 The fundamental task of any political text that addressescontexts of innovation – most fundamentally, of founding and re-founding – isthus, put most basically, a task of production: to act to generate such agents.Meeting the demands of this task requires that a political text motivate andeducate political agents as to the requirements of, and constraints on, appropriateand effective political agency in such contexts and act constitutively towards thegeneration of a political culture that reproduces political agents who are disposedto such motivation and education.

To frame an engagement with il Principe in this way is also, inevitably, to adopta stance towards two of the most vexed questions concerning Machiavelli’s work.The first is that of Machiavelli’s apparent appeal to the figure of the ‘one-manordinatore’ that I have adopted as the frame for my account. Recently Brenner(2013: 320) has suggested that this appeal poses one of the ‘deepest puzzles’ aboutthe Discorsi. Her point is that, given Machiavelli’s view of human nature, it is hardto conceive how he ‘could have thought that there were rare and wonderful excep-tions – almost superhuman men who may be trusted to act prudently at every turn’.She concludes: ‘If this is the conviction that links Machiavelli’s Discourses andPrince, it presents nothing short of a mind-boggling paradox.’ (Brenner, 2013:320). The argument that I propose may be seen as an attempt to dissolve thisparadox by showing that through a political education in glory as a politicalgood, Machiavelli can coherently seek to cultivate such rare and exceptional indi-viduals. The second is that of the relationship of the text-act il Principe toMachiavelli’s own republican commitments or, more specifically, to the politicaloutlook expressed in the Discorsi, responses framed most prominently in recentdebates in political theory by the opposition between claims of ‘trapping’ or‘taming’ the prince (see, e.g. Dietz, 1986; Fallon, 1992; Langton and Dietz,1987). To anticipate, the argument offered shares Mary Dietz’s conclusion that ilPrincipe acts to ‘trap’ its addressees, however, in contrast to Dietz’s argument,I locate Machiavelli’s ‘trap’ not in an act of deception but, rather, in one of politicaleducation, of a political education concerning the conditions of worldly glory.More precisely, I argue that Machiavelli’s text is concerned to educate his readeras to the demands that are made in the political realm by a commitment to love of

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worldly glory. Glory is the pivot on which, I claim, Machiavelli’s textual act turnsand his appeal to the one-man ordinatore coherently links il Principe and Discorsi.

The opening section of this essay offers an orientation in respect of Machiavelli’suse and understanding of the concept of glory. The next two sections of the essayaddress il Principe in terms of what I have called ‘the task of production’. Thesecond section engages the rhetorical strategy of il Principe under the aspect ofethical re-formation. My focus here is on the relationship of glory, and more par-ticularly of love of worldly glory, to the production of political agents who aredisposed to act immorally when necessary but only when necessary. The thirdsection takes up the rhetorical strategy of Machiavelli’s text under the aspect ofpolitical education foregrounding, following the recent work of Peter Breiner(2008), the way in which Machiavelli’s text teaches an art of judgment by locatingits reader–actor within the matrix of forces that define the space of action of ilprincipe nuovo. It departs from, or rather develops, Breiner’s argument, however, inreconnecting the relationship of Machiavelli’s text to the motivation of the reader–actor, their pursuit of glory, in order to draw out an answer to the question of whatMachiavelli’s text is designed to do. I conclude by elucidating the salience of thesediscussions for consideration of the relationship of il Principe to Machiavelli’sDiscorsi.

The Rhetorical Construction of Glory

Machiavelli’s rhetorical construction of glory as a political good has threedimensions that it is helpful to distinguish. The first dimension is his construc-tion of an evaluative distinction between civic religion and Christianity thatworks to undermine the appeal of the latter. The second is his rhetorical con-struction of the scope and attribution of glory. The third is his rhetorical con-struction of the politics of glory in terms of the superiority of a republicanpeople to a prince. To orient our discussion, let us start by sketching outeach of these dimensions.

The first dimension of Machiavelli’s rhetorical construction of glory as a pol-itical good is concerned to stress the incompatibility of Christianity with therepublican tradition of civic religion by drawing attention to their distinct rela-tionships to glory. Thus, in his Discorsi, Machiavelli constructs a sharp contrastbetween the outlook of Christianity and that of the civic religion of the ancientworld:

. . . the old religion did not beatify men unless they were replete with worldly glory

(mondana gloria): army commanders, for instance, and rulers of republics. Our reli-

gion has glorified humble and contemplative men, rather than men of action. It has

assigned as man’s highest good humility, abnegation, and contempt of the world

(dispregio delle cose umane), whereas the other identified it with greatness of spirit,

bodily strength, and everything else that conduces to make men very bold. And if our

religion demands that in you there be strength, what it asks for is strength to suffer

rather than strength to do bold things. (D II: 2. Translation adjusted)

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In contrast to humanist authors who sought to reconcile Classical and Christianoutlooks, Machiavelli’s view of Christianity and its relationship to Classicalthought mirrors that of scholastic thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and Giles ofRome but inverts the evaluation offered by the Scholastics. We will see in thenext section how Machiavelli’s writing in il Principe exploits the humanist turnfor his own purposes but the more general point to be made here is thatMachiavelli’s rhetorical construction of glory as a political good is designed topersuade his audience that Christianity as a way of life unfits one for politics inrespect of both the disposition and capacities that it cultivates, and it does sobecause, as an outlook, it glorifies spiritual grace rather than worldly endeavoursand achievements. Notice the asymmetry here: although Christianity glorifies thosewho are judged to have achieved a state of spiritual grace through institutions suchas sainthood, being thus glorified cannot be a coherent motivation for anyonewhose achievements would legitimately qualify them for such glorification sincesuch a motivation would entail failing to exhibit the disposition (humility, abne-gation, contempt for world things) required for a state of spiritual grace; by con-trast, those who are glorified by civic religion can coherently be motivated by thelove of glory. Christianity is thus a problem for political culture because it devaluesworldly glory, subordinating it to spiritual grace – an act of subordination that isgiven material and symbolic expression through the artistic and institutional glori-fication of saints. The political effect of the ideological hegemony of Christianity is,Machiavelli charges, ‘to have made the world weak, and to have handed it over asprey to the wicked’ (D II.2). Note this last phrase ‘prey to the wicked’:Machiavelli’s charge here is that Christianity has the political effect of empoweringpredatory agents and the political form that attends such agents, the principality,whereas civic religions empower the people and the political form of the republic.4

The second dimension of Machiavelli’s specifically republican shaping of thecriteria for the attribution of glory is that of guiding his audience’s interpretationof classical texts and, more specifically, their interpretation of figures – most not-ably Julius Caesar – who appear to be accorded glory in those texts. Politicalfounders and re-founders stand only behind the founders of religion inMachiavelli’s initial description of those to whom most glory is accorded andprovide exemplars to be emulated. However, Machiavelli notes, political actorsseeking to emulate such exemplars may be ‘deceived by a false good or a falseglory’ (D I.10) and turn to tyranny. This danger is exacerbated by the fact thatthere are exemplars of false glory who appear in our inheritance of the classicaltexts to be exemplars of glory and, hence, Machiavelli instructs his audience in therequirement to read ‘between the lines’ of ancient authors attending to the positionof those writing:

Nor should anyone deceive himself because of the glory of Caesar, hearing him espe-

cially celebrated by the writers; for those who praise him are corrupted by his fortune

and awed by the duration of the empire, that ruling under that name, did not permit

writers to speak freely of him. But whoever wishes to know what the writers would say

of him if they were free should see what they say of Catiline. Caesar is much more





detestable as he who has done an evil is more to blame than he who has wished to do

one. He should also see with how much praise they celebrate Brutus, as though unable

to blame Caesar because of his power, they celebrate his enemy. (D I.10)

Political glory cannot accrue to those who destroy republics (Caesar) or whorule as self-serving tyrants (Agathocles) because they undermine the security andwell-being of the citizens and subjects of these types of polity. Having distinguishedglory and false glory, Machiavelli rubs in the point when stressing that the greatestopportunity for glory comes with the chance to re-found or re-order a corrupt city:

And truly, if a prince seeks the glory of the world, he ought to desire to possess a

corrupt city – not to spoil it entirely as did Caesar but to reorder it as did Romulus.

And truly the heavens cannot give to men a greater opportunity for glory, nor can

men desire any greater. (D I. 10)

This passage links the problem of founding and re-founding that I have taken toorient this article to the theme of glory which will play a pivotal role in this argu-ment but it also alerts us to a link to il Principe in that any principality is ‘a corruptcity’, one in which the free political life of republican citizens is not available. Wewill return to this important point from the perspective of the actor–reader of ilPrincipe in the third section of this essay.

The third dimension of glory as a political good in Machiavelli’s rhetoricalconstruction continues the republican theme by stressing that ‘the people’ are super-ior in goodness and in glory compared to princes (D I.58). This is Machiavelli’svariant on Aristotle’s doctrine of the wisdom of the multitude and is laid out inBook I Chapter 58 of his Discorsi in which Machiavelli rebuts Livy’s view of thepeople as fickle political beings. However, it is important to note one exception orqualification to this view of the superiority of the people and it is one that is central tothe argument I offer, contra Brenner (2013), in this essay. The exception or qualifi-cation is stated, in a context in which Machiavelli is glorifying the people, thus:

If princes are superior to peoples in ordering laws, forming civil lives, and ordering

new statutes and orders, people are so much superior in maintaining things ordered

that without doubt they attain the glory of those who order them. (D I.58)

This passage, perhaps especially because of its context, supports three importantpoints for our concerns. First, in Machiavelli’s view, the job of founding or re-founding is one (the only one?) in which the princely prince is superior to thepeople. Second, both the prince and the people gain glory through the people’smaintenance of the regime that the prince has established; the people as maintain-ing and the prince as originator of what is maintained. Third, and consequently, theproblem of producing political agents who will be able to act in the ways requiredfor required for re-founding a corrupt city, the problem with which I opened thisessay, is both a fundamental issue for Machiavelli’s political thought and an issuedirectly tied to glory as a political good.

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These reflections on the rhetorical construction of glory in Machiavelli’s Discorsiprovide an orientation point for the reading of il Principe that follows in which Itrace out the relationship of glory to this text-act. My presumption in beginning inthis way is that Machiavelli’s thinking about politics, political agency and glory iscontinuous across these texts. However, the only way to vindicate this presumptionis through a reading of il Principe which demonstrates its republican commitmentsbut also vindicates the significance of the exceptional political agent – and it is tothis task that I now turn.

Ethical Reformation and the Love of Worldly Glory

As Pocock (1975: 156) has brilliantly demonstrated, il Principe is ‘an analytic studyof innovation and its consequences’ in which Machiavelli adopts the authorialpersona of adviser to il principe nuovo rather than counsellor to an establishedruler (as typical of the humanist speculum principis genre). In taking up thisstance, however, it is equally important to note that, in contrast to the classicaland contemporary works those claims he will satirise, works which exhibit thedemonstrative (epideictic) rhetorical mode, Machiavelli combines demonstrativeand deliberative rhetoric. As Tinkler (1988) has argued, this insertion of delibera-tive rhetoric into the demonstrative rhetoric that was dictated by the humanisttradition of the speculum principis was a key part of Machiavelli’s strategy becauseit allowed him to insinuate issues of utile into a rhetorical context in which con-ventionally it had no place. Tinkler’s (1988: 204) cogent suggestion is that much ofthe expressive power of il Principe for its humanist audience derives from its trans-gression of rhetorical decorum because Machiavelli ‘introduces the criterion ofsuccess into what is intended to be an exhortation to virtue.’ I’ll return to theissue of the performative role of Machiavelli’s rhetoric briefly later in this sectionbut, for the moment, let us focus on the point that Machiavelli’s is engaged in awork of political persuasion oriented to success in the traditional form of a work ofexhortation oriented to virtue – or, as we may put it, abstracting from the terms ofclassical rhetoric, he is engaged in a work of production.

Like Plato and Nietzsche, Machiavelli’s aim demands much from his prose.Aristotle reflecting on the limits of argument had written:

Now if arguments were in themselves enough to make men good, they would justly, as

Theognis says, have won very great rewards, and such rewards should have been

provided; but as things are, while they seem to have power to encourage and stimulate

the generous-minded among our youth, and to make a character that is well-bred, and

a true lover of what is noble, ready to be possessed by virtue, they are not able to

encourage the many to nobility and goodness. For these do not by nature obey the

sense of shame, but only fear, and do not abstain from bad acts because of their

baseness but through fear of punishment; living by passion they pursue the pleasures

appropriate to their character and the means to them, and avoid the opposite pains,

and have not even a conception of what is noble and truly pleasant, since they have

never tasted it. What argument would remould such people? . . .The character, then,





must somehow be there already with a kinship to virtue, loving what is noble and

hating what is base. (Aristotle, 2009, 1179b4-31)

Commenting on this passage elsewhere (Owen, 2008), I have noted that with thisargument, Aristotle is delimiting the audience for his philosophical reflections onethics, while also preparing the way for the transition from ethics to politics. Inother words, Aristotle’s lectures are taken by him to be oriented to, and necessarilylimited to, those who can be brought to value what is noble, but who have notacquired a reflective understanding of the value of ‘what is noble’ of the kind thathe will attempt to supply. At the same time, in making this case, Aristotle is dir-ecting us to an important aspect of the role of politics, namely, to support anethical culture that cultivates the valuing what is noble and acting in accordancewith this valuing. But what of a context in which those to be addressed by philo-sophical reflection on ethics are not so oriented and lack appropriate ethical dis-positions or beliefs? This may, of course, be Aristotle’s understanding of his owncontext5 and it is a very mild way of describing the later context in which a figuresuch as Nietzsche takes himself to write – a context in which the project of a re-evaluation of values demands not only compelling arguments but specific modes ofrhetorical engagement with his audience to create the affective conditions underwhich the force of his arguments can be effective in re-orienting his audience towhat is noble. The suggestion of this current discussion of Machiavelli is that he,like Nietzsche, is concerned with such a task of rhetorical re-orientation but it is aproject of political education which this task serves. Machiavelli takes Christianityto have accomplished a re-evaluation of political values in which glory is devaluedand whose outcome is render the people vulnerable to princely predators, his workdirects itself to a critical overcoming of Christianity in this sphere.

Now any task of production aimed at re-orientation is constrained to begin withthe materials available – and, for Machiavelli, this entails that the act of ethicalformation that his prose aims to perform must be an act of ethical re-formation inwhich some existing feature(s) of the ethical composition of his audience is mobi-lised to transform their composition. In other words, Machiavelli’s mode of argu-mentation must persuasively utilise the resources offered by the ethical compositionof his audience, while subverting the obstacles that their current ethical compos-ition poses to the formation of the type of political actor that is the goal of hisliterary intervention. The ethical feature on which Machiavelli hinges his efforts isthat love of worldly glory that humanism had rehabilitated as a worthy human endin the context of its attempts at reconciling classical ethics and Christian morality.It is worth briefly noting that this stance of the humanists contrasted with the viewtaken by the scholastic philosophers of this period such as Giles of Rome and St.Thomas Aquinas who insisted on the inappropriateness of love of glory on thegrounds that the good man should exhibit contempt for wordly glory. As Skinner(2002: 122) remarks:

Among the many contrasts between the schoolmen and the humanists, one of the

most revealing is that the latter never exhibit any such guilt or anxiety about world

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glory or its pursuit. On the contrary, we find Petrarch declaring that his whole purpose

in offering advice to Francesco da Carrara is ‘to lead you to immediate fame and

future glory in the best possible way.’ Petrarch accepts that rulers ought to cultivate

those qualities ‘which serve not merely as means to glory but also as steps to heaven at

the same time.’ But this concession represents his whole acknowledgment of the

deeply rooted Christian suspicion of gloria mundi and those who aspire to it.

Humanists simply assume that virtuous princes will be loyal members of theChurch. This assumption is undoubtedly aided by the central place occupied byCicero’s De Officiis in humanist thought from Petrarch’s influential De RepublicaOptime Administranda through to authors in the speculum principis genre who aremore contemporary to Machiavelli such as Pontano who specifies the ideal of theprince in terms of the exercise of ‘justice, piety, liberality and clemency’, qualitieswhich Pontano assures his reader will secure him the love of his people and, hence,fame and glory (Skinner, 2002: 137). It is this whole-hearted embrace of love ofglory on the part of humanist writers that provides Machiavelli with the pivot onwhich to engage in his own act of innovation (indeed, transvaluation), for inretaining the conceptual relationship characteristic of humanist scholarshipbetween glory and virtu (Skinner, 1978) Machiavelli can anchor his transfigurationof virtu in his audience’s assumption of, and commitment to, the value ofworldly glory.

Throughout Machiavelli’s discussions in il Principe, the sine qua non for suchpolitical glory is successful political (re-)founding where this entails not only theacquisition and maintenance of the state during the life of the ruler but, critically,its persistence beyond their personal rule. And Machiavelli seeks rhetorically tobolster love of political glory, for example, in chapter 24 of il Principe, by stressingthe special relationship of worldly glory and political innovation, and holding outthe prospect of ‘double glory’ (duplicata gloria). This specific linking of worldlyglory and political innovation leads Machiavelli away from the humanist view ofthe glory pertaining to political writing (such as the speculum princeps genre) whichis construed in terms of the act of writing something memorable to a conception ofglorious political prose as writing which opens out to, and guides the productionof, actions that are memorable., where this novel construal of political writingentails innovations in rhetorical strategy (such as those mentioned above).6 Letus then consider the work to which Machiavelli puts the love of worldly glory inseeking to re-shape the ethical outlook of his audiences and to winnow out fromthat audience those who are his addressees.

Two initial questions must be dealt with in order to advance the argument. Thefirst is this: what is the characteristic of love of glory that allows it to serve as thebasis for re-shaping the conduct of a political actor? The second is: who areMachiavelli’s addressees?

In response to the first query, it will suffice for the moment to note that worldlyglory is an agent-specific trans-historical good, that is to say, it is a good thatconstructs a practical relation to self on the part of the political agent whichinvolves an imagined relationship between their individual conduct and an





audience of future generations. The lover of glory is, in this sense, always an actoron a stage before a future audience on whom his achievement of glory depends. Hisactions are constitutively open to their interpretations and judgment. At the veryleast, this entails that the lover of glory must be concerned that his deeds areremembered (hence Machiavelli’s advice to support the arts) and that the type ofmemorialisation (e.g. historiography) stand in the right relationship to glory. Inresponse to the second query, we can note that Machiavelli’s audience can beconstrued as all those who take themselves to be lovers of glory. There are twopoints to note about this fact. First, it excludes two groups who have contempt forglory: on the one hand, those such as the scholastics who take love of glory to beincompatible with a Christian life and, on the other hand, those ‘criminals’ such asAgathocles interested only in personal power. Second, between these extremesstand a wide range of ethical types from the good man who is reluctant to actimmorally to the bad man who is reluctant to aim at good ends. Thus Machiavelli’saudience is ethically indeterminate, a fact that is significant for the rhetorical strat-egy that he adopts in two ways. The first is that Machiavelli’s textual performanceneeds to be capable of persuasively engaging both good and bad men. The secondis that it must both guide and, in doing so test, the commitment of his audience tolove of glory in order to winnow out, from that audience, his true addressees.

It is this ethical indeterminancy of Machiavelli’s audience that accounts not onlyfor much of the shifts of tone within Machiavelli’s text but, more specifically, theotherwise puzzling changes of emphasis between chapters 16–18 and chapters19–20 of il Principe (as well as within these chapters) In the former,Machiavelli’s rhetoric appears to be initially directed at a reader–actor who mustbe persuaded of the priority of utile over honestum in respect of the secure foun-dation of a state; in the latter, Machiavelli’s rhetoric appears to be directed at areader–actor who must be persuaded to restrain his own conduct in order to ensurethe secure foundation of a state. Let us consider this contrast – and thereby alsoattend to way in which the practical relation to self that is articulated through loveof glory is constructed and deployed by Machiavelli.

Chapters 16–18 of il Principe – in which Machiavelli reverses and subverts theclaims of Cicero concerning generosity (chapter 16) and keeping one’s promises(chapter 18) and of Seneca concerning cruelty (chapter 17) – most clearly exemplifyMachiavelli’s rhetorical strategy for persuading those humanist readers whoremain committed to classical accounts of political virtue of the need to act immor-ally when necessary. His strategy is to deploy the formal structure of the humanistclaim that glory is intrinsically connected to virtuous/virtuoso agency in conjunc-tion with rhetorical exercises in paradistole. What is characteristic of each of theserhetorical exercises is that they recast the exercise of virtue in its political mode asencompassing its effects on the political field within which the actor is situated (i.e.they introduce the criterion of success into the specification of virtue) and, throughsharply drawn examples whose affective force is generated by their (intellectual orhistorical) proximity to his audience, offer compelling reasons to hold that whatappears to the actor as virtuous (generosity, promise-keeping) or vicious (cruelty)conduct is liable not to appear so when judged from the standpoint of a future

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audience who are able to judge the effects of such conduct for the secure mainten-ance of the state. Precisely because Machiavelli maintains the conceptual relation-ship between glory and virtu, the ironic paradoxes that Machiavelli deploysdestabilise the humanist account of virtues and vices, not by decreeing that gener-osity and promise-keeping are political vices or that cruelty is a political virtue butby showing that they can be so under a non-trivial range of political circumstances.Machiavelli, thereby, subverts the thought that what constitutes virtu can be spe-cified independently and in advance of the specific and contingent circumstances inwhich the political actor is situated and the motivations that they bring to thesecircumstances.

In these chapters, Machiavelli’s rhetoric also paves the way for two further stepsdirected at the education of the ‘good’ reader–actor. The first step develops fromthe distinction that he has constructed between the appearance of virtu as judgedby the contemporary humanist audience of the ‘new prince’ and virtu as judged bythe audience of future generations. Once this distinction is established, the fact thatthe appearance of the ‘new prince’ as virtuous to his contemporary audience isconsequential for his capacity to sustain his rule and build the foundation of a statethat will persist beyond him ineluctably entails that a prince who is constrained bycircumstance to act immorally must maintain the appearance of moral virtue in itshumanist guise (at least until the political culture is transformed7). The second stepdevelops from the examples that Machiavelli has provided which portray humanbeings, at least in these circumstances, as fickle, untrustworthy and unlikely tobehave well unless given prudential reasons to do so – and argues that the ‘newprince’ must be prepared to practice force and fraud. As Skinner (1988: xix) hasnoted, each of these developments are performed through satirising argumentsadvanced in the demonstrative mode by Cicero in De Officiis. In relation to thefirst, Cicero insists that true glory can never be gained by the use of dissimulation(Skinner, 1988: xix). Machiavelli pours scorn on this contention as an empiricalclaim but notably has already undermined its conceptual basis since it is preciselybecause the ‘new prince’ is concerned with the audience of future generations thathe is constrained to dissimulate to his contemporary audience. In relation to thesecond, Cicero asserts that there are two approaches to attaining one’s ends –through argument, which is appropriate to men, or through force, which is appro-priate to beasts – and that bestial agency must (as far as possible) be avoided(Skinner, 1988: xix). Machiavelli punctures this piety by noting that, as Aristotle(2009: 1179b4-31, 1981: 1311a-b) had, that argument is often ineffective and henceacting as a beast is likely to be necessary. Notably Cicero had rhetorically widenedthe ‘beastly’ mode to encompass both force and fraud represented by the figures ofthe lion and the fox (Skinner, 1988: xix) and Machiavelli takes over this imagery asa way of inverting Cicero’s argument:8 ‘Since a ruler, then, must know how to actlike a beast, he should imitate both the fox and the lion, for the lion is liable to betrapped, whereas the fox cannot ward off wolves.’ (P ch.18). Machiavelli reinforcesthis point by referring to the example of the Roman Emperor Lucius SeptimusSeverus of whom ‘it must be concluded that he was a very fierce lion and a verycunning fox, who was feared and respected by everyone, and not hated by his





soldiers’ (P ch.19) but it seems probable also, for his educated humanist audience,that Machiavelli means to juxtapose Cicero’s demonstrative exhortation with thefigure and achievements of Sulla who is reported by Plutarch (‘Life of Sulla’) tohave been described by his rival, Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, as having the cunning ofa fox and the courage of a lion. Perhaps too, there is a further level of irony here towhich Machiavelli may be drawing attention, namely, that it was Sulla’s reformsand the promotion of the equestrian class within those reforms that created theconditions under which Cicero could have the career that he did.

Before summing up this discussion, we need to consider a central issue in read-ing Machiavelli on virtu for any commentary on il Principe, namely, the relation-ship of chapters 7 and 8 of il Principe in which Machiavelli considers, respectively,the cases of Cesare Borgia and Agathocles. The problem is that Machiavelliappears to praise Borgia for acting in ways that exhibit force, fraud and crueltywhich are not notably distinct from the ways for which Agathocles is apparentlycriticized. The argument presented thus far suggests that what counts as virtu ishighly circumstance-dependent but this case suggests that we need to spell out thenature of this dependence more fully. Brenner (2013), for example, argues that thecriticism of Agathocles is genuine and is designed to draw the reader’s reflectionsback in more sceptical vein to the presentation of Borgia. In doing so, she claimsthat Machiavelli’s is rhetorically disclosing that in his use of the concept of virtu,its sense as virtuosity is bounded by its sense as moral virtue (2013: 89–121). Bycontrast Kahn (1986) claims that the discussion of Agathocles is a rhetorical imi-tation in prose of the example provided by Borgia’s public display of the executedbody of his own agent Remirro. Borgia’s act was a piece of dissimulation designedto deflect hatred and re-assure Borgia’s subjects of his benevolence, Machiavelli’stextual act is a piece of dissimulation designed to deflect hatred and re-assure hisreadership, or more specifically his non-princely readership who fail to discern thenature of Machiavelli’s performance, of Machiavelli’s moral credentials. I inclineto the second of these accounts but with a further twist. The example ofAgathocles does, as Kahn argues, demonstrate that the new prince may berequired to use cruelty well as both Borgia and Agathocles do, but the examplesof Borgia and Agathocles also exemplify a distinction between the lover of gloryand the lover of power. Here, picking up a point made by Lefort (2012), I takeseriously the point that it is in chapter VIII that Machiavelli first introduces thetheme of gloria into his text and, hence, ties the discussion to the issues of foundingand of representation. The significant difference between Borgia and Agathocles asMachiavelli represents them is that the latter, unlike the former, for all the ‘virtu-osity’ to which Machiavelli draws attention, is not engaged in the activity offounding, that is, in seeking to establish a stable state that will persist beyondhis own life. This explains not least why, in contrast to Borgia, Agathocles isunconcerned to dissimulate, to disguise his cruelty, to pay public virtue its due.While both of their actions may be necessary to secure their rule, it is only Borgia’sact as a double act of cruelty and of dissimulation that can be represented asnecessary for founding, expressive of a love of glory and hence open by vindicationby future generations.

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Love of glory thus acts as a hinge on which Machiavelli’s attempt to persuadethe good man to act immorally when necessary swings by providing such a reader–actor with internal reasons to do so, reasons that would hardly be required by anactor who is anyway disposed to act immorally. But it is notable that Machiavelli isnot simply seeking to persuade but also to challenge his audience, to test theircommitment to love of glory, that is, their ranking of it within the range ofvalues or goods to which they take themselves to be committed. Machiavelli’s‘moral’ audience begin their encounter with his text from an ethical position inwhich virtu oriented to worldly glory and Christian morality oriented to personalsalvation are, through the efforts of the humanist authors in the speculum principisgenre, seen as compatible. However, as the argument proceeds, Machiavelli drivesa wedge between virtu and Christian morality such that the exercise of virtu that isa necessary requirement of the achievement of worldly glory is demonstrated to beorthogonal to Christian morality. Those for whom love of glory is subordinate topersonal salvation will fail this test; they will be winnowed out from Machiavelli’saddressees. We may further note, as Cox (1997) has plausibly argued, thatMachiavelli’s concern to subvert the Renaissance humanist efforts at reconcilingthe ethical outlooks of antiquity and Christianity is repeated in the rhetorical formof his text in which he not only adopts a deliberative mode but one which, withinthe terms of this rhetorical mode, contests the Ciceronian stress on the priority ofhonestum to utile and, via the model of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, re-instates anon-moralised outlook that echoes the Aristotelian approach to deliberative rhet-oric against which Cicero’s De inventione had explicitly directed itself. This align-ment of Machiavelli’s argument with Aristotle is re-enforced substantively inchapter 19 as Machiavelli’s rhetorical focus turns from persuading a presumptivelymoral audience of the need to act immorally when necessary to that of persuading apresumptively immoral audience of the need to avoid acting immorally (at least incertain respects) when not necessary.

Before we turn to chapter 19, though, we should note that the reading of chap-ters 16–18 offered thus far is incomplete in one important respect. I have arguedthat each of these chapters offers a specific demonstration for the ‘good’ reader ofthe claim that concludes chapter 15:

for if one considers everything well one will find that something that appears to be

virtu, which if pursued, would be one’s ruin; and something else appears to be vice,

which if pursued results in one’s security and well being (P ch.15, translation

adjusted).

For the ‘good’ reader who understands virtu as moral virtue, this provides aneducation in the paradoxes of moral virtue that acts to destabilise the humanistaccount of virtue. However, it is also the case that within each of these chaptersMachiavelli is utilising the semantic ambiguity of virtu as virtue/virtuousity. Forthe ‘bad’ reader who understands virtu as virtuosity, these chapters provides aneducation that foreshadows what becomes utterly explicit in chapter 19, namely,that conduct such as cruelty which may appear prudentially appropriate can





lead to ruin in the forms of generating hatred and contempt on the part of thepeople.

In targeting this audience of ‘bad men’, Machiavelli continues his rhetoricalstrategy of incorporating factors liable to affect success into the concept of virtuby arguing that acting immorally only when necessary is the prudent strategy forthose who would aim at the (re-)foundation of the state. This strategy is mostobviously present in his repeated stress on the need for the ruler to avoid hatredand contempt on the part of his subjects if he wishes to maintain his state. Thus inchapter 19 which specifically focuses on this topic, Machiavelli simply echoesAristotle’s argument that to avoid hatred, the ruler must restrain himself fromappropriating the property or the women of his subjects, while passing silentlyover the Roman moralist argument, most eloquently advanced by Seneca, and towhich Machiavelli has already responded, that the avoidance of hatred alsorequires the avoidance of cruelty (Skinner, 1988: xxii). In respect of contempt,Machiavelli (P ch.19) argues that contempt can be avoided by il principe nuovo ifhis actions ‘display grandeur, courage, seriousness and strength’ and he engages inundertaking ‘schemes of a kind that keep the entire populace in a state of perpetualwonder and amazement’ (Skinner, 1988: xxiii). Maintaining the goodwill andrespect of one’s subjects, at least in this minimal sense, is thus, Machiavelliurges, prudentially necessary for the maintenance of the state. This message is,then, reiterated in the seemingly disconnected following chapter, chapter 20, onwhether fortresses are useful with Machiavelli acknowledging that ‘if a ruler ismore afraid of his own subjects than foreigner’s, he should build fortresses’(P ch.20) before radically delimiting the value of such a strategy:

. . . the best fortress a ruler can have is not to be hated by the people: for if you possess

fortresses and the people hate you, having fortresses will not save you, since if the

people rise up there will never be any lack of foreign powers ready to help them.

(P ch.20)

He concludes sharply: ‘I criticise anyone who relies upon fortresses, and doesnot worry about incurring the hatred of the people.’ (P ch.20). In this discussion,Machiavelli is, with typical psychological acuteness, anticipating and responding tothe sceptical temptation liable to occur to the ‘bad’ reader–actor, not least in thelight of Machiavelli’s own earlier arguments, namely, that hatred generated by theappropriation of one’s subjects’ property or women could be handled by the use offorce. Notice that once again Machiavelli is challenging his audience but this timehis challenge is directed at those for whom the primary causes of hatred by one’ssubjects represent standing temptations and the test of their commitment to love ofglory is the exercise of self-restraint. Those in Machiavelli’s audience whose love ofglory is not sufficient for the relevant exercise of such self-restraint are thus win-nowed from his addressees.

It should be noted, however, Machiavelli’s text also performs a second strategythat addresses a more global and subtle threat to the capacity of love of glory toconstrain the ‘bad’ reader–actor. The achievement of glory is predicated on how

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one’s achievements appear to future generations – but then why should a lover ofglory be constrained in their immorality if they are sufficiently skilled in dissimu-lation? If the contemporary political audience can be gulled, why not assume thatthe same applies to the future audience? Machiavelli’s response here is performedby his text both in the chapter in question (‘One present day ruler, whom it is wellto leave unnamed, is always preaching peace and trust, although he is really veryhostile to both; . . . ’ (P ch.18)) and throughout il Principe. The rhetorical construc-tion of his authorial persona as the acute dispassionate observer removed fromcurrent political events piercing the veils of dissimulation erected by rulers offers ademonstration of the point that while the new prince may be able to gull his presentaudience, his deceptions will be discerned by skilled observers such as Machiavelliwho enjoy critical distance from the events in question and, more pertinently, thefuture audience informed by commentators such as Machiavelli on whose judg-ment the prince’s achievement of glory rests.

If these reflections are cogent, Machiavelli’s appeal to love of glory can act as apivot on which to re-shape the ethical conduct of il principe nuovo such that thisfigure is willing to act immorally when necessary but only when necessary – and itcan do so irrespective of the moral disposition of the reader–actor as long as theyare practically committed to love of glory as the highest human good.9 Noticefurther that this argument also connects the advice form in which the writing isperformed to the political education that it enacts. For the rhetorical form of thetext shifts the reader’s perspective so that, with necessities and limitations forachieving political glory in mind, the reader is attuned to the political educationof judgment the work provides.

Political Judgment and the Conditions of Glory

The second aspect under which we will address the task of production is that ofpolitical education. Machiavelli is not simply concerned to reshape the ethicalorientation of his addressees but to teach an art of judgment. Yet it is a notablefeature of il Principe that it offers no complete exemplar of il principe nuovo. Thepuzzle, as Breiner (2008: 67) notes, is that ‘the concept of the new prince as innov-ator drives the whole account of what a prince must do to acquire, secure andfound a state; yet this figure is disaggregated into a variety of examples which donot coalesce to produce a composite of the new prince.’. Breiner’s (2008: 67) cogentproposal is that:

the reason for this glaring discrepancy in il Principe between the paradigmatic figure of

the new prince in a new state and the impossibility of exemplifying him rests on a

problem that the text seeks to raise but not resolve: namely, given the impossibility for

a new prince to ever get beyond the moment of original acquisition of a state . . . there

can be no overall theoretical resolution to this tension, and thus no closure to this text.

Rather, the text draws us into this dilemma, and then forces us to use our imaginative

capacity to understand the way it is working itself out in our own

situation. . . .Machiavelli’s text addresses a reader–actor who has to assemble the





maxims and examples by him/herself under the pressure of the recurring nagging

necessities governing the primordial origin of all ‘‘states’’.

To see the value of this proposal, we need first to explicate the problem raised inthe text, second to consider the rhetorical strategy through which Machiavelli aimsto guide the reader–actor in acquiring the art of judgment that he aims to teach,and third, moving beyond Breiner’s own argument, to consider how a reader–actorwho has acquired this art of judgment is drawn to make inferences from it con-cerning the conditions of realising glory.

The problem that il Principe raises but cannot resolve within the text derivesfrom what Machiavelli takes to be a fundamental fact about political societies:namely, the desire of the nobles to dominate and oppress the people, and the desireof the people not to be dominated or oppressed by the nobles (P ch.9; Breiner,2008: 72). The relationship of these two dispositions, Machiavelli argues, cangive rise to three political outcomes in cities: principality, republic, or anarchy.The specific problem raised in il Principe for the figure of il principe nuovo canbe put thus:

The desire of ordinary people to change masters, to escape domination and rule,

provides the prince with the occasion to seize power. However, once having success-

fully won the support of the people to displace the previous rulers and impose his own

rule, he has to convince the people that his rule will be different – a claim on which he

cannot make good – while facing enemies whom he has injured, particularly among

the nobles, who would like nothing better than to exact revenge. The result is that he

invariably has fierce enemies and weak, indeed disappointed, supporters. So the very

condition that allows the prince to seize lo stato – the desire of the people to change

masters – provides the conditions for another prince to overthrow the new prince. This

problem is increased exponentially for the new prince seeking to be the founder of a

new order, for he must convince the people of the benefits of new laws and institutions

before they have experienced the benefits while the few who benefit from the old laws

know precisely what they are losing and oppose the prince as innovator or inventor of

a new state with corresponding intensity. (Breiner, 2008: 71)

As Breiner (2008: 71) notes: ‘The same problem recurs throughout The Prince,always with the same intractable set of necessities. However, the problem is expan-sive adding new problems and new actors to this paradigmatic necessity.’

Against this backdrop, let turn to consider the rhetorical strategy through whichMachiavelli attempts to educate his reader–actor. We can start by drawing atten-tion to the grammatical character of il Principe which ‘rotates around factual andhypothetical conditionals of the kind, ‘‘whoever seeks to acquire stato (commandover human beings in a territory) must do x, or x and y but avoid z’’’ (Breiner,2008: 75). One way to think about the point of this grammatical structure is toconsider Machiavelli’s text as a ‘politics simulator’, by analogy with a flight simu-lator, in which the reader–actor is, through the literary fiction of il principe nuovo,successively situated in a range of scenario’s varying according to type of state,

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means of acquisition, dilemmas of military strength and problems of civil rulewhich test the virtu of the reader–actor by requiring him, guided byMachiavelli’s examples, to engage imaginatively with each scenario and train hispolitical judgment through it. The fundamental political problem Machiavelli’s textraises is expressed in and through the rules that dynamically generate the content ofthese diverse scenarios.

Notice, on this account, that Machiavelli is doing two things. The first is pro-viding a training in the art of political judgment appropriate to a new prince who isliable to face some of the types of scenario laid out in il Principe such that they canrespond to the specific situations that they face. The second is guiding the reader–actor to recognition of the recurrent ‘generative’ problem that il principe nuovoconfronts in these various scenarios. It is this second feature on which I want toconcentrate in order to advance the discussion, but to do so we need to return onceagain to the role of glory.

Glory, as I have already stressed, involves a relationship between the agent andtheir acts, on the one hand, and the judgments of an audience of future generations,on the other. The issue of the audience-dependency and, indeed, possible audience-relativity of glory, in turn, shapes those acts and achievements that are liable to beaccorded glory because the stable or enduring achievement of glory requires thatthe excellence of the act or achievement be recognised as such across future gen-erations. Hence those acts or achievements that can most plausibly be assured ofglory are those that are constitutive of the non-instrumentally valuable identities offuture generations. This is the reason that in his Discorsi, Machiavelli claims thatfounders of religions are accorded most glory followed by political founders. Thesecure (re-)foundation of a state is a necessary condition of the highest politicalglory not simply because it is a demonstration of political virtuosity but because itis constitutive of the non-instrumentally valuable identity of the future audience onwhose judgment the political glory of the agent depends.

Yet for the astute reader–actor of il Principe, this relationship of glory and thesecure foundation of a state now represents a problem. In learning Machiavelli’slesson that the new prince is perpetually thrust back into dynamics of the originalmoment of acquisition, in coming to recognise that while Machiavelli’s advice canenable the virtuoso prince to improvise effectively, the need for such improvisationis never-ceasing, this reader–actor is brought to acknowledge both the near impos-sibility of securely founding a principality that will endure beyond the individualvirtuoso performance of il principe nuovo and that just this achievement is thecondition of enduring political glory. To account for the existence of hereditaryprincipalities, Machiavelli must acknowledge – as he does – that the secure foun-dation of a principality can occur but it is clear that such events are to be seen asproducts of exceptional good fortune. (Given enough spins, a coin will produce arun of ten ‘heads’ in a row but that is no reason to stake one’s reputation on thishappening in the next ten spins.)

This point is rubbed in further by Machiavelli’s discussion of fortuna in chapter24 in which having alerted the reader–actor to the capabilities and limits of virtuosoaction when confronted by external fortune, Machiavelli extends the realm of





fortuna from the field in which the prince is situated to the personal constitution ofthe prince. Here Machiavelli points to a disjuncture between the constant require-ments of maintaining a state (the ability to be flexible under changing circum-stances, to vary one’s tactics as required) and the inability of human beings,either in virtue of natural constitution or in virtue of cognitive biases, to exhibitsuch flexibility. It is not simply that the new prince cannot have any faith that theirrule will endure beyond them; they also cannot have any secure confidence thattheir rule will be sustainable through their own lives.

Here we find Machiavelli’s last test of his remaining audience’s love of glory andhis powers of political judgment, for Machiavelli has already indicated a plausiblealternative to the attentive reader–actor in chapter 9 when noting that anotherpossible outcome of clash of nobles and populace is a republic. And Machiavellihas also already drawn attention to the resilience of the collective memory of arepublican people in chapter 5 when presenting the impossibility of ruling such apeople as a limit-case for the new prince’s virtuosity. Indeed, republics, asMachiavelli’s audience know well from their reading of the Roman historians,are communities of historical memory in which the highest glory is granted tofounders and re-founders. This is, of course, also a point stressed byMachiavelli’s Discorsi. Thus, the last lesson of il Principe is simply this: a commit-ment to love of worldly political glory on the part of the prince finds its most securerealization in the figure of the new prince who acquires a state and founds a republic.As Brenner (2013: 317) puts this point:

The most virtuoso prince is thus one who makes himself redundant qua prince in the

usual monarchical sense. Voluntary self-elimination is the most logical means of

achieving a reflectively prudent prince’s ends . . .Princely rule defeats itself unless it

transcends itself.

The factors that generate the fundamental problem confronted by il principenuovo structure Machiavelli’s innovative re-casting of the politics of the republicaway from a classical stress on harmony to an agonic republic whose endurance isgrounded in the institutionalization of the mutually limiting conflict of the peopleand the nobles. Whereas the new prince is caught within and between the conflictbetween the people and the nobles such that he must perpetually improvise tosustain his rule, the institutionalisation of this conflict through, for example, asenate and a tribunate in a republic can generate relatively enduring conditionsof political stability.

Conclusion

As Hampton (1990: 4–5) remarks ‘perhaps to a greater extent than those of anyother period, the texts of the Renaissance stress the importance of their relationshipto their readers . . . one might say that it is in fact from their relationships to theirreaders and to the space in which those readers define themselves through actionthat Renaissance texts derive their structure and rhetorical strategies.’ This, I have

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argued, is certainly the case with Machiavelli’s il Principe whose complex rhetoricalperformance pivots around its construction of a relationship to its reader–actor asa lover of worldly glory. In introducing this reading I suggested that its denoue-ment leads me to agree with Mary Dietz that it is a ‘trap’ for the would-be ‘newprince’ albeit one that is predicated on education rather than deception, but it is a‘trap’ only in the sense that it leads Machiavelli’s addressees to a conclusion thatthey would not have embraced at the start of their encounter with his text – andthere is another better name for such a ‘trap’, it is ‘enlightenment’.

Acknowledgements

*An earlier version of this essay was presented at the American Political Science Association

annual conference in Chicago, 2013 alongside the papers by Tracy Strong and PatchenMarkell with Sharon Krause acting as discussant. I am grateful to Tracy, Patchen andparticularly Sharon, as well as the audience, for helpful criticisms and comments. I owe a

particular debt to Peter Breiner for commenting insightfully on at least two versions of thispaper and I also owe significant debts to Jill Frank and to Erica Brenner for acute readingsand extremely helpful suggestions for revision.

Notes

1. For a classic and still valuable discussion, see Price (1977).2. We may note that Nietzsche’s (2005) concern here is with how to produce great individ-

uals not as accidents of fortune but as the regular and predictable outcomes of culturalinstitutions. Machiavelli’s objections to Christianity suggest a related concern albeit onewith more restricted scope.

3. Although it should be noted that Sulla is not a fully successful example of such a prince inMachiavelli’s terms.

4. There is a second political reason for Machiavelli to attempt to weaken the ideological

grip of Christianity that concerns the disastrous political situation in Italy and the role ofthe Church in obstructing any resolution to this situation. While Cesare Borgia exhibitsmany of the traits required of il Principe nuovo, his great failing was not to control thePapacy when he had the opportunity (P ch.7, cf. Scott and Sullivan, 1994). Machiavelli’s

attempt in il Principe to weaken the ideological power of Christianity may be read also aneffort to enhance the prospect of his reader–actor being prepared to do whatever isnecessary to subordinate the temporal power of the Church.

5. I thank Jill Frank for helping me to see this point.6. I am grateful to Peter Breiner for helping me to see this point.7. How does the text of il Principe act constitutively towards the generation of a political

culture that reproduces political agents who are disposed to such motivation and educa-tion. It does so to the extent that it supports an alternative order of rank to that ofChristianity, a task which it addresses through its effects to the degree that it is successfulin the production of political agents characterised by love of glory who can stand as

exemplars of such a re-evaluation of values, but which it also contributes to as a culturaltext that itself exemplifies such a re-evaluation. il Principe attempts both in its substanceand through its rhetorical form to exploit and explode the rapprochement that renais-

sance humanism sought between classical and Christian outlooks. It performs this tasknot by directly criticising Christianity but by simultaneously exalting love of worldlyglory and attacking those Roman moralist arguments about both politics and rhetoric





that are crucial to the attempt to reconcile Christianity and classical thought. This fitswith Machiavelli’s wider anti-Christian agenda as noted in section I of this essay.

8. There is some controversy on this issue, for an overview and a distinctive intervention, seeLukes (2001).

9. We can note the distinctiveness of Machiavelli’s argument by contrasting it with a con-

temporary attempt to address the problem that political conduct is liable to require actingimmorally. In ‘Politics and Moral Character’, Bernard Williams (1978: 64) argues that theineluctability of this problem entails that one should look for moral politicians onthe (intuitively plausible) grounds that ‘only those who are reluctant or disinclined to

do the morally disagreeable when it is really necessary have much chance of not doing itwhen it is not necessary.’ This argument, however, both understates the problem and indoing so surrenders to it. The point is not only that we need politicians who will not act

immorally simply when it is expedient, but that we also need politicians that will actimmorally when it is necessary – and here Williams has little to offer. Consider that I maybe a political agent who believes that there are certain actions that are, and will remain,

morally abhorrent but that can, nevertheless, be politically justified under specific cir-cumstances. However, although the fact that I have a moral disposition combined with abelief that moral considerations can, at a cost, be overridden by political necessity makes

it likely that I will not engage in morally disagreeable actions when they are not necessary,it does not license the conclusion that I will act immorally when it is necessary. There is asignificant difference between my having the belief that it would be justified to act immor-ally in these political circumstances, even that it is politically necessary, and my being

willing so to act. Ironically, the inadequacy of Williams’ argument hangs on a point thathe has rightly made much of elsewhere, namely, it can be an ethically salient feature of myevaluation of an act that I did it or, in the case of prior deliberation, that it would be me

that has done it (recall his discussion of Ajax’s suicide). Just this ethical feature, the factthat I did it, however, is turned by Machiavelli into a resource for stating and resolvingthe problem that Williams avoids by introducing love of glory as the hinge of which his

rhetorical strategy swings.

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