9 minute read
Leah Chambers
Leah Chambers
A successful prince must pretend to be someone he is not to deceive his subjects and, by extension, nature. In The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli considers what it means to be an ideal prince and the role of fortuna, virtù, and human nature in an ideal prince. He uses history as a guidebook for how princes of the present and future should act. Joseph Falvo’s article “Nature and Art in Machiavelli’s Prince” considers the forces that a prince must manipulate to succeed. He looks at the prince as an artist of his moral characteristics, deceiving his subjects into believing he is something that he is not. For Machiavelli, human nature is not a static phenomenon because it can be manipulated by individuals for their benefit. According to Machiavelli, a prince must manipulate the nature of beasts and humans to his advantage, which demonstrates that nature is a malleable tool for political gain. For Machiavelli, the nature of beasts and the nature of humans are two separate innate ways of acting, one natural to animals and the other to humans. In Chapter XVIII of The Prince, Machiavelli describes these two natures saying, “there are two modes of fighting: one in accordance with the laws, the other with force. The first is proper to man, the second to beasts.”1 He believes that humans are naturally inclined to use and understand laws, contracts, and agreements in their method of fighting, while animals are naturally inclined to violence through physical force.
Babel Volume XXI 37 He traces this dual nature to Antiquity when the greatest warriors were trained to use both natures in war. In his article, Falvo describes the prince as “imitating the character traits of these great men, so as to have at least a hint of their virtù.”2 By learning to imitate the traits of Greek warriors, who used both their innate human nature and the nature of beasts, a prince begins to combine these natures in his actions. The nature of beasts is not natural to man, and the prince adds it to his nature through the imitation of animals. Nature, for Machiavelli, is something that develops through practice, study, and action. Machiavelli’s ideal prince uses historical figures and animals to provide a framework for his action, hoping to emulate, or go beyond their greatness by imitating them to receive, a small portion of their skill and ingenuity or virtù.
A prince must learn how to manipulate the nature of beasts and humans through education and practice because he is not born with the innate ability to manipulate successfully. A prince must do so by emulating, and Machiavelli proposes that the fox and the lion are the best beasts to imitate. He says, “it is therefore necessary to be a fox, in order to recognize the traps, and a lion in order to frighten the wolves: those who base their behaviour only on the lion do not understand things.”3 According to Machiavelli, not only should the prince learn how to use the nature of humans and beasts to his advantage, but he should also use the various qualities of different animals to support his endeavours. In certain scenarios, a good prince needs to be the cunning fox, but at other times he must be brave and aggressive like the lion. The prince must learn to use the nature of his humanity and the nature of different species of beasts based on what the situation calls for. This manipulation of different characteristics and natures can be challenging because it requires the prince to emulate a multiplicity of moral characteristics. The qualities of human nature that the prince must also learn how to use to his advantage are related to the notion of virtù
38 Babel Volume XXI and fortuna that run throughout The Prince. Machiavelli’s virtù is hard to translate, and translator Peter Bondanella says it “is a decidedly masculine quality, denoting ingenuity, skill, and ability.”4
According to this definition, virtù is not a moral characteristic attributed to the prince’s character. On the other hand, although fortuna is ascribed to the personification of a feminine figure, it can simply mean good or bad luck. As described by Dr. Simon
Kow in his lecture the most common downfall of a prince is when he relies too much on the ever-moving wheel of fortune to rise up the ranks of power but is inevitably crushed by the wheel he clings to as it moves down.5 Fortuna and virtù are related to the malleability of human nature because they are two of the driving forces behind a prince’s actions. In The Prince, Machiavelli argues that human nature is a malleable force that a prince can learn to manipulate. The prince who knows when to manipulate the nature of humans and beasts must also know when “it is necessary that he should have a mind ready to turn itself according to the winds of Fortune and the changing circumstances [that] command him.”6 A prince can try to tame fortuna through his deeds and actions but will not succeed because it is out of human control. If he wants to rule successfully, he will turn to human nature because it can be controlled. Human nature is malleable because it is a trait of humans, which the prince can control through the imitation and manipulation of his own moral characteristics. Although a prince should possess the qualities of the two natures, it is sufficient for him only to appear to possess them.
According to Machiavelli, “it is not necessary for a prince to possess all of the above-mentioned qualities, but it is very necessary for him to appear to possess them.”7 For Machiavelli, appearance plays a large role in his argument that a prince must use the nature of beasts and humans to his advantage because he does not believe that a prince can always possess the qualities needed to be a successful ruler. Machiavelli sums up the issue of possessing the qualities of a good leader by saying of an unnamed prince that “if
Babel Volume XXI 39 he had observed both peace and faith, he would have had either his reputation or his state taken away from him many times over.”8 A prince who is all good cannot rule well because he will allow himself to be overthrown by his enemies through violent actions or words. Instead, the prince must appear to be just, peaceful, and faithful while he “act[s] against his faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion.”9 The manipulation of the prince’s human nature is done through the manipulation of the outward appearance of his moral characteristics, through the emulation of positive moral characteristics. Falvo supports the argument that a prince must appear to have certain characteristics that he does not possess. For Falvo, this appearance of the two natures is a theatrical performance that the prince, as an artist, must perform. He says, “what we see reproduced then, by way of precepts, in the formation and development of a ‘fictive’ image of virtue, is a theatrical conception of human existence whereby men become or pretend to become what they are not.”10 In the theatrical performance that a good prince puts on, he is both the actor and the artist behind the stage deciding what move the actor should make next. The prince is both the manipulator and the object of manipulation. The virtue, or moral characteristics, of a prince, are malleable in appearance because they are not what they seem. People observe the ideal prince and assume that he is faithful, humane, and religious when in reality he is working against these ideals. The art of pretending to have qualities and moral characteristics that a prince does not have demonstrates that he uses nature as a malleable tool for political gain. For Machiavelli, “the princes who have accomplished great deeds are those who have thought little about keeping faith and who have known to cunningly manipulate men’s minds.”11 This quotation underlines that the human nature of others can be manipulated through a prince’s actions. The tactics that a prince uses to manipulate others have been described above and include using the nature of
40 Babel Volume XXI beasts and humans to his advantage, emulating the characteristics of different animals according to circumstance, and appearing to possess qualities that he does not have. These actions manipulate the minds of ordinary people. This is because “ordinary people are always taken in by appearances.”12 According to Machiavelli, most people walk around unable to differentiate between fact and fiction. The prince should use this credulity to his advantage and create out of himself the ideal imitation of a ruler. Falvo sees the prince’s manipulation of nature as the work of an artist, who is the prince. He uses Felix Gilbert’s “The Humanist Concept of the Prince and The Prince of Machiavelli” to support his statement: Machiavelli views his ideal prince from a similar aesthetic perspective, which recalls the humanist notion of the ‘state’ as pliable ‘raw material’ to be molded at will. The ‘artist’ or homo faber, is clearly ‘the role in which Machiavelli is forever casting his hero.’13
For Falvo, the state is the malleable material that a prince must manipulate by imitating virtues, or moral characteristics. To add to this argument, Machiavelli’s view of manipulation can also be extended to other parts of nature that the prince manipulates.
The prince is not only the artist that creates the state, but he also creates his own nature and the nature of his subjects. The prince artistically manipulates himself to appear to be the ideal ruler of a state. The prince is an artist, not only of the state as Falvo says but also of his appearance, which extends to the minds of the citizens he rules over. If a prince can make himself appear peaceful and faithful while committing acts of violence, fraud and heresy, the bounds of humanity are vastly increased. The prince accomplishes this through the imitation of the positive moral characteristics.
Through the imitation of traits that he does not have a prince can manipulate both himself and other people. He manipulates others by carefully choosing what is the best trait to imitate in each sce-
Babel Volume XXI 41 nario, which makes their reactions based on a false appearance. This mastery of imitation opens possibilities that were once thought to be impossible. Machiavelli’s prince is a skilled manipulator of himself, the state, and the people around him, for his own benefit. At a time of religious, political, and cultural change Machiavelli asserts that even human nature, once believed to be a static phenomenon, can be manipulated by individuals for their benefit.
Notes 1 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. and trans. Peter Bondanella (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 60. 2 Joseph D. Falvo, “Nature and Art in Machiavelli’s Prince,” Italica 66, no. 3 (1989): 324. 3 Machiavelli 60. 4 Peter Bondanella, explanatory Notes to The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 93. 5 Simon Kow, “Renaissance Politics: Machiavelli” (lecture, Foundation Year Program, University of King’s College, Halifax, NS, 17 November 2021). 6 Machiavelli 61. 7 Machiavelli 61. 8 Machiavelli 62. 9 Machiavelli 61. 10 Falvo 327. 11 Machiavelli 60. 12 Machiavelli 62. 13 Falvo 325.
Bibliography Bondanella, Peter. Explanatory Notes to The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Falvo, Joseph D. “Nature and Art in Machiavelli’s Prince.” Italica 66, no. 3 (1989): 323-32. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/479044. Accessed 5 December 2021. Kow, Simon. “Renaissance Politics: Machiavelli.” Lecture, Foundation Year Program, University of King’s College, Halifax, NS, 17 November 2021. Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Edited and translated by Peter Bondanella. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
