Hunting the Fox: Equivocation and Authorial Duplicity in The Prince

Abstract

Machiavelli's chapter on fortuna, which distills the teachings of The Prince, promises success to the prince who will adapt to the times. But when Machiavelli adds that one can never adapt, he implicitly withdraws the promise and leaves the prince naked before fortune. While others view this chapter as the shoal on which the text's optimistic teaching runs aground, I argue that the failure is strategic; like Machiavelli's anomalous treatment of Cesare Borgia, it points to the coherence underlying an apparently inconsistent text. In appropriately Machiavellian fashion, the work is not, as it purports to be, a handbook on princely success. Instead, it represents a characteristically audacious attempt to reconcile self-serving aims: to secure the author employment, to spur the Medici on to the task of unifying Italy, and, paradoxically, to draw his prospective employers and the potential instruments of Italian glory—once they have served his threefold purpose—to their ruin.

Mētis and violence in Machiavellian political theory

“…Thus, even if there is nowhere in Machiavellian political thought a clear statement about the virtue or the excellence of rationality, as it happens with phronesis in Aristotelian ethical and political thought (Aristotle, 1999(Aristotle, , 2002, the prudent cunning rationality corresponds to a political virtuous reason. Consequently, although the concept of virtù defies definition, and is highly controversial in the political theory of Machiavelli (Fallon, 1992;Greene, 1986;Kahn, 1986;McCanles, 1983;Pocock, 1975), prudence designs the excellence of a prince's cunning rationality. For example, when dissimulating to aspire to the throne, pretending he was willing to share the throne with his enemy, and deceiving the Senate by accusing his rival Albinus of treachery, with the intent of taking from him his government and life (Machiavelli, 1998(Machiavelli, [1515 235 cunning rationality.…”

“…What is at stake in our essay is the concept of rationality in Machiavellian political thought. In this analysis we also consider neither Machiavelli as a political actor (Benner, 2014;Dietz, 1986;Wolin, 1960), nor The Prince as a political act of deception (Dietz, 1986), the realistic or rhetorical nature of Machiavellian political theory (Hariman, 1995), and the apparent discrepancies between the Discourses (Machiavelli, 1996(Machiavelli, [1531) and The Prince (Dietz, 1986;Fallon, 1992;Ingersoll, 1986;Leonard, 1984;Pocock, 1985).…”

Machiavelli’s il Principe and the Politics of Glory*

“…The second is that of the relationship of the text-act il Principe to Machiavelli’s own republican commitments or, more specifically, to the political outlook expressed in the Discorsi , responses framed most prominently in recent debates 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 il Principe 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 political education, of a political education concerning the conditions of worldly glory.…”