Discussion 8

© American Association for Italian Studies 2014 DOI 10.1179/0161462214Z.00000000026

italian culture, Vol. xxxii No. 2, September 2014, 98–109

Machiavelli, Civic Humanism, and the Humanist Politics of Virtue James Hankins Harvard University, USA

Modern studies of Italian humanist political thought emphasize the theme of republican liberty, but this conception has been understood in anachro- nistic ways and exaggerated in importance. Much more central is the prob- lem of how to encourage virtuous and prudent behavior in the ruling class. The humanist answer — a classical education in virtue and wisdom, along with the creation of new social technologies of persuasion — was compre- hensively rejected by Machiavelli, whose own approach to political success truly introduced new modi e ordini.

keywords Civic humanism, virtue politics, true nobility, Machiavelli, Hans Baron

The expression “civic humanism,” as is well known, was invented in the 1920s by the

German historian Hans Baron.1 It is worth noting, to give some sense of the context,

that at the time Baron coined this new term he was a protégé of the great historian

and statesman Friedrich Meinecke, perhaps the most infl uential Machiavelli scholar

of the early twentieth century. Meinecke embraced Machiavelli as the inventor of the

doctrine of raison d’état, the idea that the needs of the state dictate their own criteria

for action; these criteria are rooted in the state’s natural drive to expand, and

transcend individual morality. He saw this Machiavellismus as a realistic tradition

in modern thought, distinct from and preferable to the cosmopolitan moralism of

neo-Stoic theorists like Grotius, who tried to impose conventional classical and Chris-

tian moral categories on inter-state relations (Meinecke, 1963).2 Baron’s conception

of “civic humanism” in its original incarnation was meant in part to further develop

Meinecke’s project by fi nding the intellectual roots of Machiavellism in the soil of

Italian humanist thought. In order to show the relevance of the humanists to Machi-

avelli, Baron needed to correct a common misperception of humanism that prevailed

in his time (derived ultimately from Burckhardt): that the humanists were rootless

literati, cosmopolitans who travelled from court to court, who had little interest in

politics and no commitment to any political ideology. It was usual to dismiss them

by saying that their affectation of imitating ancient authors made them unoriginal,

99MACHIAVELLI, CIVIC HUMANISM, AND THE HUMANIST POLITICS OF VIRTUE

unserious and unread: “Having nothing to say, they said it endlessly” as one histo-

rian of the time sneered (Monnier, 1910: 228).3 They were epigones of long-dead

masters, out of history, unpolitischen Menschen. Against this view, Baron argued —

principally on the basis of his studies of Leonardo Bruni — that a central current of

thought within the humanist movement, civic humanism, was in fact highly patriotic

and committed to a republican ideal. Civic humanism was the opposite of cosmo-

politan. Civic humanists elaborated a republican political ideology that made the

state, not religious authority, the font of value. The civic humanist ideology of the

Quattrocento represented a reversal of a feudal, otherworldly ideology supposedly

inherited from the Middle Ages. Civic humanists like Bruni, by making the republic

a source of value, accomplished a moral revolution. They now placed a positive valu e

on wealth and commerce (as against a supposed medieval bias towards agriculture

and monastic poverty); they praised family life (as against clerical belittling of the

married state); and they found in the defense of the city-state a justifi cation for mili-

tary virtue (as against the chivalric ethos of the Middle Ages). In general they valued

participation in politics, the active life, and public service in this life, as against a

medieval outlook that supposedly subordinated the temporary to the eternal and

politics to the salvation of souls. They represented, therefore, an important stage in

the history of secularization, at least in one sense of that word.

However, as the repetition, above, of the word supposedly implies, much of this

picture has been subject to devastating criticisms in recent decades. In particular,

Baron’s presentation of medieval and feudal ideology is now recognized as a carica-

ture, and in general the humanist attitudes to the city-state he described are now seen

to descend from the popular communes of the thirteenth century, not the humanism

of the fi fteenth.4 Nevertheless, the ghost of Baronian civic humanism continues to

haunt modern historiography. It lives a curious half-life: its shortcomings are

acknowledged, but its ideological power still works its magic on those whom the

Enlightenment’s narrative of progress still enchants. At the textbook level it remains

a canonical topic in the description of Renaissance political thought. Yet it seems

clear that the whole category of “civic humanism” needs to be rethought, a task the

present writer has undertaken in a forthcoming monograph.5 This essay begins

with a praegustatio of that monograph, giving an alternative account of the political

philosophy of Renaissance humanism. It will then turn to Machiavelli and discuss his

relationship to the humanist “virtue politics” of the Quattrocento, which in my view

would be better described as “neo-classical” than as civic humanist. To anticipate

somewhat, this essay will argue that Machiavelli thoroughly and quite intentionally

subverts neo-classical political thought in the humanist tradition. He is a Samson,

determined to bring crashing down the twin columns upholding humanist political

philosophy, namely virtue ethics and the humanist ideal of rule by a classically

educated, meritocratic elite.

* * *

After studying over many years now some hundreds of formal treatises, histories,

orations, letters, dialogues, dramas, and other works written by humanists from

Petrarch to Machiavelli, the present writer has concluded that current historiography

places a false emphasis on the theme of republican liberty in Renaissance political

100 JAMES HANKINS

thought. It is in my opinion an emphasis dictated by modern political interests and

prejudices rather than one richly documented in Renaissance humanist, especially

Latin, sources. Much more pervasive in these sources are themes related to what may

be called “virtue politics” — on the analogy of “virtue ethics”6 — that is to say, a

politics emphasizing the character and wisdom of the ruling class above questions

of legitimacy of origins or the form of the regime and its laws. Its chief goal is to

combat corruption, selfi shness, ignorance and imprudence in rulers with a view to

creating a new kind of legitimacy that can be called legitimacy of exercise. It is rela-

tively unconcerned with the political issues that were central for the scholastics, such

as the status and scope of politics in a fallen world, the correct juridical relations

between church and state, the nature and extent of ecclesiastical authority, whether

and how plenitude of power should be limited by consent or other means, the nature

of law and justifi cations for coercion, the moral status of property, and the legal and

constitutional conditions that need to be met for a government to be called legitimate.

Moreover, as I argued in a recent article (2010: 452–82), the whole notion of Ren-

aissance republicanism inherited from Baron and others tends to be misconceived,

largely because of inattention to the changes in meaning of the word respublica. This

word did not acquire its modern sense of non-monarchical regime until around the

middle of the fi fteenth century. It did not, in other words, specify a constitutional

form until Leonardo Bruni and other humanists began to use it in the 1440s as a

translation for Aristotle’s virtuous popular regime. The effect of this rebranding

may be grasped when Bruni’s terminology is compared with that of the medieval

translator, William of Moerbeke, a collaborator of Thomas Aquinas:

1. Aristotle’s constitutional scheme in POLITICS III (1279a), as translated by William of Moerbeke in 1268

good politiae corrupt politiae

one regia potestas tyrannia

few aristocratia oligarchia

many politia democratia

Source: Aristotelis Politicorum libri octo cum vestusta translatione Guilelmi de Moerbeke,

ed. F. Susemihl (Leipzig: Teubner, 1872), 178–79.

2. Aristotle’s constitutional scheme in POLITICS III (1279a), as translated by Leonardo Bruni

Rectae rerum publicarum Transgressiones et labes

Unum: regia potestas tyrannis

Pauci: optimatium gubernatio paucorum potestas

Multi: respublica popularis status

Source: Aristotelis Politicorum libri VIII interprete Leonardo Aretino (Strassbourg 1469),

[f. 118r].

In Bruni’s immensely popular translation,7 respublica becomes one of the philoso-

pher’s three “good” constitutions, which Aristotle confusingly names politeia. The

name was confusing because politeia was also the word Aristotle used to refer to

101MACHIAVELLI, CIVIC HUMANISM, AND THE HUMANIST POLITICS OF VIRTUE

constitutional form or regime in general, i.e. the formal, constitutive characteristics

of any polity, analogous to the physis of a living thing. We can call these two uses of

politeia specifi c and generic polity, respectively. With misguided consistency Bruni

also translated generic politeia using the word respublica. This was misguided

because respublica was in key respects a poor translation for politeia. The Romans

never used respublica to indicate a particular kind of constitution, for example, a

non-monarchical or polyarchic constitution, still less a virtuous popular regime.

Moreover, politeia in Greek could be a neutral analytical term, but respublica in

Latin was freighted with positive moral connotations. It meant not only “the state”

but a good or just state: a state that respects the free status of its citizens and

the common good; that treats citizens as equal under law, and not, despotically, as

slaves. It was a term of praise, a “persuasive defi nition” in William Connolly’s sense

(Connolly, 1993: 139). Its lexical opposite was tyranny, not monarchy.8

The point is an important one because the idea of a respublica, with its reminder

of a glorious Roman past, with its connotations of just government for the sake of

the citizen body as a whole, of government by virtuous rulers and magistrates, of

government that valued liberty and ensured it through observance of law and consti-

tutional propriety; this Roman conception of respublica became a kind of linguistic

marker in humanist literature. The luminous word respublica all by itself evoked the

great idealistic project of the Renaissance — the revival of antiquity, the end of the

Middle Age — as it touched on matters political. Crucially, republican thought in

the Renaissance was never limited to republics in the modern sense of the word, i.e.

regimes recognizing the will of the people as the ultimate source of sovereignty; nor

was political participation and vivere civile always confi ned to the oligarchic regimes

that came to refer to themselves as republics in the course of the fi fteenth century.9

It is true that, by the time of Machiavelli, and particularly in Machiavelli’s own

political vocabulary, the word respublica — thanks mostly to Bruni and Francesco

Patrizi of Siena — had acquired a secondary meaning, indicating a popular form of

government as opposed to princely. Machiavelli, famously, in the very fi rst chapter

of the Prince contrasted republics with principalities, as did many other Renaissance

writers before and after him. But the classical usage of respublica as any virtuous state

that respects the common good and citizen liberties remained current, and the word

could be used to designate any type of good regime, whether kingly, aristocratic

or popular. Renaissance humanists worked for many different kinds of regime

and brought their neo-classical ideals of politics to bear in many different political

contexts. If we are to use the term Renaissance republicanism, we should remember

that it includes princely republics and aristocratic republics as well as popular ones.

This is one key point that needs to be made: that Renaissance republicanism was

not regime-specifi c, and the neo-classical political thought of the humanists was much

more interested in the virtue of governors than in the form of government. It leads

directly to a second key point, namely, the centrality of virtue to humanist political

thought and the relative unimportance of what Baron and others call “republican

liberty.” The liberty of popular regimes is praised by some humanists, including

important ones like Bruni, but this is a minority view overall, and tends to be

expressed principally in propagandistic contexts.10 But all humanist political theorists

are centrally concerned with the virtue of rulers and the ruling class. The theme of

virtue is ubiquitous in the humanists’ ethical writings, as has long been recognized,

102 JAMES HANKINS

but it is equally pervasive in their political writings. The humanists saw virtue in the

ruling class as the key to better government: it was a cure for the diseases of corrup-

tion and disloyalty to the state. It is not too much to say that humanist politics in

general was a politics of virtue.

The primacy of virtue in humanist political thought had much to do, in my opin-

ion, with problems of legitimacy in early Renaissance Italy and a broad change in

strategies of legitimation employed by fi fteenth century rulers. Lords and oligarchs

with defective titles to rule in the fourteenth century had availed themselves of a

variety of legitimation techniques: for example, managed communal elections, staged

ceremonies of acclamation, loyalty oaths, the corruption and cooptation of guild

leadership, the acquisition of imperial and papal vicariates, the purchase of titles of

nobility, invented claims to high descent, and so on.11 These tactics continued into

the Quattrocento, but were regarded with increasing cynicism and distrust. The

humanists offered to supplement legalistic forms of legitimation with a different kind

of claim: the claim that a ruler was virtuous: that his rule was legitimate precisely

because it was just, moderate, frugal, merciful and respected the liberties and

patrimonies of citizens (Meek, 2010).

The humanists, in their roles as teachers, offi cials and advisors, insisted everywhere

that virtue was itself both a necessary and suffi cient title to rule. This claim dovetailed

nicely with the humanists’ new claim that classical education was a form of training

in virtue and eloquence, suitable for future statesmen (and their advisors). Eloquence

was important as the trumpet of virtue: it was an instrument of persuasion; it made

men want to be virtuous by praising good conduct and character and blaming bad in

the most lively colors (McManamon, 1989: chapter 2, passim). In modern terms,

humanist eloquence was meant as a kind of social technology, incentivizing good

behavior through the use of praise and blame, as opposed to repressing bad behavior

by using the legal and coercive powers of government. To use Hirschmann’s analytic

framework, the humanists aimed to neutralize corrupt passions and appetites, the

desire for personal gain or for revenge, by stimulating a countervailing passion: the

desire for honor and admiration from the community (Hirschmann, 1977). It involved

replacing the existing honor code of the aristocratic classes, derived from feudal

and chivalric sources, with a new honor code (or “honor world,” to use Appiah’s

evocative expression [2010: 19–22]), inspired by an idealized version of Greco-Roman

antiquity. Future statesmen were to be immersed in classical history, poetry and

moral philosophy: a moral universe where the highest praise and the highest rewards

were lavished on public servants. The political class was to be involved in a Sallustian

competition in virtue. The humanists understood that the classical ideal of virtue

depended on cultivating a certain sense of self: that one is the kind of person that

does not do certain things; that one’s dignity and honor within a community depends

on not acting, or not being seen to act, out of self-interest, catering to one’s own

appetites, but on serving the community.

The humanist ideal of virtue comes from classical history and philosophy and

especially from what Cicero called “the Socratic philosophy” of Plato, Xenophon and

Aristotle, supplemented by the teachings of the Stoics. Aristotle’s Ethics, Cicero’s

De offi ciis and Livy’s history of Rome were the most important texts, but there were

many others. Central is the idea of rational control: that the passions and appetites

103MACHIAVELLI, CIVIC HUMANISM, AND THE HUMANIST POLITICS OF VIRTUE

in moderation are good but need to be measured out in the appropriate ratios by

reason. The man ruled by reason is the man of virtue (Patrizi, 1534: f. VIIv).12 For

Aristotle, one test of whether reason was acting correctly was whether the whole

person, not just one faculty or aspect, was fl ourishing. The same analysis of the whole

and the part applied to the city: reason, in the person of the virtuous and wise ruler,

needed to serve the whole polity, doing what was appropriate for each part to

fl ourish, not favoring any one part over another.

The humanist politics of virtue implies various subversions, both implicit and

explicit, but only some of these are theoretically developed. Implicitly, the humanists

reject Augustine’s view that classical virtue was too weak and benighted to provide

the basis for a good polity. Explicitly subverted is the egalitarian ideology of the late

medieval commune, the political ideals of guildsmen in places like Florence, Siena and

Lucca. The humanists, in contrast to the egalitarianism of the Italian commune,

become champions of meritocracy. This theme is mostly developed in their numerous

treatises on true nobility, a genre almost synonymous with humanism (Rabil, 1991).

This is a genre with a message, for it is striking that, with only one or two exceptions,

the humanists are overwhelmingly on the side of virtue as the primary, or more often

the only, criterion of true nobility.

For example, in this passage from Palmieri’s Vita civile (1982: 136–7 [Book III]),

Palmieri (a disciple of Bruni) presents humanist meritocracy (the opinion of the savi)

as a via media between the aristocratic ideal of inherited nobility and the popular

egalitarian ideal:

La dignità di ciascuna è quella secondo la quale debbono esse distribuiti gli onori pub-

blici. Diffi cile cosa è nella repubblica provare di chi sia la dignità maggiore, perocchè di

quella infra il popolo variamente si dissente. I nobili e potenti dicono la dignità essere

posta nelle abbbondanti facoltà e nelle famiglie generose ed antiche. I populari nell’umanità

e benigna conversazione del libero e pacifi co vivere. I savi dicono nell’operativa virtù.

Coloro che nella città avranno a distribuire gli onori, seguitando il più approvato consi-

glio, quegli sempre ne’ più virtuosi conferiscono, perocchè, dovendo con quelli alla dignità

corrispondere, niuna cosa sarà mai più degna fra gli uomini, che la virtù di chi per pub-

blica utilità si esercita. Chi per le virtù de’ passati cerca gloria, spoglia sè d’ogni merito

d’onore; e misero certo è colui che consuma la fama de’ padri antichi. Dia esempio di sè,

e non de’ suoi che merita onore, prepondendo sempre la nobiltà, quando sono pari virtù.

I sapientissimi antichi, che sempre dilatarono gl’imperi, spesse volte forestieri, lavoratori

et infi me condizioni di uomini rilevarono a’ primi governi quando in loro conoscevano

spettabili eccellenze di virtù. [. . .] Non sia alcuno che sdegni essere governato da virtuosi,

benchè sieno in infi mo luogo e di stirpe ignota nati.13

Bruni makes a similar point about the need to earn respect for virtue, rather than

rely on the ascriptional status acquired by the virtue of one’s ancestors. In a letter to

the Venetian nobleman Pietro Miani, he maintains that “legislators and teachers of

republics” (humanists?) should want to create a competition in the virtues so as to

create nobility in the hearts of their citizens.

Bruni begins by gently making fun per ironiam of Miani’s claim to be descended

from the ancient Roman clan of the Aemilii. He then turns the tables and says,

104 JAMES HANKINS

In my view, anyone who alleges a magnifi cent descent and puts out images of his illustri-

ous ancestors should be obliged by a kind of necessity to imitate the virtues of those from

whom they say they are descended. Who is so dim as not to understand the utter shame-

fulness, who is so wicked as not to blush to degenerate from the virtue of his ancestors?

Who doesn’t see how much public utility this sense of shame brings with it? Legislators

and teachers of republics [rerum publicarum magistri] wish for nothing more than for

an enlivening competition in the virtues to be poured into the hearts of citizens: unless

I’m mistaken, it’s that which principally creates nobility. It may be permitted to hide in

other men of lower and less visible station, but the fame and glory of ancestors so shines

with concentrated light upon all the affairs of their successors — it sets up, as though in

a mirror, such expectations — that no wicked deed they may do can be kept hidden or

dark.

So you should frequently counsel with paternal exhortations Faustino and Giovanni,

those outstanding young sons of yours — brothers of mine in love — not so much

to swell with pride about their brilliant descent as to reckon it enjoined upon them by

necessity to show themselves not unlike their distinguished ancestors in integrity, piety,

goodness, industry — in fi ne, in every form of probity both in public and private affairs,

and to be zealous in the pursuit of the virtues, without which they cannot keep the rank

of their ancestors.14

Similarly, Niccolò Niccoli, an interlocutor in Poggio Bracciolini’s dialogue on true

nobility (Bracciolini, 2002: 37–38), stresses that virtue is the measure of nobility,

not descent. Since virtue is available to everyone, nobility is within the reach of all.

Poggio allows Niccoli the last word in the dialogue, which he uses to summarize

his position: It is only by making honor dependent on earned nobility rather than

ancestry that citizens will be motivated to act with virtue:

Virtue is within the capacity of everyone and belongs to those who embrace it. Those

who are stupid, lazy, wicked and perverse, who think they have succeeded to the

eminence of their ancestors, must be considered more wicked than others, because they

are further from imitating the standard of their parents. [. . .] If people were persuaded

that they could become noble through their virtue and character, that true nobility is

attained by right action and not by the industry and labor of another, believe me, we

would inspire them to behave more virtuously; arousing ourselves from idleness, we

would not rest on the laurels of others, doing nothing praiseworthy, but we would be

stimulated to pursue the honor of nobility ourselves. . . . [If those who possess ascribed

nobility were to see that true nobility was in virtue] they would eagerly seek to do those

act by which the virtue of the ancestors might shine forth in them.15

Thanks to humanists’ almost obsessive insistence on this theme, it came to be widely

accepted among the political classes of the Italian city-states and Italian courts that a

classical education was a training in virtue,16 and that virtue enhanced not only one’s

personal distinction, but also buttressed one’s claims to exercise political power.

The politics of virtue thus challenged and in part undermined the whole idea of

hereditary privilege — a theme that links the humanists with the republicans of the

eighteenth century. Humanist views on true nobility questioned the basis of inherited

social rank and therefore of a political hierarchy based on descent, and led them to

105MACHIAVELLI, CIVIC HUMANISM, AND THE HUMANIST POLITICS OF VIRTUE

propose an alternative justifi cation for political rule, namely virtue and education.

The humanists’ goal was to open up the ranks of the political elite to those who were

truly virtuous, not merely noble by descent, and to force noblemen to compete

for honor and power on the terrain of virtue. For some humanists, even merchants

and tradesmen could and should participate in government, provided they were virtu-

ous — government was not just for aristocrats and princes (Patrizi, 1534, XIIr-XVr).

To be sure, the need for princes and elites to acquire virtue was, the central theme of

the mirror-of-princes treatise, a literature that goes back to the early middle ages.

What was new was the idea of meritocracy, that virtuous character was not merely

desirable in a ruler, but also a condition of exercising power for a whole class of men

and women. It depended on the possession of a classical education and the acceptance

of classical, not clerical or chivalric, standards of virtue and vice.

* * *

So what, then, is Machiavelli’s attitude to this tradition of thought? The claim has

already been advanced at the beginning of this article that Machiavelli’s political

thought cannot be seen as a continuation or a variation or even as a radicalization of

humanist tradition, a view sometimes attributed to the so-called “Cambridge School.”17

Instead, it constituted a subversion of the central premises of the politics of virtue.

This is because Machiavelli rejects the solution of the ancient Greek philosophers to

political instability and infelicity, which is to empower a political elite consisting of

the wise and the virtuous. For Machiavelli, a republic dominated by an elite can

achieve stability and longevity but it will not be powerful, and power is the primary

goal of Machiavellian political science. The grandi oppress and dispirit the common

people, without whom greatness and glory is impossible for a republic. His great

historical model is Rome: a “republic for expansion,” not Sparta or modern Venice,

which were merely “republics for preservation.” Machiavelli also famously stated in

the Prince that political rationality and traditional moral virtue are heteronomous:

that for an individual ruler to be good morally is not necessarily good for a state.

And of course he is dubious about any political philosophy that relies on the possibil-

ity of improving traditional morality; he has no more faith in human goodness than

Augustine; indeed, he has even less.

Machiavelli’s view thus represents a fundamental challenge to neo-classical politi-

cal philosophy, and one that is inimical to any politics of virtue. It is his separation

of political rationality from traditional morality that enforces Machiavelli’s redefi ni-

tion of virtue. Virtù in Machiavelli’s lexicon acquires the meaning of any human

quality that made for effective political power. He tends to assimilate malicious

behavior to weakness; men behave badly (in a political sense) when the political

system is poorly organized, when there are no routes to power for capable men: men

of virtue (in his sense of the word).

Machiavelli was also hostile to the humanist goal of a virtuous, educated elite

because he was a populist. He served the most populist of all Florentine regimes since

the fourteenth century: the Soderini regime. It is a matter of debate just how deep

was Machiavelli’s ideological commitment to democracy and popular government; it

106 JAMES HANKINS

seems to have been based less on a belief in human dignity and equality than on

a more visceral hatred of aristocratic corruption and self-dealing.18 He remained

committed to populism throughout the 1510s in great part because he believed the

secret of Rome’s expansive power — its mighty empire — lay in its virtuous common

people. The men who fl ocked in great numbers to fi ll her armies knew how to master

fortune and were willing to sacrifi ce themselves for the state. They were loyal and

free and masculine and not slavish. This was because Rome’s constitution had evolved

in such a way as to allow her people to seek their own self-interest, security, prosper-

ity and freedom as against that of the patrician class. The Roman res publica was

thus res populi; the people identifi ed it as their own.

Freedom, too, for Machiavelli was a word in need of redefi nition. For the human-

ists, as for the ancient philosophers, freedom was not something natural to all men;

it was an achieved character trait. It was the reward of virtue, a state of mind that

supervened when reason ruled the passions and appetites; its opposite was license.19

Some, perhaps most men were naturally servile. The Romans, too, saw liberty as a

matter of character as well as of legal status. Livy writes (23.12.9) “if I should be

silent (about making war on the Romans) I may seem to be either proud or subservi-

ant: the one is the mark of the man who has forgotten another’s liberty; the latter his

own.”20 The idea that liberty was an achieved state of character was passed down to

the early humanists. As Leonardo Bruni once wrote, all peoples desire freedom

but not all are capable of it (Bruni, 2001–2007 [VII.48], 2: 327). For Machiavelli, by

contrast, the desire for liberty was a natural passion whose embers could be found

burning in all men. No man wanted to be dominated by another man, but some

men had become used to servility. The same applied to states. Nevertheless, a clever

statesman could infl ame and exploit the embers of freedom, even in the servile, so as

to enhance the power of the state. If the correct modi e ordini were instituted, the

passion for liberty could be built into a bonfi re of bellica virtus that would transform

a city-state into a great empire. But the passion for liberty as Machiavelli saw it did

not require rational control of the appetites — virtue in the classical sense — to gain

force. It required tumulti: the assertion of the people’s claims by controlled dissent.

To most historians of political theory today, Machiavelli, with his consequentialist

power-politics and his proto-scientifi c mode of analysis, separating fact from value,

has inevitably seemed far more modern than the humanists. The humanists’ confi -

dence in the ability of individuals and polities to better themselves by acquiring virtue

seems by comparison all too naïve, and Machiavelli was among the most effective in

mocking its naïvété.21 Yet it would seem, taking a longer view forward in time,

through early modern Utopianism and modern progressive thought, to all modern

political theories that hold out hope for the betterment of the human condition via

education, that the humanists, too, have some claim to be among the founders of the

modern world. And if one recognizes, with Pareto, that all government means rule

by an elite, and if one believes the primary function of government is to uphold justice

and not to subdue other peoples or to encourage illimitable desire in one’s own

citizenry, then humanist political thought might even turn out to seem preferable to

the Machiavellian style of politics so often deplored, yet so ubiquitous in the modern

world.

107MACHIAVELLI, CIVIC HUMANISM, AND THE HUMANIST POLITICS OF VIRTUE

Notes 1 For the original context of Baron’s conception of

civic humanism during the 1920s, see Fubini, 1992. 2 (Original edition 1924); translated into English as

Meinecke, 1957. 3 Cited in Hankins, 2005, 74, 91. 4 For revisionism of the so-called “Baron Thesis,”

see Skinner, 1978, Blythe, 1992; Hankins, 1995;

Hankins, 2000; Skinner, 2002. 5 The forthcoming monograph, The Virtue Politics

of the Italian Humanists is based on the Carlyle

Lectures, 2010, at the University of Oxford. 6 See Hursthouse 2013. Virtue ethics counts as one

of the three major approaches to ethics in modern

academic philosophy. 7 See Hankins, 2003 for the reception of Bruni’s

version. 8 The difference between despotism and tyranny as it

came to be understood by commentators on Aristo-

tle is that despots ruled over willing slaves, men who

were naturally slavish (as in what is referred to as

Asiatic despotism) whereas tyrants treated citizens

who deserved respect as free men as though they

were slaves. 9 See Law and Paton, 2010 for recent work highlight-

ing the continuity of communal magistracies and

assemblies under signori; for another example of

vivere civile as a description of the political life in

principalities, see Hankins, 2002: 382. 10 Despite Bruni’s apparent claim in the Oratio in

funere Nanni Stroze that non-republican forms of

government are illegitimate regimes, which Hankins

has argued is an example of rhetorical insincere; see

Hankins, 2000: 159–167, and 143–178. 11 Law and Paton, 2010 has numerous examples. 12 Patrizi calls virtue an “animi habitum [. . .] naturae

modo ac rationi consentaneum” (“a habit of mind

that agrees with nature, measure and reason”).

Patrizi goes on to say that virtue does not exist (or

does not emerge) before the formation of civil soci-

ety and civil society cannot exist without it. If all

were virtuous, then institutio (both civil institutions

and education) would not be needed. 13 “Public honors should be distributed according to

the worthiness of the individual. It is a diffi cult thing

in the republic to ascertain whose worthiness is

greater, since people disagree about this subject.

The nobles and the powerful say that worthiness

consists in abundant resources and in noble and

ancient families; the popular party say it consists in

the common humanity and benevolent intercourse

of free and peaceful living; the wise say it consists in

active virtue. Those who have the task of distribut-

ing honors in the city and who follow the most

approved counsel always confer honors on the most

virtuous. This is because honor ought to correspond

to worthiness, and nothing is more worthy among

men than the virtue of those who exert themselves

for public utility. Those who seek glory through the

virtue of their ancestors deprive themselves of all the

merit of honor, and the man who destroys the repu-

tation of his forefathers is certainly wretched. Let

him give proof of himself and not of his relatives

who deserve honor; let him boast of his nobility

only when his own virtues equal theirs. The wisest

of the ancients who greatly enlarged their empires

often elevated to the fi rst offi ces of state foreigners,

workers and men of low condition when they

recognized in them signal excellences of virtue. . . .

[Many historical examples follow.] [. . .] Let no one

think it beneath him to be governed by the virtuous,

even if [the virtuous] were born in a low estate and

of unknown parentage.” My translation. 14 Bruni, Preface to his Latin translation of Plutarch’s

Life of Aemilius Paulus, dedicated to Pietro Miani,

in Pade, 2007, 2: 96: “Ego enim sic estimo omnibus,

qui genus allegant magnifi cum et illustrium maio-

rum ymagines proferunt, necessitatem quamdam

impositam esse debere ad uirtutes eorum, ex quibus

se natos asserunt, imitandum. Quis namque aut

adeo ebes est ut non intelligat turpissimum esse, aut

ita improbus ut non pudeat a uirtute degenerare

maiorum? Hoc autem quantum publice utilitatis

secum trahat, quis non uidet? Neque enim legum

latores neque rerum publicarum magistri quidquam

magis optarent quam ut mentibus ciuium uirtutum

animatio certamenque infunderentur: quod, nisi

fallor, in primis nobilitas fecit. Nam ceteris quidem

hominibus, quonaim in obscuro tenebrisque uersan-

tur, latere licet; fama autem et gloria maiorum sic

omnia successorum suorum, quasi lumine quodam

admoto, perlustrat, sic omnia in expectatione et

ueluti specula quadam constituit, ut nullum eorum

facinus latere aut obscurum esse possit. Itaque

Faustinum et Johannem, prestantissimos adolescen-

tes fi lios tuos mihique amore germanos, paternis

exhortationibus commonefacere crebro debes ut

non tantum intumescant ob generis claritatem,

quantum existiment necessitatem eis iunctam esse,

ut integritate, sanctimonia, bonitate, industria, omni

denique probitate in publicis priuatisque rebus,

se clarissimis uiris maioribus suis non dissimiles

prestant studeantque uirtutibus, sine quibus dignitas

generis retineri non potest.” English translation my

own. 15 “Virtus enim omnibus est in promptu. Eius effi citur

propria, qui illam amplectitur. Socordes igitur,

ignavi, improbi, perversi, qui se in maiorum suorum

locum putant successisse, eo sordidiores quam

ceteri habendi sunt, quo longius distant ab

imitatione parentum. [. . .] Nam si persuasum erit

hominibus, honestate et bonis artibus nobilem fi eri

108 JAMES HANKINS

eamque veram esse nobilitatem quam sibi recte

quisque agendo quesierit, non que sit alterius

industria et labore parta, excitabimur, mihi crede,

magis ad virtutem neque desidia confecti, nihil

agentes dignum laude in aliorum gloria acquiesce-

mus, sed ipsi erigemur ad nobilitatis insignia

pervestiganda. [. . .] Quibus vero persuasum fuerit

nullam, nisi propria virtute et gloria, nobilitatem

possideri, infl ammabuntur ardore quodam ad ea

effi cianda, ex quibus eluceat in eis siuperiorum

virtus.” English translation from Rabil, 1991: 89,

with modifi cations. 16 Antonio de Ferrariis (il Galateo) in Rabil, 1991:

316–360, is particularly explicit about the connec-

tion between classical education and virtue. 17 See for example Skinner, 1978, 1: 180ff.; Skinner,

2002, 2: 196 ff.; my view is closest to that expressed

in Skinner, 1981: 35f., where the break with the

humanists on the relationship of virtue and reason

is emphasized. Machiavelli’s estrangement from the

humanist tradition while writing his famous

treatises is stressed by Robert Black, who sees a

return to humanism in the 1520s (Black, 2013). 18 See McCormick, 2011: 3–7. 19 The belief that political thinkers in the Italian

city-states advocated a model of liberty as “non-

domination” (see Skinner, 2002: chapter 7) is most

accurate when applied to Machiavelli and to the old

guild republicanism of the late Middle Ages. In my

opinion, however, it does not describe very well

the typical humanist understanding of liberty (see

Hankins, 2010). A telling example is Rinuccini’s

De libertate (2002), who sees liberty in a Stoic optic

as liberty of spirit rather than political self-rule or

non-domination. 20 “Si reticeam, aut superbus aut obnoxius uidear,

quorum alterum est hominis alienae libertatis obliti,

alterum suae” (English translation my own). 21 Most famously in the Prince, chapter 15, where

Machiavelli ridicules humanist political treatises as

depicting “republics and principalities which have

never been seen or known to exist.”

Works cited

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2010. The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen. New York: W. W. Norton.

Black, Robert D. 2013. Machiavelli. London: Routledge.

Blythe, James M. 1992. Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1992.

Bracciolini, Poggio. 2002. De vera nobilitate, a cura di Davide Canfora. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura.

Bruni, Leonardo. 2001–2007. History of the Florentine People, ed and trans. James Hankins. 3 vols. Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Connolly, William E. 1993. The Terms of Political Discourse. 3rd edn. Oxford: Blackwell.

Fubini, Riccardo. 1992. Renaissance Historian: The Career of Hans Baron. Journal of Modern History, 64:

541–74.

Hankins, James. 1995. The Baron Thesis after Forty Years: Some Recent Studies on Leonardo Bruni. Journal of

the History of Ideas, 56: 309–338.

Hankins, James. ed. 2000. Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Refl ections. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Hankins, James. 2002. Renaissance Philosophy and Book IV of Il Cortegiano. In Baldesar Castiglione: The Book

of the Courtier, ed. Daniel Javitch. New York: W. W. Norton, pp. 377–388.

Hankins, James. 2003. The Ethics Controversy. In James Hankins, Humanism and Platonism in the Italian

Renaissance. 2 vols. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 2: 193–239.

Hankins, James. 2005. Renaissance Humanism and Historiography Today. In Palgrave Advances in Renaissance

Historiography, ed. Jonathan Woolfson. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hankins, James. 2010. Exclusivist Republicanism and the Non-Monarchical Republic. Political Theory, 38.4:

452–82.

Hankins, James. 2012. Modern Republicanism and the History of Republics. In Nuovi maestri, antichi testi:

Umanesimo e Rinascimento alle origini del pensiero moderno, Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi

in onore di Cesare Vasoli, Mantova, 1–3 dicembre 2010, a cura di Stefano Caroti and Vittoria Perrone

Compagni. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, pp. 109–126.

Hirschman, Albert O. 1977. The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its

Triumph. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Hursthouse, Rosalind. 2013. Virtue Ethics. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta,

URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/ethics-virtue/>.

109MACHIAVELLI, CIVIC HUMANISM, AND THE HUMANIST POLITICS OF VIRTUE

Law, John E., and Bernadette Paton. 2010. Communes and Despots in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Farnham,

Surrey: Ashgate.

McCormick, John P. 2011. Machiavellian Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McManamon, John M. 1989. Funeral Oratory and the Cultural Ideals of Italian Humanism. Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press.

Meek, Christine. 2010. “Whatever’s Best Administered is Best”: Paolo Guinigi signore of Lucca, 1400–1430. In

Law and Paton, 2010: 131–143.

Meinecke, Friedrich. 1963. Die idee der Staatsräson in der neueren Geschichte. 3rd edition. Munich and Berlin:

R. Oldenbourg. (First edition, 1924).

Meinecke, Friedrich. 1957. Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’État and Its Place in Modern History.

London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. [English translation by Douglas Scott of the previous item.]

Monnier, P. 1901. Le Quattrocento: Essai sur l’histoire littéraire du XVe siècle italien, vol. I. Paris: Perrin et

Compagnie, p. 228.

Pade, Mariane. 2007. The Reception of Plutarch’s Lives in Fifteenth-Century Italy. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Museum

Tusculum Press.

Palmieri, Matteo. 1982. Vita civile, edizione critica a cura di Gino Belloni. Florence: Sansoni.

Patrizi, Francesco. 1534. De institutione reipublicae libri novem. Paris: Galleotus Pratensis.

Rabil, Jr, Albert. 1991. Knowledge, Goodness and Power: The Debate over Nobility among Quattrocento Italian

Humanists. Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies.

Rinuccini, Alamanno. 2002. La libertà perduta = Dialogus de libertate, testo latino di Francesco Adorno; traduz-

ione, introduzione e note di Giuseppe Civati. Monza: Vittone.

Skinner, Quentin. 1978. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1: The Renaissance. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Skinner, Quentin. 1981. Machiavelli. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Skinner, Quentin. 2002. Visions of Politics, volume II: Renaissance Virtues. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Notes on contributor

James Hankins is Professor of History at Harvard University and the author of

numerous books and articles on Italian humanism and Platonism. He is the founding

editor of the I Tatti Renaissance Library.

Correspondence to: James Hankins, Dept of History, Harvard University,

Cambridge MA 02138, USA. Email: [email protected]