Machiavelli studies in English appear to have at least one major bifurcation. On one side are the studies that are largely influenced by the civic humanism school started by Hans Baron and continued by such scholars as Quentin Skinner, J.G.A. Pocock and Maurizio Viroli. On the other side are those scholars influenced by Leo Strauss which include scholars like Harvey Mansfield and Vickie Sullivan.
I should make some differences from the previous reviewers clear. I am not going to tell you which side is right. I lean toward the Straussian view of Machiavelli but I have learned a lot from reading Skinner and Baron. I am certainly not going to claim that this is the second- or third- or nth-best book ever written about Machiavelli. I am not qualified to make such a claim and, considering my ignorance of foreign languages, never will be.
What I will state is that this is the best intro to the Straussian interpretation of Machiavelli that I have yet to read. I found it a fairly easy book to read which is not true of Strauss' Thoughts on Machiavelli (ToM). It is also a little less quirky than ToM. Many scholars have far too quickly dismissed Strauss because of some of the quirkiness.
If you are interested in studying Machiavelli with a Straussian lens then I recommend you start with this book and go on to ToM. Everyone who fancies political philosophy should welcome a chance to wrestle with both Machiavelli and Strauss.
Why study Machiavelli with a Straussian lens? I have found that Strauss and Mansfield interpret Machiavelli in a way that makes him far more challenging and more disturbing than the interpretation offered up by the civic humanist school. I also find the Straussians more successful in dealing with all the difficulties of the Machiavellian body of writings.
What we have here in Mansfield's book is a collection of writings that were published from 1967 to 1995. They were either stand alone essays and the introductions to some of his translations of Machiavelli's writings. The only new essay is the title essay and some connecting introductions. What is remarkable is how well this all works. There is some repetition but less than I expected. He speaks to all of the major works of Machiavelli, he goes over the history of scholarly reaction to ToM, and he explores what he sees as some of the major themes of Machiavelli's thought. Besides the obvious themes of the meaning of virtue and the common good in Machiavelli, Mansfield also examines the way Machiavelli's proposes to manage sects within a government and how he proposes to check the pursuit of glory of one individual within a republic with the pursuit of glory of another.
So what are the main points of the Straussian reading of Machiavelli? (Please read the following with two things in mind. Whenever I say Machiavelli, please add "according to Mansfield or Strauss". Secondly, this is my first attempt at such a summary. It is undoubtably wrong. Feel free to point out my errors in the comment section.)
Machiavelli thought that humanity was largely (where did Machiavelli fit in?) divided into two types; those who wanted to rule (the princes and nobles) and those who did not want to be ruled (the rest of us). He also felt that it was necessary to see our deeds according to their "effectual truth". In other words, what mattered was the result of our deeds. The justification could always follow the result. To base our political actions on some vision of justice or ideal of politics was to eventually be overrun by those less foolish than us.
Governments could be designed to persue the common good as long as we had the correct vision of what was that common good. This is one of the places where I think Mansfield is very clear and very correct. I have always found the term "common good" to be used by political writers very loosely. A good example in Machiavelli studies is DeGrazia. Here is Mansfield:
"The common good...is a good taken from foreigners that is common to one people and its princes; it can subsist only so long as human beings are divided inpolitical allegiance, and understood to be divided by their sect, into natives and foreigners" (p.160 of Mansfield).
This vision of the common good leads Machiavelli to posit certain rules of politics. The first rule is acquisition. Machiavelli feels that what drives men to ruin is necessity and fortune. The trick is to fight off fortune for as long as possible by making your action determine the necessity of another prince or republic.
Machiavelli is neither for princes nor republics. He is for what works. The founding of a state is best done by one acting alone. A republic will best maintain that state but occassionally circumstances (such as the corruption of the people caused by the republic's success) will necessitate "uno solo" again to set things right using whatever means are deemed necessary. Thus Machiavelli's praise of the Roman institution of the dictator in the Discourses. Here again Mansfield, in the last section of the book, is outstanding.
The Straussians identify Machiavelli as THE turning point toward modernity. Mansfield speaks to this point several times. Their main point is that Machiavelli was the first writer to really reject any sort of ideal measure for politics. But it really goes beyond that. It sometimes seems, reading Machiavelli, that his way of seeing the world is not just realistic but positively cynical and ultimately debasing. Combine that with his qualities as a writer and you have a recipe for a most disturbing thinker. On this issue, I think that Mansfield has it exactly right. We must not try to domesticate Machiavelli by making him largely just a stepping stone to the mass democratic republic. Mansfield and Strauss manage to display him as an unnerving challenge to our easy (in the sense of rarely examined) moral and political thought.
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