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- W14921132 abstract "That night I thought long and not without despair about what must become of me. I wanted very much to be a person of value and I had to ask myself how this could be possible if there were not something like a soul or like a spirit that is in the life of a person and which could endure any misfortune or disfigurement and yet be less for it. If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to the hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily. Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses. I It has often been thought that Machiavelli and Plato stand on opposite sides of the highest watershed in Western intellectual history.(1) Prior to Machiavelli wisdom had always been identified with the acceptance of some higher authority, ancient thinkers dividing chiefly over the question whether that higher authority lay in the more or less mysterious laws of God, or in the more or less coherent principles of nature. In Machiavelli's writings independence replaces acceptance as the basis of wisdom; his point of departure begins with the insight that no moral laws exist, not made by men, which men must abide by.(2) Machiavelli's rejection of Plato in particular and all ancient thought in general thus stands as a lofty peak from which one can see the greatest distance in both directions. This paper will argue, however, that Machiavelli's moral and epistemological innovations will be better understood as modifications of the Platonic approach than as consequences of a complete rejection of Plato. Both the Athenian wrestler and the Florentine clerk, it turns out, demonstrate a persistent concern with the moral problematic--that is, the tendency of human beings to do what they want to do at the cost of that which they ought to do. Both thinkers see man's vulnerability to fortune as a symptom of this tendency, and they agree as to its ultimate cause: the inability of men to accurately weigh that which is present here and now against that which is far removed in time and space. Machiavelli does not part company with Plato until it is time to suggest a remedy. Here he indeed accomplishes a radical innovation--perhaps as radical as was suggested above. Whereas Plato resolves the problematic by founding the soul on that which is, and which is better than and prior to man, Machiavelli supposes that man, starting from scratch, can construct his own foundations. Nonetheless, the Florentine walks a long way with the Athenian before he takes his leave; it may be best, then, to interpret Machiavelli's writing less as a monologue than as a dialogue, the dramatis personae of which include himself and Plato. I will not attempt to demonstrate here that this conversation was conscious. I will, however, bring the reader's attention to two facts that bear on the question. The first is that Machiavelli tells us, in his famous letter to Francesco Vettori, that he invested in his Prince the capital accumulated from numerous nocturnal conversations with ancient men. The second is that one of the most famous passages in that book--the first paragraph of the twenty-fifth chapter--is lifted from Book IV of Plato's the Laws.(3) This is especially remarkable because Plato's passage comes just as the Athenian stranger is about to suggest an alliance between philosophy and tyranny. Further, both Plato's Athenian Stranger and Machiavelli seem to view the world in the same way. To all appearances fortune exerts so powerful an influence over man that no mortal ever legislates anything, that almost all human affairs are matters of chance.(4) At least, the Athenian tells us, this is what someone might be eager to say, and Machiavelli confesses that he himself is sometimes inclined to this opinion. …" @default.
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- W14921132 date "1996-03-01" @default.
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- W14921132 title "Being, Seeing, and Touching: Machiavelli's Modification of Platonic Epistemology" @default.
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