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Abstract(s)
During the latter part of the last century, extending into the early part of this
one, there was a kind of “turnaround” in academic perceptions of Machiavelli
in the Anglosphere. 1 If not at all times, at least for a very long period, up to
the middle of the 20th century he had come to be regarded, in a moral
context, as a deeply problematic theorist. Yet in the intervening sixty-five
years or so, Machiavelli has instead come to be seen by many ‘eminent’
academics and thinkers - both in the field of political theory, and related fields
such as constitutional law - in a much more positive light. Intellectuals have
largely tended to ignore the fact that, whatever his undoubted brilliance and
insightfulness as a diplomat, writer, and political theorist, he remains a tainted
- and in some ways even an abhorrent - source.
This phenomenon has manifested itself mainly in two ways. Generally, there
has been a marked propensity on the part of many intellectuals to read, and
then write about, Machiavelli in what amounts to a highly selective and overly
positive way. Specifically, there has been a consistent tendency on the part of
intellectuals to overlook, ignore, or excuse the unquestionable inspiration that
Machiavelli provided to Italian Fascism.
These two tendencies seem to have been due to a combination of three factors:
1 I would like to credit Prof Giovanni Girorgini, University of Bologna, for this thought - A self-interested desire on the part of these intellectuals - many of
whom lack a sensitivity to Machiavelli’s “mental landscape” - to advance
their own intellectual agendas, for example in relation to value
pluralism, republicanism, democratic theory, constitutionalism, and
‘realist’ international relations theory.
- An inability or reluctance - whether witting or unwitting, and perhaps
linked to vanity and fatuity - to understand the unexpurgated nature of
the dubious Machiavellian achievement.
- A related surge in the growth of western secularism, which has
resonated with, and even been intellectually fed by, Machiavelli’s strong
contempt for, and hostility towards, Christianity, especially Roman
Catholicism, and the transcendent abstract universals associated with it.
These tendencies seem to have been centripetal, underpinning a desire to
‘sideline’ and marginalize traditional Christian thinking as having no
worthwhile contribution to make in the real-world ‘public square’.
Arguably, it was Machiavelli himself, and not Nietzsche - his strong admirer -
who, if not in so many words, nonetheless in effect, pronounced “the death of
God.”