Harvey Mansfield’s Effectual Truth: An Exposé From His Latest Work on Machiavelli
Niccolo Machiavelli, that great Prince or Philosopher, masterminded a centuries-long enterprise that began over half a millennium ago to create the modern world for the benefit of all—including you, dear reader, and everyone dear to you.
This notion must sound outrageous. Machiavelli created the modern world? He’s responsible, somehow, for the myriad benefits of modernity, in areas ranging from politics to science, economics, and religion, as well as its evils? On its face, this claim is so ridiculous as to be worthy of contempt. Machiavelli conquered no nation and made no great scientific discovery. Yet are we to thank Machiavelli for democracy and air conditioning, the polio vaccine and manned flight, capitalism? The near disappearance of dictators—modern princes—from Europe? Yes, in fact, for all these, and more. For Machiavelli, the truth of a philosopher’s teaching is found not in his thoughts or in his books, but in the effects of his thought. And the modern world is the effect of Machiavelli.
So Harvey Mansfield—the longtime Professor of Government at Harvard University—argues persuasively in his latest book, Machiavelli’s Effectual Truth (2023). Here he follows his teacher, Leo Strauss, in arguing Machiavelli self-consciously inaugurated an enterprise that involved intellectual and spiritual warfare on multiple fronts. In Machiavelli’s time, the world was dominated by despotic principalities under which most people suffered great malignities of fortune (and all dominions, he insists, are either principalities or republics; there are no other alternatives).
Accordingly, Machiavell’s enterprise was an orchestrated attempt to improve the lives of most people in tangible ways: from higher standards of living through scientific and economic innovation to better, more republican modes of government, to less exploitative religious institutions. Science and politics were to be put in the service of the relief of man’s estate, as that later Machaivellian Francis Bacon would put it. In politics, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Baron de Montesquieu knowingly became captains in Machiavelli’s intellectual army and continued to campaign on behalf of the political goal, while in science, Sir Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes led the charge.
All the while, these men also engaged in spiritual warfare against the Catholic church, but perhaps the most open spiritual warfare was waged by Spinoza. Baruch Spinoza founded a method of biblical criticism called “Higher criticism”—a method that seeks to read the Bible as one would read any other historical text, effectively toppling the good book from its pride of place as the book above all other books. In effect, this approach posits that books are the product of their historical situation and must be so understood. Timeless truths are reduced to the prejudices of particular peoples in particular historical situations.
One can easily see why Machiavelli had a reputation for being evil; his name is a synonym for sinister. The word Machiavellian means immoral, cunning, underhanded, duplicitous—the word, “Machiavel,” appears thrice in Shakespeare’s plays as an insult. Thus because they were engaged in a kind of conspiracy, Machiavelli’s followers had to write very carefully, or, as Leo Strauss famously put it, they wrote “esoterically.” The men who enlisted in his army—Machiavellians—had to hide their Machiavellianism if they were to avoid gaining a similar reputation. This is key to Mansfield’s interpretation.
The books of Machiavelli and of his followers often contained a surface, exoteric teaching as well as a deeper, esoteric one. These writers would indicate their deeper, truer teachings between the lines, so to speak, using omissions, errors and contradictions, among other devices. They even occasionally made somewhat playful use of numbers—numerology, as we Straussians call it—to signal things between the lines, a trick Mansfield himself even seems to enjoy on occasion.[1] These men had mastered the art of writing. As Strauss says: “If a master of the art of writing commits such blunders as would shame an intelligent high school boy, it is reasonable to assume that they are intentional, especially if the author discusses, however incidentally, the possibility of intentional blunders in writing.”[2] Thus Machiavelli’s intellectual heirs often hid their dangerous ideas in such ways that only the most careful readers would discover them. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to prove their Machiavellianism, precisely as they intended it.
Take the example of John Locke, a man whom I’ve impugned as a Machiavellian. Strauss argues that Locke was deeply indebted to Thomas Hobbes (another Machiavellian), and Strauss’s claim was widely derided by scholars who look for evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. But Strauss claimed Locke intentionally distanced himself from Hobbes, “The Monster of Malmesbury,” whose Machiavellianism was more easily sniffed out. Locke knew his ideas would be far more palatable to his fellow countrymen if his debt to Hobbes, and by extension Machiavelli, were unknown. So he hid their influence on his thought and judiciously avoided even mentioning their names to a large degree, though not entirely. As a result, for years scholars denied that Locke was in any way perpetuating Hobbes’ project for the simple reason that he never said that was what he was doing. But a recently discovered letter confirms Locke’s reliance on Hobbes,[3] so scholars have had to concede Strauss was right, at least about Locke. Careful reading would reveal that the men I mentioned above were all similalrly involved in perpetuating Machiavelli’s enterprise.
As I proceed, please forgive any presumption to review the latest work on Machiavelli by the world’s greatest living Machiavelli scholar, who has thought out, examined with great diligence, and written a marvelous book. Nevertheless, the attempt must be made.[4]
Mansfield the Man
Long the most prominent conservative at maybe our nation’s most prestigious institution of higher learning, Mansfield taught political philosophy for six decades at Harvard, where he led the Program on Constitutional Government and its lecture series, as well as mentored scores of students who became established professors in their own right. (Known as a benevolent teacher but hard grader, he years ago earned the nickname, Harvey “C-Minus” Mansfield.) But his influence was not limited to the academy; like his philosophical mentor Machiavelli, Mansfield also advised political men like Bill Kristol, Alan Keys, and Sen. Tom Cotton, among countless others.
He is perhaps the most famous living intellectual follower of the famous UChicago professor of political philosophy, Leo Strauss—a German scholar who as a Jewish emigre fled the rise of National Socialism and eventually came to the United States—despite never having formally been Strauss’ student. As the most infamous tenet of “Straussian” scholarship is undoubtedly its focus on esotericism, Mansfield follows his founder’s lead in interpreting writings of the philosophers, especially those of Machiavelli. “[W]hen studying Machiavelli,” recalls Mansfield, “every time that I have been thrown upon an uninhabited island I thought might be unexplored, I have come across a small sign saying, ‘please deposit coin.’ After I comply, a large sign flashes in neon light that would have been visible from afar, with this message: Leo Strauss was here.”[5]
Chapter 3 of the present book, “Leo Strauss on the Prince,” is an interpretation of Strauss’s Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958), the book unlike any other ever written on the man and the first to explain his esotericism at length.[6] In the earlier book, Strauss threw down the gauntlet on Machiavelli studies, and Mansfield picked it up. In addition to his books on Machiavelli, Mansfield has also translated Machiavelli’s The Prince, Discourses on Livy (together with Nathan Tarcov), and Florentine Histories (with Laura F. Banfield), which are now standards in the field of political philosophy, as is his translation (with his late wife, Delba Winthrop) of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. He has also edited the respective writing of Burke and Jefferson, written books on manliness, the rise of the modern executive, and party government…and once even appeared on Comedy Central.[7]
But Mansfield is known, above all, for his work on Old Nick. Once, when someone referred to him as the greatest living Machiavelli scholar in the English-speaking world, as a joke he asked why any qualification was necessary. So, let the mistake be here corrected and the qualification removed. This marvelous book is the latest work on Machiavelli, thoughtfully written with great diligence, by the world’s greatest living Machiavelli scholar. Simply read it for yourself, along with any works of Machiavelli (as well as those of Montesquieu and Tocqueville) close at hand.
Some Taxonomy
Machiavelli’s Effectual Truth is Mansfield’s third book with Machiavelli in the title,[8] plus numerous dozens of articles and book chapters as well.[9] Some of its chapters have been in print for a long time, while some are new. Chapters 1 and 6 are altogether new; Chapter 2 is partly new with added members; the book inherits Chapters 3 through 5 from previous publications, which appear to have revisions; and Mansfield adds in Chapter 7 to a text he inherited, on “Tocqueville’s Machiavellianism,” from Delba Winthrop, a final chapter which he considers a joint enterprise.[10]
The book consists of two main parts which advance two clear, related theses. In Part I, Mansfield shows the incredible scope and ambition of Machiavelli’s enterprise and the role the Florentine saw himself playing in it. In Part II, Mansfield shows how Machiavelli takes charge of others, secures his succession, and effects the execution of his centuries-long enterprise long after his death. He not only changed the world, he also created a world difficult to change.[11]
Obviously we all live in the modern world, but that means less obviously that we all live within the horizon Machiavelli fashioned, one that still profoundly shapes us by his thought even in ways we may be yet unaware. Later thinkers carried out his enterprise even as they modified it. In order to better understand ourselves, to say nothing of the possibility of escaping this intellectual horizon, we have to understand both the philosopher and his successors. In such an effort, Harvey Mansfield is our indispensable guide.
The Machiavellian Enterprise
If Machiavelli aimed to make what we call the modern world, such a project is definable “as a more or less concerted attempt at the rational control of chance for the advantage of mankind.”[12]. In part, creating modernity required the destruction of the modes and orders of premodernity, or at least that they be so corrupted to such an extent that they cease to be effectual. Orders, for Machiavelli, are political foundings on the grandest scale.
In Chapter 6 of The Prince, for example, Machiavelli gives the examples of Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus. As excellent princes who introduced new orders, these men seem to have founded peoples: the Jews, the Persians, the Romans, and the Athenians. In the same spirit, Machiavelli seeks to found a new people, the moderns. When Machiavelli says he wants to “depart from the orders” that dominated the world at his own time, namely Christianity and classical philosophy, he means he wants to overthrow them and introduce a new order.
Christianity and philosophy, each in its own way, has rendered the world weak and effeminate: they encourage us to forget about how we are faring here in the real one and to focus instead on some other realm, an imaginary fantasyland that no one has ever actually known to exist, be it heaven, the City of God, or the realm of the so-called Forms or Ideas. Christianity and classical philosophy have taught us to forget this world—but ours is the only one we know and the only one that matters! If men suffer in the here and now due to the mere hope that the hereafter will be better, we then let ourselves be governed by chance or by fate or by God or the gods—or as Machiavelli would say “fortune.” No more, he charges, we need to take matters into our own hands and create a new world altogether.
And Machiavelli does precisely this: he aims to introduce a new world order on the magnitude of Greece, Persia, Judaism, and Rome. As this is not an easy task, he knows he needs help if the enterprise is to succeed. Nothing is more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than putting oneself at the head of introducing new orders—and it’s even harder if you don’t have arms! Quite literally, Machiavelli has no guns, whereas his models Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus all had arms: weapons and an army. Machiavelli calls such men armed prophets, and he contrasts them with prophets who lacked arms. These armed prophets introduced a new order and had the guns, so to speak, to back it up. But unlike them, Machaivelli doesn’t have an army. By his own account, he’s an “unarmed prophet,” and unarmed prophets, he famously avers, are ruined.
To illustrate the point, he gives the example of a relatively obscure unarmed prophet, Girolamo Savonarola, known to history for the infamous “bonfire of the vanities.” Brother Savonarola was burned alive at the stake in a failed attempt to prophesize to 15th-century Florentines. How does Machiavelli avoid a similar fate? He lacks “arms,” so he must obtain some, but of a different kind. Machiavelli’s account of David and Goliath in Chapter 13 of The Prince illustrates how he intends to gain them, but part of the solution involves a much more elastic definition of “arms”—which will no longer mean only military devices.
When Machiavelli recounts the Biblical story of David and Goliath, he subtly alters it for his own purposes. First, his account of David follows on the heels of his discussion of the Syracusan tyrant Hiero, a mercenary man. He thus invites the reader to compare these two men with all the unsavory implications such a comparison would produce, tie together any other passages where Machiavelli discusses Hiero, and also apply his descriptions to David. In any event, the most significant change Machiavelli makes to the Biblical story is that he gives David his own knife: “so he would rather meet the enemy with his sling and his knife.”[13] Yet the Bible is emphatic: David did not have a sword, and no mention is made of a knife. Rather, David both refuses the gear which Saul offers, and insists God will deliver Goliath into his hands; for the Lord does not conquer with the spear or the sword. In the Bible, after using his slingshot, David uses Goliath’s own arms—his sword—to behead him.
In contrast, Machiavelli wants you to return to the Bible to see whether, in your own reading, David was able to defeat Goliath by his own arms and virtue, or whether his victory was the result of reliance on God. In between the lines, he is encouraging us to the distorted judgment that David relied on the former, not the latter. But as a prince who relied on his own arms, David did so with a twist: he acquired a weapon from his enemy, Goliath, and made it his own.
This is key. Relying on one’s own arms, Mansfield delightfully deduces, also “includes picking up the arms of your enemy and using them against him—which is just what Machiavelli is doing in appropriating and distorting this incident in the Bible.”[14] And just what “David did to Goliath,” he later says, Machiavelli “will pick up his dead enemy’s knife to cut off its head.”[15]. Now, Machiavelli’s enemy is Christianity. But as he must use the weapons of his enemies, the philosopher thereby pays a backhanded compliment to his greatest enemy by having to imitate it. Christianity’s “knife” is propaganda, thus Machiavelli will conspire with others to conduct his spiritual warfare against it using the same tools it once used to acquire the world in the first place.
In sum, Machiavelli, the master conspirator, will acquire the world as a prince in imitation of the great unarmed prophet—not Savonarola but Jesus Christ.[16] Again, Machiavelli wants to rid the world of Christianity in order to improve it. Machiavelli seeks to defang Christianity, or at least to corrupt it enough that it will become less effective in governing men’s lives. Machiavelli wants to benefit the many, and, in his view, men had resigned themselves to enduring great and continuous malignities of fortune under Christianity. Old Nick, instead, wants men to learn how to overcome them.
But how? The answer can be found in a play by Machiavelli called Mandragola, a microcosm that holds the key to unlocking this far-reaching enterprise.
Effectual Truth in Mandragola
For students it is surprising to learn that, like his Italian subject, Mansfield can be bitingly funny, be it in person and in text, on the Colbert Report or even in footnotes. Just as Leo Strauss often left “in the footnotes” of his books like Thoughts on Machiavelli “little puzzles” such as numerological hints “for his students to come along and try to discover,”[17] Mansfield once cited P.G. Wodehouse to explain Machiavelli’s conception of realpolitik—as Jeeves tells Bertie Wooster: “It is a recognized fact, sir, that there is nothing that so satisfactorily unites individuals who have been so unfortunate as to quarrel amongst themselves as a strong mutual dislike for some definite person.”[18]
It is just as surprising to learn that, like Wodehouse, Machiavelli was a practitioner of farce. Thus in his book’s central chapter, “The Cuckold in Machiavelli’s Mandragola,” Mansfield lays out his interpretation of the Italian’s play. As it is impishly delightful, let the reader enjoy it if he reads nothing else, or let alone basks in a podcast episode of The New Thinkery on the play with Mansfield. Please like, rate, and subscribe. (But future philosophical founders only, please.)
While interpreting comedy might seem out of place in a book of political theory, Mansfield helps the reader see that in this play Machiavelli discloses the role he sees himself playing as a political and philosophical founder on the grandest scale. As The Mandragola (“The Mandrake”) presents a near-frivolous domestic conspiracy as a comic allegory for Machiavelli’s deadly serious political conspiracy, perhaps the play is more serious than it seems, and Machiavelli’s project is more playful that it first appears. (For “in all things,” as the play’s prologue states, “the present age falls off from ancient virtu” because “people, seeing that everyone blames [others], don’t labor and strain to make, with a thousand discomforts,” any works of greatness.)[19]
Briefly put: the plot follows an ambitious young man, Callimaco, who wants to seduce Lucrezia, the wife of the middle-aged, reputedly stupid doctor, Messer Nicia, and turn him into a cuckold with the help of a priest and a few other shady characters. But this supposedly ignorant husband, butt of the joke, and cuckold, Nicia, is actually the mastermind behind the whole thing, as he convinces others not only to conspire against him, but to also believe that the conspiracy is their idea and that he is oblivious to it all.
Basically, Nicia wants an heir—a desire shared by the other characters—so he orchestrates a movement to have Callimaco seduce his wife and procure her child, all the while preserving her Christian virtue—or, more accurately, at least her virtuous reputation. Nicia willingly lets others see him as the old fool to achieve his goal—as everyone else gets what he or she wants.
A point worth stressing: Mansfield’s interpretation, being wholly new, sharply contrasts with all prior published interpretations of this play. Nearly everyone else saw Callimaco as the hero, the wiley and ambitious young would-be prince who deposes the foolish old husband by seducing his desirable wife for himself. As Tricky Nick confesses in the Prologue, he wishes to trick the audience—he doesn’t want most people to see what he’s up to.
But Mansfield exposes the trick: Messer Nicia represents Niccolò Machiavelli (MN=NM), whose reputation will similarly go down in history, though not for stupidity but for evil. And just like Nicia, Machiavelli’s reputation is deliberately misleading. He sacrifices any reputation for virtue to bring forth new modes and orders. And to do so, he must corrupt the Christian virtue of his fellow citizens, just as Nicia has to corrupt his wife’s virtue to benefit her. Further, Machiavelli allows others to get the fame of Callimaco. The fields of political glory will be harvested not by Machiavelli, but by his captains and lieutenants: Hobbes, Locke, and, by extension, Madison.
Now, it’s sort of funny, impish even, for modernity’s founder to disclose his self-presentation in the image of an old, foolish, impotent, bookish doctor. Indeed, impishness seems to be necessary to Machiavellianism, if not to wisdom itself. Nicia is the master conspirator who sacrifices his own reputation for the good of all. But Nicia’s naughtiness is not simply for fun; it brings about a good effect for all: the wife gets her baby, the cad satisfies his lust, and the doctor secures his heir. And the same is true of Old Nick: getting rid of Christianity and classical philosophy paves the way for both a science that relieves human suffering instead of uselessly contemplating obscure matters of theology and metaphysics, and a politics that helps to usher in the age of republics. The Cuck—that ubiquitous present-day term of derision, one I loath no less to write than even to utter—is Machiavelli’s comic equivalent.
O Fortuna!
In Part II, “Machiavelli’s Fortuna,” Mansfield examines his subject’s place in history, both critiquing the scholars who underrate his significance, and highlighting the philosophers who helped build the master’s legacy.
One dominant interpretation, which has the odor of historicism about it, argues that Machiavelli was merely a typical representative of a larger movement that preceded him, and not an innovator of new orders, a Founder on the scale of Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus—and especially not even greater than them. This line couldn’t be further from the truth. Whereas all these men founded political communities of flesh-and-blood men, yet were later remembered through texts and stories, Machiavelli acted in reverse: by literary warfare he helped forge the brick-and-mortar of the developed western world.
Here Mansfield targets historians like Hans Baron and Jacob Burkhart, who would deny to Machiavelli the title of Founder—one whose grand political ambition actually introduces a new political way of life. By failing to see the enormous break with classical philosophy and Christianity that the Florentine initiated, they smother his thought with historical explanations. As one example: while Machiavelli coined the term, “effectual truth,” even as it thrice made its way into the King James Bible, that phrase never appears elsewhere among Renaissance humanists. This was part of the plan, for while The Prince was explicitly dedicated to Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, the title implicitly belongs to its author.
Mansfield shows this point by comparing Machiavelli with his predecessor, Leonardo Bruni, who as the hero of civic humanism merely reflected the dominant intellectual milieu of his day. Yet thinkers who merely reflect the zeitgeist rarely achieve the prominence of Machiavelli. Bruni may be well-known among Renaissance scholars, but few outside that cloister have ever heard the name. By contrast, nearly all have at least heard the name of the infamous Florentine. There are Machivellians, but no Brunites.
Furthermore, Mansfield shows the succession of Machiavelli’s thought in other enlightenment thinkers who followed in his footsteps and helped advance the modern enterprise. Mansfield identifies five successors—Englishmen like Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, as well as continental thinkers like Baruch Spinoza and Rene Descartes—but he focuses on two philosophers not ordinarily deemed as Machavellians: Montesquieu and Alexis de Tocqueville.
Perhaps their unlikeliness is why Mansfield focuses on these two Frenchmen. Or perhaps the reason is that Machiavelli’s enterprise had begun to come to its completion with Montesquieu—who actually says of himself, “one has begun to be cured of Machiavellianism, and one will continue to be cured of it.”[20] What could this statement even mean?
Well, a key Machiavellian teaching is that foundings are necessarily harsh, and only after an extraordinary execution can a people return to ordinary government. We see this point, for example, in Machiavelli’s example of Cesare Borgia in Chapter 7 of The Prince: Borgia was only able to institute good government in Romagna after his bloody but sanctified execution of Remirro de Orco—the man whom he tasked with cruelly whipping the province into shape—had left the people satisfied and stupefied.
Similarly, if Montesquieu can help guide us moderns towards good government, he can cure us of our Machiavellianism, but only after Machiavelli’s spectacular execution has already taken place. Montesquieu makes our lives gentler just as he gentrifies Machiavelli’s teaching. Whereas Machiavelli sought to legitimize unlimited acquisition by princes, including violent acquisition of principalities, Montesquieu channels the desire for unlimited acquisition among the few into the relatively softer arena of commerce among the many. Since “cure” is first mentioned by Mansfield in the introduction, it’s probably worth paying attention to all 26 places, like the Prince’s 26 chapters, where it recurs.[21]
Montesquieu: the Doctor Will See You Now
The chapter, “Montesquieu and Machiavelli,” contains Mansfield’s first sustained interpretation of Montesquieu’s political thought. As the book’s most novel part, it is also enormously ambitious and a bit overwhelming. Mansfield interprets all of The Spirit of the Laws—an enormous book—in roughly 100 pages. Allow me to give a sense of its movement.
At first, Mansfield persuasively argues both that Montesquieu is deeply indebted to Machiavelli, but that he tries to advance modernity past him. With the Frenchman’s remark about being “cured” of Machiavellianism, Mansfield also points out that Montesquieu calls Machiavelli a “great man,” a title he accords to only one other philosopher, Pierre Bayle.[22]
More curious is Montesquieu’s later remark that he will not lose courage in writing his work, when he has seen “so many great men in France, England and Germany.” Seeing such great men, Montesquieu says, quoting the renaissance painter Correggio, “I too am a painter.” As in, I too am like these great men. Notably, Correggio did not say this about anyone from France, England, or Germany, the places Montesquieu mentions; rather, as Mansfield notes, “Correggio said this of Raphael, a contemporary of Machiavelli” and Italian compatriot. Among “so many great men,” Machiavelli’s name is conspicuous by its absence.[23] In beginning to be cured of Machiavellianism, Montesquieu begins to be cured of certain remedies that Dottore Niccolò prescribes.
Despite his association in our minds with principalities, Machiavelli was a republican, and opposed to a certain kind of despotism, for republics, too, can be tyrannical[24] While we can see his preference for republics more readily in his Discourses on Livy than in the Prince, no less a thinker than Rousseau says: “The Prince is the book of Republicans.”[25]
Machiavellianism feels rather nasty, as it condones nastiness in moral and political affairs. It has a high level of toleration of extraordinary executions, sometimes quite literally, in order to set affairs right. You can’t make an omelet without cracking some eggs. While Machaivelli preferred republics—this is the teaching of the Discourses—he tolerated nasty ones, even, perhaps, despotic ones. Beginning to be cured of Machiavellianism means we are no longer under the necessity of accepting such harsh measures. Imitation of violent founders and even criminal thugs can later give way to peaceful republics.
Seen in light of how Mansfield interprets Montesquieu, the republican form of government that Machiavelli prescribes must culminate in a kind of despotism. And while this movement was necessary at one time to undermine the Catholic Church’s more devastating despotism,[26] the success of this project makes his particular brand of republicanism no longer essential or helpful. If anything, Machiavelli was too successful. He so untethered the natural human longings of home and hearth toward unlimited acquisition, that Montesquieu could channel that passion into commerce as incentive and interest.
Montesquieu’s chief project is to promote commercial republics whose chief political goal is economic growth. Republics, like all regimes, must grow or die, and commercial republicanism satisfies this requirement in the most peaceful way imaginable. Countries that trade with one another will want better relations with each other, perhaps even to the point of becoming economically interdependent. Whereas Rome is Machiavelli’s model, Montesquieu’s is England. Not conquest but commerce was its proper mode of expansion: an ever-growing economy satisfies the human longing for acquisition.
Montesquieu’s project was prepared by Machiavelli, but it departs from that original version—and, Mansfield suggests, the Florentine might have approved. Were Machiavelli alive today to see the modern world, on the one hand, he would almost certainly regret that later thinkers “emasculated his notion of virtue,” but on the other hand, he would admire the prevalence and achievements of modern republics as well as the near disappearance of princely rule, at least in Europe.
Tocqueville: A Machiavellian Comes to America
At the book’s end, Mansfield argues that Alexis de Tocqueville, despite being the least known Machiavellian, learned from and was influenced by him, maybe the most. Even if Tocqueville mentions him just once, it is notable that the name Machiavelli appears in the 26th chapter of Democracy in America (Vol. II, Pt. 3), with 26 being the Machiavellian number (or rather twice the Machiavellian number, 13). From his Italian teacher, Tocqueville learned how an unarmed prophet could succeed, or, in his own terms, how one could effect a “revolution in ideas.”
In the final chapter, we learn how Machiavelli’s project culminates in modern democracy, even though this is not necessarily the outcome he intended.[27] As Machiavelli classified all regimes in his day as either principalities or republics, by Tocqueville’s time the alternative had morphed into authoritarianism or democracy, thanks in part to the modifications to Machiavelli’s political thought made by Hobbes and Locke, but also by changes in science and technology. One can catch a glimpse of this move from republic to democracy by looking at our own case: the Federalist Papers speak incessantly of republics, but today we constantly call ourselves a democracy. If a republic means the “public thing,” one can see how it inevitably slides into democracy, “strength of the people.”
Elsewhere, Mansfield says, “Tocqueville is Aristotle’s modern representative,” and yet here he speaks of Tocqueville’s Machiavellianism. This is most curious. As Machiavelli sought to overthrow both Christianity and classical philosophy, that of course includes Aristotle. So it is perplexing to speak of Tocqueville as simultaneously Aristotelian and Machiavellian. In Machiavelli’s own time, Aristotle’s philosophy had been subsumed, to a considerable degree, by the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, into Christian theology. Did the Florentine foresee that the only way to return to Aristotle’s thought was by throwing the amalgamation out altogether? That is, instead of trying to pry Aristotle away from Aquinas, just throw them both out and let some later thinker rehabilitate Aristotle freed of his Christian followers.
Perhaps Montesquieu began to rehabilitate Aristotle, and Tocqueville continued the project. To return to Aristotle in his own right would mean beginning to read him on his own and not through the lens of his later interpreters. Such a return would require taking seriously his philosophy—political, moral, scientific, and metaphysical—freed from the dogmatic doctrines that had accreted around it. This return need not be merely theoretical; Tocqueville’s account of the all-encompassing features of democracy sounds Aristotelian, and he helps us to see that our regime shapes us fundamentally in ways recognizable yet imperceptible.
Aristotle, after all, is Mansfield’s favorite philosopher, although one could easily be forgiven for thinking that title belongs to someone more notorious. And, indeed, Aristotle lurks around in this book. One shining example is Mansfield’s claim that Alexander the Great stands for Aristotle in Machiavelli’s works. For Mansfield’s Machiavelli, a philosopher’s truth is found in the effect of his teaching, so the Athenian’s most famous student, Alexander the Great, “is the effect of his teacher Aristotle and stands for him in Machiavelli’s work and here also in Montesquieu.”[28]
Let’s apply this identification. In Chapter 4 of The Prince, for example, if Alexander stands in for Aristotle, then his father Philip might stand for Plato. One also wonders about the list of ten emperors in Chapter 19 that begins with Marcus Aurelias, whom Machiavelli calls a philosopher. Perhaps here, in this chapter on conspiracies, we can begin to see how Machiavelli sought to conspire with other philosophers to realize the coming together of political power and wisdom, not by relying on a fortunate coincidence, but making it so intentionally.
Socrates famously avers that there would be no end to human ills until and unless philosophers become kings.[29] Machiavelli sought to make this happen, just not directly. Philosophers need to take matters into their own hands, to a certain extent, and rule. But their rule must be indirect. Just as Alexander is the effectual truth of Aristotle, and Aristotle rules through him, so will Machiavelli, and his philosophical heirs, rule through later “princes.” And if in a modern democracy every member acts as his own prince, then each of us are his heirs. Machiavelli rules through us.
All in all, Mansfield is indispensable for understanding Machiavelli, and his interpretation of Montesquieu’s reception and correction of Machiavelli, not to mention Tocqueville’s continuation of that curing, helps to understand both thinkers better. As moderns, we, too, are products of Machiavelli’s enterprise, so understanding Machiavelli is essential for self-knowledge and Mansfield is our greatest aid in understanding Machiavelli, and thus ourselves. So, how should we judge what Machiavelli did to the world?
“Machiavelli is himself also under the necessity of proving to be good for the princes he advises,” as Mansfield lectures, “and not merely offering irresponsible advice in order to make himself look good.” For “that necessity is judged in the end by how much good it leads to, even if the good in this case is only apparent.” In total, “Machiavelli, the professor of necessity, is obliged to profess the necessity of the good. The effectual truth is not the only truth: he must admit the primacy of the good over necessity.”[30]
Although Mansfield has retired from teaching, thankfully this book is not to be his last.[31] Curiously, the premier Machiavelli scholar is famously one of the least Machiavellian teachers a student can meet. If effectual truth effectively means “ye shall know them by their fruits,” much can be said for Harvey “C-minus” Mansfield.
To be categorically clear, this review is not written in any esoteric manner whatsoever. And just to be safe, definitely ignore the endnotes. ↩︎
Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 30. ↩︎
While John Locke was a student at Oxford, recalled his friend James Tyrell, he “despised Science and Erudition. Nonetheless, he almost always had the Leviathan by H. on his table, and he recommended the reading of it to his friends. Mr. . . . bought it on his recommendation; however he [sc. Mr. L] in the future affected to deny that he ever read it. He prided himself on being original, and he scorned that which he was unable to pass off as his own.”
Quoted in Felix Waldmann, “John Locke as a Reader of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan: A New Manuscript*,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 93, No. 2 (June 2021): 245-282, 273. ↩︎To be extremely clear, this qualification is not a reference to the dedicatory letter from Niccollo Machiavelli to Lorenzo de Medici in The Prince. ↩︎
Harvey Mansfield, “Strauss’s Machiavelli,” Political Theory, vol. 3 no. 4 (November 1975): 372-384, 372. ↩︎
Harvey Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Effectual Truth: Creating the Modern World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023): 71-94. (MET for all further citation.) ↩︎
The mentioned translations include: Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey Mansfield (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985, 1998); NM, The Florentine Histories, trans. HM and Laura Banfield (Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, 1988); NM, Discourses on Livy, trans. HM and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. HM and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
The mentioned titles include: Thomas Jefferson: Selected Writings, ed. HM (Wheeling, IL: H. Davidson, 1979); Selected Letters of Edmund Burke, ed. HM (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1984); HM, Statesmanship and Party Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965); HM, Taming The Prince (New York: The Free Press, 1989); HM, Manliness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).
The interview with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report, Comedy Central, 5 April 2006. As of now, the video is offline, but the clip’s subtitle used to be captioned as: “Harvey Mansfield and Stephen collide in a perfect storm of man musk.” Obviously, Colbert emerged as the victor and still remained funny, And to be obviously clear, this point is not allusive. ↩︎Officially, the other two are Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders (1979) and Machiavelli’s Virtue (1996). The present volume can be taken, Mansfield says, as a companion to the latter (MET, ix). Alongside these books, one might also add Taming the Prince (1989). ↩︎
Lastly, the appendix is a previously published review (“Everyday Niccolò”) of Alexander Lee’s biography, Machiavelli: His Life and Times (2020). ↩︎
To be perfectly clear, this entire section is not imitating in jocular fashion the Florentine Secretary’s taxonomy of principalities in Book I of The Prince. ↩︎
Harvey Mansfield, MET , ibid, 253-254. ↩︎
Mansfield, MET, ibid, 9. ↩︎
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, Bk. XIII, trans. Harvey Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985, 1998), 56. ↩︎
Mansfield, MET, ibid, 85. ↩︎
Mansfield, MET, ibid, 158. ↩︎
Mansfield, MET, ibid, 254. ↩︎
Mansfield quoted in Transcript, “Harvey Mansfield on Leo Strauss and the Straussians,” Conversations with Bill Kristol, 11 May 2015, online.
Again, the present review makes no use whatsoever of numerology, nor does this reviewer, if that was not absolutely clear. ↩︎P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves (London: H. Jenkins, 1936), 309; Harvey Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 340, fn. 4. ↩︎
Niccolò Machiavelli, Mandragola, “Prologue,” trans. Mera J. Flaumenhaft (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc., 1981), 11. ↩︎
Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (21.20), trans. and eds. Cohler, Miller, and Stone (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989). ↩︎
Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws (21.10) (SL for all further citations), ibid; Mansfield, MET, ix. ↩︎
Montesquieu, SL (6.5), ibid; Mansfield, MET, ibid, 160. ↩︎
Montesquieu, SL (Preface, Para. 77), ibid; Mansfield, MET, ibid, 167. ↩︎
Mansfield, MET, ibid, 189. ↩︎
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract (3.6), trans. Jonathon Bennett (2017), online, 37. ↩︎
Mansfield, MET, ibid, 162. ↩︎
Mansfield, MET, ibid, 255. ↩︎
Mansfield, MET, ibid, 193. ↩︎
In addition to this Machiavellian treasure, Mansfield plans to add three more works. The first is a write-up of the lectures he gave in the course he gave over many years, since 1965, on “The History of Modern Political Philosophy.” Second, he plans to complete a book on Gulliver’s Travels, with special attention to Jonathon Swift’s esoteric attack on the prominent figures of modern political philosophy. And finally, he plans to return to the topic of his first book, Statesmanship and Party Government (1965), to discuss American political parties. Here he wants to pay particular attention to the thinking behind parties and the sort of people who are attracted to each. ↩︎
Harvey Mansfield, “Machiavelli on Necessary Evil,” De Nicola Family Lecture delivered at Notre Dame University (November 2017), online. Was this final remark an esoteric comment by Mansfield? It remains unclear. ↩︎
Greg McBrayer is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ashland University, and a cohost of The New Thinkery, a political philosophy podcast. A contributor to Interpretation and Kentron, among other publications, he is the co-translator of Plato’s Euthydemus (Hackett Publishing, 2010), as well as the editor of Xenophon’s Shorter Writings (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), and unofficial obituarist for Norm Macdonald. He invites you to follow him on X.
Featured image: Morte di Niccolò Machiavelli painting (1848) by Cesare Dell'Acqua via Wikimedia Commons.
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