Review: The Machiavellian Moment by J.G.A. Pocock, Part One
First Installment of a Three-Part Review; Part of an Ongoing Book Review Series
The first five chapters of J.G.A. Pocock’s The Machiavelli Moment (1975) attempts to capture something quite ambitious, and that is ”to reconstruct a scheme of ideas within which the sixteenth-century mind sought to articulate the equivalent of a philosophy of history… [the concept which] the idea of active citizenship in a republic—must struggle to maintain itself” (Pocock, 4). Pocock’s attempt to do so is impressive. His desire to, in fact, go beyond the sixteenth century (later in the book) and draw together the history of modern republican participation is even more extraordinary.
The philosophical underpinnings of this work are central to its aims and to its understanding. Rather quickly, Pocock sets the scene—in the abstract—by noting the crucial difference between the knowledge of particulars versus the knowledge of universals. This is a fascinating discussion involving epistemological thought. He casts the realms of these opposing concepts by treating them as contrasting forms. Particular knowledge is defined by its place within time and space. It is momentary, contingent, and connected to material existence. For Pocock, this is where the political world resides, as does human history. The other realm of knowledge is informed by universal maxims—true everywhere, for all human beings, regardless of recognition. Because they are universal, they are, by definition, outside of space and time. Thus, universal principles are by their very nature not contingent. They are self-evident and self-contained. The maxims of republicanism are informed by these universal truths, because they transcend the immediate and the fleeting. Knowledge of universal maxims reside in “this self-contained quality that timelessness largely [consists]. In contrast, the knowledge of particulars [is] circumstantial, accidental, and temporal” (Pocock, 4).
This view of history, politics, and the role of republicanism is informed by Aristotle in the classical era and by the medieval thinkers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One figure important to this scholarship was Sir John Fortescue, who maintained that maxims are acquired by induction through the senses and memory. This brought to mind twentieth-century historical philosophy which asserted the value of semiotics. In both cases, the process of induction is seen as a pathway to knowledge quite different from the empirical method. In the case of Fortescue, he argued that rational knowledge was gained, by contrast, through deduction. Again, we see the difference between these forms of knowledge as well as how they are revealed to the human mind. Perhaps Fortescue’s most crucial contribution to republican thought was his categorization of law into three categories: laws of nature, laws of custom, and statutes. Pocock expands and analyzes these categories at length, noting their different natures, histories, and purpose.
In the next part of the book, Pocock discusses Boethius and the concept of Fortune’s wheel. “Fortune is, first of all, the circumstantial insecurity of political life. Her symbol is the wheel, by which men are raised to power and fame and then suddenly cast down by changes they cannot predict or control” (Pocock, 38). Pocock connects Fortune’s wheel to the material, particular form of knowledge that is trapped within space and time. Fortune, and its effects, are contingencies put upon the human experience.
It is when Pocock gets to discussing Polybius, however, that he is able to begin tying together some of the seemingly disparate points he had been making for seventy or more pages. Here, the connections (and contradictions) between these different forms of knowledge and how they inform history and participatory government comes into focus. He notes that Polybius was “led into a lengthy analysis of stability and instability… and to a rephrasing of the theory of polity which was to have a momentous appeal to the Renaissance mind” (Pocock, 77). He contends that Polybius’s model of government as a cycle that naturally tends toward corruption and tyranny is “a special case of the rotation of Fortune’s wheel” (Pocock, 77-78). Pocock thus draws together his particular knowledge/corruptible government versus universal knowledge/republicanism thesis: “Once the polis was admitted to be finite, it ceased to be self-sufficient; it existed within, and was conditioned by, an unstable temporal-spatial world, the domain of fortuna” (Pocock, 85). The answer to this, Pocock notes, according to fifteenth-century scholar Leonardo Bruni, was to cultivate human talents as universally as possible. This would, at least, increase the strength and potential of an enduring republic. “The case for an open society, as Bruni saw it, was that excellence of one could only flourish when developed in collaboration with the diverse excellences of others” (Pocock, 88).
The challenge of providing a reading response to The Machiavelli Moment, even simply the first third of it, is that it is packed with so much information that a summary analysis is going to fall short of representing its depth and scope. With this in mind, and for the sake of concision, a cursory overview of the first third of the book is required. For example, Pocock is able to provide some important historical context to the precarious position Florence found itself in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, pivoting back and forth between republicanism and monarchy. This fact is crucial to understanding why republican scholarship came to be so strong in this particular place and time. Though it is being briefly mentioned here, Pocock skillfully demonstrates the significance of these factors.
Furthermore, there are historical figures I have necessarily left out, but the role of Cavalcanti, for example, and others were also vital. As Pocock asserted, “Cavalcanti wrote in a context of republican failure, one where virtue had failed to triumph over fortune” (Pocock, 97). Even here, Pocock reasserts the opposing forms of knowledge: virtue/maxims and fortune/particulars in time and space.
One more person who needs to be mentioned regarding the first third of The Machiavelli Moment is Francesco Guicciardini. Guicciardini advocated for republicanism by contending for the value of a citizen army (over a mercenary one). He reasoned that “since citizens will fight well only if the city is in good order, to commit yourself to a citizen army is to commit yourself to good laws” (Pocock, 124). Guicciardini is interesting also because of the conflict he recognized regarding political participation. He was insightful in seeing that personal honor can be channeled to promote political involvement, therefore manifesting personal vice such as vanity and ambition into a public good. He also, however, feared that something other than an elite rule may corrode the republic. “[H]e acknowledged widespread participation to be a prerequisite of liberty, but distrusted the actual exercise of participatory initiative by the many” (Pocock, 142).
Machiavelli and his work Il Principe, aka The Prince, only begins to be discussed at the end of chapter five. Nevertheless, what Pocock does mention is both provocative and inviting. “[Machiavelli] could never be either a senator or a courtier, and his mind was liberated to explore the absorbing topic of the new prince’s relations with his environment. It is this which gives Il Principe the standing of an act of intellectual revolution: a breakthrough into new fields of theoretic relevance” (Pocock, 155). It is, then, interesting to see how the second third of The Machiavelli Moment unfolds with this statement acting as its primer.
To state again, this is a work which is difficult to summarize. The deep themes at play require a fair amount of analysis and exploration. It is easy to understand, then, why this work has been discussed and debated by scholars over the past forty to fifty years. Pocock’s deep dive into the intellectual history of republicanism was ambitious and commendable. As for the first third of The Machiavelli Moment, it is breathtaking in its ability to capture the combination of history and political philosophy. It is indeed a challenging read, but less for its vocabulary or even its density than for its breadth. Any work which seeks to make sense of the history of republican thought and analyze its ideology simultaneously is going to be a challenge. It is a challenge worth taking.
[James M. Masnov is a writer, historian, and lecturer. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Rights Reign Supreme: An Intellectual History of Judicial Review and the Supreme Court. His first book, History Killers and Other Essays by an Intellectual Historian, is available here.]