Uniting thirty years of authoritative scholarship by a master of textual detail, Machiavelli's Virtue is a comprehensive statement on the founder of modern politics. Harvey Mansfield reveals the role of sects in Machiavelli's politics, his advice on how to rule indirectly, and the ultimately partisan character of his project, and shows him to be the founder of such modern and diverse institutions as the impersonal state and the energetic executive. Accessible and elegant, this groundbreaking interpretation explains the puzzles and reveals the ambition of Machiavelli's thought. "The book brings together essays that have mapped [Mansfield's] paths of reflection over the past thirty years. . . . The ground, one would think, is ancient and familiar, but Mansfield manages to draw out some understandings, or recognitions, jarringly new."—Hadley Arkes, New Criterion "Mansfield's book more than rewards the close reading it demands."—Colin Walters, Washington Times "[A] masterly new book on the Renaissance courtier, statesman and political philosopher. . . . Mansfield seeks to rescue Machiavelli from liberalism's anodyne rehabilitation."—Roger Kimball, The Wall Street Journal Harvey C. Mansfield is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is the author of Machiavelli’s Virtue and has translated The Prince , Discourses on Livy (with Nathan Tarcov), and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (with Delba Winthrop), all published by the University of Chicago Press. Machiavelli's Virtue By Harvey C. Mansfield The University of Chicago Press Copyright © 1966 The University of Chicago All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-226-50369-1 Contents Abbreviations, Preface, PART ONE MACHIAVELLI THE PRINCE, 1 Machiavelli's Virtue, PART TWO MACHIAVELLI'S BEGINNINGS, 2 Necessity in the Beginnings of Cities, 3 Burke and Machiavelli on Principles in Politics, 4 Machiavelli and the Idea of Progress, PART THREE MACHIAVELLI'S BOOKS, 5 An Introduction to Machiavelli's Florentine Histories, 6 Party and Sect in Machiavelli's Florentine Histories, 7 An Introduction to The Prince, 8 An Introduction to Machiavelli's Art of War, 9 Strauss's Machiavelli, PART FOUR MACHIAVELLI'S POLITICS, 10 Machiavelli's New Regime, 11 Machiavelli's Political Science, 12 Machiavelli's Stato and the Impersonal Modern State, 13 Machiavelli and the Modern Executive, Notes, Bibliography, Index, CHAPTER 1 Machiavelli's Virtue Everyone knows that there is something remarkable about Machiavelli's use of the word virtù . Almost every book on Machiavelli discusses virtù , and a number of scholarly studies are devoted to explaining the Machiavellian meaning of that word. It needs explanation because Machiavelli's usage is at first blush both shocking and inconsistent. A quick look at the best-known instance of virtù in Machiavelli will introduce the problem that commentators seek to explain. In the eighth chapter of The Prince , Machiavelli considers "those who have attained a principality through crimes." From his account it appears not only that the wicked prosper but also that their success may be, at the least, "accompanied" by virtù , or at the most, caused by virtù . Machiavelli's example from ancient times is "Agathocles the Sicilian," who became "king" of Syracuse (Machiavelli does not call him "tyrant") while always keeping to a life of crime at every stage of his career. In considering this criminal Machiavelli says that "one cannot call it virtue to kill one's citizens, betray one's friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion"—all of which Agathocles was or did. Yet in the very next sentence Machiavelli, doing what he said one cannot do, proceeds to speak of the "virtue of Agathocles." Later he says generally, stating the principle behind the attribution of virtue to a particular criminal, that a prince must "not depart from good, when possible, but know how to enter into evil, when forced by necessity" (P 18). What is one to make of this? Machiavelli seems to deplore the need for a prince to be evil, and in the next breath to relish the fact. He alternately shocks his readers and provides relief from the very shocks he administers: Agathocles has virtù but cannot be said to have virtù , It is not enough to say that he uses the word in several "senses"; he uses it in two contradictory senses as to whether it includes or excludes evil deeds. What could be more clear, more essential, and more inconsistent than that? It is no wonder that Machiavelli's translators have difficulty in rendering virtù . Sometimes they simply leave it untranslated, as if to isolate it in the sixteenth century, where it cannot affect us today. More often, skirting the question of evil, they use several words referring to amoral qualities, such as vigor, ingenuity , or boldness , which treat virtù technically, as the means to an end. Both ways of tran