What in Machiavelli’s view are the most important features of a free state if it is to succeed in securing and preserving liberty
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What, in Machiavelli’s view are the most important features of a free state if it is to succeed in securing and preserving liberty for its citizens? Make sure to include fortuna and virtu! Make sure to also include the three forms of good government! DO NOT use any sources other than the pdfs provided. You can find more quotes in the file named “machiavelli 1″ and freedom and the state in machiavellis discourse”. make sure to use the quotes to back up your argument.
“Ancient writers say that men usually worry in bad conditions, and get bored in good ones, and that either of these passions produces the same effects. Whenever men cease fighting through necessity, they go to fighting through ambition, which is so powerful in human breasts that, whatever high rank men climb to, never does ambition abandon them. The reason is that nature has made men able to crave everything but unable to
attain everything.” Disc. I.37 AMBITION AND CONFLICT
“…One should take it as a general rule that rarely, if ever, does it happen that a state, whether it be a republic or a kingdom, is either well-ordered at the outset or radically transformed vis-à-vis its old institutions unless this be done by a single person. It is likewise essential that there should be but one person upon whose mind and method depends any similar process of organization. Wherefore the prudent organizer of a state whose intention it is to govern not in his own interests but for the common good, and not in the interests of his successors but for the sake of that fatherland which is common to all, should contrive to be alone in authority. Nor will any reasonable man blame him for taking any action, however extraordinary, which may be of service in the organization of a kingdom or the constituting of a republic. It is a sound maxim that reprehensible actions may be justified by their effects, and that when the effect is good, as it was in the case of Romulus, it always justifies the action. For it is the man who uses violence to spoil things, not
the man who uses it to mend them, that is blameworthy.”” – Disc, 1.9
“Florence thinks that what concerns many ought to be decided by the action of the whole citizen-body acting according to the law and legal procedure… everyone is of equal rank…the Florentine citizen-body itself has promised to protect the less powerful…each is given his due.” (Bruni, Panegyric, 1403/4)
“All lands and provinces which live freely in all respects profit by this enormously. For, wherever increasing populations are found, it is due to the freedom with which marriage is contracted and to its being more desired by men. And this comes about where every man is ready to have children, since he believes that he can rear them and feels sure that his patrimony will not be taken away, and since he knows that not only will they be born free, instead of into slavery, but that, if they have virtue, they will have a chance of becoming rulers.”- Disc II.2
“One observes, two, how riches multiply and abound there, alike those that come from agriculture and those that are produced by the trades. For everyone is eager to acquire such things and to obtain property, provided he be convinced that he will enjoy it when it has been acquired. It comes about that, in competition with one another,
men look both to their own advantage and to that of the public; so that in both respects wonderful progress is made. The contrary of this happens in countries which live in servitude; and the harder the servitude the more does the well-being to which they are accustomed, dwindle.” Disc. II.2- LIBERTY AND ECONOMY
Types like Athens or Venice, who group together for purposes of defence: ‘Without any person or prince to give them a constitution, they began to live as a community under laws which seemed to them appropriate’ Disc. I.1
‘Free cities are those which are built by peoples who, either under a prince or under their own accord, are driven by pestilence or famine or war to abandon the land of their birth and to look for new habitations’ Disc. I.1
BOTH OF THE TWO: ‘from the outset been far removed from any kind of external servitude, but instead have from the start been governed in accordance with their own wishes, whether as republics or principalities’ – Disc. I.1
‘Happy indeed we should call that state which produces a man so prudent that men can live securely under the laws he prescribes without having to emend them.’ Disc. I.2
ROME- ‘Romulus and the rest of the kings made many good laws quite compatible with
freedom; but because their aim was to found a kingdom, not a republic, when the city became free, it lacked many institutions essential to the preservation of liberty, which had to be provided’. Disc. I.2
Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. IX: ‘For these two humours are found in every city… the people do not want to be dominated or oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles want to dominate and oppress the people.’- look at screenshot
Machiavelli, Disc. I.5: ‘Unquestionably if we ask what it is that the nobility are after and what it is the common people are after, it will be seen that in the former there is a great desire to dominate and in the latter merely the desire not to be dominated. Consequently, the latter will be more keen on liberty since their hope of usurping dominion over others will be less.’
“All states (stati), all dominions that have held and hold power over men have been, and are, either republics or principalities. Principalities are either hereditary (their ruler having been for a long time from the same family) or they are new…either used to living under a prince or used to being free; and they are acquired either with the arms of others or with one’s own, either through fortuna or else through virtù.”- The prince,
chapter 1
“I am not unaware that many have thought, and many still think, that the affairs of the world are so ruled by Fortuna and God that the ability of men cannot control them. Rather, they think that we have no remedy at all… it is useless to sweat much over things, but let them be governed by fate…. I am sometimes inclined to share this opinion. Nevertheless, so as not to eliminate human freedom, I am disposed to hold that Fortuna is the arbiter of half our actions, but that she lets us control roughly the other half.” Machiavelli, The Prince, Ch. XXV
Digest, 1.5.3: ‘The chief division in the law of persons is that all men are either free or else are slaves.’
Digest, I.6.1: ‘Some persons are in their own power, some are subject to the law of another…slaves are in the power of their master’
Three good forms of government – monarchy, aristocracy and popular government – and their corrupt counterparts into which they degenerate. 1) Monarchy – becomes tyranny, leading to the establishment of the rule of a few in the form of an… 2) Aristocracy – which becomes an oligarchy (which is then overthrown by a… 3) Popular government (which is then itself inclined to degenerate into anarchy.
FORTUNA AND VIRTU!
Lo stato (the state): a civil body over which sovereign power (imperio) is exercised.
Virtù (virtue): that ability (or set of abilities) which helps you acquire and ‘mantenere lo stato’- ‘maintain the state
machiavelli_1 skinner_machiavelli_48_73 bruni_panegyric the_prince_54_63 machiavelli_discourses
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