of this spectacle kept the people of the Romagna for a time appeased and stupefied. (Machiavelli, 1961: 57–8, my emphasis)
So Borgia managed to restore order to an area he had conquered by installing a minister to do just this, and when the criticism of these methods started to be aimed at him, he had the minister killed and his body displayed in the town square so that his subjects would think that he had listened to them. Machiavelli thinks that this is marvellous. But precisely how is this different from the criticisms that he levels at Agathocles? The answer lays in glory. Agathocles was remembered as a tyrant who murdered many of his citizens and largely destroyed the areas under his control. He is not the type of ruler that future students of power and politics would wish to emulate. Borgia is remembered as ‘severe yet loved, magnanimous and generous’ and the leader of a glorious state, and precisely the type of leader who we should copy and learn the virtues of politics from (Machiavelli, 1961: 61).
Far, then, from Machiavelli thinking that the prince can do anything he wants in order to protect his position, Machiavelli thinks that glory rather than the Christian virtues places restrictions on the actions of a prince. Brutal, faithless acts are permitted as a means to an end to a glorious state. As he discusses in his Discourses on Livy when discussing Romulus’ murder of his brother Remus, ‘when the act accuses him, the result should excuse him; and when the result is good, as in the case of Romulus, it will always absolve him from blame’ (Machiavelli, 1950: 139). Whereas it might not be morally right to murder one’s brother, the resulting founding of Rome, the eternal city, means we can forget this transgression. The end does not always justify the means, but if the ends are glorious the means can be justified. Glory is the purpose of politics for Machiavelli, and the nature of man and politics is such that, in order to bring about a glorious state, it is necessary to do some things which are not quite so good.
So Machiavelli presents us with a consequentialist account of politics and morality. We cannot determine from his works a right or wrong set of political actions, and the virtue of a prince is to be able to do the right thing at the right time; to have the skill to be able to make political judgements based upon necessity. Therefore, the rightness or wrongness of an act cannot be determined by its intentions, motivations or adherence to a moral code, but rather from what occurs as a result of them. If a prince’s achievements lead to a strong state with artistic and financial achievements, and that prince is then remembered as one to study and attempt to emulate for future generations, then he can be forgiven the occasional act that might otherwise be considered contrary to morality. If you are remembered solely for your breaches of morality and you achieve little else than power, then you will not be regarded as glorious.
Activity 2. Please attempt the activities below:
1 Why did Machiavelli think Agathocles was a tyrant and Borgia was glorious? Is there a contradiction here?
2 Why does Machiavelli think that a prince should not always follow the Christian virtues?
Utilitarianism and happiness
Whereas Machiavelli is a consequentialist, not all consequentialists are similar to Machiavelli. Perhaps the dominant body of thought in the history of political thought that judges the morality of an action by its consequences is utilitarianism, a body of thought which has a lot to say about the nature of politics as well. It is a complex body of thought that spans many thinkers and contains many variations of thought. At its core, however, utilitarianism argues that the morality (or lack thereof) of an act should be judged based upon the amount of happiness that the act produces. Utilitarians were often political reformers who proposed policy revisions in everything from punishing criminals to more recently giving all one’s disposable income to charity.
In perhaps the founding text of utilitarian moral thinking, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Jeremy Bentham outlines his ‘principle of utility’.
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do … By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words to promote or to oppose that happiness. I say of every action whatsoever, and therefore not only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government. (Bentham, 2012: 1–2)
In some ways this should not appear too controversial – no one is opposed to pleasure and in favour of pain as a general rule; but what Bentham is saying here is that this should be the grounding principle as to what politics should be about. Above, we have seen how Machiavelli thinks that politics is about glory; later on in this book we will see how Hobbes thinks politics is about stability, and how Paine suggests that the protection of rights is the proper aim of politics. For Bentham, it is about promoting pleasure and avoiding pain. An action is therefore good if it brings happiness, and bad if it results in pain; therefore, the rightness or wrongness of an act is determined by its consequences as opposed to its motivations.
Utilitarians question the helpfulness of rights in discourses around politics. For them it is better to talk of people’s happiness, or their interests. It is not so much that they would support active breaking of rights, but more that they feel discussion of other issues would lead to better results.
Let us take the following thought experiment. Suppose you are taking an afternoon stroll past a duck pond in your local park on a sunny summer’s afternoon. You hear a commotion and look up and notice that a child has fallen into the pond and is in trouble; you immediately think that it is a moral law beyond question that you should assist children in peril, remove your jacket, dive into the pond, and rescue the child. Is this a moral act? Very few would doubt that it is. If you are a Kantian (precisely what this means will be discussed below, but for our purposes it means someone for whom universal morality consists of universal laws based upon motivations), the fact that your intentions were pure and universal make this moral. If you are a rulebased utilitarian like J.S. Mill (again more on this later, but broadly it means that utility is best brought about by enforcing certain laws as opposed to making lots of individual calculations), again it appears moral as the rule that we should assist children in peril seems to be one that would increase overall happiness. And Bentham would certainly regard it as moral, although he would probably think the motivations and rule are largely irrelevant, and the crucial issue was the pleasure of the child at being rescued and the avoidance of pain.
But let us twist the example a little bit. Suppose you were taking the same stroll on the same sunny summer’s day, and you heard the same commotion, and noticed the same child in peril in the pond. But this time you did not immediately remove your jacket and dive into the pond to rescue the child because you thought there was an irrefutable moral law commanding you to do so. Instead, you glanced up and noted that nearby the child in need was Justin Bieber, or Cardi B, or George Clooney, or Christina Hendricks, or whatever celebrity you think is attractive. You think to yourself, ‘if I jumped into this pond and rescued the child, then Justin/Cardi/George/Christina or whoever would notice me, think I was brave, and maybe take me out to dinner as a reward’. So you remove your jacket, jump into the duck pond, and rescue the child. Is this still a moral act? Kant would almost certainly say not, as your actions were based upon potential consequences rather than motivations, and based on laws that cannot be universalized. You would have used that child as a means to an end rather than them being an end in and of themselves. Likewise, Mill, although a utilitarian, might have a problem with attempting to apply the rule that we should ‘rescue all children who are in the vicinity of attractive celebrities’ as one to promote general utility. Bentham would probably think that this was still a moral act, and despite the quibbles over motivations and rules, the end consequence is that the child was rescued
