Machiavelli's Virtue by Harvey C. Mansfield; Discourses on Livy by Niccolò Machiavelli;Harvey C. Mansfield; Nathan TarcovReview by: Eric G. HaywoodRenaissance Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Autumn, 1998), pp. 966-968Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2901759 .

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presuppose each other in their structure to such a degree that the independent composition of book 1 becomes an incredible hypothesis. And his study of the intertextual relations of the Dialogi with other contemporary texts suggests a date for it of late 1405-06. This is a date that is in line with most recent criti- cism, and gives new weight to Jerrold Seigel's old hypothesis that the Dialogi and the Laudatio Florentinae urbis were in part exhibition pieces intended to promote Br-uni's candidacy to succeed Salutati as chancellor of Florence.

Baron's thesis about the dating of the Dialogi has never been generally accepted, but his great eminence as a scholar gave it more authority than it per- haps deserved, especially in Italy. Baldassarri's careful edition and study are as close to a decisive refutation of it as we are likely to get. JAMES HANKINS Harvard University

Harvey C. Mansfield. Machiavelli's Virtue. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. xvi + 371 pp. $29.95. ISBN: 0-2265-0368-2.

Niccol6 Machiavelli. Discourses on Livy. Trans. and eds., Harvey C. Mansfield & Nathan Tarcov. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Iiii + 367 pp. $34.95. ISBN: 0-2265-0035-7.

Machiavelli's Virtue is "Machiavellian" in more ways than one: in order to move things forward, it leads us back to beginnings, and its virtue is not what it may seem. The title refers properly to the only original part of the book, chapter 1. The rest consists of twelve previously published articles: "Necessity in the Beginnings of Cities," "Burke and Machiavelli on Principles in Politics," "Machiavelli and the Idea of Progress," "An Introduction to Machiavelli's Flo- rentine Histories," "Party and Sect in Machiavelli's Florentine Histories," "An Introduction to The Prince," "An Introduction to Machiavelli's Art of War," "Strauss's Machiavelli," "Machiavelli's New Regime," "Machiavelli's Political Science," "Machiavelli's Stato and the Impersonal Modern State," "Machiavelli and the Modern Executive." All parts are equally stimulatin , but there is, inev- itably, a degree of repetitiveness. The real beginning for Mansfield is Leo Strauss's invitation to look behind the rhetorical gloss at Machiavelli's "indirect statements"; and the aim of the work is to make us feel uneasy once again about Machiavelli. Mansfield writes as a political scientist, not an historian, taking the long view (which leads, in this case, from Aristotle through Machiavelli to Hob- bes and Burke), and removing Machiavelli from his immediate context. He thus plays down any chronological development between one work and the other, claiming that they all basically say the same thing, though in different rhetorical guises to different audiences. This renders the "Is Machiavelli republican?" debate essentially otiose. But in any case, the real difference for Machiavelli, we are told, is not between regimes, but between "humors" (rulers and ruled); republics also spawn princes, and all political men (i.e., all princes) are driven by the same motivation, necessity. Mansfield sees Machiavelli himself as taking the

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long view (out of hostility to his own times, and concern for mankind in gen- eral, rather than Florence or Italy), and therefore as founding modernity, by deliberately breaking with the Classics, casting aside Christianity and, as it were,

knowingly anticipating Hobbes and Burke. The most thought-provoking section is the one which gives the book its

name. It argues that Machiavelli's virtue is not republican, not of the soul but of the body and spirit, not a habit but on the make, and never in itself. It is neces-

sity, its end is acquisition, it must be impressive (show and be recognized), and it is politicized, i.e., understood by its political effects. Arguing thus, Machia- velli must dispense with (natural) justice, i.e., with that virtue which, according to Aristotle, would restrain politics. Moreover, virtue is what it gets you - but it will get you the wrong thing unless you compromise with evil. It is therefore distinct from goodness (although goodness is needed for its impressiveness). Mansfield wants, and manages, to be challenging, and he knows that not every- one will necessarily agree with him. This reviewer will simply presume to query his assumption that, whereas virtue is a notion whose meaning needs to be teased out, goodness, as Machiavelli uses it, is unambiguous: when Machiavelli talks of, say, good laws and good arms (Prince, chap. 12), is the notion, though, not equally ambiguous, or at least polyvalent? And could the goodness, for

example, of Leo X (Prince, chap. 1 1) not also be said to be not "in itself," but rather in what it achieves, which would make it akin to virtue? Perhaps the least

convincing theme of the book is the one which, on the grounds that a prince, real or potential, is anyone who can understand, and he who understands best must be the best prince, portrays Machiavelli as his own, ideal prince. This line of argument forces the author into an awkward corner. Since the only art

expected of a prince is the art of war, Mansfield cannot but put the stress on art rather than war, assert that Machiavelli subsumes politics into the art of war, consider arms as a metaphor (for human reason or will), and claim that Machi- avelli's "soldiers" are his readers, in particular the readers of the future, amongst whom he wished to "gain adherents" to his "conspiracy against Christianity," which was, it is claimed, his main mission.

Such a view certainly justifies the work of the critic, whose job it must indeed be to unravel the "indirect statements" of this "most subtle and difficult

writer," but does it not suggest that Machiavelli failed where he most wanted to

succeed, i.e., in being clear, convincing, and immediately useful to others? In order to accept this, one must accept that Machiavelli, as Mansfield would have

it, was never really interested in those around him, and that, even before putting pen to paper, he had given up on the princes of Italy, in the sure knowledge, so to speak, that Hobbes would pick up where he had left off. This of course begs the question as to whether it is feasible to ignore the historical context and diachronic sequence of Machiavelli's works. Whatever about La Mandragola or Florentine Histories, can The Prince really be said to be the work of an author who is indifferent to whether or not his contemporaries will pay heed to what he says? But however much one may wish to argue with Mansfield, there is

never any doubt about his mastery of Machiavelli. The excellent translation of

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the Discorsi is further proof of that. Naturally, since translations are made for the benefit of those who do not understand the original, they will tend to arouse the suspicions of those who do, as there is something much more final about them, stating as they seem to not only that "this is what X says," but also that "this is what X means." The translators however have managed to avoid this pitfall by providing a very "transparent" translation, which, while sounding English, is yet close to the original, and also gives the reader the keys to unlock it. Besides notes which explain any ambiguities in the text, it is accompanied by an extensive glossary, which allows one to go behind the English and check what particular word Machiavelli uses at any particular time, and how often that word recurs in the text. There is also an index of proper names and an introduction, which is a kind of summary of Machiavelli's Virtue. One may regret that the criteria for the composition of the glossary are not made more explicit (why for instance is "good" not included?), and that the exciting nature of Machiavelli's language, which manages to challenge even the laws of syntax, is often lost in a rendering which (inevitably) is too prosaic, but there can be no doubt that Mansfield and Tarcov's translation will become an indispensable tool for every serious, anglophone student of Machiavelli. ERIC G. HAYWOOD

University College, Dublin

Louis Valcke and Roland Galibois. Lepiriple intellectual dejean Pic de la Miran- I A dole, suivi du Discours de la digniti de Phomme et du traiti L etre et Pun.

Sainte-Foy: Les Presses de l'Universit6 Laval, 1994. xxiii + 353 pp. n.p. ISBN: 2-7637-7397-4.

This interesting volume presents two studies dealing with the thought of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. In the first, Louis Valcke advances a develop- mental account of Pico's intellectual context, without omitting detailed analysis of the Oratio de dignitate hominis and of the De ente et uno. In the second, Roland Galibois' offers annotated French translations of these two works. The volume as a whole is the first of two planned works. The proposed second vol- ume will deal with the "ramifications latirales" which are only touched upon in passing here, such as the influence on Pico of Paduan "Averroism"(xxii-xxiii), as well as the place of magic in Pico's thought (IO 1), inter alia.

In the first study, Valcke offers three contextualizing chapters (3-73), a con- sideration of the Oratio (75-121), a description of Pico's "conversion" after papal reprimand in the late 1480s (123-40), and an account of Pico's last years, along with an analysis of the De ente et uno (141- 66).

The examination of the Oratio is the centerpiece. Here Valcke argues that the Oratio was somewhat of an exception in Pico's corpus, having had only lim- ited popularity until comparatively recent times. Intended as a prefatory speech to Pico's ill-fated, hypothetical disputatio at Rome, it differs in character and, especially, rhetorical style, from his other, more scholastic works. Valcke also suggests that the Oratio is neither a philosophically grounded paean to human

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