{"id":1920,"date":"2022-08-09T12:36:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-09T12:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/08\/09\/adeimantus-machiavelli-and-the-pope\/"},"modified":"2022-08-09T12:36:00","modified_gmt":"2022-08-09T12:36:00","slug":"adeimantus-machiavelli-and-the-pope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/08\/09\/adeimantus-machiavelli-and-the-pope\/","title":{"rendered":"Adeimantus, Machiavelli, Bloom, and Strauss"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Owl<\/a>Recent events make it clear that the West is on the wane. The sun is setting on the Land of Evening. As the West goes under, the philosopher, like the proverbial owl of Minerva, spreads his wings in the gathering dusk so as to attain an altitude from which to survey the passing scene.  He soars and he strains, to com-prehend and understand, and if he is of the tribe of Plato, he seeks to discern what might lie beyond the scene he surveys.  His flight is fueled by the thoughts of his great predecessors.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I found the following in Allan Bloom's interpretive essay on Plato's Republic<\/em> which is appended to his translation thereof. (Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato<\/em>, Basic Books, 1968, p. 371, correction and emphasis added.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Adeimantus' objection, then, is the same as Machiavelli's: the best regime is a mere dream, for a good city cannot avoid ruin if it does not do the things which will enable it to survive among vicious cities. It is foreign policy which makes the devotion to the good life within a city<\/em> impossible [sic<\/em>; read: possible<\/em>]  One must be at least as powerful as one's neighbors and must adopt a way of life such as to make this possible. Poverty, smallness, and unchangingness cannot compete with wealth, greatness, and innovation. The true policy is outward-looking, and cities and men are radically dependent on others for what they must be. Without a response to this objection\u2014 which Machiavelli thought to be decisive for the rejection of classical political thought \u2014 the very attempt to elaborate a utopia is folly. (p. 371)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My gloss: An enlightened nationalism, while chary of intervention, cannot be isolationist.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the following I found in Leo Strauss' essay "What is Political Philosophy?" in What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies<\/em>, University of Chicago Press, 1988, originally published by The Free Press, 1959, pp. 40-41, emphasis and hyperlink added.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The founder of modern political philosophy is Machiavelli. He tried to effect, and he did effect, a break with the whole tradition of political philosophy. He compared his achievement to that of men like Columbus. He claimed to have discovered a new moral continent. His claim is well founded; his political teaching is "wholly new." The only question is whether the new continent is fit for human habitation. <\/span><\/p>\n

In his Florentine Histories he tells the following story: Cosimo de Medici once said that men cannot maintain power with pater-nosters in their hands. This gave occasion to Cosimo's enemies to slander him as a man who loved himself more than his fatherland and who loved this world more than the next. Cosimo was then said to be somewhat immoral and somewhat irreligious. Machiavelli himself is open to the same charge. His work is based on a critique of religion and a critique of morality. <\/span><\/p>\n

His critique of religion, chiefly of Biblical religion, but also of paganism, is not original. It amounts to a restatement of the teaching of pagan philosophers, as well as of that medieval school which goes by the name of Averroism and which gave rise to the notion of the three impostors<\/a>. Machiavelli's originality in this field is limited to the fact that he was a great master of blasphemy. The charm and gracefulness of his blasphemies will however be less strongly felt by us than their shocking character. Let us then keep them under the veil under which he has hidden them. I hasten to his critique of morality which is identical with his critique of classical political philosophy. One can state the main point as follows: there is something fundamentally wrong with an approach to politics which culminates in a Utopia, in the description of a best regime whose actualization is highly improbable. Let us then cease to take our bearings by virtue, the highest objective which a society might choose; let us begin to take our bearings by the objectives which are actually pursued by all societies.<\/em> Machiavelli consciously lowers the standards of social action. His lowering of the standards is meant to lead to a higher probability of actualization of that scheme which is constructed in accordance with the lowered standards. Thus, the dependence on chance is reduced: chance will be conquered.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I will take a stab at a gloss of the italicized passage. It is a grave error to aim at a utopian resolution of our political predicament. To seek the unachievable best is to preclude the attainment of the achievable good. The pursuit of unrealizable ideals will make hypocrites of us and what is far worse, murderers who will be able to justify mass murder  to achieve perfection as if anything truly straight could ever be made by human effort from the crooked timber of humanity.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recent events make it clear that the West is on the wane. The sun is setting on the Land of Evening. As the West goes under, the philosopher, like the proverbial owl of Minerva, spreads his wings in the gathering dusk so as to attain an altitude from which to survey the passing scene.  He … Continue reading “Adeimantus, Machiavelli, Bloom, and Strauss”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180,24,48,355],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-decline-of-the-west","category-plato","category-social-and-political-philosophy","category-strauss-leo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1920\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}