The European Renaissance: An Intellectual Movement Towards a New Society
The Context
•
Renaissance, the intellectual movement, first
bloomed in Italy where through out the 15
th
century
its finest fruits were manifest in diverse branches of
creative thinking.
•
It
soon spread to almost every country of Western
Europe,
though varying in its content from country to
country.
•
European renaissance was actually
necessitated by the
changing social forces leading to the decline of the
feudal order and the emergence of the bourgeoisie-
a
new class trying for its dominance in European society.
Renaissance: A Bourgeois Ethos
•
The renaissance was
essentially a bourgeois ethos-
a
kind of intellectual climate best suited to the needs of
a completely new mode of economic operations on the
basis of which a new society was about to evolve in
Europe.
•
The economic revolution thus brought about
required
for its survival and success a new set of conditions
and a new set of values.
•
The development of commerce and industry naturally
called for continuous exploration and expansion and
this
meant a total break with the erstwhile attitude of
life-
A timid submission to the static order of feudal
society was now replaced by a
courageous defiance of
all natural and artificial barriers.
Need for a New Image of Man
•
The rising bourgeoisie,
to assert their authority and
safeguard their economic progress, needed a new
image of man-
a man brave and self-confident.
•
A man who would
make his own laws on the anvil of a
secular view of life and confidently direct these laws
to his final goal of material success.
•
The Renaissance was, in essence,
man’s awakening
about himself- about his autonomous sphere of
authority
and about his colossal power and
possibilities.
•
The renaissance naturally preached
a secular and
scientific view of life
to brighten this image of man.
Nothing was any longer treated as final and
unquestionable.
Inspiration from Greek Thinking
•
The spirit of adventure and enquiry
was more sharpened by
its inspiration from Greek thinking where human life was
sought to be interpreted clearly in a mundane context, where
earthly achievements were more treated as an outcome of
human will and personality
and where most of the things of
life were settled not on the basis of a mystic faith but on the
basis of
a labourious process of reasoning.
•
Truly embodying the aggressive spirit of bourgeois economic
ventures, the renaissance made
material success the prime
goal of life and refused to make any compromise with the
rigid moral rules
that might inhabit the pace of this success.
•
Renaissance
did not totally discard moral and religious
prescriptions.
However, it took
them as irrelevant
and
unnecessary in so far as man’s struggle for life was concerned.
Machiavelli’s Methodology
•
Machiavelli
derives nothing a priori
. His assumptions are built
up
neither with the aid of a philosophical transcedentalism
nor on the basis of a so-called religious fetishism.
•
They, rather,
result from hard human facts from historical
lessons and from his own personal experiences.
His data
drawn from
man as he has been or he is and not from man as
he ought to be.
•
Machiavelli, certainly, is a
political analyst and not a political
philosopher.
He treats politics not philosophically but
empirically.
•
His empirical observations produce a
highly disagreeable
picture of man-
an ungrateful and selfish creature who cares
only for his power and fame, his success and security.
Machiavelli develops a thoroughly secular view of human
virtue without being tied to morality and traditional norms.
Success, Power and Fame: Chief End in
Man’s Life
•
Achieving success, power and fame happens to be the
chief end in the life of man. Man’s
virtue,
Machiavelli
believes, is nothing but
those qualities which facilitate
the attainment of this goal.
•
Thus to him good is what is a good means for reaching
the mundane goals of material greatness and power.
•
Machiavelli’s man is, further, a
master of his own fate
.
He would not meekly submit to fortune , taking it to be
an irresistible force.
Fortune, to Machiavelli, is like a
woman who has to be kept under control only by a
rough handling.
•
This is why Machiavelli has so much
contempt for the
traditional Christian values such as humility,
submissiveness, resignation and asceticism.
Glorifies Man’s Cruel Aggressiveness
•
According to Machiavelli, success alone is the criterion of
man’s greatness whatever the means he employs for
achieving it.
•
Human
life, to him, is a continuous battle which has to be
won at any cost.
Those who win it are alone good and
honourable and they only have the right to rule over
others.
•
The man he depicted was nothing but the bourgeois man
that was just appropriate for speeding up the process of
dynamic economic activities already underway in European
society.
The new economic order, for its success, no doubt,
called for cruelty, selfishness and aggression
as the desired
qualities on the part of those who controlled this order.
•
Machiavelli was
putting a theoretical armour around this
new economic order
and around the new class who
required an ideational defence of their practice.
The Historical Perspective of
Machiavelli’s Ideas
•
To
blame Machiavelli on a personal note for
producing a wicked doctrine would be an act of gross
oversimplification
as that would amount to
ignoring
the correct historical perspective of his ideas.
•
Thus the savageries manifest in his ideas are not alone
his personal product; they are more
the reflection of
the cruelties of the class Machiavelli stood for.
And
this is why it is necessary to study Machiavelli taking
him to be a
child of the European Renaissance
- the
unique intellectual movement serving the growing
needs of Europe’s emerging bourgeoisie.
•
But the bourgeois development in Italy had its own
peculiarities. These
local conditions in Italy are highly
relevant to understand Machiavelli
since they very
much conditioned the theme of such ideas.
The Historical…(contd.)
•
European trade and commerce led to a fundamental
social change in Europe first flourished in Italy.
Italy
had a geographical condition ideal for commercial
activities
and thus she became an important gateway
of European trade with the East as early as in 10
th
century. The Italian Renaissance emerged to represent
the spirit of the increasing
bourgeoisation of Italian
society.
•
In 15
th
century that witnessed the political unification
of a number of important European countries I
taly was
in the midst of dismal political condition.
It was still a
country
fragmented into too many city states; there
was utter lack of national unity. Italy was far from
being a nation state.
Excessive Competition and Rivalry
among the Bourgeoisie
•
This strange political condition was mainly due to an
excessive competition and rivalry among the Italian
bourgeoisie themselves.
Although Italian trade and
industry had greatly expanded there was
hardly any
internal market for them in Italy.
•
So with a lot of dependence on foreign buyers the
different
Italian city states intensely vied with each
other for having a monopoly over the foreign market.
•
Thus, by the end of 15
th
century, there were in Italy,
besides the city of Rome, four other important city
states- Milan, Venice, Florence and Naples- each an
independent republic.
Political Instability
•
Their jealousy and contempt for each other severely
affected their political strength and made them
frequent victims of the political aggrandisement of
France, Spain and Germany.
•
The
entire political atmosphere was uncertain and
insecure.
Despite spectacular economic changes the
corresponding political changes toward a stable and
unified order were persistently eluding Italy.
Although, culturally, the Italian Renaissance was in the
fullest bloom, politically, it made little advance.
•
Machiavelli was writing his doctrine at this
confluence
of the success and failure of the Italian Renaissance.
The political disunity of Italy causing much of her
political weakness was his major concern.
Political…(contd.)
•
In the
closing chapter of his
Prince
, not in keeping with the
dispassionate detachment that characterized all his political
writings, he made a
highly emotional appeal for bringing
Italy’s political unification.
•
Machiavelli tried to grow a political atmosphere congenial to
the bourgeois social development in his country and thereby
sought to take the Italian Renaissance to its logical result in
the political field.
•
While doing this he, however, introduced an approach that
was crucially important for the development of modern
European political thought. The process of
secularization of
politics
which had begun with Marsiglio of Padua
reached its
culmination in Machiavelli’s writings.
•
Free from mediaeval inhibitions Machiavelli
gave a fully
secular content and character to politics,
granting it the
fullest autonomy and thus laid the first
important milestone
of modernism in European political ideas.
Secularization of Politics
•
In
Prince
Machiavelli makes it quite clear that his path
is different from what has been followed by his
predecessors in that he is
only interested in exploring
the factual truth of politics.
•
In order to get at this factual truth he
delinks politics
from two of its old associations- one, theology and
the other, ethics.
But Machiavelli’s general attitude,
however, is
far from anti-religious.
In
his
Discourses
he
clearly recognizes religion as a social force.
He even
goes to the extent of admitting that the
ruler,
as one of
his
important political strategies, must play on the
religious sentiments of his people
and must,
therefore,
give due reverence to all religious
observances.
Secularization…(contd.)
•
Although Machiavelli thus prizes the political effects of
religion he, however, never compromises his secularist
stand.
Religion ,to him, may at best be a convenient
means to politics, but certainly not its sovereign
determinant.
Although he is not generally anti-religious,
Machiavelli is
very much hostile to Christianity.
•
Machiavelli’s modernism is further reinforced by his
denial
of the uses of ethics in the political sphere.
However, he is
not a stubborn anti-moralist. Machiavelli
does not deny the
role of given moral rules in the private lives of individuals.
•
But he makes a
distinction between private morality and
public morality
and believes that the
private norms of
morality actually have no bearing on the public sphere of
politics
the imperatives of which give birth to a new kind of
morality that goes much against what is viewed as moral in
the private sphere.
Politics has its own Morality
•
The
underlying assumption is that the formation of a
nation state in Italy is too stupendous a task that is hardly
attainable by the so-called moral means
and for the sake
of this goal the ruler must take to whatever violence and
cruelty, falsehood and breach of faith are needed to
accomplish this task.
•
After erecting the secular foundation of politics
Machiavelli
proceeds further to provide its content.
The content of
politics, according to him, is nothing but power.
It is
around the problem of
how to acquire and to preserve
power against all odds
which hover Machiavelli’s ideas as
developed in both the
Prince
and the
Discourses.
•
Machiavelli, however, is
least interested in questions like
whether power as such is morally just or what are the
possible ways of validating it.
Power as an End in itself
•
Machiavelli considers
power as an end in itself and
deems it unnecessary to morally validate it
as to him
morality ill suits the hard facts of power.
•
Power is the ultimate end for without it most of the
men inhabiting society being ungrateful, selfish and
fickle will upset the stability and security of society
by
pursuing their narrow, selfish ends.
•
In other words, power represents the
very core of the
state without which there can not be any unity and
order
and hence it
requires no philosophical
justification as it springs from a basic political
necessity.
Power as…(contd.)
•
Secondly, according to Machiavelli,
to have a right to hold
this power one does not have to be morally superior
or a
chosen agent of God.
Those alone deserve to be powerful
who have the necessary skill to wrest it for themselves,
adopting whatever means are found suitable for this end.
•
One who acquires this power and exercises it without
challenge is the ruler for whom the
greatest concern is
how to preserve it.
•
The ruler
must not allow others to be powerful; he alone
must have the whole of it. This power, however, can not
be exercised against a hostile populace.
•
Hence there is the
need of securing the acquiescence of
the people as a whole.
Thus Machiavelli suggests that the
ruler
must not hesitate to indulge in brute force, cruelty
and cunning.
Acquiescence of the People
•
The ruler should
tend to be more feared than loved
and must not be ashamed of frequently breaking his
words.
•
He must be
both a lion and a fox
- a lion flashing in
physical strength and a fox excelling in cunning. In
other words, he should
not care for the intrinsic
goodness of means.
•
It thus appears that Machiavelli
frees power from the
tightening belts of morals and religion.
Power is a
product neither of man’s moral virtues nor of his divine
life. Rather, it
results from his own arms- from his own
brute physical force.
No Interest in Legitimizing the
Authority of the State
•
Machiavelli had
scant interest in questions like
legitimizing the authority of the state,
formulating
safeguards for a smooth operation of this authority and
establishing an apparent
harmony between the
interests of the sovereign and the subjects.
•
Machiavelli, being a
man of action, was more keen on
suggesting concretely as to what was to be done
rather than on building up a theoretical model.
And
he gave his suggestions quite candidly without any
touch of hypocrisy.
•
But, for his
frank advices,
he had to
pay a great price
.
Most of the
modern Western political thinkers who
owe him all the perspective of their political
theorization have completely disowned him.
The European Renaissance blossomed in Italy in the 15th century, marking a transition from feudalism to a bourgeois society. It emphasized courage, exploration, and a secular view of life, shaping a new image of man. Inspired by Greek thinking, it valued human achievements and rationality over mysticism. Machiavelli's methodology was grounded in practical human experiences rather than philosophical or religious ideals.
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Presentation Transcript
The Context Renaissance, the intellectual movement, first bloomed in Italy where through out the 15thcentury its finest fruits were manifest in diverse branches of creative thinking. It soon spread to almost every country of Western Europe, though varying in its content from country to country. European renaissance was actually necessitated by the changing social forces leading to the decline of the feudal order and the emergence of the bourgeoisie- a new class trying for its dominance in European society.
Renaissance: A Bourgeois Ethos The renaissance was essentially a bourgeois ethos- a kind of intellectual climate best suited to the needs of a completely new mode of economic operations on the basis of which a new society was about to evolve in Europe. The economic revolution thus brought about required for its survival and success a new set of conditions and a new set of values. The development of commerce and industry naturally called for continuous exploration and expansion and this meant a total break with the erstwhile attitude of life- A timid submission to the static order of feudal society was now replaced by a courageous defiance of all natural and artificial barriers.
Need for a New Image of Man The rising bourgeoisie, to assert their authority and safeguard their economic progress, needed a new image of man- a man brave and self-confident. A man who would make his own laws on the anvil of a secular view of life and confidently direct these laws to his final goal of material success. The Renaissance was, in essence, man s awakening about himself- about his autonomous sphere of authority and about his colossal power and possibilities. The renaissance naturally preached a secular and scientific view of life to brighten this image of man. Nothing was any longer treated as final and unquestionable.
Inspiration from Greek Thinking The spirit of adventure and enquiry was more sharpened by its inspiration from Greek thinking where human life was sought to be interpreted clearly in a mundane context, where earthly achievements were more treated as an outcome of human will and personality and where most of the things of life were settled not on the basis of a mystic faith but on the basis of a labourious process of reasoning. Truly embodying the aggressive spirit of bourgeois economic ventures, the renaissance made material success the prime goal of life and refused to make any compromise with the rigid moral rules that might inhabit the pace of this success. Renaissance did not totally discard moral and religious prescriptions. However, it took them as irrelevant and unnecessary in so far as man s struggle for life was concerned.
Machiavellis Methodology Machiavelli derives nothing a priori. His assumptions are built up neither with the aid of a philosophical transcedentalism nor on the basis of a so-called religious fetishism. They, rather, result from hard human facts from historical lessons and from his own personal experiences. His data drawn from man as he has been or he is and not from man as he ought to be. Machiavelli, certainly, is a political analyst and not a political philosopher. He treats politics not philosophically but empirically. His empirical observations produce a highly disagreeable picture of man- an ungrateful and selfish creature who cares only for his power and fame, his success and security. Machiavelli develops a thoroughly secular view of human virtue without being tied to morality and traditional norms.
Success, Power and Fame: Chief End in Man s Life Achieving success, power and fame happens to be the chief end in the life of man. Man s virtue, Machiavelli believes, is nothing but those qualities which facilitate the attainment of this goal. Thus to him good is what is a good means for reaching the mundane goals of material greatness and power. Machiavelli s man is, further, a master of his own fate. He would not meekly submit to fortune , taking it to be an irresistible force. Fortune, to Machiavelli, is like a woman who has to be kept under control only by a rough handling. This is why Machiavelli has so much contempt for the traditional Christian values such as humility, submissiveness, resignation and asceticism.
Glorifies Mans Cruel Aggressiveness According to Machiavelli, success alone is the criterion of man s greatness whatever the means he employs for achieving it. Human life, to him, is a continuous battle which has to be won at any cost. Those who win it are alone good and honourable and they only have the right to rule over others. The man he depicted was nothing but the bourgeois man that was just appropriate for speeding up the process of dynamic economic activities already underway in European society. The new economic order, for its success, no doubt, called for cruelty, selfishness and aggression as the desired qualities on the part of those who controlled this order. Machiavelli was putting a theoretical armour around this new economic order and around the new class who required an ideational defence of their practice.
The Historical Perspective of Machiavelli s Ideas To blame Machiavelli on a personal note for producing a wicked doctrine would be an act of gross oversimplification as that would amount to ignoring the correct historical perspective of his ideas. Thus the savageries manifest in his ideas are not alone his personal product; they are more the reflection of the cruelties of the class Machiavelli stood for. And this is why it is necessary to study Machiavelli taking him to be a child of the European Renaissance- the unique intellectual movement serving the growing needs of Europe s emerging bourgeoisie. But the bourgeois development in Italy had its own peculiarities. These local conditions in Italy are highly relevant to understand Machiavelli since they very much conditioned the theme of such ideas.
The Historical(contd.) European trade and commerce led to a fundamental social change in Europe first flourished in Italy. Italy had a geographical condition ideal for commercial activities and thus she became an important gateway of European trade with the East as early as in 10th century. The Italian Renaissance emerged to represent the spirit of the increasing bourgeoisation of Italian society. In 15thcentury that witnessed the political unification of a number of important European countries Italy was in the midst of dismal political condition. It was still a country fragmented into too many city states; there was utter lack of national unity. Italy was far from being a nation state.
Excessive Competition and Rivalry among the Bourgeoisie This strange political condition was mainly due to an excessive competition and rivalry among the Italian bourgeoisie themselves. Although Italian trade and industry had greatly expanded there was hardly any internal market for them in Italy. So with a lot of dependence on foreign buyers the different Italian city states intensely vied with each other for having a monopoly over the foreign market. Thus, by the end of 15thcentury, there were in Italy, besides the city of Rome, four other important city states- Milan, Venice, Florence and Naples- each an independent republic.
Political Instability Their jealousy and contempt for each other severely affected their political strength and made them frequent victims of the political aggrandisement of France, Spain and Germany. The entire political atmosphere was uncertain and insecure. Despite spectacular economic changes the corresponding political changes toward a stable and unified order were persistently eluding Italy. Although, culturally, the Italian Renaissance was in the fullest bloom, politically, it made little advance. Machiavelli was writing his doctrine at this confluence of the success and failure of the Italian Renaissance. The political disunity of Italy causing much of her political weakness was his major concern.
Political(contd.) In the closing chapter of his Prince, not in keeping with the dispassionate detachment that characterized all his political writings, he made a highly emotional appeal for bringing Italy s political unification. Machiavelli tried to grow a political atmosphere congenial to the bourgeois social development in his country and thereby sought to take the Italian Renaissance to its logical result in the political field. While doing this he, however, introduced an approach that was crucially important for the development of modern European political thought. The process of secularization of politics which had begun with Marsiglio of Padua reached its culmination in Machiavelli s writings. Free from mediaeval inhibitions Machiavelli gave a fully secular content and character to politics, granting it the fullest autonomy and thus laid the first important milestone of modernism in European political ideas.
Secularization of Politics In Prince Machiavelli makes it quite clear that his path is different from what has been followed by his predecessors in that he is only interested in exploring the factual truth of politics. In order to get at this factual truth he delinks politics from two of its old associations- one, theology and the other, ethics. But Machiavelli s general attitude, however, is far from anti-religious. In his Discourses he clearly recognizes religion as a social force. He even goes to the extent of admitting that the ruler, as one of his important political strategies, must play on the religious sentiments of his people and must, therefore, give due reverence to all religious observances.
Secularization(contd.) Although Machiavelli thus prizes the political effects of religion he, however, never compromises his secularist stand. Religion ,to him, may at best be a convenient means to politics, but certainly not its sovereign determinant. Although he is not generally anti-religious, Machiavelli is very much hostile to Christianity. Machiavelli s modernism is further reinforced by his denial of the uses of ethics in the political sphere. However, he is not a stubborn anti-moralist. Machiavelli does not deny the role of given moral rules in the private lives of individuals. But he makes a distinction between private morality and public morality and believes that the private norms of morality actually have no bearing on the public sphere of politics the imperatives of which give birth to a new kind of morality that goes much against what is viewed as moral in the private sphere.
Politics has its own Morality The underlying assumption is that the formation of a nation state in Italy is too stupendous a task that is hardly attainable by the so-called moral means and for the sake of this goal the ruler must take to whatever violence and cruelty, falsehood and breach of faith are needed to accomplish this task. After erecting the secular foundation of politics Machiavelli proceeds further to provide its content. The content of politics, according to him, is nothing but power. It is around the problem of how to acquire and to preserve power against all odds which hover Machiavelli s ideas as developed in both the Prince and the Discourses. Machiavelli, however, is least interested in questions like whether power as such is morally just or what are the possible ways of validating it.
Power as an End in itself Machiavelli considers power as an end in itself and deems it unnecessary to morally validate it as to him morality ill suits the hard facts of power. Power is the ultimate end for without it most of the men inhabiting society being ungrateful, selfish and fickle will upset the stability and security of society by pursuing their narrow, selfish ends. In other words, power represents the very core of the state without which there can not be any unity and order and hence it requires no philosophical justification as it springs from a basic political necessity.
Power as(contd.) Secondly, according to Machiavelli, to have a right to hold this power one does not have to be morally superior or a chosen agent of God. Those alone deserve to be powerful who have the necessary skill to wrest it for themselves, adopting whatever means are found suitable for this end. One who acquires this power and exercises it without challenge is the ruler for whom the greatest concern is how to preserve it. The ruler must not allow others to be powerful; he alone must have the whole of it. This power, however, can not be exercised against a hostile populace. Hence there is the need of securing the acquiescence of the people as a whole. Thus Machiavelli suggests that the ruler must not hesitate to indulge in brute force, cruelty and cunning.
Acquiescence of the People The ruler should tend to be more feared than loved and must not be ashamed of frequently breaking his words. He must be both a lion and a fox- a lion flashing in physical strength and a fox excelling in cunning. In other words, he should not care for the intrinsic goodness of means. It thus appears that Machiavelli frees power from the tightening belts of morals and religion. Power is a product neither of man s moral virtues nor of his divine life. Rather, it results from his own arms- from his own brute physical force.
No Interest in Legitimizing the Authority of the State Machiavelli had scant interest in questions like legitimizing the authority of the state, formulating safeguards for a smooth operation of this authority and establishing an apparent harmony between the interests of the sovereign and the subjects. Machiavelli, being a man of action, was more keen on suggesting concretely as to what was to be done rather than on building up a theoretical model. And he gave his suggestions quite candidly without any touch of hypocrisy. But, for his frank advices, he had to pay a great price. Most of the modern Western political thinkers who owe him all the perspective of their political theorization have completely disowned him.
