Great Books Archives - Page 18 of 26

Freeing the Mind in Chains

In the genre of books which we can call “Triumph of the Human Will in the Face of Evil,” Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave is a classic.

It is in the same class as Solzhenitsyn, which is extremely high praise.

But some books transcend their genre. This is one of those books.

Douglass’ narrative is more than a story of the escape from slavery. It stands as a metaphor for the liberation of the human mind.

Consider first Douglass Himself. Beginning in slavery in the American South, Douglass realizes the necessary mental state to exist in that condition:

I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.

Akin to Dante beginning in the Dark Wood, Douglass begins in that thoughtless state. He is not a man. He has ceased to be a man and he is merely a thoughtless beast.

Then, Douglass learns to read. And when he learns to read, he learns to think. At this point, we want to rejoice that the thoughtless beast has become a thinking man. But, for Douglass, that transition is painful, very painful.

I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate.

Pause for a moment and ask: Why is this transition from thoughtlessness to thoughtfulness so painful? If you were given the choice between going through life as a thoughtless beast or as a thoughtful person, which would you prefer? That seems obvious. But, consider: when you become thoughtful, what will you think? You don’t know. So, why are you so certain you will be happier?

For Douglass, the thoughts turn to freedom. And that tortures him because he is not free.

In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick Henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us it was a doubtful liberty at most, and almost certain death if we failed. For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.

Patrick Henry thundered “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.” That is one of those stirring phrases you hear in elementary school and you cheer. But, could you say that? Would you rather have death than a lack of liberty?

Hold that thought.

This is not just Douglass’ story. Think about the other side of the story.

My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and in the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another. In entering up on the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and that for her to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but dangerously so. Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me

Slavery proved as injurious to the slaveholders as to the slaves? Really? Do you believe that? It takes about two seconds of reflection to realize that the physical life of the slave is much worse than that of the slaveholder. So, why would Douglass make this seemingly absurd claim?

Douglass is not talking about physical conditions. He is concerned with the life of the mind. The slaves are thoughtless beasts. The slaveholders?

I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,—a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,—and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.

And there is the insight that is key to the whole narrative. The slave holders are every bit as much thoughtless beasts as the slaves they own. The slave owners think of themselves as educated and thoughtful and wise, but they are viciously trapped in a mindset that denies the humanity of the people around them, that brutalizes their fellow humans, that thinks it is praising God when it is torturing the image of God.

As Douglass realizes, the move from becoming a thoughtless slave to a thinking man is no different than the move from becoming the thoughtless slave-owner to a thinking person. Both journeys are hard.

And us? Oh sure, none of us are slaves or slave owners. But are our minds free? This is the question Douglass is asking the reader. It is the same question Thoreau asks;

I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read his book? As if Plato were my townsman and I never saw him — my next neighbor and I never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. But how actually is it? His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet I never read them. We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects.

We often talk as if the ability to read is the same thing as the benefit of being able to read. But, it isn’t. Reading can liberate the mind, but only if we read deeply and widely. To do so, however is not natural for us. We, like the slaves and the slave-owners, have developed patterns of thought which ossify. We get stuck in mental ruts. And to break those ruts is terrifying.

What happens, for example, if your reading leads you to wonder if it really true that if you cannot have liberty, you would rather die? If you became convinced this was true, deeply convinced that this was true, would your life be different?

Douglass learned to read. But he did not learn the burden of slavery from reading an American abolitionist tract. He read a book of oratory and found an Irish argument for Catholic emancipation.

Imagine assigning a tract about Catholic emancipation to someone in an American high school, not as a historical work, but as a work which might bring meaning to a 21^st century high school student. The first question that would be asked, “How is this relevant to me? I am not an Irish Catholic living in 1795.” Since very few teachers would be able to give a decent answer to that question, very few teachers would ever think to assign it, or anything else remotely old and seemingly irrelevant. (The exceptions, the high school teachers who would have an answer, are the Great Teachers.)

It is not an opaque answer. It is the same reason you should read Douglass. It is the reason Douglass wrote his book. It is what he wants to convince you.

It is relevant because it has nothing to do with your immediate life. It is relevant because you are stuck in the rut of your life and reading this thing that seems totally irrelevant to you might just break you out of the mental slavery in which you find yourself, might just induce a thought different than you have ever had before, might just convince you to shake off your chains and be free.

Cheap Repentance

“Repent and believe in the gospel.”

Jesus says that at the outset of the gospel of Mark. This has become one of those “church phrases,” often used in Christian circles and everyone nods and knows exactly what it means.

Well, everyone knows exactly what it means until you start asking what exactly it means.

Consider the word “repent.” As I have heard in numberless sermons, it means turning away from your past sins, expressing sorrow for those past sins, asking for forgiveness for those sins you committed in the past, vowing never again to do those sins, and so on. So far, so good.

Then, there is the three step process: Repent, accept forgiveness, move on. Periodically, you need to repeat the process (after all, you will sin again). Every now and then you pause, think about how bad you have been, and then be glad you are forgiven, and move on.

Enter Augustine:

Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart. You had pity on it when it was at the bottom of the abyss. Now let my heart tell you what it was seeking there in that I became evil for no reason. I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved the self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself. My depraved soul leaped down from your firmament to ruin. I was seeking not to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake.

Now that is repentance.

Here is what fascinates me. I have read that paragraph from Augustine many times over the years. I’ve read it aloud many time in classes discussing the book. Last week, I read it in a reading group when we were talking about repentance. Everyone agrees that Augustine is really repenting here.

But, is that a good model for repentance? Because, as one student put it, it is a bit over the top.

Now add in the fact that the great sin for which he was repenting was stealing some pears off a tree. Does that ridiculously trivial sin require that much repentance?

Then add in the fact that this passage was not written the day after he stole the pears, or a week later or a month later—it was written 30 years later. Does he still need to repent for a three decade old event in his life, an episode of youthful indiscretion?

Suddenly the word “repent” becomes rather difficult to define. If what Augustine is doing is an example of true repentance, then that thing I and everyone else I know has been doing for years barely qualifies. We could even call what we have all been doing “Cheap Repentance.” Sure, many times I have thought “I wish I had not done that. Sorry, God!” And then I moved on as if nothing had happened. Augustine and I are playing in different ballparks here.

But, wait, there is more. Augustine is not only repenting of the pear stealing episode. There is also this:

Yet, for an infant of that age, could it be reckoned good to use tears in trying to obtain what it would have been harmful to get, to be vehemently indignant at the refusals of free and older people and of parents or many other people of good sense who would not yield to my whims, and to attempt to strike them and to do as much injury as possible? There is never an obligation to be obedient to orders which it would be pernicious to obey. So the feebleness of infant limbs is innocent, not the infant’s mind.

Yep. Augustine repents of the sin of being selfish when he was an infant. Do I need to do that too? (Suffice it to say, the students in the discussion had a hard time believing that they needed to repent of the sins of being a selfish toddler.)

The first instinct is to simply dismiss all this as Augustine using his autobiography to foolishly wallow in his own guilt. Indeed, he tipped us off in the title: the book is Confessions. He is, therefore, confessing his sins.

But, the focus of the book is not his sin; the focus of the book isn’t even Augustine. He doesn’t want you thinking about him at all; he wants you to be thinking about God. The entire book points toward God, not Augustine.

The direction the book points is the key. Augustine is confessing all these sins to point our attention to the God who forgives all these sins. Augustine wants to convince you that he is not good, that he is really wicked. “Don’t admire me,” Augustine says. “Admire God.”

So that makes sense of the tone of the book. But, what do I do about repentance? If what Augustine is doing is a model of repentance, then why don’t I repent like that? Why do we in the church talk about repentance like it is a simple thing; you do it and then you accept the forgiveness of God? You confess your sin, say a few quick prayers, and then we are all done here.

Do I really have to examine the depths of the depravity of my heart all the time, thinking about the sins I committed not just in the last week, but over my whole lifetime, and repenting of them even today?

Reading Augustine, it is hard to believe in the lazy cheap repentance we find so appealing, that it is easy to repent and get the nice thrill of forgiveness. On the other hand, though, continually repenting of the sins of my infancy seems so tiresome. When do I get to stop repenting?

Augustine says, “Never.”

Augustine’s answer is surely right. We cheapen repentance when we make it easy.

This is undoubtedly why, sitting in a room of thoughtful students, constantly probing to come up with a definition of repentance, repentance comes off as such a trivial thing. Everyone knows it isn’t a trivial thing. But, the rhetoric surrounding repentance in the modern age sure makes it sound like a trivial thing. Every person in the room had a definition of repentance they learned at some point; every definition collapsed under scrutiny; the notions of repentance could not stand the weight of sin.

We need a stronger definition of what it means to repent. Why? Because until I really come to grips with how much I need to repent and how little I actually feel compelled to repent, I can never really understand the depth of God’s love and forgiveness. When we cheapen repentance, we cheapen grace.

The American National Quality?

“She had the American national quality—she had ‘faculty’ in a supreme degree.”

The “she” is the titular character in Henry James’ short story “Mrs. Temperly” (included in the Library of America’s Complete Stories 1884-1891).

Like every work by James, the story is calculated to describe with exquisite precision how life works. Our protagonist, Raymond, is in love with Mrs. Temperly’s daughter, Dora, and wants to marry her. Without ever saying to either Raymond or Dora that the marriage should not happen, Mrs. Temperly ensures it will not. That is the story.

Mrs. Temperly does indeed have faculty in a supreme degree.

What does that mean? “Faculty” is not a word used much these days to describe a person. Do I know anyone with faculty in a supreme degree? I don’t think so. I have certainly never described anyone that way. I have never even herd someone described that was before. I suspect neither have you.

More than that, I was not even sure what exactly it would mean to say someone had faculty in a supreme degree.

The Oxford English Dictionary comes to the rescue, which begins by pointing to Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, which defines the term most succinctly as “The power of doing any thing.”

Ah. Mrs. Temperly certainly has faculty in a supreme degree. It is, without a doubt her defining characteristic. She sets forth what she wants to do, and then arranges for it to happen, seemingly without effort, not just inhibiting a marriage, but every other thing she wants to do.

Chance for her is a lighthearted joke: “Oh, a chance! what do you call by that fine name?”

Is Mrs. Temperly realistic? Since she is in a Henry James short story, she certainly meant to be realistic. But is it possible to have such a high degree of faculty? Is it possible to arrange one’s world so perfectly, so neatly, that nothing is left to chance, and things will work out exactly as you would have them work?

Even more interestingly, if you were to meet someone with a supreme degree of faculty, would you like that person? Would you want to be friends with someone like that? Would you hire someone like that?

Probably not. You, being a person with a lower degree of faculty, will become merely another set piece in that other person‘s perfectly arranged life.

Raymond does not make out too well in his interactions with the woman of supreme faculty. He has ideas of his own, he is unhappy with the status quo, but he ends up living out his life in exactly the way Mrs. Temperly would choose without her ever needing to cajole or force him to do anything at all.

Having faculty seems like a good thing. I would like to have faculty.

But, others having faculty may not be such a good thing for you. What if your plans are not the same as the plans of the person with faculty? “I am sorry you have ideas that make you unhappy,” Mrs. Temperly tells Raymond. “I guess you are the only person here who hasn’t enjoyed himself to-night.”

Part of me wants to just dismiss the whole idea of a supreme degree of faculty as an oddity in a Henry James story. Surely not every character in Henry James is someone I can actually imagine meeting. But, James won’t let us dismiss the term so easily. It is, he said, “the American national quality.” That is intriguing.

James is setting up Mrs. Temperly as the personification of America in the drawing rooms of France in the late 1800s.

She “was an optimist for others as well as for herself, which doubtless had a great deal to do…with the headway she made in a society tired of its own pessimism.”

Not a bad description of America in the late 1800s compared to European continent in the midst of centuries of perpetual struggle.

Over a century later, is it still true? Curiously, James’ story may provide insight into the divisions currently deepening in American society. One the one side, we have those who see America as the land of Faculty, that optimism that the good old USA can do any thing. On the other side, there is a society tired of its own pessimism. When the former enters into the land of the latter, what happens?

Henry James is a prophet.

What About Rome?

The biggest question about some books is why they are not better known.

Montesquieu is an extremely important and well known political philosopher, whose (long) book The Spirit of Laws is a landmark in political theory.

The Roman Empire is a perennially interesting topic to both scholars and general readers.

So, imagine if Montesquieu wrote a book about the Roman Empire. That book would surely be a runaway bestseller, right?

He did write that book. And nobody has heard of it.

Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline.

OK, the title is lousy and way too wordy. But that can’t explain why nobody has heard of this book.

So, it must not be a very good book. Boring, uninteresting, tedious, uninsightful, something. Right?

Nope. It is actually an easy to read and interesting book. If you are interested in Rome or Montesquieu or political philosophy, you’ll enjoy it. It is not as deep and detailed as The Spirit of Laws, but it hits on the same themes and it is vastly more readable.

Indeed, one way to think of this book is that it is solving a problem political philosophers surely face all the time. Imagine you are writing a book advancing a new theory on how to think about and organize political society. Somewhere along the way, people are going to start asking you, “How does your theory fit with the history of Rome?”

Why will that question about the history of Rome arise? Because Rome has everything. In its 1000 year run, everything that could happen, happened. If you have a theory about political orders, you don’t want Rome standing there as a giant counter-example. So you better figure out how your theory fits Rome.

That is what Montesquieu’s Rome book reads like. You imagine him hammering away at The Spirit of Laws and people keep asking him about Rome, so he starts a notebook on “Thoughts on Rome,” and eventually that notebook gets to be book-length, so he publishes it as a stand-alone book. I have no idea if that is how this book actually originated, but it sure reads that way.

What does he say in the book? We can divide his argument into three parts: Why did Rome rise? What made it so Great? Why did it Decline?

The rise: “always striving and meeting obstacles, Rome…practiced the virtues which were to be so fatal to the world.” The Romans had courage and valor and a determination to win. And so they built the most impressive army in the word, marched into town after town, and assimilated them. They were the Borg. “Resistance is futile; you will be assimilated.” (Surprisingly, Montesquieu does not make the comparison to the Borg. Go figure.) “In short no nation ever prepared for war with so much prudence, or waged it with so much audacity.”

It was a slow way of conquering. They vanquished a people and were content to weaken it. They imposed conditions on it which undermined it insensibly. If it revolted, it was reduced still further, and it became a subject people without anyone being able to say when its subjection began…
It is the folly of conquerors to want to give their laws and customs to all peoples. This serves no purpose, for people are capable of obeying in any form of government.
But since Rome imposed no general laws, the various peoples had no dangerous ties among themselves. They constituted a body only by virtue of a common obedience, and, without being compatriots, they were all Romans.

This leads directly to why Rome was so great. “The government of Rome was admirable. From its birth, abuses of power could always be corrected by its constitution, whether by means of the spirit of the people, the strength of the senate, or the authority of certain magistrates.”

As Montesquieu describes the features of the Roman government which enabled it to be great, you can imagine the Founding Fathers reading this book and thinking, “This is what we should do.” Separation of powers, faction against faction moderating both, well-regulated militias, not seeking monsters to destroy, a federalist system allowing different cultures or religions to exist in different parts of the republic…the list goes on and on. Montesquieu was the second most cited authority by the Founding Fathers (after, of course, the Bible). I always assumed that meant they just spent a lot of time with The Spirt of Laws, but it is hard to believe they were not all well versed in this book too.

So, what went wrong? First we should note the oddity of speaking as if the collapse of the Great Roman Republic somehow means that the Roman Republic failed. Suppose you came up with a scheme of government and I came along and said, “Sure, you could do that, and it will work for a bit, but it is going to miserably fail in the year 2520.” Would that make you think the proposal was a failure?

Montesquieu thinks the failure was inevitable; the greatness of Rome caused the collapse of Rome. (Again, after a 500 year rise, the “collapse” took another 500 years to complete…) As the people got wealthier in the Roman Republic, they became comfortable, and as they become comfortable, they were less interested in the hard work of being a good citizen.

The people of Rome, who were called plebs, did not hate the worst emperors. After they had lost their power, and were no longer occupied with war, they had become the vilest of all peoples. They regarded commerce and the arts as things fit for slaves, and the distributions of grain that they received made them neglect the land. They had become accustomed to games and spectacles. When they no longer had tribunes to listen to or magistrates to elect, these useless things became necessities, and idleness increased their taste for them. Thus Caligula, Nero, Commodus, and Caracalla were lamented by the people because of their very madness, for they wildly loved what the people loved, and contributed with all their power and even their persons to the people’s pleasures. For them these rulers were prodigal of all the riches of the empire, and when these were exhausted, the people—looking on untroubled while all the great families were being despoiled—enjoyed the fruits of the tyranny. And their joy was pure, for they found security in their own baseness. Such princes naturally hated good men: they knew they were not approved of by them. Indignant at meeting contradiction or silence from an austere citizen, intoxicated by the plaudits of the populace, they succeeded in imagining that their government produced public felicity, and that only ill-intentioned men could censure it.

Go ahead and admit it: when you read that you thought about contemporary American society.

At the end of the constitutional convention in 1787, James McHenry related the following: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin, ‘Well, Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?’ ‘A republic,’ replied the Doctor, ‘if you can keep it.’”

If you can keep it. That is why Montesquieu’s book should be vastly better known than it is. Not only is it a work of a giant in political philosophy, not only is it a work about the endlessly fascinating Roman Empire, it wrestles with the question that should occupy the mind of every citizen. Can we keep it?

Can Economists and Philosophers Be Friends?

“Indeed, there is arguably no higher example of a philosophical friendship in the entire Western tradition. It takes some effort, in fact, to think of who the closest rivals would be.”

Dennis Rasmussen, The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship that Shaped Modern Thought.

The Infidel and the Professor is a wonderful and ultimately quite charming book. The explanations of the writings of both Hume and Smith are very well done; brief enough that someone who has read the works in question does not find them tedious, but extensive enough that they serve as excellent summaries of the works for those who have not read them. The character studies are similarly impeccably drawn; after reading this, you’ll never forget le bon David or Smith with his “preoccupied air and a habit of mumbling and smiling to himself.”

But, it is the friendship between the two that frames the story.

The relative lack of attention paid to philosophical friendships, while understandable, is unfortunate. Friendship was understood to be a key component of philosophy and the philosophical life from the very beginning, as even a cursory reading of Plato or Aristotle should remind us. The latter famously claimed that friendship is the one good without which no one would choose to live even if he possessed all other goods, and Hume and Smith clearly concurred.

Rasmussen notes this at the outset of his book, and so I settled in expecting to be reading a book about two guys strolling merrily through life together, sharing good and bad times together, writing revealing personal letters to one another.

That didn’t happen. It turns out that while there is zero doubt that Smith and Hume were indeed great friends, they spent remarkably little time together. What survives of their correspondence is not extensive, and even if we had it all, it does not seem like it would be all that interesting.

Instead, what we witness in this book is a philosophical friendship. Rasmussen carefully demonstrates how the works of these two giants are intertwined. Both of Smith’s Great Books (The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations) are in many ways part of a long running conversation with Hume’s works. One easily imagines the two of them pleasantly arguing late into the night by a roaring fire about such things as how we internalize a moral code.

The idea of the philosophical conversation is the true animating force in this book. Hume describes himself as an “Ambassador from the Dominions of Learning to those of Conversation.” He also notes, “Learning has been as great a Loser by being shut up in Colleges and Cells, and secluded from the World and good Company.”

Therein lies the tragedy. Rasmussen documents beyond any doubt that Hume and Smith should be read together, enabling us to join in the amazing conversation.

But, in the modern world, Smith is sequestered over in the Economics department, Hume is locked up in the philosophy department, and neither one of them is ever let out to roam among the population at large.

Oh sure every now and then you hear about “The great Adam Smith, proponent of laissez-faire economics,” which always seems to sound like some sort of libertarian nirvana. But, it takes about 15 seconds looking at the Table of Contents of The Wealth of Nations to realize that Smith did not actually write the book his fans accuse him of writing.

Specialization has nearly killed philosophical conversation. The Cartoon Version of Smith exists not just because The Wealth of Nations is long and rambling. (Hume’s review is dead-on: “the Reading of it necessarily requires so much Attention, and the Public is disposed to give so little, that I shall still doubt for some time of its being at first very popular: But it has Depth and Solidity and Acuteness, and is so much illustrated by curious Facts, that it must at last take the public Attention.”)

The larger problem is that Smith’s two Great Books no longer have the same author: The Wealth of Nations was written by that rabid free market exponent Adam Smith, while The Theory of Moral Sentiments was written by that obscure philosopher Adam Smith. And, so nobody reads him: economists don’t actually read Smith because, well, there isn’t enough math in it. Philosophers don’t read Smith because he really belongs over in the economics department so obviously he could not have written a philosophy book worthy of being included in a class on Enlightenment philosophy.

The idea that maybe, just maybe, those two books were written by the same guy and could usefully be read together in the same undergraduate, let alone graduate, class is inconceivable. Nobody could write important books in both Economics and Philosophy.

And, moreover, the idea that an economist and a philosopher could have fruitful intellectual discussions is crazy. On what subjects could the two of them possibly converse? Would it even be possible to imagine a semester long conversation in a class which read both Hume and Smith? It would be a fantastic course. Undergraduates would love it. But which department would house such a course?

The ultimate charm of Rasmussen’s book is the quiet way in which he documents a time before specialization destroyed the possibility of an intellectual kinship unburdened by disciplinary turf wars.

The Nice Machiavelli

“Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.”

Macaulay wrote that about Niccolo Machiavelli.

You’ve heard of Maciavelli, of course. He wrote The Prince, that manual for back-room, double-crossing, amoral, evil, self-serving, repulsive, despicable people. Not people like you, obviously. Those awful, terrible, no good, very bad people.

Indeed imagine an interview for a leadership position. One of those inane questions beloved by people who have no idea how to interview is: “What is your leadership style?” Imagine someone answering, “I am Machiavellian.” Is there any chance that person gets hired?

(I am now going to spend the next few years trying to convince a Mount Holyoke student to use that line in a job interview just to see what happens. Suggestions welcome on how to persuade someone to do this.)

Set aside for a moment whether the popular impression of Machiavelli is entirely fair. (It isn’t.) Think for a moment about Machiavelli’s other book. It is vastly less well known. Discourses on Livy.

The conventional wisdom about Discourses is that it shows the other side of Machiavelli. The nicer side.

You see, The Prince is, shockingly enough, all about how to be a prince. But, in the modern age, does anybody defend the idea that a country really ought to have a prince?

Instead, we all (tout le monde) are enamored with Republics, those societies where you get to select your leaders. And, Conventional Wisdom (that tautologically wise interpreter of all things) says that Discourses on Livy is about being a ruler in a Republic. To lead in a Republic, you can’t be a, well, Machiavellian Prince. You have to like freedom and other good things.

What does Discourses on Livy actually say? Therein lies a tale.

The Prince is a crisp book. Fun to read, easy to see the point. Discourses on Livy is a sprawling 300 page dense examination of the Roman Republic/Empire, full of endlessly minute details and stories, some of which are accurately told and some of which are, well, not. The tales are sometimes followed by a whole bunch of advice on an array of minute subjects.

In the end, you have a book which for the casual reader (i.e., not the Machiavelli experts) is one of those endurance tests which are worth reading because just often enough there is a sentence or a paragraph of such clever insight that you think it is worth continuing. You just keep hoping the whole time that the tone of the book will change and just get to something crisper, something that reminds you of the experience of reading The Prince, but this time it will be about how to be a nice ruler in a nice Republic and not a manual for being a reprehensible Machiavellian prince.

I was at a conference not too long ago which was about this book. About a third of the way in, I was annoyed at the endless small details and observations, which never quite seemed to fit together into a whole. I was wondering why in the world Machiavelli never bothered to write a short summary articulating his main point which would at least give some hints about why he included these stories of Rome and these observations.

Then it hit me. Machiavelli did write the executive summary of Discourses on Livy. He wrote the short version for the Busy Ruler who doesn’t have the time to read 300 pages of Roman anecdotes. He entitled the executive summary: The Prince.

At the moment that realization hit, the clouds lifted and suddenly Discourses on Livy made total sense. Instead of trying to figure out how Machiavelli is saying different things in these two books, look at how at the heart of books, they are really arguing exactly the same thing. They are both manuals on how to get and keep power.

What is the difference between Principalities and Republics? Machiavelli doesn’t hide that:

For it is seen that two virtuous princes in succession are sufficient to acquire the world, as were Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great. A republic should do so much more, as through the mode of electing it has not only two in succession but infinite most virtuous princes who are successors to one another. This virtuous succession will always exist in every well-ordered republic.

The fundamental difference between these two government forms is simply how long they will last.

Now imagine you are the ambitious type. Imagine you want to rule a country and you want to set that country up so that 500 years later people in that country will still talk about you and how amazing you were and you will have monuments to you all over town and your picture will be on the currency. What should you do? Obviously, according to Machiavelli, if you can set up a Republic, then that is the better route because people will praise you for a very, very long time.

How do you set up a Republic?

This should be taken as a general rule: that it never or rarely happens that any republic or kingdom is ordered well from the beginning or reformed altogether anew outside its old orders unless it is ordered by one individual. Indeed it is necessary that one alone give the mode and that any such ordering depend on his mind. So a prudent orderer of a republic, who has the intent to wish to help not himself but the common good, not for his own succession but for the common fatherland, should contrive to have authority alone…

There it is. If you want to craft a Republic, then you start out by getting complete power and ordering the society exactly the way you want it to be ordered. If you want to be a Prince, by the way, you do exactly the same thing.

But, Conventional Wisdom rushes in to argue with this crazy argument that The Prince and Discourses on Livy are really the same book: “This is not right because Machiavelli makes another distinction between Republics and Principalities. Look at that passage just quoted; he talks about the common good! Republics have freedom and freedom is important because it is better to be free. The prince doesn’t care about freedom. Republics preserve freedom. So, Discourses on Livy about rulers in free societies is totally different than The Prince about rulers in unfree societies.”

Yes, Machiavelli talks a lot about how important it is to preserve the freedom of the population. For example:

Besides this, the common utility that is drawn from a free way of life is not recognized by anyone while it is possessed: this is being able to enjoy one’s things freely, without any suspicion, not fearing for the honor of wives and that of children, not to be afraid for oneself.

There is also this on how to avoid the hatred of the population:

This he will always do if he abstains from the property of his citizens and his subjects, and from their women; and if he also needs to proceed against someone’s life, he must do it when there is suitable justification and manifest calls for it.

So, as both passages make painfully clear, freedom is really important. As both passages say quite explicitly, if you want to be a great ruler, don’t take away people’s property or family.

But, look again at those two passages above about the importance of preserving freedom if you want to be a Great Ruler. Only one of them is from Discourses on Livy. The other is from The Prince. Can you tell which is which?

Should you read Discourses on Livy? Sure, if you have already read The Prince enough times to feel like you have a good handle on it and want to see the further development of the argument. When you read it, though, don’t get bogged down in the wealth of stories. Just go along for the ride and watch Rome grow and see the advice Machiavelli is giving you and imagine creating your own Republic.

Seriously. Imagine creating a Republic. It is a useful exercise. In doing so, you will realize two things. First, what is it that would make the perfect government, the perfect society? And second, do the means you would have to use to create that perfect society justify the ends of having that society? Those are not rhetorical questions.