On the Renaissance and Machiavelli

It's hard to overstate the historical importance of the Renaissance. With the History of Western Philosophy and today's lecture being my first plunge into the era, I find myself becoming quickly aware of just how greatly it has defined our culture to this day. Even at the earliest age, we are taught history not from the time of Alfred the Great or William the Conqueror, but from the reign of the Tudors whose rule over England was contemporary to the Renaissance. Shakespeare and Marlowe wrote their plays not in the 15th century under the watchful eye of the Church but in the late 16th and early 17th century, when the theatre became enshrined in English culture. And it is not the gorgeous Bibles painted and penned over the course of lifetimes by the monks of medieval times we remember but the burgeoning humanism within the art of Raphael, Leonardo Da Vinci and their contemporaries, as they throw out the highly stylised art that once declared the fear of God and sins of Man for a realistic approach that celebrates the wonder of human life. The most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa, was painted in Florence in the early 1500s, at the very heart of the Italian Renaissance.


Of course, the rapidly growing independence from the church exhibited by the literature, theatre and art to come from and after the Renaissance could not have been achieved without a change in the way in which people thought. Machiavelli and his doctrine, which removes itself from any pretense of morality, is the perfect example of what was achieved in - and what could only have been achieved during - the Renaissance. It is the hostile political environment of the Renaissance, rich as it was in its immorality even within the highest ranks of the Church, that gave birth to his books, The Prince and Discourses. In them is a harsh ruthlessness with which he advises should be practised by those who are and those who wish to be in power. Machiavelli's frank doctrine does not bother to deal with the ideas of morality, the subjective nature of which not even the authority of the Church, powerful as it was in 1500, could hold complete control over. He looks instead at the truth of the matter: that the cunning and powerful prevail whilst the weak acquire nothing. Though the phrase 'survival of the fittest' would not enter the vocabulary of the public for several more centuries, Machiavelli's teachings are just that, though placed in a political context.


Today's politics are far less ruthless than in the days of Machiavelli, but his doctrine can still be seen applied to recent and current events. In today's lecture I was introduced to Machiavelli's quote "[Kill, but do not take their land], for men forget the death of their father more easily than the loss of inheritance." In 2009 we had the expenses scandal, which lost the public's respect for many MPs as we discovered how our tax money was being abused, and did nothing for Gordon Brown's regime. More recently, there has been controversy over Lord Ashcroft's tax evasion and the Queen's request for a poverty grant to help heat her palace. While the latter examples are not entirely relevant to the above quote, they bring to light the world in which the very rich live, a world so far detached from reality that the Queen should think herself qualified for a poverty grant. It is a world completely removed from our own, and when news such as this is reported, we are reminded of the gap between the middle class and the highest echelon of society, which relates directly to what Machiavelli's previous quote deals with: the idea that rulers should not be hated, though they should be feared. It is an unfortunately true fact, as rulers feared such as Stalin and Hitler flourished and, in some parts of Africa and the Middle East, continue to flourish, whilst those hated - unduly or not - should fail.


I find two of Machiavelli's ideas, that a leader should a) be feared but not hated and b) should not be loved, (as "fear is constant while love is fickle") are particularly relevant to the current political environment of America. In the run up to the election, Obama and his slogan of 'Change' inspired the public - not just American but all over of the world - that the reign of Bush was at an end, that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would draw to a close and that the depression we found ourselves in would be over in one swift moment. Obama was not just a presidential candidate, he was an idol. And just as Machiavelli warns that "love is fickle", Obama has lost a lot of favour since the momentum of his election died down and the public, disgruntled with reality, are reminded that he too is just a man. Since his coming into power, he has been under constant attack: Fox News, a Murdoch-powered propaganda machine, has done everything in its power to besmirch Obama's name. Almost two years on, still there appear people who attack his politics and personal life, and whilst sometimes this is an honest difference in views, other times it is nothing but thinly veiled racism. As the leader of America, the most powerful country today and one of the largest exporters of culture, Obama has a difficult job, and whether or not one thinks he's doing it well, the opposition and its mindless hate machine are so loud compared to his supporters that it seems increasingly unlikely that he will be re-elected in 2012. In this case, it is Obama and his party's weakness to reach out to the public that could well be their undoing.


Descartes is the other name to take centre stage in today's lecture, but I think I'll leave that for another day.