Friday, November 28, 2008

Why Machiavelli Bothers Us

My company is sending me to some executive management training this year, a program that includes several seminars throughout the year and a collection of about 30 books to read. So the other day a big box arrived at my house with all these books in it. Amongst all the how-to-be-a-great-leader style books, one stood out: The Prince by Machiavelli.

I've always been intrigued by Machiavelli, knowing the reputation his name carries as a colloquialism for getting things done in somewhat unscrupulous ways. I'm nearly done with the book now and have started to contemplate why this man's ideas have been so controversial and haunt our sense of ethical behavior even today.

The book talks a great deal about how princes (a.k.a. leaders) and their people, and other princes interrelate, but within the pages are two questions for which Machiavelli is most famous:
  1. As a leader is it better to be loved or feared?
  2. Does the end justify the means? (i.e. If the result of an action is generally good, does it matter if some not-so-good actions were required to achieve this result?)
These questions still pop up today--and they bother us, as would other elements of Machiavelli's advice to leaders in his book if people were to read all of it. By the way, Machiavelli's answers are as disturbing as the questions: it's better to be feared than loved, and yes the end justifies the means. We instinctively don't like these answers but yet as a culture we cannot dismiss the man or his questions. Why? What holds us so captive? It was these questions, rather than Machiavelli's, that drew my curiosity.

It is my belief that Machiavelli's ideas crash head-long into some key ideas of the Enlightenment, upon which much of our culture is based. This collision creates the distaste we have for his questions and especially his answers. Yet we don't simply dismiss Machiavelli because there is also something that rings true in his question that resonates in our souls. Let's unpack this ethical struggle a bit and the issues will become quite clear.

The Enlightenment was about the ascendancy of human reason as the authoritative basis of truth. If we could reason through a problem it's inherent truth could be discovered. This thinking continues to pervade today. For example most Western diplomats would likely ascribe to the view that if two countries explained their interests reasonably enough they may not come to agreement, but they would come to understand each other and have principled negotiations.

Sounds lovely, but there's a problem with this view. Enlightenment assumes the world is populated with rational people, or at least people who value reason. I don't know Machiavelli's religious piety but he certainly had a Biblical view of mankind: we're a fallen race and whenever possible will act according to our own selfish desires. Enlightenment assumes the best in others and Machiavelli assumes the worst. Perhaps this is the nexus of our struggle with him. We very much want to believe the Enlightenment world view but a casual survey of the real world would suggest Machiavelli's assumption was correct. So we can't dismiss Machiavelli's questions, but we don't like them either.

But what about Machiavelli's answers? Enlightenment thinking presumes that you, personally, are basically a good, if not perfect, person. Machiavelli again makes no such assumption, and his prescriptions are uncomfortably amoral in nature--ethically flexible, if you prefer. His arguments promote this flexibility as a necessary asset to properly govern and lead people. This certainly flies in the face of the ideal of a democracy based on Enlightenment principles. Once again as consumers of ideas we are torn between what we want to believe about ourselves and what we observe to be apparent truth.

Into this mix of my curiousity I stir my own Christian world view and see error in both of the others. The Enlightenment assumes man's reason is authoritative truth, but the problem is that Machiavelli was right. We are not creatures of reason but creatures of selfish pride. Machiavelli's questions were spot-on. However a Christian would take issue with his answers. Machiavelli believed that to be loved without fear and to be ethically pure were both weaknesses. Perhaps they are, but a Christian's life is underwritten by a living God active through his or her life. The individual Christian is still a selfish and prideful person, but they commit in faith to the irrational idea that to be weak in ourselves is to be strong in Christ. This means that a Christian believes that God will work through people or circumstance such that projecting their own strength is unnecessary and would even be a weaker position. (Do you think Jesus would find anything new in all the "servant leadership" buzz making the rounds in corporate circles lately?)

Non-Christians in the western world are left with a dilemma. They can forfeit ambition to put their full faith in an Enlightenment ideal that has serious observable cracks in its execution, or they must to some degree become amoral to achieve great ambitions, thus having to admit to themselves that they are indeed a sinful, prideful person, and live with that knowledge. What a heavy burden. This is why we don't like Machiavelli--and why we can't stop reading his book.

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