June 16, 2006: Machiavelli in the 21st century
While reading Bacon's Advancement of Learning recently I came upon a couple of quotes from Machiavelli's classic The Prince. What we see happening in the world now has happened before, and no doubt will happen again:
"That a man seek not to attain virtue itself, but the appearance only thereof; because the credit of virtue is a help, but the use of it is cumber." And the second quote: "That he presuppose, that men are not fitly to be wrought otherwise but by fear; and therefore that he seek to have every man obnoxious, low and in strait..."
A few notes about Elizabethan English:
1.) Cumber: encumbrance, burden in the sense of obligation.
2.) Wrought: made or shaped, here in the sense of shaped by rule or upbringing; in the modern sense similar to what Chomsky means by "manufacturing consent."
3.) Obnoxious: subject or vulnerable to unjust criticism, e.g.: opponents of a government policy or action accused of treason.
4.) in strait: constrained, literally in a narrow, confined space.
Does this sound familiar? Does this sound, not only like current state of discourse but also the state of the U.S. population for decades? How did we come to be "wrought by fear" in the first place?
Cf.: Bacon, Francis. The Advancement of Learning. (New York : Modern Library, 2001) p. 206.
