The key hidden step in the Machiavellian view, a bold intellectual move that is made logically rigorous and then politically palatable by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, is to define man as outside nature. Strauss sees this as the key to modernity. Man exists in opposition to nature, conquering it to serve his comfort. Nature does not define what is good for man; man does. This view is the basis for the modern penchant to make freedom and comfort (read "prosperity") the central concerns of political philosophy, whereas the ancients made virtue the center. Once man is outside nature, he has no natural teleology or purpose, and therefore no natural virtues. Since he has no natural purpose, anything that might give him one, like God, is suspect, and thus modernity tends towards atheism. Similarly, man’s duties, as opposed to his rights, drop away, as does his natural sociability. The philosophical price of freedom is purposelessness, which ultimately gives rise to the alienation, anomie, and nihilism of modern life.Machiavelli would be a very fine American: he could easily thumb his nose at long-standing and enduring grand ideals as he counsels every perspicacious sage: "come down to my level." And with the American: "there are no outside dangers, French or German."
Bloom intersperses the Closing of the American Mind with some dead-on descriptions:
Machiavelli follows Callicles in Plato's Gorgias, who ridicules Socrates for being unable to defend himself, to avert insults and slaps in the face. The vulnerability of the philosopher would seem to be the starting place for the new reflection and the renewal of philosophy. This may seem trivial to many today, but the entire philosophic tradition, ancient and modern, took the relation of mind to society as the most fruitful beginning point for understanding the human sitation. Certainly the first philosophy of which we have a full acount begins with the trial and execution of the philosopher. And Machiavelli, the inspire of the great philosophical systems of modernity, starts from this vulnerability of reason within the political order and makes it his business to correct it.I make it a habit not to use boldface or underline in citations, but here I think it is warranted. He makes it his business to correct it. That might be laudable, insofar as things are correctable. The prudent person (if the word conservative must now be embarrassing and debunked) recognizes that the way things are is the stage for the courageous to endure and suffer--at least. Not to correct.
This view is reflected in the wisdom of our contemporary Czech President Vaclav Havel:
A heaven on earth in which people will love each other and everyone is hard-working, well-mannered, and virtuous, in which the land flourishes and everything is sweetness and light, working harmoniously to the satisfaction of God: this will never be. On the contrary, the world has had the worst experiences with utopian thinkers who promised all that. Evil will remain with us, no one will ever eliminate human suffering, the political arena will always attract irresponsible and ambitious adventurers and charlatans. And man will not stop destroying the world. In this regard, I have no illusions. <p. Neither I nor anyone else will ever win this war once and for all. At the very most, we can win a battle or two- and not even that is certain. . . It is an eternal, never-ending struggle waged not just by good people (among whom I count myself, more or less) against evil people, by . . . people who think about the world and eternity against people who think only of themselves and the moment. It takes place inside everyone. It is what makes a person a person, and life, a life.
[I realized all too late that The Prince was the favorite book of one of my ex-wives. Had she read Machiavelli more carefully and more thoroughly, I might still be stuck with her... I thank God for her superficial reading.]
Machiavelli was for a time and ever wanted to be the Carl Rove to the Medicis. He lost out, and spent his exile trying to get back in. On top of it, The Prince was concerned less with domestic affairs than as with the external.. The Prince was wholly in favor of republican government.
You wrote,
The prudent person (if the word conservative must now be embarrassing and debunked) recognizes that the way things are is the stage for the courageous to endure and suffer--at least. Not to correct.I'm not sure I read you correctly here, but it seems to me that the conservative is concerned with what works. We do not believe in natural law because it is right. We believe in it because it works. From that it becomes right. Machiavelli believed in first principles not because he felt that first principles were inherently correct but because he felt that first principles that led to success were correct, and to deviate from what brings success leads to failure.
In Discourses, Niccolo explained that constitutions must have "some goodness in themselves through which they might recapture their first repute and their first increase." More specifically, he entitled a chapter,
If One Wishes That a Sect of a Republick Live a Long Time, It Is Necessary to Draw It Back Often toward Its PrincipleIt had to be a success in the first place before being concerned with failure.