Machiavelli in the Making

by Claude Lefort, Michael B. Smith (Translation)

Machiavelli in the Making is both a novel interpretation of the Florentine’s work and a critical document for understanding influential French scholar and public intellectual Claude Lefort’s later writings on democracy and totalitarianism. Lefort extricates Machiavelli’s thought from the dominant interpretations of him as the founder of “objective” political science, which, having liberated itself from the religious and moralizing tendencies of medieval political reflection, attempts to arrive at a realistic discourse on the operations of raw power. Lefort ultimately finds that Machiavelli’s discourse opens the “place of the political” which had previously been occupied by theology and morality.
 

Genres: Philosophy, Politics

528 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

Reviews

[Mariam Rawwas]

Reading Althusser's Machiavelli and Us fundamentally altered my relation to the titular figure. There, Althusser ciphers Machiavelli through his concept of "aleatory materialism": The Prince is a text fundamentally concerned with the unification of the Italian state, of how disparate, more or less free-floating political elements can come to "hook" onto one another in a semi-stable formation or structure. I cannot help but read Lefort on Machiavelli via Althusserian aleatory materialism, and the reading here is not much different. What Lefort offers that is novel is the suggestion that Machiavelli offers something new to thought by suspending the question of justification: instead of a theory of the political that requires recourse to the theological in order to ground political authority, Machiavelli simply brackets the question, refusing to offer (moral) justification to the processions that he goes on to analyze. What so offends the sensibilities of his detractors, leveled as the charge of excusing "might makes right," then, is precisely the opposite of what Machiavelli is up to. It is in fact hitherto existing political philosophy which sought to justify political authority, and that is precisely what Machiavelli refuses to do. It is therefore the secularism of Machiavelli's philosophy which is the true target of the backlash against him, and he occasions a true break by refusing divine right. What we are left with is a true realpolitik, one that situates itself on the basis of the "facts on the ground," so to speak.

[Max Giordana]

Central para entender al autor.

[Jeanne]

J'ai longtemps écarté ce livre de la littérature pertinente pour mon mémoire (comparaison Lefort-Gauchet autour de la question des droits de l'homme). La thèse de l'ouvrage me semblait clairement énoncée et expliquée ailleurs, et puis 776 pages... ouarf !
Sauf que la démonstration s'avère brillante. Voilà un livre qui expose à la fois le génie de Machiavel et celui de Lefort. Le début peut paraître rébarbatif, surtout si l'on n'est pas très familier de Machiavel (c'est mon cas), car il démarre directement sur ses interprétations. Ce n'est qu'ensuite qu'il nous est permis d'entrer au cœur de l'œuvre... Les allers-retours entre la Rome antique et la Florence du cinquecento donnent à ce livre une saveur historique irrésistible, de laquelle il apparaît qu'on ne peut séparer la découverte de la conception machiavélienne du politique. Politique et histoire en effet sont intimement liées.
En bref : un pavé, certes, mais qui donne terriblement le goût du savoir !