The Garments of Court and Palace: Machiavelli and the World that he Made

by Philip Bobbitt

The Prince , a political treatise by the Florentine public servant and political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli is widely regarded as the single most influential book on politics—and in particular on the the politics of power—ever written.

In this groundbreaking book, Philip Bobbitt explores this often misunderstood work in the context of the time. He describes The Prince as one half of a masterpiece that, along with Machiavelli’s often neglected Discourses prophesies the end of the feudal era and describes the birth of the neoclassical
Renaissance State. Using both Renaissance examples and cases drawn from our current era, Bobbitt situates Machiavelli’s work as a turning point in our understanding of the relation between war and law as these create and maintain the State. This is a fascinating history and commentary by the man Henry Kissinger called "the outstanding political philosopher of our time."

Genres: History, Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Italy, Renaissance, Biography

240 pages, Hardcover

First published March 5, 2013

About the author

Philip Chase Bobbitt is an American author, academic, and public servant who has lectured in the United Kingdom. He is best known for work on military strategy and constitutional law and theory, and as the author of Constitutional Fate: Theory of the Constitution (1982), The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (2002) and Terror and Consent: the Wars for the Twenty-first Century (2008).

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gary Wills in New York Times Review. No Like.

"He just shows us how wonderfully Machiavelli agreed with Bobbitt’s longer works — as if Niccolò had read them half a millennium ago. Machiavelli is often viewed as surprisingly modern, but does that have to mean he must be surprisingly Bobbitt?"


The New York Times

August 2, 2013
New Statesman
By GARRY WILLS

THE GARMENTS OF COURT AND PALACE

Machiavelli and the World That He Made

By Philip Bobbitt

270 pp. Grove Press. $24.

One expects a book by Philip Bobbitt to be over 900 pages (“The Shield of Achilles,” 2002) or just under 700 pages (“Terror and Consent,” 2008). Then how can he diet himself down to a mere 200 or so pages of text on Machiavelli? Bobbitt is a great systematizer in the Toynbee mold — “Shield” gave us six different state systems since 1500 (princely, kingly, territorial, imperial, national, ­market).

“Terror” focused on one condition (the market state), but that state is still in formation, so Bobbitt argued its case more (and more and more) extensively. Then how does he deal with Machiavelli so compactly in “The Garments of Court and Palace”? Very easily, as one can tell by the frequency of his self-citations in the new book. He just shows us how wonderfully Machiavelli agreed with Bobbitt’s longer works — as if Niccolò had read them half a millennium ago. Machiavelli is often viewed as surprisingly modern, but does that have to mean he must be surprisingly Bobbitt?

Machiavelli fits into Bobbitt’s scheme because he is the expounder of the first of the six state systems in “The Shield of Achilles,” the princely one (Machiavelli even graced the form with its Bobbittian name). Bobbitt believes that legal systems are changed by military strategies, often by military technology. So, in 1494, when Charles VIII brought bronze cannon into Italy, threatening fortress walls and smashing the governments that relied on them, Machiavelli had to propose new walls, along with new states to defend them. This must mean that Machiavelli was interested in new technologies for war — though in fact he was not very interested in forts (he thought they were less vulnerable to siege than to inner rebellion). In the encyclopedic “Art of War,” he suggests an improved design for forts, but he is still concerned with inner rebellion (he forbids an inner keep where the residents can hole up and tells us starvation is more effectual than siege). Nor did he invest his time or energy in the technological innovations of Leonardo (their one collaboration, diverting a river, was an ancient concept, and it failed).

What Machiavelli was interested in was old systems, and especially old military systems — Roman ones, in fact. These were powerful not because they relied on new weapons but because they were based on virtù, an expression of their manly religion. Unlike Christianity, which makes people humble and otherworldly, Rome’s religion instilled a thirst for glory and freedom in this world. In Christianity “the ritual is more mincing (delicata) than grand, without fierce or manly (gagliarda) energy.” Roman “ritual was as grandly ceremonious, but it added the energy of a sacrifice deep in blood and fierceness, slaughtering hordes of animals. By being terrifying in this way, it made men just as terrifying.”

Bobbitt thinks that Machiavelli’s prince could be ruthless, like the Romans, because he invented that new thing, “the princely state,” which must be preserved for the benefit of all. Thus crimes done for the state are no crimes. They are, in fact, rather altruistic. The prince must “subordinate all other indicia of right behavior to the one parameter of serving the state.” Those murdered are rightly murdered for being enemies of the state — a convenient rule for the prince, who is the state. He sacrifices himself to himself.

Machiavelli is even made to endorse Bobbitt’s concept of the market state, on the rather broad ground that he was the “philosopher” of Bobbitt’s first state, so he would buy into the sixth one as “our sublime predecessor.” The new book is more vague than was “Terror and Consent” about the military obstetrics of the market state. Here Bobbitt just says it is “coming into being as a response to changes in the strategic context.” There he told us terrorism is at least the partial cause of the market state, which mirrors it. If Al Qaeda can operate freely across national entities, relying on modern communications, computer funding and ideological inventiveness, then we must do so too, calling on creative minds “free of many of the legal and political restraints that bind government officials.”

This means continual outsourcing of previously governmental acts, and omnidirectional deregulation. The right must stop regulating abortion and pornography, the left must stop regulating hate speech and, through affirmative action, hiring — such acts “promote national values in defiance of the market.” Terrorists are “entrepreneurial,” so our market state must be an entrepreneurial state. Terrorists use the media, so we must use them (the media, we are told, are nimbler than bureaucrats). If they use Visa to finance strikes, so should we. We can abandon our own state limits to engage in “state building” around the world to cope with the terrorist state.

Bobbitt says the market state has been in process of formation for a while. In “Shield” one of its prophets would seem to be Oliver North. The entrepreneurial Iran-contra (arms for hostages) transaction “anticipated the new market state,” and was “a natural market response to the problem of overregulation” (by overregulation he means the Boland Amendment against funding the contras in Nicaragua). Old nation-state rules should not hamper new market-state solutions. That is what Bobbitt says happened in the Iraq war. The open nation-state strategy was a quick decapitation of the Iraqi government. But since the war was with the mobile “virtual state” of terrorism, what was needed was a market state mirroring its tactics. (Blackwater and all the other private contractors were too hampered by the nation state, not yet acting as the market state.)

But the best entrepreneur of the new counterterrorist terrorism was Dick Cheney, with his “enhanced interrogations” of captured terrorists. Bobbitt says torture may not be used just to score a political point or secure a judicial conviction. But the new state has to have new rules. In former wars, captives were forced to surrender their arms. In the new wars they must be forced to surrender their information. “There cannot be a ban on the collection of strategic information — information from terrorist leaders and senior managers — by whatever means are absolutely necessary short of inflicting severe pain when that information is likely to preclude attacks.” That is just the legal guidance Cheney got from John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel. Neither Yoo nor Cheney thought waterboarding inflicted “severe pain.” The new prince, like Machiavelli’s old one, can commit crimes if they are in service to the state. The aim, after all, is to escape those “legal and political restraints that bind government officials.”

It has often been noticed that war makes adversaries end up resembling each other; but Bobbitt would have us start out resembling our foe. Terrorists, he says, are not just criminals. They have created a “virtual state,” and we have to create an entirely new kind of state to cope with it. This reminds me of the people who denounced democracy in the 1930s as too slow and stumbling to respond to the rise of dictators. Some would have had Roose­velt and Churchill create a new kind of state, baffling dictators with “good guy” dictatorships.

Not even Bobbitt thinks a new state was born of that crisis — his “nation state” runs unbroken from 1914 to 1990, and was able to survive World War II and the cold war. Only Al Qaeda and its ilk are enough to make us create an entirely new political order. Those who have seen the efficiency and lack of corruption in unregulated medicine and banks and Blackwater-type operations will have a little trouble hailing Machiavelli as a sponsor of the Higher Cheneyism.

Garry Wills, emeritus professor of history at Northwestern University, is the author, most recently, of “Why Priests? A Failed Tradition.”

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great read. Bobbitt presents Machiavelli as a statecraft genius whose whole body of work needs to be considered, not just "The Prince." Some feel the thesis, that Machiavelli's oeuvre fits exactly with Bobbitt's conclusions in the tomes "Shield of Achilles" and "Terror and Consent'" is at best self-serving and at worst incorrect. To me that's irrelevant. Bobbitt is widely credited as one of the only political theorists who understands where we are now as a society facing terrorism and where we might go. Regardless of Bobbitt's conclusions concerning "The Prince" (which I think are insightful) "The Garments of Court and Palace" serves as a great introduction to Bobbit's theories on constitutional order.

[John Schneider · Rating 5 out of 5]

This compact work succeeds in presenting Machiavelli's "The Prince" in a new and authoritative light. Bobbitt contends that "The Prince" can only be properly understood as part of a larger body work. Along with Machiavelli's "The Discourses," the two form the grand work "The State." In "The State" Machiavelli contends that feudalism is dying such that central Italy must form a new neoclassical state in order for it protect the people. At the very least Bobbitt presents an original understanding of Machiavelli. After 500 years of study, that alone is a remarkable achievement.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philip Bobbitt is best known for his earlier work "The Shield of Achilles", a thousand-page work tracing the development of the modern state. This book, "The Garments of Court and Palace," focuses more narrowly on the inception of the modern state, through the prism of Machiavelli’s writings. At the same time it claims to be a new interpretation and synthesis of Machiavelli’s thought, rejecting many widely held beliefs about it, including that he denied the importance of virtue and morality in politics. Bobbitt posits that Machiavelli instead had a specific conception of virtue, and he wrote with a precise constitutional purpose: he was the midwife of the European princely state, superseding the feudal state, and therefore the herald of the modern Western state, in all its versions.

The book’s title comes from Machiavelli’s famous 1513 letter, written during forced retirement, in which he describes his day, at the end of which he comes home, shakes off the dust of the countryside, dons “the garments of court and palace” and proceeds to immerse himself, through books, in the ancients and their lives, ‘jott[ing] down what I have profited from in their conversation.’ ” Bobbitt’s basic claim is that in his labors Machiavelli presciently identified a wholly new type of state struggling to be born and devoted his writings to bringing that form of state into existence. Though he failed in his immediate goal of enabling such a state in central and northern Italy, his writings influenced its later development outside of Italy. Bobbitt’s project is thus to deny the common view that Machiavelli was often self-contradictory or self-serving in his works, and to present him as a genius with a unitary vision of a new constitution of government. His primary method to show this is to rescue Machiavelli from the common habit of picking standalone passages from his works, and instead to synthesize all his commentary within the larger context it is made. I am not really qualified to judge if Bobbitt is correct in his conclusions, or for that matter in his analysis, but certainly he offers an impressive and cogent argument.

Most of Bobbitt’s inquiry revolves around Machiavelli’s two best-known works, "The Prince" and "Discourses on Livy," though others also come in, such as the "Florentine Histories" and "The Art of War." The first two are usually seen as contradicting each other, especially in that the first is seen as endorsing authoritarian or princely rule, and the second as endorsing republican rule. Bobbitt sees them instead as not inconsistent in any way, and in fact claims they should really be viewed as parts of one work, hypothetically named Lo Stato, “the state,” split into two as a result of events beyond Machiavelli’s control. Generally, I am not a fan of historians who search for, much less find, hidden meanings earlier missed, especially when those meanings fly in the face of common understandings and common sense (Paul Rahe, whom Bobbitt cites occasionally, is a prime offender, like many disciples of Leo Strauss). But Bobbitt doesn’t seem to take his analysis too far, and maintains a sense of detachment, so the effect isn’t too annoying.

Stato is a word that Machiavelli often used, but to which he (sometimes) gave an entirely new meaning. In translations of Machiavelli, this appears to often be a bone of contention—what Machiavelli meant by a specific word, since he frequently used existing words by giving them new meanings, rather than coining neologisms. This also makes the task of readers of works analyzing Machiavelli difficult, since we must rely on filtering through experts, who disagree among themselves on many crucial matters. But there is no help for that, so I will treat Bobbitt’s argument as it stands. Along the same lines, a very great deal of Bobbitt’s analysis depends on careful parsing of dates, both of events in Machiavelli’s life, and in the history of Italy during that time. Since this is a short book, it is hard to tell, but it seems like portions of Bobbitt’s chronology are disputed, and there is a distinct feel that Bobbitt may be glossing over arguments in opposition. On the other hand, he is very open that his is a minority and novel view, and he cannot be expected to both set forth his argument and defend it against all possible attacks in a few hundred pages.

Bobbitt lists five common understandings of Machiavelli’s work and explicitly rejects them all (though he nods to the apparent hubris of this, in defense quoting Isaiah Berlin, “where more than twenty interpretations hold the field, the addition of one more cannot be deemed an impertinence”). The most prominent of these understandings is that "The Prince" is a mirror book, a book of advice for rulers. From the belief that "The Prince" is a mirror book flows the most common criticism of Machiavelli, found early in reactions to his work (including in Shakespeare)—that he was an amoral villain who advised rejecting all virtue and morality, hence the adjective “Machiavellian.” Bobbitt’s repeatedly contrasts Machiavelli’s writings with Cicero’s "De Oficiis," the classic mirror book, claiming that “expecting a mirror book, [Machiavelli’s] readers were given a mirror instead.” That is, "The Prince" is a book of analysis of the world as it is, and men as they are, not as it and they should be, as would be a traditional mirror book. Bobbitt instead posits that Machiavelli does not reject virtue, he merely defines it differently than classical sources like Cicero.

Perhaps so, though the onion-layer type of morality Bobbitt offers instead, on Machiavelli’s behalf, is so far removed from what Cicero was talking about that it’s not really the same type of morality at all. Bobbitt’s key claim, one which he appears to also have made in his other books, is that Machiavelli was a believer in “consequentialism”—the idea, in short, that the moral demands placed on a political leader are inherently not comparable to the moral demands placed on an individual. Or, put more bluntly, a leader sometimes acts in a wholly moral fashion when he does things that for an individual would be evil. This is because the state, lo stato, properly viewed, is not, or should no longer be, regarded as synonymous with the prince himself—the ruler acts on behalf of his people, which may require acting in a way forbidden to an autonomous individual. What this boils down to is an argument from necessity—when the state must be protected, the ruler must do what is necessary, and he does not act wrongly by torturing, killing, or lying to do so. “Properly viewed” here means a new kind of state, the state aborning, where the state is not horizontally and vertically enmeshed within a feudal web, but rather a modern unitary and autonomous state—still led by a prince, but fundamentally different than earlier states. This insight is what Bobbitt credits as Machiavelli’s supreme achievement—prescience, and theoretical application of that prescience to the circumstances at hand in his lifetime. On this reading, Machiavelli is not separating ethics from politics at all. He is offering a mirror book, just with a different type of mirror.

Bobbitt’s moral imperative of consequentialism therefore revolves around what constitutes the “common good.” Not all evil actions of the ruler are excused by consequentialism—those that are not in furtherance of the common good are still immoral. Excessive cruelty, such as that of the Syracusan tyrant Agathocles, is not justified by appeals to the common good, nor are such acts as torture if done for personal gratification. Bobbitt wrote a book on the War on Terror; I have not read it, but on this reasoning presumably he excuses waterboarding of terrorists but not the petty humiliations of Abu Ghraib. Trying to fit this into a traditional moral frame, Bobbitt argues, weakly, that “Machiavelli’s argument . . . is grounded in a Christian view of reality,” and that “Roughly speaking, Machiavelli’s ethics recognize that different forms of life require different ethical rules.” I’m not sure this is all that different from the traditional knock on Machiavelli as a preacher of vice, though; it’s just phrased differently, in the language of utilitarianism given a moral gloss. Bobbitt doesn’t understand Christian views at any level, since his argument is because bad people are everywhere, as shown in Genesis, “it is a prudent rule that the prince who governs a state must do unto others as they would do unto him,” because otherwise the downfall of the state will result, and people for whom the prince is responsible will suffer. This may be true, but it is very dubiously Christian (for which “prudence” is not the main judge of what is moral), as shown by both Machiavelli’s and Bobbitt’s exclusive reliance on Old Testament examples to buttress their claims, and Bobbitt makes no other effort, beyond the bald claim, to show that it is Christian. He would do better to examine the rule of Charlemagne to grasp the tensions that devout Christianity imposes on a ruler—although, to be fair, Bobbitt’s point seems to be that the new, princely form of the state is inherently different than the feudal one of Charlemagne. Still, maybe the Saxons could be slaughtered in a way found compatible with Christianity, but it’s harder to see why all your Borgia or Medici brothers-in-law need to get knifed. Necessity has never been regarded in Christian thought as the “get out of jail free” card that Bobbitt seems to think it is.

Of course, Machiavelli was right, in that it is true that consequentialism is the governing principle of all modern states. On a secular level, certainly, consequentialism seems appealing, but it strays very close to “the end justifies the means” (something Machiavelli never said, as Bobbitt is at pains to point out), which removes the ruler’s decisions entirely from the moral realm. This makes it a favorite argument of embattled rulers—both princely, but even more of republican rulers, who are trying to justify to the masses and to history what they feel they must do. Lincoln, famously, used consequentialist arguments in his remaking of the American state. So, perhaps, as a description of reality, Machiavelli was entirely correct—though given his influence, what is chicken, and what is egg?

For Bobbitt, therefore, none of Machiavelli’s books are princely instruction, even though they are addressed and dedicated to princes. They are constitutional treatises directed to society at large. The Prince is, in this view, really a sub-part of a larger work, the hypothetical Lo Stato, entirely on republics, “which proposes an ethics of service to the state.” But "The Prince" was hurriedly extracted out of the larger work as a result of very specific happenings of the time, when due to Medici accession to the Papacy “[Machiavelli] saw an opportunity to create a new principality in the centre of Italy, uniting Rome and the papal vicarages [lords putatively enfeudated to the Pope] with Florence and its possessions, and thus providing a bulwark against Spain and France.” Machiavelli is therefore said to have seen that the new order of things, of states in the era of gunpowder warfare (Bobbitt is very focused on warfare in all his books), long distance communications, bureaucracy, and increasing wealth, needed a new constitutional order to respond to new strategic imperatives—the princely, as opposed to the feudal state. In the nature of the way things were at that time and place, this would be a state headed by a monarch, hence the immediate focus on princely rule in "The Prince" (especially on a ruler who lacked long-term legitimacy, a “new prince”), but Bobbitt’s thesis is that Machiavelli wished to demonstrate overall, in Lo Stato, that this princely state was a transition phase to a new form of republican state—one which would have as its chief goal the promotion of the common good.

Bobbitt claims that Machiavelli believed that a non-republican princely state was too inflexible to survive long; when Fortuna arrived bearing changed circumstances, individual men would find it very hard to change with the times (a perennial Machiavelli theme), but a republic could bring forward new, suitable men at need. Machiavelli also supposedly believed that many rules he pushed, such as that past good deeds not excuse punishment for later bad deeds, were incompatible with autocratic rule, though why that should be is not clear. In fact, much of this seems to be grasping to put the best gloss on republican government, because for every supposed virtue of republics, a virtue of authoritarian governments could be adduced—for example, authoritarian governments more often avoid the fickleness and inconstancy of republics, especially those with a broad franchise. Bobbitt, however, does not address such lines of thought, although he does note that Machiavelli believed the vices of the masses could be channeled and constrained by proper civil and constitutional structures, a far more plausible hope in 1513 than in 2018 (not to mention that Machiavelli had zero interest in democracy). Moreover, Bobbitt several times falls into the basic error of believing that the rule of law is somehow a consequence of, or dependent on, a non-authoritarian form of government, something that is ludicrous both historically and theoretically if given a moment’s thought.

To examine this more closely, people can agree that the common good should be the highest aim of the state. But why should a republic serve this goal best? For Bobbitt’s Machiavelli, it is because the republican form ultimately conveys both legitimacy and durability, in a way that the princely state cannot. That evades the question, since a longer-lasting state does not necessarily best serve the common good, unless that good is reduced to mere stability. This is a question that has new resonance today, as “liberal democracy” reaches its end. Not that Bobbitt foresaw that end—in fact, in all his books, including this one, he vigorously pushes his idea that we have now moved beyond both the type of then-modern state envisioned by Machiavelli, and its successors (such as the twentieth-century “industrial nation-state”) to a new form, the “market state,” by which Bobbitt means not free markets, but (though he phrases it, and views it, more positively) the neoliberal state that exalts unfettered autonomy and unbridled consumerism under the tutelage and whip of an overweening government. You would think that Bobbitt would notice the inherent contradictions and spreading cracks in this Leviathan with feet of clay, with its lassitude, discontented loneliness and linked lack of children and future, but you would be mostly wrong, although he does suggest that “the sense of a single polity, held together by adherence to fundamental values, is not a sense that is cultivated by the market state,” and intimates that is a bad thing. What Machiavelli would think of all this, he does not say, but my bet is that he would change his mind about the inherent superiority of republics.

So this book is interesting, though hardly earthshattering. Every so often a false note creeps in. No, “a specific provision of the United States Constitution” does not forbid the suspension of habeas corpus—on the contrary, Article I, Section 9 explicitly authorizes such suspension, although whether by Congress or the President is unclear. And Bobbitt is a lawyer, or at least a law professor, and so elevates men like him above the rest, claiming that dislike for Machiavelli is partially driven by brutish dislike for our betters, who are people like him. He cites “our [read: not my] current contempt for bureaucrats, for politicians, for lawyers—the superstitious reaction of people who are frightened by forces they identify with those who are trying to master those forces, rather like blaming a volcanologist for a volcanic eruption.” Um—sure, Philip. Bureaucrats and lawyers are just like Superman. Still, the book flows well, and Bobbitt provides a very helpful chronology, notes, and bibliography for those interested in diving deeper. You can do worse than start here to think about Machiavelli.

[Steve Greenleaf · Rating 4 out of 5]

We recently toured Rome and Italy, where we viewed many of the splendors of the Italian Renaissance. Works by Michelangelo, Titian, and Rafael were prominent. The spirit of Leonardo da Vinci loomed in the background. These figures and others like them are considered among the glories of the Italian Renaissance. But perhaps the most important person to emerge from the Italian Renaissance was not a painter, sculptor, or poet. He was a Florentine diplomat sent involuntarily into exile from Florence to a country estate, where he took up his pen and began writing. He drew upon his deep knowledge of ancient history and Florentine history. He drew upon his extensive practical experience from many years as a Florentine diplomat. After his death, one of his works, On Principalities, was published. Immediately, it was subject to mistranslation, misunderstanding, and abridgment. It became known as the Courtier's Koran (and this is not a compliment). Who was this person? Niccolò Machiavelli. His name has become familiar through the centuries since the publication of The Prince (as the title was misleadingly translated into English) as a purveyor of sinister political advice. Almost every major commentator addressing all him him him him him him him him the history of political thought has grappled with Machiavelli’s works and wrestled with his legacy. In this book, Philip Bobbitt enters the fray.

Philip Bobbitt is a professor of law at Columbia University with continuing ties to his original teaching position at the University of Texas. In addition, he has served in foreign-policy positions under both Republican and Democrat administrations. Finally, and most recently, he has published two major works on law, strategy, and international relations: The Shield of Achilles and War and Consent. Compared to those two books, his foray into the world of Machiavellian studies is brief and succinct. However, Bobbitt has a compelling hypothesis and makes a strong case in favor of his interpretation.

Bobbitt argues that The Prince is a short detour from Machiavelli's longer work, the Discourses on Livy, which helped create the intellectual climate that allowed the resurgence of Republicanism in the Western world. Bobbitt argues that The Prince and the Discourses should be read as one book on the state (il stato). Instead of Machiavelli writing a “mirror of princes” work like his predecessors, Machiavelli is attempting something else. In The Prince Machiavelli aims to establish a practical ethics for establishing a state (principality). After the establishment of the state, Machiavelli recommends a transition to a republican form of government. Machiavelli undertakes this intellectual project in the hope that Italy will one day unify into a single state under a republican government, a hope that was not realized until several centuries after his death. In forwarding this argument, Bobbitt does not see Machiavelli as a teacher of evil, but as an astute student of political realities that is willing to weigh the consequences of action and not pay mere lip service to ethical guidelines that don't deal with the reality of those grasping for political power.

I found Bobbitt's argument convincing. Most who read Machiavelli have to admit that he has insights into the behavior of those grasping or seeking power (i.e., all of us). His classic query is to whether it is better to be loved or to be hated, a question that has a practical ring to it for personal relations as much as for political rule. Many readers over the centuries have felt that in taking any advice from Machiavelli one was somehow lowering oneself in a dastardly way, but this is not (necessarily) so. Machiavelli tries to establish the guidelines for founding a state (or regime or scheme of power) that can be later transferred into a more stable republic.

Bobbitt's argument about Machiavelli makes a lot of sense, but it also leaves many unanswered questions. The review of the book by Garry Wills in the New York Times suggest that Bobbitt’s book tacitly approves of a powerful state that will limit civil liberties and unduly aggrandize the regime. Wills seems to believe that Bobbitt’s argument grants license to the Dick Cheneys of the world to do as they will in protection of the state. I didn't read Bobbitt as making that argument, although I am curious to go back and look more closely at The Shield of Achilles and especially Terror and Consent to learn how Bobbitt draws these lines. Bobbitt does ignore the question of when Machiavelli’s ethics of The Prince should no longer apply. In other words, a newly formed principality, according to Machiavelli and Bobbitt, must work under different set of guidelines than an established republic. However, to what extent can a republic or should a republic revert to the ethics of a principality when under threat? Indeed, history seems littered with examples of political leaders who grasp for power when external forces threaten. The identification of an external threat is the oldest trick in the playbook for extending political power. According to Machiavelli and Bobbitt, how do we sort out the legitimate expediencies that Machiavelli might consider legitimate from those that would prove harmful to a republic? Our own republic has undergone a serious decline in civil liberties under the terrorist threats of the last 20 years, and before that, under the threat of communism. Despite the warnings of people like George Kennan, throughout the Cold War the US too often mimicked our adversaries in paranoia, state security, and limitations on freethinking. The same thing can be happening in the current age, although Al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism don’t pose the ideological threat that Marxism once held as an attractive messianic religion.

For anyone who is remotely interested in Machiavelli and the world in which he lived and acted, I highly recommend Bobbitt's book. Bobbitt is not a Machiavelli scholar, but he has done his homework and marshaled his arguments in a way that is convincing and appealing. I hope his next book will address the application of Machiavelli and Machiavellian principles in today's world and how we can distinguish between the legitimate uses of power and their easy corruption.

[Reid Powers · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this relatively short book, professor Philip Bobbit offers a brilliant reinterpretation of Machiavelli's writings. There are literally dozens of ways to read Machiavelli, with the main ones being: (1) Machiavelli is writing a satire; (2) Machiavelli is an amoral monster; (3) Machiavelli is writing the book to secretly show the populace how to rise up against a tyrant; (4) Machiavelli is a true utilitarian... the list goes on.

Bobbitt uses The Prince and The Discourses on Livy as his main sources, arguing that each one must be analyzed to understand the other (Bobbitt calls the combined work "The State"). He argues that, though Machiavelli was a republican at heart, he saw the need for a powerful ruler to unite the fractured political map of renaissance Italy in order to defend it against the "barbarians" (i.e., the Spanish and French).

Bobbitt is pretty convincing in his arguments about Machiavelli's political purposes. His background as a constitutional lawyer really shines here--he really understands the differences between a monarchy and a constitutional republic, and does an excellent job of contextualizing 15th and 16th century Italy. Bobbitt writes that, because Machiavelli sees the independence of Italy as such a crucial goal, he declares the need for a man of great "virtu" to take charge and lead the Italians to freedom.

Overall, this book is a fresh, well-researched, and very well written work on a character whose scant works have been turned over by countless scholars in an attempt to understand the unique and enigmatic nature of Machiavelli's ethical and political views. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys renaissance history, is interested in constitutional law, or simply finds Machiavelli (who has been called "the last of the ancients and first of the moderns") interesting as a historical character.

[Heep · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a tough read. The first half made me want to put it down without finishing it. At around the 90th page (of about a total of 160), it turned around. The argument could get circular and repetitive even after that point but the final chapter is a marvel. In a little over 10 pages the author provides an assessment of the current political climate in the Western world that is remarkably astute and clear minded.

[David Pilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great examination of Machiavelli's political philosophy and the humanist, republican views he espoused. It's a great explanation of why his vision is so often twisted and misappropriated by over-simplifying and opportunistic hacks who dominate contemporary politics.

[Fran · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had been on my shelves for a number of years; something was stopping me from reading it, although I don't know what.
However, having now finally read this relatively short book, I have taken much from it, and I now tend to agree with many that Machiavelli, surely one of the most misunderstood political writers of all time, truly is just as relevant today as he was in the early sixteenth century.
It is said (by some) that human civilisation goes through a major metamorphosis every 500 years. If we assume that the last mega shift occurred with the Reformation, around the time of Machiavelli's career in the early sixteenth century, then we are now currently experiencing a similar transformation. There would be many now who would agree with that, I am sure, but Machiavelli's insistence that a ruler must act for the common good of the people, speaks even more loudly to us now.
It is clear that his early critics, such as Gentillet, exaggerated aspects of his philosophy as stated in the last chapter of the Prince, whilst his 'Discources' could be said to be more representative of Machiavelli's true republican leanings based upon the long lasting Roman republic between the epochs of the kings and empire.
It is time once more to re-evaluate this fascinating thinker. The notion of the nation state is clearly disappearing and a huge daunting political vacuum stands before us. Only the most extreme would want to fill this emptiness with rampant 'globalism', which would seem to want to strip us of our essential humanity. Machiavelli would understand this, I am sure, but what would be suggest in response to such a future? Where is our own Machiavelli? Or should we merely consult his writings with clear minds with a keen eye for the future?
Machiavelli said that the ruler will often have to act contrary to accepted personal morality for the common good and the security of each country - do we have leaders of such stature today?

[E.J. J Doble · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an impressive analysis of a very misunderstood writer and his most influential book, The Prince, which I read earlier this year. It certainly addresses some key issues I saw with the original treatise - including the notorious last chapter - and delves into some of the contextual nuances around Machiavelli's time and his way of thinking. That being said, to call it accessible would be a push, and I'm sincerely glad that the bulk of the writing was <200 pages - sentences possessing seven clauses and a list are *slightly* above my level of understanding.

That being said, if you've read or are looking to read The Prince and have some questions about it, this book is definitely sufficient!

[Phillip]

"Using both Renaissance examples and cases drawn from our current era, Bobbitt situates Machiavelli’s work as a turning point in our understanding of the relation between war and law as these create and maintain the State."

[K.C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gave me a radical new lens through which to view Machiavelli. Bobbit offers a truly perspective-shifting work that remains easily digestible.

[Michael Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bobbitt's thesis is provocative and his writing is, as always, engaging. Even so, his attempt to reconcile "The Prince" with "Discourses on Livy" may be too clever by half. The last chapter, which barely fits into the rest of this short book, is a poor man's version of Bobbitt's "Shield of Achilles."

[Gregory Weisler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great read. Bobbitt is a clear thinker and observant analyst of historical trends and nuanced political philosophy. This book re-examines Machiavelli's ethical and moral stance and his foresight in recognizing the emergence of the state as we know it today. An eye-opening and very thought-provoking read. I enjoyed it immensely for the clarity of argument and the shifting of paradigm.

[!Tæmbuŝu]

KOBOBOOKS

Reviewed by The Guardian (11 Jul 2013)

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a smart book that turns over many preconceptions about Machiavelli. It places his theories firmly in the camp of constitutional scholarship, and combines his two works -- often seen as too distinct -- into one The State. Recommended.

[Mills College Library]

320.1 B6633 2013