1. "The philosophers have only interpreted the world ...; the point, however, is to change it.

"
(Marx, Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach). How adequate is Marx's characterization of "the
philosophers" to Plato? To Machiavelli, Hobbes, or Locke? (Discuss Plato and any ONE of
these three modern thinkers.)

• Plato: the philosophers have interpreted the world, but they cannot change it; society will
always remain trapped in the cave because philosophy is the preserve of the few.
• Machiavelli: critique of religion; trying to mobilize people to overthrow the church;
doesn’t see this as the role of the philosopher per say but whoever can understand the
subversive undertones in his writing
• Hobbes: point isn’t to achieve the possible best (and change the world) but to avoid the
known worst; arguments about the good can be productive of the worst evils (as religious
wars in Hobbes time demonstrate)
o should be satisfied with avoiding the state of nature
• Locke: everyone should be able to find out good in their own way
o allowing individual freedoms to flourish would be his answer to changing the
world; however, such change cannot and should not be instituted by the state; it
should remain minimally involved in the lives of citizens
o each can be a philosopher how he/she sees fit

Introduction
Socrates’ city in speech can be realized only if philosophers rule as kings. However, through the
metaphors of the cave and the ship, Socrates shows that this is very unlikely to happen. Society
will always remain in a cave full of illusions, and the best that the philosopher can hope to do is
to lead those who he can to philosophy. This is the most significant benefit one human being can
perform for another. Only few can engage in philosophy, and no society can – every society will
always remain a cave. The Platonic project is to help those few who can be receptive to
philosophy without harming anyone.
• vs modern thinkers who look to transform society as a whole; they have an eye
to effectual truth, as opposed to imaginary principalities
• modern thinkers seek to change society, because reason and freedom (that were privy
to few in the Republic) are universal to the modern thinkers
←
← The rule of the philosophers depends on the existence of the regime; the existence of the
(ideal) regime depends on the rule of the philosophers. That they depend on each other means
that both are impossible in reality.
←
What is a philosopher?
• In cities as we know them, philosophers are very far from rule; the philosopher is lucky if
he is not crushed by society.
• delights in wisdom for its own sake, unbounded mental curiosity, never satisfied with
what they know
• would never be content with authority; compelled to question the opinions that the city
holds sacred and assumes to be true
• the philosopher, while passionate for the truth, is dispassionate for everything else, which
are mere imperfect representations; his eye is always on the city in thought, which,
existing only in thought, does not need to be fed
• philosopher is only concerned to know why and know the truth; does not leave things
alone that the city commands be left alone
 • calls into question founding dogmas of the regime – this is precisely what philosophy
does and it tends to upset a lot of people
Philosophers see far more clearly than we do the imperfections of all things. We cling to the
belief that our regime is just; that certain things are beautiful and good. We cling to our opinions
and the way of life that these opinions support; our way of life depends on it. But the philosopher,
passionate to the truth, is dispassionate to everything else (because it is imperfect versions of
truth).
• how could he care so little for and be so critical of what we care for so much?
• philosopher is not simply contemptuous of our opinion; if the philosopher never fully
accepts the opinions he encounters in other, he never wholly rejects them
• each opinion is a waystation to a more adequate understanding; interested only in so far
as it contributes to progress (up the ladder)
• the philosopher says that nothing that can pass as beautiful, just, or good for human
beings is fully so; nothing that passes for anything is fully that thing
• doesn’t delight in good things (like everyone else), but the good itself

• would never be content with authority; compelled to question the opinions that the city
holds sacred and assumes to be true
• philosopher is only concerned to know why and know the truth
• does not leave things alone that the city commands be left alone
• calls into question founding dogmas of the regime – this is precisely what philosophy
does and it tends to upset a lot of people

• in politics, it is always the particular (regime, way of life) that demands devotion or
sacrifice
• only the philosopher says that nothing can be perfectly just and beautiful; they only come
to life in thought and speech
• the things that matter most in life can never be possessed in their fullness; they can only
be thought in their fullness (THAT is the fundamental insight on which the philosophic life
depends)
• the beautiful can be held and cradled, but the beautiful as such can only be discussed
• the philosopher is emphatically different from all human types; his concern is with the
being of things, their character and their whatness
• Soc believes that most human beings live in the realm of opinion; since they cannot
distinguish b/w imperfect images of beauty and justice and beauty and justice themselves;
thus they do not live in the realm of knowledge
• philosopher is not the person who thinks he knows the answer to this question; does not
claim to possess the answers, he desires to know them though; he delights in wisdom so he
seeks it, but he doesn’t claim to possess it

Philosopher is the rare human type that not only can but must challenge the opinions of those of
his time. Thereby exposing that this is all these are: the opinions of that time and place. All such
opinions are partly true partly false, partly just/unjust. They are inadequate guides of human life.
← The philosopher isn’t simply a contrarian (simply taking the opposite view) because then
his mind and opinions would be predetermined.
←
← But every society holds that he who is not with it is against it; thus every society
experiences the philosopher as an enemy, just as the Athenians did to Socrates.
Arguments in favour of rule of philosopher:
Philosopher will see more quickly; he looks away from the particular, changeable, transient
things, and looks at the permanent, universal things; he alone is competent guardian of city b/c he
can guide the city in the light of the truth; this is one argument for philosopher kings. Only they
know what is important to guide the city in the right path.
← Philosophers are the most just of human beings in the ordinary sense (i.e. keeping your
hands off of the property of others, minding one’s business). It is not that they are selfless or
restrain themselves as other people don’t from pursuing what they see as truly good. If
philosopher thought that gold was the best thing, or rule of the city was the best thing, he would
take it. But he is indifferent to those things, he realizes they are of little value compared to the
pursuit of truth. Above all, he is indifferent to the pleasures of the body and thus to all the
temptations of injustice. He is not indifferent to pleasure; concerned with the pleasures of the
upper part of the soul, not with base human desires.

Adeimantus objects (p. 167)

Philosophizing is an act of someone who doesn’t have the answers. We might say that the
philosopher cares about the city as the doctor cares about a cadaver, as examining it advances his
medical knowledge. For the philosopher, everything is a means to understanding the category to
which it belongs. His eye is never on ‘our city’ and its concerns/fears/enemies; his eye is always
on the city as such, which existing only in thought requires not to be policed, fed, maintained, or
defended. Is this the sort of person we would want to rule the city?
• philosopher only cares for the universal and permanent; this is everywhere, but at the
same time nowhere
• the philosopher seems at the opposite pole from a person who gets things done
• 485d-e: Socrates describes the philosopher not as the man possessing learning, but the
one who experiences an erotic desire for learning, which means that he lacks it (we don’t
desire what we already have).
• Adeimantus: of those who take up philosophy in a serious way, most become ambitious
vicious, and those few that remain decent, suffer the punishment of becoming useless to
the cities; would get nothing done; Soc recognizes that this is a powerful objection

How can philosophers “who we agree to be useless” be said to run the city? Socrates invokes a
range of images to counteract Ad’s skepticism.

The Ship: true philosophers are useless because the city refuses to make use of them. Includes the
owner of the ship, the sailors on the ship, the stargazer or true pilot.
• the shipowner is the people; the people are good natured but shortsighted, i.e. incapable of
effective oversight on their own behalf
• the sailors fight for control over the helm even though they don’t care about the actual
result, they care only about reaching the helm and staying there; these are politicians; they
practice image politics (each trying to present himself to the people in a light that they will
find appealing, claiming to know the art of navigation when they do not)
• this is a critique of all known regimes (all regimes that are not governed by philosophers)
• stargazer: the philosopher; the only one competent to plot the ships course, but neither the
owner or the sailor will ask him to do so
• the owner is ignorant, and cannot distinguish among politicians who is competent and
who is not; sailors will not ask stargazer to take the helm, b/c they are preoccupied with
the squabble among themselves (each of them want to helm)
• stargazer is too proud to offer himself up; it would be embarrassing for the best artisan to
 present himself to those lesser than him and be refused; content to continue philosophizing
because rule doesn’t interest him
• the philosopher is not defined by his knowledge of anything; he is defined not by his
wisdom, but by his unique awareness of his lack of it and his necessity of striving to attain
it; would you want to be ruled by this man?
• There is a war b/w the city and philosophy, and it is one in which the city holds all the
weapons. No human being starts out as a philosopher, though perhaps with basic
philosophic concerns. Person starts out by being imbued with concerns of their
environment. Most people that are seduced by the city to practice “philosophy” are not
really philosophers, so it gives philosophers a bad name.
• Man in the dust storm: “taking all this into the calculation, he keeps quite and minds his
own business –as a man in a storm, when dust and rain are blown about by the wind,
stands aside under a little wall. Seeing others filled full of lawlessness, he is content if
somehow he himself can live his life here pure of injustice and unholy deeds…”
• Philosopher has no political ambitions to transform the city. He philosophizes for his own
benefit, hopes to keep himself clean of the city’s injustice and irrationality
• the moderns emphasize the power of philosophy, its capacity to remake the entire world;
while Socrates emphasizes its impotence
• the non philosophers, the vast majority of human beings, are powerful but have no notion
what to do
• philosophers are sane but powerless to act in the city or persuade the others; the most they
can hope to do is to

Soc and Ad agree that philosophers are useless, however only if the philosophers rule could the
city in speech be realized (or its reasonable facsimile). But in cities as we know them,
philosophers are very far from rule; the philosopher is lucky if he is not crushed by society. (man
in the dust storm)

Previously Soc said that the rule of the philosophers was the condition for the coming into being
of this regime (or its reasonable facsimile). Now he says that this regime is the necessary
conditions for the rule of the philosophers.
• this means that neither can come into being
• a regime of this sort is impossible, and so is the rule of the philosophers
 • this is proof that Plato does not regard these as blueprints for the real world

497b continued: Rule of the philosophers can only occur in a city which recognizes the necessity
of the rule of the philosophers. But only the philosophers recognize the necessity of their rule
• philosophers can only rule in a city in which philosophers already rule
• this impresses on us that this cannot happen

Adeimantus is now persuaded that philosophy and the city need each other.
The question of possibility now presents itself in a particular guise: can the people really be
persuaded to submit to rule of the philosophers?
• given the characterization of philosophers (who see truth) vs. other people (who
experience their world as a dream – confuse images of things with the ultimate reality of the
world, and are thus indifferent/blind to that reality), what is the likelihood that they would
recognize the necessity of philosophers ruling them?
• Soc: they might do so if Thras will persuade them.
• Soc concedes that the philosophers themselves would not persuade them; so little trust
the citizens have in the philosophers that they will not trust what they say
←
What is the relationship of philosophy to the city/society?
Socrates is the incarnation of the philosophic life in Plato’s presentation
←
← Cave analogy: this is “an image of our nature in its education and want of education”
says Soc. This reminds us how much the theme of the dialogue is education, and how much the
dialogue’s treatment of politics and justice is inseparable from the treatment of the treatment of
education. It is an image of our nature and its want of education. Also an image of our nature in
unreason/reason.

← The image is of a cave-like welling – this description points to it as a human construction

rather than something natural. This reminds us that our beginning point is simply a natural one.
To grow up as a human being doesn’t mean only to grow up in a human nature, it also means to
be educated in a certain way and in certain conventions. The more successful the education, the
more we take these conventions for granted; the more successful the education, the more these
conventions seem to be natural, and the less we are able to distinguish ourselves from natural
beings from people who live according to conventions.
←
← Cave is open to the sunlight filtering in from above. No human being is utterly deprived
of the light of the sun or of reason. The inhabitants of the cave live by the artificial light of the
fire. Their field of vision is limited to shadows and images projected onto the bottom part of the
cave. They are shackled and unable to turn their hands around. Also these images are
accompanied by sound effects.
For the inhabitants of every society, a certain interpretation of the world is given. The world itself
disappears behind that interpretation. The wool is pulled over our eyes. Our opinions disclose the
world to us, and this reflects the light that comes from above, but they also mask it.
• education prevails over all else in the way in which human beings view the world; in
every society, opinion reigns
←
← Nothing is more miserable than to live enslaved to false opinions of the good. The
prisoners are unaware of their unhappiness because they are unaware of their imprisonment; they
mistake their artificial world for the true world. The most important shadow images by which we
live are the shadow images of ourselves. The main thing is that we see ourselves only as society
depicts us to ourselves. The light projects the watchers themselves onto the wall before them, and
they know themselves only by these shadows. Every society teaches us who we are
←
← Ultimately, we mistake images or shadows of ourselves for the truth about ourselves, and
are therefore far from self knowledge.
• we experience not clarity but confusion
• habits, interests, and passions are shackles to keep us from questioning convention
• while someone who sees the light pities those who he sees below, he wouldn’t
willingly sacrifice his happiness by returning
• Glaucon’s response shows the ultimate priority of our own good; philosopher would
pity the low, and the sacrifice of all that matters to him, so he would prefer to do
anything but live that way
←
← The cave, once his beloved home, is hated by him. He doesn’t envy those who hold
power over these men. Were he to attempt to liberate them, they would be so angry at him for this
attempt, that they would kill him if they good (but they cannot).
• spiritedness makes its first appearance
• whoever questions what the people hold dearest is bound to appear as a deadly
enemy to their society and to them.
• Soc is not condemning or criticizing people for this; he pities them as anyone with
sight would pity the blind
←
← The greatest favour that the cities do the philosophers is leaving them alone and not to
require them to rule; but the so called best city must do so.
← Glaucon sees that life in the best city is not choice-worthy after all. To compel those who
are living a good life to live a worse life is injustice. This is injustice: to compel someone to lead
a worse life who is able to lead a better one. This is what would happen to the philosopher.

← The justice of the city is indifferent to the happiness of each, except insofar as that
happiness of each harmonizes with the happiness of the whole city.
• philosophers are the only ones who are happy; those in the cave are not
 • if we compel the philosophers to rule, we sacrifice the happy few to the unhappy many,
without us even becoming happier thereby
• the philosophers ability to control society in any sense is very limited (image of
philosopher in the dust storm is pessimistic but not by much)

← The city is the cave. Those who are naturally capable of the philosophic life are always
extremely few. If by ruling the many, the few could lead them to philosophy, then it would be
something, but this is not what Soc presented; it is never an image of bringing light to the people.
It is always the philosophers descending to the shadowy cave to rule. The permanent element of
political life is opinion, not knowledge. It is only with unequivocal espousal to the city’s point of
view that one could conclude.
←
1. though Soc says that philosophers could see much more clearly the nature of the phantoms
than anyone else, he doesn’t say that philosophy could liberate the people from their
subjection to the phantoms; this is not within society’s power
2. those who are most fit to rule, philosophers, are the ones who don’t want to rule
3. even Socrates presents this argument as persuasive only if philosophers could spend time
with one another in the pure region. But that presupposes a lot of philosophers. There is a lot
to do in the city and the great rarity of the philosophic nature; it is unlikely that in a city even
one philosophic nature exists, let alone enough to govern the city in their spare time.

Gratitude has its limits, and the city’s demands on the philosophers exceed these limits. Even
here, Soc doesn’t claim that the philosophers owe their services to any city except one that
realizes the need for philosophers (same chicken and egg problem).

← Philosophers have a strong interest in the best cities not coming into being, because then
they would have to rule. They are the only class of people not attracted by ruling. Of course the
philosophers needn’t worry; people are not going to beg them to rule.
non philosophers are slaves unaware of their slavery, pity us; they would help us if they could; by
help a human, he means to take those who are able to be liberated, and take them from the cave

← The greatest irony: in the best city as in any other, the citizens are subjects of opinion
(remember the noble lie). In the philosophic view of the world, some caves are more comfortable
than others; but our slavery is so complete, so we will never realize our suffering.
←
← The philosopher is in the city without being entirely of it:
• philosopher has a body, and so needs the protection of the city just as much as the rest of
us; the city extends that protection only to those who perform their duties to it
• like the rest of us, his only access to truth is via the ascent from opinion; as is evident
from life of Soc, the philosopher is anything but a hermit, philosophy is the most social of
activities and the philosopher the most sociable of men; philosopher’s life depends on the city
• In these two respects, the philosopher is dependent on the city. He depends on it for the
sustenance of his body and his mind. There is no respect that the city is dependent on him.
The relationship is asymmetrical, can think of philosopher as a kind of parasite.
← What is the political action of the philosopher?
 • he defends his personal and class interest (the class interest of the philosopher)
• since philosophers aren’t numerous enough to form an interest group, Soc needs the
protection of non-philosophers
• Soc seeks to avoid harming the city and may even be able to help it; he seeks to
benefit certain individuals (those who are open to philosophy) and most of all, those
who are capable of it
• the philosopher helps the good who are his friends, those of philosophic nature, while
seeking to harm no one

LOCKE: everyone should be able to find out good in their own way
• allowing individual freedoms to flourish would be his answer to changing the world;
however, such change cannot and should not be instituted by the state; it should remain
minimally involved in the lives of citizens
• each can be a philosopher how he/she sees fit

Modern thinkers consider reason and rationality universal, whereas Plato saw it within the
purview of the few. Modern thinkers look to transform society as a whole; eye to effectual truth,
as opposed to imaginary principalities

To Locke, all of us are potentially rational, but it is a minority who he describes as “rational and
industrious” (those who buy into Locke’s project of the conquest of nature via human labour).
These people recognize that the authoritative goal of political life is the acquisition and protection
of property (in Locke’s extended sense, life liberty and estate)

Place life of reason in the grasp of all, but they do this by subordinating reason to the popular aim
of comfortable self preservation. The popular aim or goal (of the people) as comfortable self
preservation. Rationality becomes instrumental; becomes a means over an end; becomes a
method or technique. Applied reason aimed to achieve comfortable self preservation (this is the
popular goal). Knowledge is modern science and its practical applications (technology).
Ignorance is whatever is imagined as opposed to what is the effectual in the indicated sense
(Mach). Ancient phil and religion are relegated to this realm of the imaginary (except in the case
of priests using their platform to control people, which moderns borrow from)

By the life of reason, Plato means the life wholly devoted to the exercise of reason (exercise of
reason for its own sake).
• Locke’s conception would be to Plato a perversion of reason, b/c it would be in service of
desires that are not rational; it uses reason as a means to material ends
• as for freedom, Plato means freedom from unreason (shadows of the cave); this is the only
significant freedom to which human beings should aspire
• any other freedom would be “false consciousness” (as a Marxist would say)
• Plato’s principle: think radically (philosophize), but act moderately (because you know
that society is not susceptible to fundamental transformation, any gains in society are
incremental and hard won, easily lost). These two go together.
• According to Soc’s account, true aristocracy or the rule of the philosophers (the naturally
best), gives way to timocracy (or the rule of honour) which is unbridled spiritedness.
• as the rule of the soldiers or auxiliaries, unrestrained or uncorrected by the true
guardians

HOBBES
All human thought proceeds by means of images, which are all derived from sense impressions.
Imagination is thus decaying sense. Every image that you have goes back to some sense
perception. Since images are the stuff of thought, our internal mental discourse, it is an illusion to
think that thought can carry us toward a truth of the world that lies beyond sense impression.
• greatest human invention is speech (p.16 sect 3)
• speech is a means by which we process our thoughts so as to make them more efficient
 so as to increase our power
• words facilitate our rapid and exact manipulation of those images; they are like counters
or tokens
• sect 11: where speech is not, there is not truth or falsehood
o truth is a matter of correctly understanding conventional definitions
o truth is a property of statements only
• according to Hobbes, projection of truth into the world is simply a misunderstanding of
what truth is – truth is a property of statements only
• there is no true God; there is no true happiness; there is no true love
o all these statements reflect an abuse of the term truth
o anything that uses truth as a synonym for real; assumes there is a realness in the
world, this is a misunderstanding of what truth is

p. 25 and 26 (sect. 20). The aim of science is the increase of human power.
- Hobbes personal motto: knowledge or science for the sake of power
- breaks from the theoretical understanding of science as the increase of human knowledge

• appetite and aversion; for any object or person, it refers to the same kind of positive or
negative orientation; attraction to it or repulsion from it.
• teaching concerning the good follows just as quickly following appetite and aversion
discussion (section 7)
o good and evil: there is no natural good for human beings.
o Plato: every action by individual or community presupposes some good end
o Socrates: all of us seek the good but few of us actually know what it is
o we all think that some people are deeply mistaken about what is good for them,
and we all defend our own way of life as good
o but according to Hobbes this is all nonsense; people don’t seek “the good,” it is
merely imaginary. They merely seek this or that, and whatever they happen to be
seeking at any given moment they call good. Good is not something substantive, and
it is simply a term and we apply it to whatever attracts us in the moment
o Hobbes is the great founder of relativism in matters of the good:
 good is as arbitrary and circumstantial as human passion itself
 by the good we mean only what seems good; different for every person

This means that there is no notion of the good as could serve for standard of human life. Just as
there is no opposition between truths and falsehoods, there is no opposition between greater and
lesser goods. Truth and good are just names.
• Hobbes takes the view that human life doesn’t point anywhere, and if you pose question
as did Plato/Aristotle (what is truly good for human beings?) it just shows that you don’t
know human life

For Hobbes, there is no such thing as the good life to serve as the aim for political life
 • practical reason why Hobbes so eagerly refuted the notion of substantive or
transcendental good: good is illusory and can be rejected as misguided and also
dangerous, and this was the lesson of religious wars of Hobbes’ times
• men cannot agree on the good life, and to the extent that they continue to put the good
life first, they will fight about it
• apparent misunderstandings of the good are cloaks for wars in disguise
• by debunking the good, if saying that it is nothing but a passing fancy generated by the
momentary nexus of desire and circumstance, then there is no good worth dying for; this
goes together with the notion that there is no truth worth dying for
• like the good, the beautiful and the honorable are just generated by the flux of our
passions

We are different from animals because we can reason from cause to effect but also from effect to
cause
• the good we strive for is just the name for the passion of the movement
• our desire is thus power; power to satisfy our passions and appetites
• therefore all human relationships are merely power relationships; these relationships
mask themselves though

Civil society – we are able to reason from effect to cause; cause remains self-preservation, but we
are able to look beyond the state of nature and see that a different effect can bring about the same
cause (peace).

In the world as Hobbes presents it, there is nothing worth dying for.
• whereas the good is not negotiable (i.e. between sects of Christianity), in Hobbesian
world everything is negotiable because nothing is worth dying for
• Hobbes sets out to show that all human commitments, most broadly, all human opinions
of the good that are worth dying for, are without solidity

Ch. 14: begins with an argument for political equality. We are all equals, and no one has by
nature a claim to greater political authority than anybody else. The greatest achievements, as
Mach stressed, require the greatest virtues.

This argument shows not that none are naturally superior in wit to others, but why the rule of the
naturally superior is not likely to be realized.
• less wise are not willing to recognize their inferiority in wisdom and also that anyone can
kill anyone
• animals have no drive for pride and war because they do not possess reason. They do
possess language, but they don’t possess reason and therefore don’t possess speech.
• reason and speech are the origin of all of the problems that human beings face. Pride and
wisdom – thinking they are smarter and wiser than they are, and also can be deceived
(because humans are rational they are susceptible to deceit)

• our reason turns out to be more of a handicap than an advantage

o double edged: within reason there is the possibility of coming out of difficulties
in which reason sinks us, but irrationality or misuse of reason is everywhere
predominated, so you cannot really thank God/nature for having given us reason
o if it weren’t for the problem that reason posed, we would have no need to find a
solution for it
 o i.e. other animals don’t require civil society

MACHIAVELLI
Claims that as his aim is to write something that will be of use, in contrast to other thinkers, he
will consider regimes which exist in reality (not just thought). Educating men (rulers) into an
impossible way of life, i.e. aiming for good among so many men who are not good, leads to their
ruin. In accord with his concern with effectual truths, Mach aims to furnish shrewd readers with
the weapons to change the world, namely by subverting the Church.

Point #1: Only concerned with effectual truths.

* rejects imagined truths/principalities, in favour of effectual truths, actual principalities
 • truth that makes a differences, ambitious, changes the world; truth not for its own sake
but for the effects; knowledge for the sake of power

**all previous political philosophy sought to answer what is the best regime.
Mach does not address this at all; declares the discussion of justice as
superfluous.

Theological truths, platonic ideals, and Aristotelian essences do not allow

you to accomplish anything. There is a huge gap b/w how one should live
and how one ought to live  any attempt to bring imagined principalities
will not work and leads to ruin.

Properly understood, imagined truths are the means to someone else’s success; e.g. Christianity’s
supposed truths allow it to control millions
• e.g. Moses as an imposter

Point #2: Church is an impediment to political power

• no ruler truly rules b/c he is always subservient to spiritual power
• earthly power must decisively subsume spiritual power in order to be truly powerful 
Church’s authority must be subverted  ecclesiacide
• if you can succeed in decapitating central authority, by defeating it you can create a
vacuum which you can fill entirely’ successor of Church would have utmost latitude in
forming new order
• subjects of the Pope do not even think of being governed by him
• to rebel against the pope is to rebel against God
• final consequence of the Church resting on own hypocrisy: there may be a truly pious and
sincere pope that gets elected, and truly Christian belief is that the papacy should not have
any territory; thus, temporally, the Church would be screwed
• because Church rests on spiritual laws and rules, it cannot be attacked in the traditional
way, but its very susceptible to charges of hypocrisy
o Mach attacks the Church for not being ambitious enough; popes have families,
ambition, and want wealth
• the profound attack on Church must be for the time hidden (that religion as such is
hypocritical)
o the less profound attack is intended to appear more widely to Christians (i.e. that
certain people are hypocritical)
o subversive, more profound attack intended for just the few people who are
capable of following his underlying argument

In Roman times, church was always subservient to government.

• Machiavelli gives examples of how to do things (Ancient Romans) and how not to do
them (King Louis 12th of France)
• Power of the Church as an institution:
• Louis always placated the church. In Machiavelli’s time, all principalities are divided
between spiritual and temporal powers. Division makes for weakness. This is in the
chapter “of mixed principalities” – all principalities in M’s time are necessarily mixed.

Wisdom of Roman’s time = council of war; pagan wisdom

 • Roman view of life is preemptive, make bad things happen to others, their loss is your
gain, acted as if other men were bad
• Romans: methodical, used time to their advantage

Wisdom of M’s time = council of peace; it is Christian (love thy neighbour)

• Louis: soft power, relied on fortune, acted as if men were good and favours would be
returned or rewarded by fortune
• don’t upset things and don’t act until you have to (this is what Louis did).
• rest on your laurels, enjoy the good fortune of your time
o assumes that if the status quo is good it will remain good
• Church teaches that if we abstain from harming others then they will abstain from
harming us; if they do not do this there is someone more powerful to take care of it

Point #3: Incite the demise of the Church

• ecclesiastical principalities strong in that they somehow do not have to defend themselves
in the way that others do
• no other pope to transfer allegiance to – uniqueness of the Pope (supposed to be chosen
by God – to rebel against the Pope is to rebel against God)
• Machiavelli recommends not mounting a frontal attack but instead, some kind of
conspiracy/plot
• discussion of the temporal power of the church could be seen as the first step in
opening/unmasking the hypocrisy of the church; directed at Christians, beginning to nibble
away at its authority
• ecclesiastical power rests on spiritual modes and orders (other-worldly), therefore
ineffective to attack in a physical way, BUT particularly open to attack on the basis of
hypocrisy
• hypocrisy the most popular and effective criticism of those who depend on other-worldly
power for their worldly power

Point #4: Great men have status quo set against them
Great political founders didn’t destroy in order to found; they were
compelled to found because they destroyed. We live in a constant state of
insecurity – the greatest know this and are thus the most dangerous. The
greatest human beings have the greatest ends, which are the least compatible
with the status quo; they cannot do anyting but rock the boat. If you want
more than the status quo, it begins to see you in a different light and you
become insecure.

Unlike Plato, Machiavelli is attempting to directly change the world by providing his reader with
an instruction manual concerning how to rule properly. The Prince on the other hand can be seen
more as an instruction manual; a practical guide for ruling. Trying to help the reader understand
the ways in which one can acquire and maintain princely power.

• This is all rooted in the fact that Machiavelli believes that the Italy of his day had fallen
from grace due to its lack of knowledge on how to maintain power.
o e.g. all principalities mixed (b/c power of the Church)
• Machiavelli sets forth teaching how to maintain power using both reasoning and
experience: his reason delineates the theoretical aspects of the book (knowledge of the nature
of princes) while his experience accounts for the practical aspects of the book (rules which the
prince must follow in order to succeed).