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An Anti-Modern History of Humanist Political Thought

2022; Penn State University Press; Volume: 31; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/goodsociety.31.1-2.0168

1538-9731

Gabriele Pedullà,

Political Theory and Influence

Since its publication, reviewers have not spared Virtue Politics compliments, and today, now some years later, it seems that all the appropriate expressions to congratulate James Hankins's research have already been used. In joining this well-deserved chorus of praise, I will therefore limit myself to adding just one thing: Hankins's volume is one of the rare books destined to mark a watershed, dividing scholarship on Renaissance political theory into a "before" and an "after." From now on, and for a long time, any scholar in this field will inevitably dialogue first and foremost with Virtue Politics.In the twentieth century, specialists have almost always portrayed early modern political thought as a clash between supporters of republics and principalities: on the one hand the lovers of freedom, on the other hand the preening propagandists of tyrannical despotism. This is essentially the thesis that underpins the two most widely read sketches of late medieval and Renaissance political theory: those by Quentin Skinner and Maurizio Viroli.1 In the last twenty years, however, other scholars have begun to challenge this interpretation, starting with Hankins himself, who played a decisive role in this true change of paradigm.2 Too many elements did not add up. First of all, the contrast between republics and principalities so dear to twentieth-century historians is nowhere to be found. Indeed, for the humanists the split runs rather between the righteous forms of government, indifferently republics and lordships, and the illegitimate rule of tyrants, who, instead of pursuing the common good, are concerned only with personal gain. This means, however, that—if it is not the institutions but the characters of those who rule that make the difference—great care must be taken in the education of those who are destined to hold public office by virtue of their illustrious births. Therefore, it is precisely toward such moralization of politics through pedagogy that the humanists directed their best efforts, with the aim of helping future leaders of any sort rid themselves of their selfish impulses thanks to the example of the ancients.Hankins's book is poised to become a classic and, because of its breadth and the large number of scarcely known authors it brings back to the attention of a wide community of scholars (not necessarily specialist of the Italian Quattrocento), it will also influence, by domino effect, our understanding of European intellectual history at least until the collapse of the Ancient Regime. The earthquake has just begun. The fact that the work of assimilation/discussion of Virtue Politics is destined to last a long time does not mean, however, that one should not start debating it immediately. To this end, I would like to raise three different issues, gradually shifting from the historical aspects to the book's implications for our present.A quick comparison with Skinner's The Foundations of Modern Political Thought easily shows that Hankins's research has no competition, in English or in any other language. No one has ever gone so deep into Italy's early modern political thought. There are three chapters on Francesco Petrarca, Leonardo Bruni, and Niccolò Machiavelli each; other monographic chapters are devoted to Giovanni Boccaccio, Flavio Biondo, Leon Battista Alberti, Cyriac of Ancona, Georg of Trebizond, Francesco Filelfo, and Francesco Patrizi, while Coluccio Salutati, Poggio Bracciolini, the Decembrios, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Lorenzo Valla, Roberto Valturio and Bartolomeo Platina are often evoked in the book. The focus is on the most characteristic feature of humanistic thought: what Hankins has rightly labeled precisely "virtue politics." However, Hankins could not resist drawing attention also to other issues, works, and authors that are less relevant to the book's principal line of thought, like in the chapters on Cyriac of Ancona and Georg of Trebizond (but this is true at least partly for those on Filelfo and Greek constitutional theory as well). The many nonspecialists who have begun to discover the importance of fifteenth-century Italian thought thanks to Virtue Politics could therefore easily take it for a comprehensive overview of humanist political theory. Yet this would be an error: despite its unparalleled richness, Hankins never intended his monograph to be a full survey of Italian early Renaissance political thought from Petrarch to Machiavelli—and readers should not be mistaken on this point.What is missing? One major absence prevents Virtue Politics from being the full history of humanistic political thought that no one has written yet: the great flowering in the Naples of the second half of the fifteenth century I once called "the second wave" of humanistic political theory.3 The new Aragonese dynasty, having emerged victorious from a long civil war in 1442, had more need than any other political power in the peninsula for solid arguments that would legitimize its rule over Naples, and to this very end it enlisted some of the best humanists of the time, who greatly contributed to a flourishing of Southern culture in all fields. This is also why, in the fifty years up to the collapse of the Italian political equilibrium, at the time of Charles VIII's expedition (1494), we count so many political treatises of great importance and wide European circulation: from Panormita's De dictis et factis Alphonsi regis to Francesco Patrizi, who, after the death of his patron Pius II, chose Gaeta (the city of which he was bishop) as his permanent residence, and here he completed his De institutione reipublicae and composed his De institutione regis in its entirety.4 It was an exceptional season for political theorizing, very likely the highpoint of the century, even without considering the other literary genres where politics played an important role, such as oratory and historiography.5The achievement of Neapolitan political thought at the time, however, is linked above all to the figure of Giovanni Pontano. An Umbrian by birth, Pontano experienced a resounding career at the top of the Aragonese state, combining his position as a secretary of the king with his huge literary production in verse and prose. His writings include several political treatises, from a De principe and a De obedientia (designed to circulate together) to a sequence of short writings on various social virtues (De liberalitate, De beneficentia, De magnificentia, De splendore, De conviventia), plus a diptych on the complementary couple political wisdom/fortune (De prudentia and De fortuna), two books on two typically princely qualities such as resilience in misfortunes and high-mindedness (De fortitudine and De magnanimitate), and finally an analysis of "inhumanity" (De inmanitate), that is, the fury into which politicians inadequately supported by humanistic studies are likely to fall.Even this simple list is enough to highlight how Pontano possesses all the elements to feature prominently in Hankins's narrative (from the ideal portrait of the humanist prince to the vindication of classical culture as the best antidote to the passions that lead to bestiality), but even more so when one considers that his highly original analysis of the virtues represented a real turning point in the fifteenth-century approach to social ties and political bonds.6 On the contrary, his name is barely mentioned in Virtue Politics. Given the richness of Hankins's book, this would not be a problem (there is just so much!), if it were not for the fact that such an absence risks affecting his overall interpretation. In the history of Italian humanism Pontano embodies the moment of full maturity, when the now victorious classicizing movement was able to successfully encompass even cultural traditions initially opposed to it. By the mid-fourteenth century, Petrarch had formulated the program of recovering antiquity in open polemic with the culture of the universities, frontally attacking jurisprudence and scholastic philosophy in the name (as he wrote) of a culture that would no longer limit itself to defining virtue, but would be able to stimulate it in men (pp. 8–14). More than a century later, from a position of strength, Pontano, on the other hand, no longer has a problem drawing on the disciplines condemned by the early humanists, and in his treatises describes analytically virtues that had never been inspected by the ancients, applying the Aristotelian (and Scholastic) principle of the golden mean to new fields (even devising appropriate neologisms for the newly discovered vices and features)7 and illustrating his theories with a large number of examples taken from the ancient historians (especially Plutarch).Something similar is also true for legal culture. Despite disciplinary competition, humanists had shown in the past that they were able to put the teachings of jurisprudence to good use, as in their frequent recourse to Bartolus of Saxoferrato's reflection on the tyrant (from Coluccio Salutati to the controversy between Guarino Guarini and Poggio Bracciolini on Caesar and Scipio8). The case of Pontano is the most glaring of all, however, since especially his De obedientia presupposes in-depth knowledge of Roman law in order to addresses the question of the subjects' duties toward their sovereign.In both cases, the fact that a key figure in the history of humanistic virtue politics such as Pontano could draw on scholasticism and jurisprudence complicates the picture drawn by Hankins, who—adopting Petrarch's perspective—presents humanism as inherently hostile to legal culture and in the concluding chapter goes so far as to call for a return to virtue politics precisely as a corrective to the "progressive lawyerization of Western governments, which exceeded (and still exceeds) in scope that of any other historical civilization" (503).9 Pontano offers some reasons to believe instead that political humanism was a phenomenon even more layered, multifaced, and malleable than the chapters on Cyriac, Georg of Trebisond, Filelfo, and Greek constitutional theory (305–17, 335–85) already suggest. Had Hankins included him and the other Neapolitans in his book, the whole narrative would likely look a bit different.My main disagreement with Hankins concerns the characterization of political humanism as a form of meritocracy. This is an important issue, not least because of its implications for today, and one on which, already in the past, I have expressed my doubts while discussing Hankins's previous essays.10 Many objections can be raised—from the most basic to the most complex. Despite Vittorino da Feltre's Ca' Zoiosa, the admission of exceptionally gifted children to the schools of the humanists remained more exceptional than one would think from Virtue Politics.11 In the communes, the spread of the new classicizing culture always coincided with (and actively favored) an oligarchic closure (the opposite of a meritocratic selection).12 More in general, the humanists seemed to be highly aware that their spectacular success depended on the endorsement of traditional ruling elites, who saw in the new classicizing culture an important source of legitimacy, in troubled times when medieval political institutions were under attack and hereditary titles did not seem to work anymore by themselves (a historical argument not to be confused with the Marxist thesis that any political theory is but the defense of the interest of a given class).My objection, however, is more general. In my view, the humanists could not promote a meritocratic project because they lacked a fundamental assumption: the (typically modern) belief in an (at least partial) original equality of conditions and opportunities that is the prerequisite for any argument in favor of the selection of the best. When, even hypothetically speaking, only some contenders have no access to a fair competition, you cannot have meritocracy by definition: and this is precisely the case of fifteenth-century Italy, where the only two ways for a young boy coming from a poor family to climb the social ladder to the highest levels were either through the ranks of the Church or by serving as a soldier in a mercenary army. This principle was universally accepted. For instance, in the last decades, historical research has demonstrated that even in fifteenth-century communes there was not a single libertas for all (as an abstract principle), but many unequal libertates, depending on the particular privileges accorded to each subject; every citizen entered the public arena with a previous familiar history which made him different from anybody else and conditioned his subsequent rights (libertates) and duties (officia) in front of the community (this is also the reason why, while we the modern speak of liberty in general, Renaissance authors preferred to specify it as much as possible: the freedom of the Church, of Italy, of the citizens, of the city, of the people . . .); moreover, such a multiplicity of different legal conditions was considered perfectly acceptable because it was believed to reflect the cosmos' hierarchical order itself. In such a legal framework, not every citizen could aspire to the same roles, and justice was achieved when everybody was recognized with the public position he was entitled to in accord with his social rank (dignitas) and personal qualities (virtus), not with personal qualities alone.13The humanists were perfectly consistent with this anti-egalitarian vision. Patrizi praised the exclusion of the poor and the humble from the offices with two elegant similes:Pontano explicitly took position against the common citizens' aspiration to take part in political life because he judged them inferior by birth:Even Bruni extolled the Romans' presumed habit of using Latin in public gatherings so that the plebeians (who, in his view, spoke only Italian, like in his own times) could not follow the speech in detail and create problems:In this framework I do not see any room for political meritocracy—at least, in the current meaning of the word. Instead, I see an application of the classical, medieval, and humanistic principle of aequabilitas, that is, equability, which gives to everybody according to his different position in the society and carefully preserves differences that precede individual merit because, at the beginning it values family status more than anything else. Personal virtue can clearly play a role here too, but only later, for it will determine, for example, who—among the members of richest families—will occupy the highest ranks of the city, although this remains just a secondary element because the citizens' public role will depend on their dignitas in the first place. And anyone who lacks dignitas will be excluded from the offices regardless his personal qualities.In my understanding, the humanists' insistence on virtue plays a different function. Petrarch, Bruni, Bracciolini, Patrizi, Pontano, and so on, were not concerned with the selection of the best possible leaders in absolute (like in Plato's Republic, where the children are raised together by the whole community and everybody is perfectly equal at the beginning, even if later only the most gifted will be called to rule the polis), but with the best education of the predestined leaders of tomorrow, to be selected within the boundaries of the traditional ruling class. According to the humanists, schooling the scions of the principal families through the constant reading of the classics will ensure the quality of their future tenure, and that will make the difference for the whole community, because good princes (and good oligarchies) found libraries, universities, and hospitals, promote public charity and protect the weak, while their wicked counterparts spend their lives in parties and banquets and waste their resources on dogs, horses, and courtesans. No doubt: the humanists were right, pedagogy matters. But pedagogy of the elites has nothing to do with meritocracy, because, while in a truly meritocratic society primacy at least hypothetically derives from individual talent, the humanists were only concerned about making the likely rulers-to-be as virtuous as possible. Speaking of meritocracy for fifteenth-century hierarchical society seems therefore a perfect example of evaluative redescription—what ancient rhetoric called a paradiastolé and people label today as a euphemism.In a passage quoted also by Hankins (who presents it as a kind of humanist virtue politics manifesto at p. 42), the teacher Pier Paolo Vergerio affirms very clearly that education in the humanae litterae should work as a strong justification of the elite's preeminence by improving the skills and morality of their upcoming members:First, you have your social dignitas; then, you are called to show that you deserve it by proving that you are truly dignus. Even if there is a clear circularity, the process starts with a social distinction inscribed in family political power, clan status, and wealth, and humanism comes into play only later, in order to legitimate pre-existing ascendency a posteriori.18Erasmus too is especially candid on this point in his Institutio principis christiani (I.5): "In the case of hereditary succession of princes [. . .], the chief hope for a good prince is from his education, which should be especially looked to. In this way the interest in his education will compensate for the loss of the right of election."19 Humanists became obsessed with the pedagogy of the rulers (princes and republican oligarchy) precisely because Renaissance institutions were—at best—only very partially meritocratic (and often not at all, as in the case of hereditary titles and lordship). Therefore, one might even be tempted to reverse Hankins's reading and conclude that it was premodern limited social mobility that made virtue politics so necessary in order to compensate for the impossibility of freely choosing the best leaders.Virtue Politics is not just an impressive reconstruction of two centuries of Italian political thought. Differently from his previous books, Hankins is not only speaking as an intellectual historian here. Modern life is out of joint: and in his view fifteenth-century authors could help today's disoriented liberal-democracies to find, or maybe to recover, the right path.According to Hankins, at a certain point Western politics lost its soul, and Virtue Politics traces a grand narrative of triumph and decadence that will probably recall to many that proposed by Leo Strauss. The German American scholar is mentioned just twice in the book, but his antimodern approach to the history of political thought certainly constitutes one of Hankins's main sources of inspiration. For both of them, modernity represents a fall from a condition of excellence located in the past: in the Athens of Socrates's disciples for Strauss; for Hankins, in those humanists who, in many respects, can be considered their descendants. And, again for both of them, the fall is associated with the same figure: Niccolò Machiavelli, who is reproached for having substituted the education to virtue of the few with the government of the masses through necessity, that is, fear.20I completely agree with Hankins on this point: contrary to what is assumed by Skinner and the Cambridge School, Machiavelli was raised as a humanist, but he marked a major break in the history of political thought by refusing the classical philosophical-rhetorical tradition and its modern followers. Given his pro-popular sympathies, it is hardly surprising that Machiavelli hated virtue politics for its patent elitist implications. However, Machiavelli did not criticize the humanists only for their oligarchic penchant, but also because in his view the humanist's political-pedagogical project had always failed and was destined to fail again in the future. Much of his work rotates around this question in one way or another. I will try to explain why his arguments have not lost their strength in the last 500 years (and then why, in my opinion, we do not need virtue politics back).Throughout the fifteenth century humanists had often argued that there were two types of individuals: on the one hand, women, children, and manual laborers: preys of their irrational appetites, unfit for education, and therefore incapable of ruling over others because they were first incapable of ruling over themselves; on the other hand, a small company of adult males in the fullness of their mental faculties, freed from the passions thanks to extensive training in the classics, and for this reason capable of managing public affairs in the name of the common good and not in view of their own particular interest, without any need for supervision by others, much less by laws. Bracciolini is very explicit in this regard (and, tellingly, he too insists on natural differences):In his writings Machiavelli did not merely denounce the violently oligarchic nature of such a refusal of any public control for the wise few, but—against the humanists like Bracciolini—repeatedly sought to prove wrong the idea that education can successfully replace the threat of punishment for those who had the best teachers and excelled in their studies. With Machiavelli (who always championed a full accountability of republican officers) there is no room for double standards anymore.22 Simply, in his view, when tested, experience shows that in the absence of an external restraint even the most gifted pupils of the humanists give in to temptation anyway: self-moderation is not enough, or at least it is unwise to make a state's freedom depend on it alone. For every Scipio the African, there are hundreds or thousands of other political leaders unable to resist desire despite the excellent lessons of the best teachers. As Machiavelli writes, men "will always turn out wicked for you if they are not made by some necessity to be good"; indeed, not even the knowledgeable few make an exception, because citizens of any sort and princes "all err equally when they all can err without fear"."To presume that all men are evil," as Machiavelli invites his readers to do (Discourses I.3), does not mean however that all men are necessarily malicious, but only that a prudent politician will never entrust his projects to others' good disposition, relying on their willingness (and ability) to defuse the antisocial charge of "appetites." In short, Machiavelli does not deny that men can rationally control their own desires, nor that there are individuals for whom the philosophical-rhetorical therapy of the humanities can be effective, but he suggests that one should not place his full trust in it. Every time the humanists' disciples have taken over the rule of the state, they have shown that, in the absence of good institutions (i.e., in the absence of outside control), they do not behave less egoistically than those who have not enjoyed their high-priced education. It is therefore necessary to take a different path, resorting to the threat of law for all (and even using minor vices to correct major ones).23As Hankins rightly points out, Machiavelli's dismissal of virtue politics is rooted in the disastrous tenures of the Italian princes and republican elites in 1494 and in the subsequent years, when both showed "cowardice," "pragmatism," and "self-serving opportunism" (426–29). Yet Hankins does not mention what Machiavelli considered as their main faults: their political ineptitude and their arrogance toward their subjects and their fellow citizens. The two aspects are strictly connected in The Prince. Besides their lack of military skills (which Machiavelli traces back to the humanists' teaching too), the voracious and scornful Italian rulers had not been able to win the affection of their subjects. Thus, when war ignited Italy and their people turned their backs on them, provoking the fall of the most powerful states, the humanists were to blame for that, too.Such a disastrous conclusion was even more shocking because there was no shortage of great teachers in the second half of the fifteenth century, and the task of educating a new generation of leaders had been undertaken by the very best of them with the highest hopes. Piero de Medici (who would be expelled from Florence and die in exile) was raised by the greatest poet-philologist of his time, Angelo Poliziano. Alfonso II of Naples (who would abdicate and flee in front of the menacing French army, carrying away the whole treasure of the kingdom to Sicily) spent his whole life in the company of his teacher Pontano. Ludovico Sforza (who would lose the Duchy of Milan and die in prison) at the age of eleven surprised his family with an elegant Latin oration written in his own hand and recited quite eloquently (the episode was famous at the time). But when actual politics tested their skills and morality, they were all wiped away by the much less cultivated French and Spanish pairs (true barbarians for the Italian high educational standards).Virtue politics made the Italian princes neither more morally virtuous nor more politically proficient. The better the teacher, the worse the outcome, one could even say reviewing their actions. Therefore, it is not surprising that even an (atypical) virtue politics humanist like Antonio Galateo, after the fall of the Kingdom of Naples, derided his own dream of influencing the rulers' mores in his bitter comic dialogue Eremita (composed in 1496–98 in imitation of Lucian), where the turbulent relationship between Saint John the Baptist and Herod Antipas is employed to encapsulate the failure of virtue politics (Saint John was beheaded by Herod).24In his harsh criticism Machiavelli was not alone among his contemporaries, just more consequent and radical: he clearly saw better the cause of the collapse and proposed a completely different remedy. However, despite the bad showing of the Italian princes, after 1494 humanism and virtue politics conquered Europe all the same, for when there is no alternative to hereditary succession—to quote Erasmus's line again—"the chief hope for a good prince is from his education" (virtue politics is then a sort of second best). After all, the Jesuits' ratio studiorum was nothing but Christianized virtue politics, while similar teaching programs of the elites imposed themselves everywhere in the Reformed countries too.25 Machiavelli's objections inspired, however, an alternative tradition of thought. It took time, but in the long run—educational failure after educational failure—political theorists started thinking that, if pedagogy alone was not enough and so often proved to be completely impotent, maybe it was time to try something new, hitting the problem at its roots. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote after four centuries of virtue politics–inspired schooling of the Western elites: "Great pains are taken, so they say, to teach young princes the art of ruling: it does not seem that this education profits them."26Political modernity was born (also) from the gigantic failure of virtue politics. Given the scarce results of humanist training of the elites, Machiavelli's disciples started devising a way to make artificially virtuous in the public arena both those who have received the best tutoring and those who have not, since one as well as the other is subject to the force of desire and even the best are in danger of forgetting the noble principles to which they were educated. This is what institutions are for, with their system of checks and balances and the beneficial threat of punishment for all the transgressors. To quote a great Machiavellian, James Madison: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary" (The Federalist 51, 1788). But men do not put on wings even when they benefit from the most accomplished instruction: and perhaps, contrary to what the humanists thought, they do not need to in order to live peacefully and fruitfully together.In the footsteps of Machiavelli, modern thinkers simply stopped believing in men turned into angels. The important point here is that virtue politics is not a solution for our problems not just because of its blatant antidemocratic (and even antimeritocratic) implications. Virtue politics is not a solution because it never worked and it never will—unless human beings become something completely different (what, in many centuries of humanist pedagogy, the tutors of the princes and the ruling elites never proved to be able to do). In the light of virtue politics' inability to fulfill its promises, even pro-aristocratic thinkers like Algernon Sidney or Montesquieu increasingly shifted their attention from the education of the future rulers to the mechanics of the institutions.If the humanists' program failed so many times, why should we reclaim its legacy now? Of course, I am ready to endorse at least a minimal version of Hankins's recommendation for virtue politics. After all, remnants of humanist curricula are still with us and prove to be very precious in many respects; for instance, I live in a fortunate country where in 2022–23 6 percent of the whole population still studies Latin and Greek in high school and 15 percent Latin alone (although, I have to say, without remarkable influence on the Italians' public morality and civic behaviors). Good laws and good mores are strictly connected—yes (and Machiavelli too would approve). As the saying goes, Quid leges sine moribus vanae proficiunt?, that is, "What use are all these empty laws without the behavior that should accompany them?" (Horace, Odes, III.24). Yet, if I must choose just one, I will side with the moderns: we need both, but good institutions come first, because good institutions nurture virtuous behaviors, while individual virtue itself has less power to generate good institutions (for, after Giambattista Vico, we the moderns do not believe in legendary lawgivers either). And, I would add, the education that we badly crave in our democratic societies is the education of the many—not just the education of the few leaders-to-be.Hankins, on the contrary, strongly advocates a return to the ancients. His theoretical arguments in favor of virtue politics are always original and often powerful, and they are already having a fair amount of appeal, also in Italy now that the book has appeared in translation. But I still have doubts about the desirability of such a revival: and I think that it would not be respectful of Hankins's ambitious political and intellectual project to minimize our disagreement on the relevance of humanist theory today because of my admiration for the extraordinary scholarly achievement that is Virtue Politics.