Machiavelli to Descartes

Machiavelli offered a practical politics that emphasized image over reality: “it is not necessary for a prince to have all of the above-mentioned qualities, but it is very necessary for him to appear to have them. Furthermore, I will be so bold as to assert this: that practicing them, that all times is harmful; and appearing to have them is useful; for instance, to seem merciful, faithful, humane, forthright, religious, and [perhaps even] to be so; but his mind should be disposed in such a way that should it become necessary not to be so, he will be able and know how to change to the contrary.”

This reduction of politics reduced to a theater of power (the prince operating politically as Castiglione’s courtier did socially) fit neatly with Machiavelli’s own skeptical epistemology. As Giuseppe Mazzotta puts it, “Because one cannot trust appearances or public postures and discourses . . . one can only trust oneself.” Thus, Machiavelli’s skepticism limits “the knowledge of the external world” but also is “the triumph of private forms of knowledge over and above public discourse.”

With no certainty in appearance, one is forced inward to establish the foundations of knowledge. Machiavelli thus fosters Descartes’ retreat into “the inviolable interiority of oneself, into a philosophical garden, away from the turmoil and deceptions of history.”