The Prince

If you could choose one classic book as a beautiful example of anti-Stoic thought, what would you choose?

Maybe it's just because I recently read it, but my choice would be Machiavelli's The Prince.  It's famous for being the quintessential book of realpolitik.  The book is a manual of how to obtain and then hold power.  Very few qualms about morality appear in the book, it is just about practices that are effective and ineffective.

There are a few interesting quotes that I think would be interesting to a Stoic audience.  He has a few things to say on chance, for instance:

I say that a prince may seem happy today and ruined tomorrow without having shown any change of disposition or character.  This, I believe, arises firstly from causes that have already been discussed at length, namely, that the prince who relies entirely on fortune is lost when it changes.

Everyone, regardless of philosophy, would agree this is true.  The Stoics would say that because of the caprices of chance, we should only treasure what is free from the reach of fate: our logic and morality.  Machiavelli, though, views those that can be undone by chance as merely not clever enough. When fortune changes, you have to change with it, or else fortune will overcome you.  Machiavelli, then, wants to fight fortune, while the Stoics wish to ignore it.

The fundamental problem, though, is that the world of Machiavelli is zero-sum.  One person cannot gain power without another losing it.  Not so for the Stoics, and in fact quite the opposite.  If you gain wisdom and the ability to transcend your position in life through philosophy, I am actually more likely to do so as well, since you can help me.  Therefore, at the least we can say that Machiavelli's advice is not for everyone.

I think a case can be made that his advice is moral.  After all, Machiavelli promotes effective leadership.  Imagine living in an Italian city centuries ago.  If your ruler was an effective leader, your life may be peaceful and prosperous.  If not, chaos and war could follow from your leader's follies.  The morality of a ruler is different than other morality.  Your duty is to your subjects.  Sometimes that means you have to betray people, or punish some severely so that rest can benefit, or destroy the family who may eventually plot to overthrow you.  Maybe the ends just the means.

Maybe.  It's all quite dubious to me.  Regardless, I have no real power, and am unlikely to get it.  The Stoic philosophy seems much more appropriate to me, since it is the philosophy of powerlessness itself.

One more interesting point from the book: he actually talks about Marcus Aurelius.  Marcus the Philosopher, as he calls him, was a pretty nice emperor.  But he could only be nice, Machiavelli claims, because he was born into the title of emperor.  Things would be quite different if he had to fight for it.

From these causes it arose that Marcus, Pertinax, and Alexander, being all men of modest life, lovers of justice, enemies to cruelty, humane, and benignant, came to a sad end except Marcus; he alone lived and died honored, because he had succeeded to the throne by hereditary title, and owed nothing either to the soldiers or the people; and afterwards, being possessed of many virtues which made him respected, he always kept both orders in their places whilst he lived, and was neither hated nor despised.

Machiavelli goes on to talk about the sins of Marcus's son Commodus, as well as other issues with Roman emperors.  Reading Machiavelli's praise of Marcus is amusing, especially for the idea that his success was so conditional on the circumstances under which he received the throne. Perhaps Marcus would answer that by saying that if that wasn't so, he'd just be a good man, and whether he was a successful emperor, an unsuccessful emperor, or not an emperor at all is unimportant.

With that in mind, I leave you with Machiavelli's description of Pertinax, who succeeded Commodus.  Think about what is written here, and what you would do if you were Pertinax.

But Pertinax was created emperor against the wishes of the soldiers, who, being accustomed to live licentiously under Commodus, could not endure the honest life to which Pertinax wished to reduce them; thus, having given cause for hatred, to which hatred there was added contempt for his old age, he was overthrown at the very beginning of his administration.  And here it should be noted that hatred is acquired as much by good works as by bad ones, therefore, as I said before, a prince wishing to keep his state is very often forced to do evil; for when that body is corrupt whom you think you need of to maintain yourself - it may be either the people or the soldiers or the nobles - you have to submit to its humors and to gratify them, and then good works will do you harm.