Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-dfsvx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T15:57:47.378Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Farewell to Fortune

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2013

Abstract

Machiavelli's argument in chapter 25 of The Prince for resisting Fortune is no longer persuasive. The reason is that it is based on the outmoded Ptolemaic cosmology. With that cosmology long discarded, it is time to discard the political philosophy based on it. But discarding the political philosophy does not mean discarding the chapter. On the contrary, we should study the chapter with renewed diligence as part of the history of Machiavelli's political philosophy. The distinction between his political philosophy and the history of his political philosophy is critical here.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Croce, Benedetto, What Is Living and What Is Dead in the Philosophy of Hegel, trans. Ainslie, Douglas (London: Macmillan, 1915)Google Scholar.

2 Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, ed. Robbins, F. E. (London: Loeb Classical Library, 1980), xiiGoogle Scholar.

3 Machiavelli, Niccolò, Legazioni e commissarie, vol. 2, ed. Bertelli, Sergio (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1964)Google Scholar, 649n4 (hereafter Bertelli).

4 The text of Machiavelli's letter does not exist, but the text of Vespucci's reply is available. See Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, ed. Martelli, Mario (Florence: Sansoni, 1971), 1063–64Google Scholar (hereafter Martelli).

5 Martelli, 1164.

6 Savonarola, Contra astrologiam divinatricem (Venice, 1513), 10Google Scholar.

7 For a brief account of these debates, see Parel, A. J., The Machiavellian Cosmos (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 1125CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also Parel, Ptolémée et le chapitre 25 du Prince,” in L'enjeu Machiavel, ed. Sfez, Gérald and Senellart, Michel (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001), 1541CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Human Motions and Celestial Motions in Machiavelli's Historiography,” in Niccolo Machiavelli: Politico, storico, letterato, ed. Marchand, Jean-Jacques (Rome: Salerno, 1996), 363–88Google Scholar.

8 Roberto Ridolfi, Guicciardini's biographer, tells us how the learned historian carried with him for daily consultation “a quarto volume of hundreds of pages,” drawn up by his astrologer, in which the whole of his life, past and future, was examined (Ridolfi, The Life of Francesco Guicciardini, trans. Grayson, Cecil [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967], 5859Google Scholar). Even though in his Ricordi he expressed skepticism about astrology, in his Cose fiorentine he noted in the margins: “Consult the astrologers for the moment of the origin and building of Florence” (ibid., 60).

9 Machiavelli, Il principe, ed. Burd, L. Arthur, with an introduction by Lord Acton (Oxford: Clarendon, 1891; repr. 1968), 355Google Scholar.

10 Machiavelli, The Chief Works and Others, trans. Gilbert, Allan (Durham: Duke University Press, 1965), 1:406–7Google Scholar (hereafter Gilbert).

11 Gilbert, 3:1445.

12 Gilbert, 3:1461.

13 Gilbert, 2:747.

14 Tetrabiblos 2.117–19.

15 Ibid., 3.221.

16 Ibid., 2.161n1.

17 For Tedaldi's letter advising Machiavelli on the best time to attack Pisa, see his letter of 5 June 1509, in Martelli, 1107. Machiavelli actually entered Pisa on 8 June 1509—three days after Tedaldi had written his letter. See Ridolfi, R., The Life of Niccolo Machiavelli, trans. Grayson, Cecil (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 108Google Scholar.

18 Gilbert, 1:90.

19 For the text of the Ghiribizzi, see Gilbert, 2:895–97; Martelli, 1082–83.

20 Gilbert, 2:748.

21 Ibid., 748–49.

22 Hörnqvist, Mikael, Machiavelli and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 236, 239, 248, 252, 254. Italics in original.

23 Tetrabiblos 1.39.

24 Ibid., 4.451–53.

25 Cumont, Franz, Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans (New York: Dover, 1960), 61Google Scholar.

26 Bertelli, 2:912.

27 Bertelli, 1:353.

28 Gilbert, 2:897.

29 Discourses 3.9; Gilbert, 1:453.

30 Bertelli, 2:655.

31 Martelli, 948.

32 For an example of a nonhistorical interpretation of the term “impetuous,” see Hörnqvist, Machiavelli and Empire, 234–54.

33 Gilbert, 1:92.

34 Ibid., 1:453.

35 Ibid., 1:90.

36 Ibid., 1:92.

37 Chabod, Federico, Machiavelli and the Renaissance, trans. Moore, David (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), 2223Google Scholar.

38 For an example, see Pitkin, Hanna, Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolo Machiavelli (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 148–53Google Scholar.

39 Brown, Alison, The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Rahe, Paul, “In the Shadow of Lucretius: The Epicurean Foundations of Machiavelli's Political Thought,” History of Political Thought 28 (2007): 3055Google Scholar; and Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 3245Google Scholar.

41 Monsignor Jose Ruysschaert, the vice-prefect of the Vatican Library, brought to the attention of Sergio Bertelli and Franco Gaeta, then (1950s) working on the Feltrinelli edition of Machiavelli, the existence of this transcript (MS Rossi 884). Bertelli published two articles on the transcript in the Rivista storica italiana, in 1961 and 1964.

42 Brown, Return of Lucretius, 74.

43 Ibid., 74–75.

44 Ibid., 85.

45 Ibid.

46 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, ed. Rouse, W. H. D. (London: Loeb Classical Library, 1966)Google Scholar, 100n.

47 Bergson, Henri, The Philosophy of Poetry: The Genius of Lucretius, ed. Baskin, Wade (New York: Wisdom Library, 1959)Google Scholar, 17. Greenblatt, Stephen, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (New York: Norton, 2011), 188–89Google Scholar, gives an account of the meaning of the term “swerve,” but does not tell anything about its arbitrary and invented character.

48 Mansfield, Harvey Jr.'s translation, in Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 109Google Scholar.

49 It is also worth noting that recent secondary literature sees no link between Lucretius and Machiavelli. The relevant chapters of The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, ed. Gillespie, Stuart and Hardie, Philip (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, make no mention of Machiavelli—he is not even in the index. Neither Jill Kraye nor Quentin Skinner, in their magisterial articles in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Schmitt, Charles and Skinner, Quentin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, notices any influence of Lucretius on Machiavelli. Miles J. Unger, Machiavelli's most recent biographer, makes no mention of Lucretius either (Unger, Machiavelli: A Biography [New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011]Google Scholar). It is of course possible that these scholars missed something very important about Machiavelli and Lucretius; but the present state of our knowledge of the intellectual context of Machiavelli's thought does not support the view that the theory of atomic swerve had any influence on his philosophy of free will.

50 See, for example, Garin, Eugenio, Astrology in the Renaissance: The Zodiac of Life, trans. Jackson, Carolyn and Allen, June (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983)Google Scholar; Grafton, Anthony, Cardano's Cosmos: The World and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; and Westman, Robert S., The Copernican Revolution: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.