Reading Machiavelli in Tehran: Beyond the Theological- Political
Ramin Jahanbegloo

Why bother reading Machiavelli today? Why reading The Prince or The Discourses in Iran? It is, after all, exactly 500 years day by day since The Prince was written by Machiavelli in 1505. One simple answer is that Machiavelli is the founder of modern political philosophy. Another answer is that he is the first political theorist of a disenchanted world in which the individual stands alone without God, with no motives and purposes except those supplied by his own subjectivity. This is perhaps closer to our concerns in Iran. What is most relevant in Machiavelli’s thought to us is not only his new science of statecraft, but what one can call an “un-Machiavellian Machiavelli”. It is precisely at this point that a non-Machiavellian reading of Machiavelli should start. Machiavelli was no Machiavellian, nor Machiavellians are acute and aware readers of Machiavelli. Of course, it is difficult to avoid seeing the man through the work of a long line of commentators, and imputing to him the theories which have been adduced at later times in order to explain his thought. It is essential to discover where lay the peculiar genius of the man, and to find out in which way his attitude is ours in regard to our political passions. Machiavelli is admittedly ours. He does not speak past us, from another time and another culture. He challenges us from within our world, and the challenge he poses is total.

In truth, what Machiavelli’s analysis throws into relief is the political condition itself. If human beings stop overlooking the place of fortune in their affairs and recognized their limited powers to establish political institutions and to ensure themselves against the caprice of time and chance, they could throw their weight on the side of political life animated by civic spiritedness. Politics orients itself towards action and for action to be possible, men must play their part. There is a possibility of a new beginning insofar as human s act together politically, which is Machiavelli’s deepest conviction. Politics so conceived is, of course, subject to all the ambiguities of political action. Today in a time when ideological politics is discredited and when globalization has thawed frozen political systems, many consider political action as an unpleasant burden. Others try through politics to inculcate a univocal and monolithic sense of the public good in citizens. Thus the “public thing” (the res publica ) is in constant danger of being overwhelmed by enemies of freedom, or by citizens’ forgetfulness of their responsibilities. The former possibility is the political fate of religious fundamentalisms in our world, as for the latter, it could be defined in terms of the Western experience of “thoughtless” politics developed in an increasingly private and materialistic terms of the pursuit of happiness.

What distinguishes Machiavelli from the politicians of our time is that he does not appear at the head of a party in the name of the universal class or race or on behalf of humanity. For him, there are no standards above politics. In other words, Machiavelli’s political thought is on principle hostile to partisan claims, which mislead any politician or simple citizen who take them seriously. This is to say that instead of believing in the efficacy of self-interest, as it is the case today with many politicians, Machiavelli believed in the power of virtu. But this virtu was in him before getting distributed to the princes he advised and the people he described. For Machiavelli, virtu does not consist in having a virtuous character, as for Aristotle. “Virtu” here is a quality of human art which enables its actual possessor to perform acts conducive to the good of the political organization of the society. Far from being an Aristotelian phronesis, the Machiavelli’s concept of virtu refers to the ability which enables a private person to become most public of all persons, the founder of a political entity. The main idea here is that the foundation and transformation of politics occurs through the human exercise of the powers of choice. And as for political choice, it is a way of fighting superfluity in politics, if it is true that we choose politically only from the inner world of public realm and only when we are in the company of other people. What does follow from this is that we make ourselves what we are through our political choices. On the other hand, in light of the unpredictability of politics, which underscores our uncertainty about the future, the renewable meaning of foundational and initiating action is the only thing that can offer human beings a way out of contingency and relativism.

As we can see the original character of Machiavelli’s political thought emerges by contrast to Aristotle’s conception of the best regime. Machiavelli opposes his idea of indirect government to the classical notion of direct regime (politeia) as presented in the third book of Aristotle’s Politics and known to him from Livy and Polybius. The best regime, which is the theme of classical political philosophy does not exist according to Machiavelli, neither does the natural right that would be required to elaborate the best regime. This is to say that Machiavelli’s concern is with actual regimes and not with the common good. Also, Machiavelli abandons the Greek classification of six regimes and adopts the roman tradition of the distinction between republics and principalities. But in making use of this distinction, he affirms that politics is too varied to be determined by human nature. The fundamental fact for Machiavelli does not reside in the question “Who rules?” but in the question “How one rules?”. When a founder makes a regime entirely anew so as to acquire glory for himself, he incidentally believes that “the true political way of life and the true quiet of a city” would prevail. It is Machiavelli’s argument that human things are in motion and therefore human affairs must rise or sink. Change cannot be avoided but the political skill of men must be devoted to make themselves safe within this change. However, adds Machiavelli, “Men cannot make themselves safe without power”. This is why he suggests an expansion of human power. Instead of using the model of six classical governments to signify the circular inevitability of good and bad in politics, Machiavelli calls for a “perpetual republic” as the condition of progress of all mankind. By “perpetual republic” he understands the expansion of the power of execution. Since nature gives men knowledge without the faculty of execution, men must execute on their own, they must not wait for help from God or nature. God or nature not helping men to execute power, therefore no natural law or natural right are behind the sphere of politics. In other words, the modern doctrine of sovereignty begins in Machiavelli’s appropriation of the power that men had been said to exercise in executing God’s will. By using his concept of “stato”, Machiavelli creates a fundamental challenge to the tradition of the theological-political. Even if stato is always the advantage of someone or a group of people over others, Machiavelli’s state is yet impersonal. The arte dello stato that Machiavelli says that he has been studying for 15 years in the letter of December 10, 1513 to Francesco Vettori, is the impersonal art of maintaining power. For Machiavelli, lo stato (the state) is the arena of stability which humans can construct as a defense against the natural changeability of circumstances. As Machiavelli presents it clearly in his Florentine Histories (II,I): “ unhealthy countries become healthy by means of a multitude of men that seizes them at a stroke; they cleanse the earth by cultivation and purge the airs with fires, things that nature could never provide”. In addition to this, in the best-known lines of The Prince ( chapter 7), Machiavelli assets “that the principal foundations all states have, new ones as well as old or mixed, are good laws and good arms”. In other words, according to Machiavelli, the true founders, deserving the highest praise, combine force and law. The control over unforeseen events thus requires both good laws and good arms. However, while law is not sufficient by itself, for the reason that “all unarmed prophets fail”, force also has only limited efficacy. The state, then, is ought to be the domain of stability in the chaotic realm of natural changes and human passions. So unlike the classics, Machiavelli believes that politics is an unnatural body created by human art. To understand this point , one has to bear in mind that Machiavelli’s political theory presents itself as “secular” and this-worldly, moreover, its practical application entails a new ontological dimension. This new political ontology opened by Machiavelli can thus be viewed as a moment of transition to modernity. Machiavelli foresees the basic principles of modernity without abandoning the wisdom of the ancients. When Machiavelli remarks in the dedication to The Prince that his knowledge is based on “long experience with modern things and a continuous reading of ancient ones”, he implies that knowledge of the antiquity is relevant to modern times. Machiavelli explains his focus on ancient things as an attempt to show that his contemporaries are wrong to believe that the pagan Romans are impossible to imitate. Yet, one must not forget that even if Machiavelli places the prudential rules of the ancients for the intelligent leader, unlike Hobbes he does not replace traditional Christian thinking as the foundation of political obedience. Without entering into details, it should suffice to contrast the way Hobbes and Machiavelli utilize the biblical texts. In The Prince, the account of Moses in Exodus is used to provide an exemplar of the entirely new prince as a human leader. In parts 3 and 4 of Leviathan, Hobbes tries to show that his political theory is consistent with the biblical texts if they are read as humanly written. This is to say, that Machiavelli’s secularism could be understood in his way of understanding religion as a practical instrument in the hand of the political leaders. Machiavelli understands religion not as a yearning for perfection in God but rather as an attempt to control chance. According to Machiavelli, religion is a weakness that can bring strength to the leaders. Since men fear God and ask for his mercy, this is also a way for asking the mercy of virtuous men without feeling the need to directly do so. Therefore,religion empowers those who claim to have a knowledge of the other world, for only those can guide a fearful man to perform the actions which will lead him to redemption of his human condition – and, therefore, to the end of fear. Thus Machiavelli sees religion as a weakness that can be manipulated by the virtuous leader. This appropriation of religion is operated by the instrumentalization of men’s religious belief. Therefore, Machiavelli goes beyond the logic of theological-political and appropriates religion as an instrument of state-building. He frees human morality and human political from under the shadow of God. Such a view clearly implies that for Machiavelli the foundations of political morality are secular. The Machiavellian world is an order which values only action; it is a vita activa and not a vita contemplativa. It is a sphere of action where men are forced to leave their old way of life and make a new life. It is a world of political beginnings. The sphere of beginning leads, then, to the question of the scope and use of human choice. The central question here is that of the self-constitution of the political as the moment of beginning of the state. For Machiavelli, the ends of political life are the foundation and the holding of the res publica , or in other words the stability of the state and the maintenance of order and general prosperity. The only possibility consistent with such situation would be the formation and education of a new elite, capable of understanding the complexities of modern politics. It should be recalled that for Machiavelli, there are three kinds of intelligence: “one that understands by itself, another that discerns what others understand, the third that understands neither by itself nor through others” (The Prince, chapter 22). Machiavelli seems to counsel the political elite that “discern what others understand”. One way of maintaining control of the political entity is to institute a secular form of government. This would allow the elite to govern without being morally bound to religious precepts. Machiavelli actively promoted a secular form of politics, because according to him a secular form of government is a more realistic type of political invention. Through Machiavelli, one comes to realize that what is essential about the political is actually contained in its republican form, in the republic as the "rule of law," and not in its princely form. The primary question here concerns that of the production of the political itself. The analysis of the relation between constituent power and constituted power. In thinking about the self-institution of the political from the horizon of the eventual Machiavelli seeks the way to overcome the two fundamental theoretical limits of the logic of the theological-political : its lack of a theory of the political ; and it does not rely on a history of events. Machiavelli returns to the pagans beyond the onto-theological in order to find a way to conceive of history in terms of a political theory of events, where these events are thought of as the encounter of the political with the real movement of the society.

It is not too much to say that with Machiavelli the European political thought reaches at certain points an extraordinary emancipation from religious authority and medieval conception of man. But in order to free his world from the tyranny of the past and from the dominion of the medieval writings, Machiavelli consults the ancient world. Further than this, for Machiavelli to consult the classics is not only a great intellectual adventure, but also a way of equalling perhaps the political achievements and the philosophical prowess of the ancient days. Thes ideas upon the classical world and the historical process are the philosophical background which gives a true originality to the work of Machiavelli. In the light of them and the conclusions arrived at by Machiavelli, it becomes the more remarkable that reading his writings in Tehran would help us to understand the Machiavellian idea of “beginning in politics” as a way of leaving behind our own Machiavellism. We cannot see the true character of Machiavelli’s thought unless we free ourselves from the influence of Machiavellism in our own history. To do justice to Machiavelli in Iran and to have a better understanding of his views we need to look back to the Iranian tradition of Machiavellism and to reflect on the political teachings of its representatives.

Perhaps the most towering figure in the Iranian tradition of Machiavelism is Nizam al-Mulk Tusi who was a well-known minister of the Saljuk king Sultan Malek Shah. Nizam-Al-Mulk drew up a set of protocols for the governance of the empire called the Siyasat Nameh, the two most influential institutions of which were the offices of atabeg, and the right of iqta. Atabegs were military advisers to young princes who frequently ended up usurping the power entrusted to them, while iqta was a grant of the income from land to an official who was entrusted with its running. In theory no ownership in the land passed but in practice large hereditary estates developed. Both these institutions led to a massive decentralization of power and this in turn facilitated and prolonged the factional fighting which characterized the Seljuk period of power. The Book of Government is a voluminous treatise on kingship in which Nizam Al- Mulk undermines the authority of the Abbasid Caliph and renews the ancient Persian claim of divine authority of the kings. It is said that in the year 1091 Sultan Malek Shah instructed some of his dignitaries to write down the principles of political conduct that were followed by kings in the past and were required to be observed by himself. The political treatise of Nizam Al- Mulk among the works presented to the Sultan was the only one which was approved and adopted as a guide. As in the case of Machiavelli, 400 years later, who relates his theory of political action with the cyclical thery of history, the political maxims which Nizam Al-Mulk lays down as the guiding principles for the successful administration of the State, are, in fact, induced from the study of history. For Nizam Al-Mulk, any event which ever happens to take place in the world has occurred already several times. Nizam Al-Mulks historical methodology goes from the present to the past and not the reverse. As a matter of fact, he first draws conclusions from the observations of the conditions around him and then turns them back to the past. Therefore, the treatment ofhistory squares well with the object of hois political theory which is to theorize the institution of kingship in Iran. This makes us to look upon Nizam Al-Mulk’s Siyasat Nameh as the first rational exposition of the Persian political theory. From the very first paragraph of his book Nizam Al-Mulk takes it for granted that the real source from which the king derives his authority, in theory and practice, is not the institution of the Caiphate. He puts it in clear words when he says: “ In every age and time God chooses one member of the human race and, having endowed him with goodly and kingly virues, entrusts him with the interests of the world and the well-being of His servants; He charges that person to close the doors of corruption, confusion and discord, and He imparts to him such dignity and majesty in the eyes and hearts of men, that under his just rule they may live in constant security and ever wish for his reign to continue” ( translation by Hubert Drake,Page 9). What Nizam Al-Mulk is implying here is that the kingly office is essentialy of divine origin as well as hereditary, and should pass, like the kingship in ancient Persia, from father to son. Nizam Al-Mulk goes on to say that the ultimate object to which the king should direct his efforts is to create and maintain social and political conditions so that people “may passs their time in the shadow of his justice”. What Nizam Al-Mulk is attemting to set out here is indeed to revive the Persian notion of absolute monarchy and he seks to shape it on the work of the ancients. It appears that his aim in stressing the absolute superiority of the king is to introduce a central authority in the political system of the Saljuks, the majority of whom were not fully accustomed to the priciples of state-building. All this results in another important question, namely, the place that religion must have, according to Nizam Al-Mulk, both in the conduct of a king and in the everyday political life of the people.Unlike Machiavelli’s prince , who is advised to handle eligion merely as a useful instrument for achieving political ends, and who is taught to appear rather than become religious, Nizam Al-Mulk’s prince is taught to believe sinceely in religious ruths, and to exercise political power as an essential mens of finding a reconciliation between the old Persian ideals of kingship and the Muslim political ideology. According to Nizam al-Mulk, the State and religion are dependent upon each other for their existence; therefore the king must treat must treat them alike as two brothers. “Whenever there is any disorder in the State”, says Nizam Al-Mulk, “there is confusion in the religion of its people also, and the heretics and mischief-makers make their appearance. And whenever religious affairs are disturbed, the State is thrown into disorder, the mischief-makers grow strong, and heresy makes itself manifest”. It is , then, a practical necessity that leads Nezam Al-Mulk to insist on the essentially religious character of the king’s authority. The moral obligations he sets on the absolute authority of the king prevent it from growing into an oppressive despotism. Viewed in this perspective, one can say that Nizam Al-Mulk’s importance as a political thinker must rest not on his practical suggestions to the king, but on his moral and political principles of kingship in Iran. This raises , of course, once again, the question of reading Machiavelli in Iran today. Machiavelli would , I think, be mostly interested and perplexed by the return of the theological-political on the scene of modern politics. After all, reading Machiavelli in the present situation, in a country like Iran , where the political is dominated by the theological, is a way of learning to distinguish between the realm of what ought to be and the realm of what is.Machiavelli, certainly, rejected the first for the second. Machiavelli’s political realism, like that of NizamAl-Mulk could be answer to the reign of the theological in politics, but it is surely not a democratic and humanistic solution to our problems. This is why we need to look for a third realm between the political realism and the radical idealism: that could be the realm of the possible. It is in that realm that what one might call a democratic and secular humanism can lie. After all. if politics is the art of possible, the measure of man is in his ability to extend this sphere within the scope of democratic values. As Isaiah Berlin used to say: “It is on earth that we live and it is here that we must believe and act”.