This text is reproduced solely for the limited academic use of students in Webster University MNGT 5590.
Numbers in brackets indicate the start of a page in the original text.
Administrative Rhetoric from Kenneth Burke. A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 1962), 158-166.
“Administrative” Rhetoric in Machiavelli
[read
the complete text of Machiavelli's The Prince]
Machiavelli’s The
Prince can be treated as a rhetoric insofar as it deals with the producing of effects upon an audience.
Sometimes
the prince’s subjects are his audience; sometimes the rulers or inhabitants of
foreign states are the audience, sometimes particular factions within the
State. If you have a political public in mind, Machiavelli says in effect, here
is the sort of thing you must do to move them for your purposes. And he
considers such principles of persuasion as these: either treat well or crush;
defend weak neighbors and weaken the strong; where you foresee trouble, provoke
war; don’t make others powerful; be like the prince who appointed a harsh
governor to establish order (after this governor had become an object of public
hatred in carrying out the prince’s wishes, the prince got popular acclaim by
putting him to death for his cruelties); do necessary evils at one stroke, pay
out benefits little by little; sometimes assure the citizens that the evil days
will soon be over, at other times goad them to fear the cruelties of the enemy;
be sparing of your own and your subjects’ wealth, but be liberal with the
wealth of others; be a combination of strength and stealth (lion and fox); appear merciful, dependable, humane,
devout, upright, but be the opposite in actuality, whenever the circumstances
require it; yet always do lip-service to the virtues, since most people
judge by appearances; provoke resistance, to make an impression by crushing it;
use religion as a pretext for conquest, since it permits of “pious cruelty”;
leave “affairs of reproach” to the management of others, but keep those “of
grace” in your own hands; be the patron of all talent, proclaim festivals, give
spectacles, show deference to local organizations; but always retain the
distance of your rank (he could have called this the “mystery” of rule); in
order that you may get the advantage of good advice without losing people’s
respect, give experts permission to speak frankly, but only when asked to
speak; have a few intimates who are encouraged to be completely frank, and who
are well plied with rewards.
Correspondingly, there are accounts of the human
susceptibilities one can play upon, and the resistances one must expect. Thus:
new benefits [159] won’t make great personages forget old injuries; it is easy
to persuade people, but you need force to keep them persuaded; acquisitiveness
being natural, those who acquire will be praised, not blamed; the nobles would
oppress the people, the people would avoid oppression by the nobles; one can
satisfy the people, but not the nobles, by fair dealing; men are bound to you
as much by the benefits they give as by the benefits they receive; mercenaries
are to be feared for their dastardly, auxiliaries for their valor; the unarmed
are despised; often what we call virtue would ruin the State, and what we call
vice can save it; cruelty may reconcile and unify; men in general are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, greedy;
since all men are evil, the prince can always find a good pretext for
breaking faith; it is safer to be feared than
loved, since people are more
likely to offend those they love than those they fear; yet though the prince
should be feared, he should not be hated; the worst offense is an offense
against property, for a man more quickly forgets the death of his father than
the loss of his patrimony; people want to be deceived; if the prince leaves his
subjects’ property and women untouched, he “has only to contend with the
ambitions of a few”; a ruler’s best fortress is not to be hated by his own
people; any faction within the State can always expect to find allies abroad.
The difference between the two lists is mainly
grammatical. For instance, if we use a gerundive, “valor in auxiliaries is to
be feared,” the statement belongs in the second set. But we can transfer it to
the first merely by changing the expression to an imperative: “Fear valor in
auxiliaries.” Both lists are reducible to “topics” in the Aristotelian sense.
We think of another “Machiavellian” work, written
many centuries earlier. It is in praise of “eloquence,” the eloquence, it says,
that serves in the conquest of the public, of the senate, and of women. But it
would concentrate on the third use, for it is Ovid’s Ars Amatoria. It deals not with political power, but with another
order of potency; and where Machiavelli is presumably telling how to get and
hold a principality, Ovid is telling how to get and hold a woman.
Grounded in figures of soldiery, of gladiators, of
the hunt, of animals enraged or ruttish, it is in form a manual of
instructions, like The Prince. But it
is really a poetic display, an epideictic exercise, the sort of literary
ostentation that De Quincey had in mind when selecting Ovid as prime example of
rhetoric. For one does not usually read it as he would read in- [160]
structions for opening a package (though a yearning adolescent might); one
reads it rather for the delight he may take in the imagery and ideas themselves,
the topics or “places” of love.
But to consider some of the poet’s picturesque
advice is to see how close it is to the thinking of Machiavelli, except of
course for the tonalities, since the Italian is solemn, the Latin playful.
Having begun scenically, with a survey of locations where the hunting good, he
proceeds thus:
On deceiving in the name of friendship; feigning
just enough drunkenness to be winsome; of feigned passion that may become
genuine; on astute use of praise and promises; inducement value of belief in
the gods; deceiving deceivers; the utility of tears; the need to guard against
the risk that entreaties may merely feed the woman’s vanity; inducement value
of pallor, which is the proper color of love; advisability of shift in methods,
as she who resisted the well-bred may yield to the crude; ways to subdue
by yielding; how to be her servant, but as a freeman; risks that gain favor; on
operating with the help of the servants; need for caution in gifts; get your
slaves to ask her to ask you to be kind to them; the controlled use of
compliments; become a habit with her; enjoy others too, but in stealth, and
deny if you are found out; rekindle her love by jealousy; make her grieve over
you, but not too much, lest she muster enough strength to become angry (as she
might, since she always wants to. be shut of you); if she has deceived you, let
her think you don’t know it; give each of her faults the name of the good
quality most like it.
And to women he offers advice on dress, cosmetics,
the use of pretty faults in speech, gait, poetry, dance, posture, cadence,
games, on being seen in public (you may find a husband at the funeral of your
husband), deceit to match deceit, on being late at banquets, on table manners,
on drinking to excess but only as much as can be deftly controlled.
Machiavelli says of war: “This is the sole art
proper to rulers.” And similarly Ovid’s epideictic manual of lovemaking is
founded on the principle that “love is a kind of war” (militiae species amor est). “I can love only when hurt,” the poet
confesses (non-nisi laesus arno). And
Machiavelli rounds out his politics by saying that it is better to be
adventurous than cautious with Fortune, since Fortune is a woman, “and if you
wish to keep her subdued, you must beat her and ill-use her.”
True, though both books are concerned with the
rhetoric of advantage, [161] principles of amative persuasion rely rather on
fraud than force. But the point to note for our purposes is that in both cases
the rhetoric includes a strongly “administrative” ingredient. The persuasion
cannot be confined to the strictly verbal; it is a mixture of symbolism and
definite empirical operations. The basic conception in Stendhal’s book on love,
for instance, is not rhetorical at all. For the rhetoric of love in Stendhal,
we should go rather to his The Red and
the Black. There, as in Ovid , the work is developed on the principle that
love is a species of war. But the basic principle underlying Stendhal’s De I’Amour is that of “crystallization,”
a concept so purely “internal,” so little “addressed,” that it belongs
completely under the heading of “symbolic” in these volumes, naming but a kind
of accretion (both unconscious and consciously sentimental), that grows about
the idea of the beloved, and for all its contagiousness is rather a flowering
within the mind of the lover than a ruse shaped for persuasive purposes.
We might put it thus: the nonverbal, or nonsymbolic
conditions with which both lover and ruler must operate can themselves be
viewed as a kind of symbolism having persuasive effects. For instance, military
force can persuade by its sheer “meaning” as well as by its use in actual
combat. In this sense, nonverbal acts and material instruments themselves have
a symbolic ingredient. The point is particularly necessary when we turn to the
rhetoric of bureaucracy, as when a political party bids for favor by passing
measures popular with large blocs of
voters. In such a case, administrative acts themselves are not merely “scientific” or “operational,” but are designed also with an eye for their appeal.
Popular jokes that refer to policemen’s clubs and sex organs as “persuaders” operate on the same
principle. For nonverbal conditions or objects can be considered as signs by
reason of persuasive ingredients inherent in the “meaning” they have for the
audience to which they are “addressed.”
It is usual now to treat Machiavelli as a founder of
modern political “science,” particularly because he uses so naturalistic a
terminology of motives, in contrast with notions of justification that go with
supernaturalism. But this simple antithesis can prevent accurate placement of The Prince. For one thing, as in the
case of La Rochefoucauld, you need but adopt the theological device of saying
that Machiavelli is dealing with the motives typical of man after the “fall,”
and there is nothing about his naturalism to put it out of line with
supernaturalism. But most of all, the approach to The Prince in terms of naturalism vs. super- [162] naturalism
prevents one from discerning the rhetorical elements that are of its very
essence.
Here again we come upon the fact that our contemporary views of
science are dislocated by the failure to consider it methodically with relation
to rhetoric (a failure that leads to a blunt opposing of science to either
religion or “magic”). For if the rhetorical motive is not scientific, neither
is it in its everyday application religious or magical. The use of symbols to
induce action in beings that normally communicate by symbols is essentially
realistic in the most practical and pragmatic sense of the term. It is neither
“magical” nor “scientific” (neither ritualistic nor informational) for one
person to ask help of another. Hence, in approaching the question through a
flat antithesis between magic and science, one automatically vows himself to a
faulty statement of the case.
Above all, we believe that an approach to the book
in terms of rhetoric is necessary if one would give an adequate account of its form
(and the ability to treat of form is always the major test of a critical
method). Thus, though the late Ernst Cassirer gives a very good account of
Machiavelli in his Myth of the State, his oversimplified treatment
in terms of science alone, without the modifications and insights supplied by
the principles of rhetoric, completely baffles an attempt to account for the
book’s structure. Not only does he end by treating the last chapter as a
misfit; having likened the earlier chapters to Galileo’s writings on the laws
of motion, and thereby having offered a description that could not possibly
apply to the last chapter, he concludes that the burden of proof rests with
those who would consider the last chapter as a fit with the rest. By the
rhetorical approach, you can meet his challenge, thus:
The first twenty-four chapters discuss typical
situations that have to do with the seizing and wielding of political power.
They are analytic accounts of such situations, and of the strategies best
suited to the conditions. Thus they are all variants of what, in the Grammar,
we called the scene-act ratio; and they say, in effect: “Here is the kind
of act proper to such-and-such a scene” (the ruler’s desire for
political mastery being taken as the unchanging purpose that prevails
throughout all changes of scene).
However, in the next-to-the-last
chapter, Machiavelli modifies his thesis. Whereas he has been pointing out what
act of the ruler would, in his opinion, have the most persuasive effect upon
the ruled in a given situation, he now observes that people do not always act
in accordance [163] with the requirements set them by the scenic conditions.
People also act in accordance with their own natures, or temperaments. Thus, a
man may act cautiously, not because the scene calls for caution, but merely
because he is by nature a cautious man. Conversely, if a man is adventurous by
nature, he may act with adventurous boldness, characteristically, even though
the situation itself may call for caution. In the Grammar we listed such motivations under the heading of the
agent-act ratio, since they say, in effect: “Here is the kind of such-and-such
a person.”
But there may be fortunate moments in history when
both kinds of motives work together, Machiavelli is saying. The scenic
conditions require a certain kind of act; and the ruler may happen to have
exactly the kind of temperament and character that leads him into this same
kind of act. Given such a lucky coincidence, the perfect manifestation of the
scene-act ratio is one with the perfect act ratio.
Far from there being any formal break in the book,
this concern in the next-to-the-last chapter forms a perfect
transition to the final “Exhortation to Liberate Italy from the Barbarians.”
For this chapter rounds things out in a “Now is the time . . .” manner, by
calling for the agent to arise whose acts will simultaneously be in tune with
the times and with himself. This man will be the ruler able to redeem Italy
from its captivity. And given such a combination, there will be grounds too for
the ultimate identification of ruler
and ruled, since all will benefit, each in his way, by the liberation of their
country.
True, in the last chapter there is a certain
prayer-like lift not presents in the others. Whereas the earlier chapters are a
kind of rhetorica docens, the
peroration becomes a kind of rhetorica
utens. But that is a standard aspect of rhetorical form, traditional to the
wind-up. Far from being added on bluntly, it is very deftly led into by the motivational shift in
the preceding chapter.
When the ruler happens to be of such a nature that
the act characteristic of his nature would also be the act best suited to the
situation, we could attribute the happy combination to chance, or
fortune. Here
again the stress upon science vs. magic can somewhat mislead. True,
references to a fatal confluence of factors will almost inevitably bring up
connotations of “design.” Hence, the “fortune” that makes the ruler
temperamentally a fit for his times may take on fate-like connota- [164] tions
alien to science. One may find such metaphors of cosmic purpose flitting
through Machiavelli’s discussion. But they are not the central matters. The
central matter is this fortuitous congruity of temperament and external
conditions, whereas an “unlucky” combination can prevent the ruler from
adopting the proper mode of action (somewhat as Cicero said that the ideal
orator should be accomplished in all styles, but human limitations would
restrict his range in actuality).
Machiavelli’s concern is brought out clearly by La
Rochefoucauld, in his comments Des Modeles
de la Nature et de la Fortune. “It seems,” he says, “that Fortune, changing
and capricious as she is, renounces change and caprice to act in concert with
nature, and that the two concur at times to produce singular and unusual men
who become models for posterity. Nature serves to furnish the qualities;
Fortune serves to put them into operation.” By “nature” he is obviously
referring to human nature, capacities of human agents; “fortune” is his word
for scenic conditions, which impose themselves independently of human will. He
calls the congruence of agent and scene an “’accord de la nature et de la fortune.”
Concerns with the “lucky” or “unlucky” accident that
may make a man temperamentally fit or unfit to employ the strategy best suited
to the situation may eventually involve one in assumptions about fatal cosmic
design along the lines of Carlyle’s “mystifications” about heroes in history.
And too great a concern with science as antithetical to magic may get one to
thinking that the important point lies there. But by treating the book as a
manual of “administrative rhetoric,” we can place the stress where it belongs:
on the problem of the orator’s ability to choose the act best suited to the
situation, rather than choosing the act best suited to the expression of his
own nature.
Likewise, the proper approach to Machiavelli’s choice of vocabulary is not exclusively
in terms of science, but through considerations of rhetoric. (We have in mind
his paradoxical distinctions between the virtues of princes and the virtues of
private citizens, or his proposal to base political action on the assumption
that all men are “ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, and greedy.”) Is not
Machiavelli here but giving a new application to a topic in Aristotle’s Rhetoric? Aristotle had said in effect
that privately we admit to acquisitive motives, but publicly we account for the
same act in sacrificial terms. In the Christian terminology that had intervened
between Aristotle and Machiavelli, [165] however, the public, sacrificial motives
were attributed to the state of grace, and the private, acquisitive
motives were due to the state of original
sin after the fall. In the Christian persuasion, the rhetorical distinction
noted by Aristotle had thus become written dialectically into the very nature
of things. And insofar as a man was genuinely imbued with Christian motives,
his private virtues would be the
traits of character which, if cultivated in the individual, would be most
beneficial to mankind as a whole.
But
Machiavelli is concerned with a different kind of universality. He starts from
the principle that men are universally at
odds with one another. For this is what his stress upon predatory or
warlike motives amounts to. He is concerned with motives which will protect special interests. The Prince is leading towards the period when the interests of a
feudal ruler will be nationalistically identified,
thought to represent one state as opposed
to other states.
Now, national motives can be placed in a hierarchy
of motives, graded from personal and familial, to regional, to national, to
international and universal. As so arranged, they might conceivably, in their
different orders, complement or perfect one another rather than being in
conflict. But where the princes, or the national states identified with them,
are conceived antithetically to the interests of other princes and states, or
antithetically to factions within the realm, the “virtues” of the ruler could
not be the “virtues” which are thought most beneficial to mankind as a
whole (in an ideal state of universal cooperation). Similarly, if we carry the
Machiavelli pattern down from political to personal relations, the individual
may become related to other individuals as ruler to ruled (or at least as would-be
ruler to would-not-be ruled)—for here again the
divisive motives treated by Machiavelli apply.
Once a national identity is built up, it can be
treated as an individual; hence like an individual its condition can be
presented in sacrificial terms. Thus, in the case of The Prince, the early chapters are stated in acquisitive terms.
They have to do with the ways of getting and keeping political power. But the
last chapter, looking towards the redemption of Italy as a nation, is presented
in sacrificial tonalities; the “virtue of an Italian spirit” is oppressed,
enslaved, and scattered, “without head, without order, beaten, despoiled, torn,
overrun,” and enduring “every kind of desolation.” So Italy “entreats God to
send some [166] one who shall deliver her from these wrongs and barbarous
insolencies.” And “she is ready and willing to follow a banner if only some one
will raise it.” This is the shift in tone that led Ernst Cassier to treat the
last chapter as incongruous with the earlier portions.
In this last chapter, the universal, sacrificial
motives are adapted to a competitive end. The Christian vision of mankind’s
oneness in the suffering Christ becomes the vision of Italians’ oneness in the
suffering Italy. Since Italy actually is invaded, the analogy is not forced as
it is in the vocabulary of imperialist unction. (Contrast it, for instance,
with the building of empire under slogans like “the acceptance of grave world
responsibility,” or “the solemn fulfillment of international commitments,” when
the support of reactionary regimes was meant.) But whether the nationalist
exaltation be for conquest or for uprising against conquerors, in either case
there is the possibility of identification between ruler and ruled. Hence the
new prince, in bringing about the new order, “would do honor to himself and
good to the people of his country.” And by such identification of ruler and
ruled, Machiavelli offers the ruler precisely the rhetorical opportunity to
present privately acquisitive motives publicly in sacrificial terms.
Machiavelli is concerned with political cooperation
under conditions, which make such cooperation in part a union of
conspirators.
Where conspiracy is the fact, universality must often be the fiction. The
ambiguity in Machiavelli is thus the ambiguity of nationalism itself, which to
some extent does fit with the ends of universal cooperation, and to some extent
is conspiratorial. The proportions vary, with the Hitlerite State probably
containing as high a percentage of the conspiratorial as will be attained in our
time, though the conspiratorial motive is now unusually strong in all
international dealings. Sovereignty itself is conspiracy. And the pattern is
carried into every political or social body, however small. Each office, each
fraternal order, each college faculty has its tiny conspiratorial clique.
Conspiracy is as natural as breathing. And since the struggles for advantage
nearly always have a rhetorical strain, we believe that the systematic
contemplation of them forces itself upon the student of rhetoric. Indeed, of
all the motives in Machiavelli, is not the most usable for us his attempt to
transcend the disorders of his times, not by either total acquiescence or total
avoidance, but by seeking to scrutinize them as accurately and calmly as he
could?