Between admiration, deception, and reckoning: Niccolò Machiavelli’s economies of esteem

ABSTRACT

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) never wrote any subtle disquisition on esteem (stima in Italian). Even so, this essay suggests that esteem played an important and hitherto largely unexplored role in Machiavelli’s political thought. Proceeding from an examination of Machiavelli’s use of the noun stima and the verb stimare in their literal and figurative senses, this article discusses Machiavelli’s ideas from three different perspectives. The first section discusses ways of attracting other people’s esteem through virtuous deeds. The second section, in turning to Machiavelli’s notorious advice to princes, explores the ways in which stima may be generated by merely pretending to be virtuous. I argue that Machiavelli’s new prince exchanges the real esteem he must elicit from his subjects (if he wishes to stay in power) with a surrogate: in other words, a psychological economy of stima. It arrests, through a performative spectacle, the rational faculties of the prince’s subjects. The third section investigates Machiavelli’s ideas on esteem in relation to his own person. Even though Machiavelli never uses the phrase stima di se stesso (which would be a literal translation of self-esteem), some passages from his correspondence are highly pertinent to this topic.

KEYWORDS:

• Machiavelli
• esteem
• stima
• politics
• performance

1. Introduction

All too often, posterity remembers Niccolò Machiavelli either as the bête noire of political realism or as the ingenious philosopher of the modern state. Because of this, perhaps, it is no wonder that Machiavelli’s ideas about esteem have not yet – to the best of my knowledge – received much attention.¹ Even so, esteem (perhaps surprisingly) played an important and hitherto largely unexplored role in Machiavelli’s political thought. I will suggest that esteem becomes a precious, if volatile, psychological entity: like money, it has to circulate and be exchanged in order to be effective. Like money, esteem is precious and, more often than not, scarce. Turning to Machiavelli’s notorious advice to princes, the second section explores the ways in which stima, this precious good, may be generated by merely pretending to be virtuous.² I will even suggest that Machiavelli’s new prince exchanges the true esteem he should elicit from his subjects (if he wants to stay in power) with a surrogate.³ In his descriptions of the exchange of stima between prince and subjects, Machiavelli implicitly outlines an outright psychological economy of stima.⁴ Even though Machiavelli never uses the phrase stima di se stesso (a literal translation for self-esteem), some passages from his correspondence are highly pertinent to this topic.⁵

2. Machiavelli’s uses of the words stima and stimare

Just like the English word “esteem,” the Italian word “stima” in was frequently used in Machiavelli’s day in figurative speech with a positive connotation: signifying respect, regard, or appreciation. In Dante, stima may signify a positive opinion about a person, or it may imply a positive judgment (as it does in Boccaccio).⁶ In the Istorie fiorentine, Machiavelli writes that Cosimo Medici became maravigliosamente stimato (wonderfully esteemed or admired).⁷ Similarly, somebody may appreciate (stimare) the use of objects or persons.⁸ To denote a lack of esteem, Machiavelli often uses the expression stimare poco or poca stima.⁹ Moreover, Machiavelli uses stimare in a less common sense, to signify that somebody fears something.¹⁰ Machiavelli also employs stimare to denote the process of forming an opinion, an assessment, a value judgment, or an idea (io stimo or io estimo). This sense of belief is also present in the Italian use of stimare to signify “to believe, or: to reckon.”¹¹ A sense of approximate reckoning is also present in a phrase Machiavelli uses in the Legazioni: “si può […] stimare ad 14 soldi per lira” (“you may count 14 soldi as a lira”).¹² This is a highly idiomatic and typically Florentine expression for saying that you sell something way below its real price (because twenty and not fourteen soldi make a lira). This usage constantly overlaps with the literal meaning of esteem: just as its Latin predecessors, the noun aestimatio and the verb aestimare, the Italian stima and stimare mean “to rate” or “to tax” the material value, an estimate, the price of something.¹³ There is thus an economic aspect to stima, when it is used in the sense of assessing or fixing a price. From the thirteenth century, the Florentine land tax was called estimo.¹⁴ The Latin aestimator denotes a person who judges something from its visual appearance and gives a rough assessment of its price (for instance of cereals, as in aestimator frumenti).¹⁵ Just as stimare may denote the process of the estimation of an object, so stima may signify the material value of that object. There is thus an implicit economy of stima, which in that process is itself an entity, albeit a volatile one. It is an economy that may be translated into psychological phenomenona.¹⁶

Stima, itself the product of a sense impression, of a rough estimate, becomes translated as it were into a currency. This may be the monetary value of a harvest, or the military strength of an army, or some personal trait that can be admired and at the same time feared. Like money, stima may also be exchanged on unfair terms, just as one might sometimes (wrongly) esteem fourteen soldi for a lira: that is, be misguided, as in any transaction. There are, of course, honest ways of acquiring stima, as when Machiavelli writes to his nephew Giovanni Vernacci that he esteems the latter because he is “valorous and also has proven to be so.”¹⁷ In one of his letters, which describes the esteem of Swiss Mercenaries, Machiavelli provides an outright genealogy of stima in a political context. He says that, in order “not to be dominated by others,” the Swiss first defended themselves in their country against the Duke of Austria. After further military successes against foreign forces, they began to wish to dominate others. In Machiavelli’s time, with the revenues from fighting as mercenaries, they have the means to educate and maintain powerful armies. In this process of shaking off dominance by others, and the implementation of domination over others, the Swiss have become esteemed in a psychological sense (stimati) with the connotation of being feared.¹⁸ Towards the end of his life, and under dramatic historical circumstances, Machiavelli again combines these senses of esteem, as fear and as appreciation of valor.

these times of ours demand bold, extraordinary, and unusual decisions. […] Giovanni de’ Medici was raising a company of mercenaries in order to fight wherever he best saw an opportunity. […] everyone is agreed that among Italians there is no leader whom the soldiers more willingly follow or whom the Spaniards fear or esteem more [dubitino e stimino più] than Signor Giovanni. Everyone also agrees that he is brave and impetuous, has great ideas, and is a taker of bold decisions.¹⁹

We may conclude that esteem is elicited – even extorted – by vigorous, daring, sometimes violent actions. In principle, this maxim would also be valid for the new prince described in Machiavelli’s Principe, were it not for the fact that the new prince has to attract esteem by these means. The opposite of stima is disprezzo (contempt), which results from people acting timidly (timido) and without vigor (poco risoluto).²⁰

3. Stima in the Principe

Machiavelli’s Principe is (in)famous for its disenchanted analysis on the mechanisms of trickery in politics, which, at least for new princes, is a vital strategy to retain power. Yet, transactions of stima are a crucial factor for the maintenance of such usurped princely power. In the following, I summarize in five maxims of Machiavelli’s thoughts on the function of stima/re in this kind of politics. These maxims are derived from famous and much examined passages of the Principe, but have never, as far as I can tell, been discussed from the perspective of stima/re.

Maxim one: always be well armed and practiced in warfare, for otherwise you will lose the esteem of your adversaries and your people.²¹ Esteem in the service of the maintenance of political power (which here means military power) is concomitant with the ostensible aptitude for exercising the business of war. A corollary to this maxim is to never remain neutral in an armed conflict if you want to win the esteem of other princes.²² However, in Machiavelli’s time, as in ours, warfare is expensive, and thus the prince is always in danger of running out of money.²³ He will then have to tax people even more heavily.

Maxim two: avoid incurring hatred by being parsimonious. Nevertheless, prodigality turns the prince into a miser in the long run, and that does not pay in fame or reputation, but leads to stigma (infamia),²⁴ for the prince loses the esteem of the majority of the people and consequently his power.²⁵ Moreover, people who lose their money become poor and the poor are not esteemed. In face of this problem, a prince must uphold a delicate balance of esteem: when the prince cannot recompense actual loss or damage, he must delegate the wrath and loss of esteem of the people to some other party than himself.

Maxim three: you must find a scapegoat on whom to publicly confer responsibility for unpopular measures, such as the levying of taxes (cose di carico). Scapegoating thus implies some sort of token gesture; one that is designed to be confounded with the real thing. Crucially, judgement is passed not on the main culprit, the prince, but on someone else, who perhaps was only executing orders.²⁶ However, all the gifts (cose di grazia) must still accrue to the prince.²⁷

Maxim four: the principe acknowledges any action that is in his interest with symbolic rewards.²⁸ This recompense may be disproportionately small when compared to what an individual has given. Such transactions are an effective means of generating stima for the prince, as long as he successfully conveys the deliberately misleading impression that such goods are actually rewarded and that the wicked are punished. This implies that stima as a psychological entity may be exchanged in the way that material goods are traded.

Maxim five: never interfere with the money and belongings (for example, wives) of your people. For, otherwise, you will incur the hatred of your subjects, who will conspire against you. Machiavelli explains that this is because, even more than their honor and their relatives, people care for their possessions.²⁹

Taken together, these maxims are conducive to the establishment of a stable, princely government recently acquired. However, in the best of possible circumstances, following Machiavelli’s advice leaves only little room for the new prince to maneuver.³⁰ As maxims two to five show, esteem must be exchanged: for in order to obtain esteem from his subjects, the principe must also extend it to others. For a new prince it is therefore advisable to merely pretend to share out reciprocal esteem for his peers.³¹ Thus, for want of economic resources and in order to deflect the contempt of the people for other unpopular measures, the prince has to build up a symbolic and potentially deceptive economy of esteem, which relies on theatrical performance: the prince has to become a performer.³² To accomplish such a task, the prince must make a constant spectacle of himself, a mise en scene through which he elicits esteem from his subjects, often with the intent of distracting them from matters of genuine importance. The maintenance of power is thus dependent on esteem, but esteem depends on constant performative acts on the part of the prince.³³ Fascinatingly, Machiavelli describes the psychological mechanism that structures this economy in the transfer of stima:³⁴

Nothing makes a prince so highly esteemed as do great undertakings and extraordinary acts. [Nessuna cosa fa tanto stimare uno principe, quanto fanno le grande imprese e dare di sè rari esempli.] An example in our times is Ferdinand of Aragon, the present king of Spain.³⁵ He can be called almost a new prince [principe nuovo] because through fame and glory [per fama e gloria] he has transformed himself from a petty ruler [re debole] to the foremost king among the Christians. If you consider his actions, you find them all very great and some of them extraordinary. In the early part of his reign, he attacked Granada; this undertaking was the foundation of his power. First, he acted when he was otherwise unengaged and had no fear of being hindered; by invading Granada he kept employed the minds of the barons [tenne occupato in quella gli animi di quelli baroni] of Castile, who when thinking about war did not think about rebellion [innovazioni]. In the meantime, he gained a high reputation and sovereignty over his nobles without their realizing it [acquistava in quel mezzo reputatione e imperio sopra di loro, che non se ne accorgevano]. […] he invaded Africa; he then undertook his expedition to Italy; recently he attacked France; and so always he performed and planned [fatte e ordite] great actions, which kept the minds of his subjects always in suspense and wonder, watching for the outcome [le quali hanno sempre tenuti sospesi gli animi de’ sudditi, e occupati nello evento di esse]. These actions have in such a way grown one from another that between one and the next never has he given people any interval of leisure for working against him [e non ha dato mai spazio alli uomini di potere quietamente operarli contro]. It also helps a prince enormously [giova assai] to give striking displays [rari esempli] of ability in dealing with internal affairs […] hence whenever a citizen offers him an opportunity by doing something unusual [cosa estraordinaria], either for good or bad, in the life of the city, he finds a way for rewarding or punishing that citizen that is sure to be much talked about. Above all, a prince strives to gain from all his acts notoriety [fama] as a strong man [uomo grande] and of superior talent [ingegno eccellente].³⁶

Machiavelli explains that, while contemplating the actions of Fernando, the (politically highly dangerous) baroni inadvertently defer their esteem to their prince. Fernando was able to arrest the subrational faculties of the baroni in this performance and alter the background against which their judgements were made.³⁷ Moreover, by putting on a marvelous, almost miracle-dispensing persona which attracts all public attention, Fernando makes sure that his subjects are kept busy watching the outcome of his performance. In this shady transaction, popular esteem becomes transferred to the prince. Machiavelli explains that the art of eliciting esteem consists in keeping your subjects’ minds in constant suspension, with the prince never disclosing what he is doing, while always moving to some spectacular and unusual enterprise.

Fernando held his subjects/spectators in a constant state of imbalance (sospesi) as they observed his daring actions.³⁸ Even though sospeso easily translates into the English “suspended” – i.e. “dangling up in the air” – the Italian sospendere also means to distract and to ravish, just as the Latin suspensus animus. The figure of speech suspensa expectatione means “to be full of expectation” or “in suspense,” respectively. It is as though the baroni were watching an acrobat, for instance a dancer on a tight-rope, which keeps the spectators in a state of constant suspension.³⁹ I argue that these transactions imply an exchange: the esteem transferred by the spectators to the persona of the prince is traded for the anxiety the prince inculcates in the imagination of his spectators and, with it, admiration for his audacity. The reciprocity of this transfer refers to the psychology of the act of observing somebody else, in this case a daring prince, who, like a tightrope-walker, performs a dangerous act. Not being in immediate danger but instead being able to watch another person in that situation is a source of pleasure. The audience will turn a blind eye to this trick, because they enjoy, admire, and hence esteem the quality of the performance.⁴⁰ The audience thus transfers its esteem to the actions of another person. Viewed from this perspective, it is the prince who assumes the role of a scapegoat, a substitute for the audience, who may sit comfortably and without danger but not passively, as they watch the princely rope-walker.⁴¹ Machiavelli’s explanation is even more specific: the transaction seems to be especially effective because the prince manages to stealthily exchange his people’s hostility with the surrogate of a performance. The dialectics between (potentially deceptive) visual performance and the truth is, of course, a key element in Machiavelli’s theories on the role of deception in politics.⁴²

It is illuminating to examine this topic of transaction in the conceptual framework of the psychology of Machiavelli’s day. In the psychology of the faculties, the virtus aestimativa bundles and roughly assesses sense impressions (the so-called sensible species) that it receives from the imaginativa. This faculty of the soul produces images which are assessed by the aestimativa, from where they are transported to the faculty of reason, ratiocinatio. The aestimativa “account[s] for instinctive reactions of avoidance or trust,” just as sheep, for instance, flee the shape of a wolf, or as a donkey will refrain from eating grass that is close to a precipice from fear of toppling over. The aestimativa is thus a faculty of the soul that human beings share with some higher animals.⁴³ Within this conceptual framework, and returning to Machiavelli’s example, esteem is created by tricking that virtus aestimativa, which is not primarily concerned with ratiocination, but with instinctive attraction or repulsion, or at most with a limited experience. Like a juggler, Fernando’s trick to gain esteem consists in taping into a basic capacity of the soul that makes us prone to deception.

At first glance, stima/re might appear to be similar to another word, reputation/riputazione. Yet stima/re is associated with ammirazione (admiration) and apprezzamento (appreciation): that is, a rough estimate that is made from an individual perspective.⁴⁴ Stima is thus generated by unmediated sensual evidence; it is the material from which (after various instances) a riputazione emerges. Whereas stima refers to a person’s immediate sensory impressions of someone or something, reputation is the outcome of a bundle of evidence that may be transmitted only indirectly. Reputation is, therefore, more abstract than stima. More often than not, reputation implies a prognostic or historic aspect: from a person’s reputation (deeds in the past), you judge his/her future actions.⁴⁵ Likewise, as the Latin reputare means to calculate, reputatio is calculation, implying more abstract and reflected processes than the rough visual estimate denoted by aestimatio. Tied to admiratio, to looking upon something, aestimatio is more prone to deception than reputatio. In Machivelli’s strategies of political deception, this may in certain cases imply a deceptive use of stima in order to build up a reputation, not only because this is the way reputation is built but also because our sensory estimations are more easily deceived than the more complex impression comprising a reputation.⁴⁶

Yet, does a principe gain or maintain any self-respect in the process of becoming a performer?⁴⁷ For Machiavelli’s prince, too much self-esteem is dangerous, but not on moral grounds; rather, it is because the prince himself might fall prey to the images he has produced to gain esteem from others.⁴⁸ As we have noted, public esteem for the prince is concomitant with his appearance of being aggressive and rich. Stima is accumulated by a performance, but is this esteem convertible into self-esteem? Machiavelli never used the expression stima di se stesso. Despite being silent on the subject, from his private letters it is possible to gather a few highly pertinent insights into Machiavelli’s ideas on self-esteem.⁴⁹ These letters were written during his “second life.”

4. Post-1512: stima and the reconstruction of Machiavelli’s persona

Machiavelli’s epochal contributions to political theory, military studies, and the theater were all written after 10 November 1512, during the last fifteen years of his life. We can establish this date with such precision because on this day he was removed from his position in the former Florentine Republic by the once and future overlords of Florence, the Medici. Until then, Machiavelli had occupied the post of head of the second chancery of Florence since 1496. As a confidant of the Gonfaliere Soderini, he had also quickly been promoted to the rank of Secretary to the Ten of Liberty and Peace. Now in 1512, over forty years old, Machiavelli was ousted and condemned to a year of exile in his small country place in Sant’ Andrea di Percussina; for financial reasons, he had to remain there for many years.

There was worse to come, however. After his arrest in February 1513, Machiavelli was tortured.⁵⁰ As he writes in a letter shortly after his release from prison, it was only a lucky coincidence that he escaped execution; he was now carrying on with life as well as he could.⁵¹ Machiavelli’s perception of himself, one must surmise, changed significantly after these traumatic experiences.⁵² Machiavelli led a rather impoverished life with his family for most of his remaining years without gaining any significant position in the Florentine government, even though he constantly tried to be admitted into the service of the Medici, at whose behest he composed the Florentine histories.⁵³ It was mostly during his involuntary retirement – in villa, as he called his exile – that Machiavelli began to write the Discorsi; there, too, he was to finish the much shorter Prince early in the spring of 1515. His acute analysis of so many political issues of his day were thus developed in relative isolation, with an attendant lack of information on current politics. There is evidence of Machiavelli’s changing self-perception and, with it, the state of his self-esteem, in his letters from the years after 1512.⁵⁴ Especially remarkable in this context is his correspondence with his close friend Francesco Vettori (1474–1539)⁵⁵ and, later, with a potential patron and friend, Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540).⁵⁶

On 18 March 1513, immediately after his release from prison, he writes to Vettori that he “really likes [or loves] how bravely he withstood torture and imprisonment, in fact better than he himself would have believed [che io stesso me ne voglio bene, e parmi da essere da più che non credetti].” This is one of the rare instances – probably the only one – in which Machiavelli writes directly about self-esteem in reaction to his own person.⁵⁷ In this letter, he also writes that he would be glad if his prosecutors (questi padroni) would consider lifting the ban on him, which would afford the Medici an opportunity to appreciate his good behavior. As this did not come to pass, Machiavelli declares himself happy to continue to live in poverty, because this was how his life began.⁵⁸ Yet this attitude, which is probably typical for most people who have narrowly escaped death, was soon to change.

Later that year, in a famous letter to Vettori, Machiavelli describes a day of his life in the countryside: he gets up early in the morning to oversee work with the woodcutters.⁵⁹ Later, sitting by a fountain, he reads the works of Dante, Petrarch, or the minor Roman poets, then, after a short walk through the village, he has lunch at home with his family. He returns to the village inn for few hours to play cards (tick track or cricca). Together with the local baker and two millers, his party at times shouts out so loud that they can be heard in the next village. Machiavelli says that, amongst these “lice,” he manages to work off his anger at his adverse fate, “to discover whether or not my fate is ashamed of treating me so.”⁶⁰ In the evening, he returns home and, at the entrance to his study, he

take[s] off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, were, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on the food that alone is mine and for which I was born [mi pasco di quel cibo, che solum è mio, et che io nacqui per lui]; where I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death. I transform myself into them completely [tucto mi transferisco in loro].⁶¹

As Rebhorn and many other commentators have observed, Machiavelli here describes himself as an actor, as he slips into the persona of a counselor. He enters into a conversation with rulers to whom he is not merely a peer but virtually acts as their teacher.⁶² He derives some gratification from his private and imaginary staging of kingly audiences with long-dead leaders of state.

From the perspective of stima, his transformation into somebody else is even more revealing because it shows the reverse of the performance the prince staged in order to exchange the esteem of his spectators with a mere surrogate. This is because – as opposed to the prince’s spectators – Machiavelli himself is not watching breathlessly and sospeso. It is as though Machiavelli is performing for himself to regain his self-esteem in these fictitious conversations. Yet, as opposed to the spectators, who are observing a princely spectacle, Machiavelli is keenly aware that he is merely putting on a temporary show for himself, a phantasmatic transaction. He “feeds on a food that belongs to him alone,” whereas later in the Discorsi he writes that the “majority of the people are feeding on false images” (lo universale degli uomini si pascono così di quel che pare).⁶³ Hence, the author of such transactions must not be tricked himself: in the face of political marginalization, this kind of self-esteem can only be a temporary illusion, nice for dispelling one’s worries in a solitary evening show, but no substitute for the real thing.⁶⁴

As such, the letter ends by destroying this idyllic scenario. Machiavelli admits that he is worn out (mi logoro) by his present state of affairs, and that he cannot continue in this way for much longer. Poverty will make him contemptible.⁶⁵ What is true for a prince with empty coffers also applies to Machiavelli: whoever is poor becomes disesteemed and, consequently, once the exchange of esteem is blocked, self-esteem breaks down, as it does with any other economy.⁶⁶ Any lasting self-esteem is reliant upon and generated by mutual esteem with others. Of course, it is an irony of history that just those imaginary conversations, once put into written form, secured Machiavelli’s lasting – but largely posthumous – fame, for he also reports in this letter that he has started to work on a text, De principatibus, which eventually was to become the Principe. At least with hindsight, Machiavelli thus made his nightly shows productive as texts. They were actually designed to allow him to re-enter the economy of the performance of the public stima. He famously tells Vettori that he would rather “roll a rock” for the Medici than continue with his present life, having been a statesman with fifteen years of hard work and expertise behind him.⁶⁷

5. The generation of stima in a carnivalesque mode

This essay need not end on a gloomy note. For over three days in late May 1521, Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) engaged in a playful and humorous exchange of letters. The six surviving letters not only mark the beginning of a closer acquaintance – if not friendship – between the two men, but their correspondence also points to what I have described elsewhere as a carnivalesque “letter game.”⁶⁸ In these documents there is an attempt to create stima by putting on an admirable show. The objective of this letter game is to trick Sigismondo Santi into believing that Machiavelli – Santi’s houseguest at the time – was in fact involved in some secret and very important matter of state, and that Machiavelli therefore needed to be treated with the utmost courtesy. The game aimed to artificially increase the stima of Santi and his household for Machivelli by putting on a carnivalsque performance, a beffa. The game proceeds as planned, with Machiavelli receiving increasingly lavish meals and attention, until day three, when the suspicious host intercepts Guicciardini’s last extant letter to Machiavelli and the ruse is finally discovered.

In May 1521, at the age of fifty-two, Machiavelli was sent by the government of Florence to Carpi with a futile task: to negotiate an exemption of the Florentine Franciscans from the rest of the Tuscan congregations. In his letter to Machiavelli from Modena, dated 17 May 1521, Guicciardini ironically addresses Machiavelli as the “Florentine ambassador to Carpi,” asking Machiavelli how the Signoria could have sent him on such a mission in light of his former career and his avowed distrust of the Church and of religious matters in general.

In his reply, Machiavelli asked Guicciardini if he could send more letters of advice on a daily basis; and he requested that these messages be delivered with great reverence. Already, the arrival the first letter caused quite a stir in Santi’s household:

for another, you would make me more esteemed [voi mi farete più stimare] by those in the house, seeing the messages come thick. And I can tell you that on the arrival of this arbalester with the letter, and making a bow down to the earth, and with his saying that he was sent specially and in haste, everybody rose up with so many signs of respect and such a noise that everything was turned upside down, and I was asked by several about the news.⁶⁹

Machiavelli reports that he immediately seized this opportunity to make inroads in convincing his host of his importance. He explains that, in order to enhance the (wrong) impression in Santi’s mind that he was involved in an urgent matter of state, he made some generic, insignificant remarks and allusions to affairs of high politics. Machiavelli next reports that, as he is writing these lines, the entire household stands still:

So that they all stood with open mouths and with their caps in their hands; and while I write I have a circle of them around me, and seeing me write at length they are astonished, and look on me as inspired [si maravigliano, et guàrdommi per spiritato]; and I, to make them wonder more [per farli maravigliare più], sometimes hold my pen still and swell up, and then they slaver at the mouth; but if they could see what I am writing, they would marvel at it more [maraviglierebbono più].⁷⁰

When we consider the close connection between stima, marvel, and princely performance in the generation of political esteem, Machiavelli’s account easily translates into a travesty of the show Fernando had to put on to acquire stima. It is as though Machiavelli would transform himself – that is, impersonate some important prince – as he had transformed himself in the solitude of his study in villa more than seven years earlier. Yet this time he acts not only for his sake; this time, he has a rather modest audience. He is also not playing high stakes: the letter game is for the fun of it. Machiavelli expresses not only his gratitude to Guicciardini for support in increasing his stima with a host who granted him a few good lunches and a comfortable bed; in a significant turn, he also promises to reciprocate Santi’s hospitality if his host should come to Florence, and asks Guicciardini to intercede.⁷¹ In this sense, Machiavelli behaved differently from Fernando when he elicited stima from his powerful spectators, leaving his own baroni open-mouthed. The terms on which psychological stima is transferred in this letter game, therefore, are remarkably fair. We may surmise that, as with any fair transaction, lasting esteem (including self-esteem) depends upon the capacity to reciprocate not with breadcrumbs but with real food; but these have to be paid for, not necessarily with money, but perhaps with another performance.⁷²

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy in the context of the Cluster of Excellence Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective – EXC 2020 – Project ID 390608380.

Notes on contributors

Sergius Kodera

Sergius Kodera received his Doctorate in 1994. Since then, Kodera has been teaching Early Modern and Renaissance Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. Habilitation in 2004. Fellowships in London (Warburg Institute), Vienna (IFK) and New York (Columbia), Berlin (FU). Kodera has published on authors such as Marsilio Ficino, Machiavelli, Leone Ebreo, Girolamo Cardano, Giovan Battista della Porta, Giordano Bruno, and Francis Bacon. Currently he is working on a book-length study on Della Porta in English. His main fields of interest are the history of the body and sexuality, magic and media in trans-disciplinary perspectives.

Notes

1 Yet some authors briefly touch upon the subject: see Hochner, “Love and Economy of Emotions,” 85–97; Ferroni, “Transformation and Adaption,” 81–106, at 66–7, 90–1; Price, “Self Love, ‘Egoisme’ and Ambizione,” 237–61, see below.

2 Machiavelli notoriously maintains that if “new princes” would truly inhabit the virtues they should merely pretend to have, they will lose their stato, cf. Machiavelli, Principe, 118 (chap. 18, § 13–16) transl. Gilbert, I, 66. Machiavelli claims that people can always be found who are willingly deceived, cf. Machiavelli, Principe, 117–18, (chap. 18, §12), transl. Gilbert, I, 65. Therefore, the prince has to generate and inhabit a deceptive appearance of his persona, becoming an actor, an impostor, even a “con-man,” in Waye Rebhorn’s terms (Rebhorn, Foxes and lions, see below). De Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell, 235–97, describes this as a “logic of imposture.” See also the discussion in Tarcov, “Belief and Opinion,” 576–8, who emphasizes the visual and hence fickle nature of the multitude that judges the actions of the prince, who ultimately founds his power on the people. On the origins of this rhetoric of expediency in theory of classical rhetorics, cf. the seminal article by Cox, “Machiavelli and Deliberative Rhetoric,” 1126–32. On the pedagogical character of Machiavelli’s extreme examples, see Germino “Political Anthropology,” 50. Strauss, “Thoughts on Machiavelli,” 82: “precisely some of the most outrageous statements of the Prince are not meant seriously but serve a merely pedagogic function: as soon as one understands them, one sees that they are amusing and meant to amuse.”

3 As Fischer, “Political Psychology,” 811, observes: “On balance, […] the desire for glory and honor endows human beings with an unsocial sociability: they need others to admire them and to acknowledge their status, but continue to treat them as means to their own satisfaction.”

4 It is not new to conceptualize some of Machiavelli’s ideas in economic terms: for instance, violence or love. On the economies of love in Machiavelli, see Hochner, “Love and Economy of Emotions,” 85–97. Her work builds on the seminal article by Wolin, “Economy of Violence,” 198, who claims that: “what has been called an obsession with power on Machiavelli’s part might be better described as his conviction that the ‘new way’ could make no greater contribution than to create an economy of violence, a science of the controlled application of force.”

5 Boccaccio writes, “facendo di noi maravigliose stime” (cf. Grande dizionario della lingua italiana XX, 183, col. 3), or in Guicciardini’s phrasing: “le qualità per le quali tu ti stimi” (ibid., XX 185, col. 1).

6 Grande dizionario della lingua italiana XX, 183, col. 3.

7 Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, 338 (VII, 6): “Questa sua prudenza adunque, queste sue ricchezze, modo di vivere e fortuna, lo feciono, a Firenze, da' cittadini temere e amare, e dai principi, non solo di Italia, ma di tutta la Europa, maravigliosamente stimare.” See also ibid., 359 (VII, 22): “Questo modo di procedere ambizioso lo fece più dai principi di Italia stimare, e ciascuno cercò di farselo amico.”

8 Machiavelli, Discorsi, 334 (II, 17, 1): “Quanto si debbino stimare dagli eserciti ne' presenti tempi le artiglierie.” He writes to Vernacci, Machiavelli, Lettere, 500 (5 January 1518): “fuori de’ miei figliuoli, io non ho huomo che io stimassi quanto te.”

9 Machiavelli, Discorsi, 558 (III, 38, 2): “e mostrò [Valerio Corvino], con ogni efficacia, quanto ei dovevano […] stimare poco tali nimici.” Ibid., 512 (III, 16, 6): “nelle republiche è questo disordine, di fare poca stima de' valenti uomini, ne' tempi quieti.”

10 Machiavelli, Discorsi, 122 (I, 27, 7): “Così Giovampagolo, il quale non stimava essere incesto e publico parricida.” Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, 296 (VI, 18): “ma tanto stimorono la perdita di quel castello che il Senato veneto, naturalmente timido e discosto da qualunque partito dubio e pericoloso, volle più tosto, per non perdere quello, porre in pericolo il tutto, che, con la perdita di esso, perdere la impresa.” Cf. also Grande dizionario della lingua italiana XX, 186, col. 1.

11 Machiavelli, Discorsi, 324 (II, 13, 2): “Io stimo essere cosa verissima.” See also: ibid., 382 (II, 33, 2) and ibid., 520 (III, 21, 2). Tarcov, “Belief and Opinion,” 582–3, discusses Machiavelli’s different uses of “I judge” (io iudico) as opposed to “I believe” (io credo) with reference to Strauss, “Thoughts on Machiavelli,” 96, 117, 126, 178, 321 fn. 1. Both authors do not discuss the use of io stimo or io estimo.

12 Machiavelli, Legazioni, I, 382 (27 August 1500), quoted also in Chiappelli, Nuovi studi, 47.

13 In this sense, the Grande dizionario della lingua italiana XX, 183, col. 2, defines stima as: “valore in denaro attributio a un bene mobile o immobile.”

14 See Ciappelli, Fisco a Firenze, 9–41.

15 Cf. Oxford Latin Dictionary, 71 col. 1–72, col. 1, on aestimatio and aestimare. Likewise, the Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, XX, 183, col. 1, defines stima as “Attribuzione di un valore venale a un bene economico, a un immobile, ai frutti pendenti o anche un danno subito.”

16 See, for instance, the famous passage in Machiavelli, Principe, 119 (chap. 18, § 17), trans. Gilbert I, 66–7: “because in general men judge more with their eyes than with their hands, since everybody can see but few can perceive. Everybody sees what you appear to be; few perceive what you are.”

17 Machiavelli, Lettere, 495 (to G. Vernacci, 8 June 1517).

18 Ibid., 403 (to F. Vetttori, 10 August 1513): “la quale difesa li cominciò a fare stimare in casa loro; dipoi bastò difendersi dal Duca Carlo, il che dette nome fora di casa loro; dipoi è bastato loro pigliare li stipendi da altri, per mantenere la iuventù loro in su la guerra ed onorarsi.”

19 Machiavelli, Lettere, 580–1 (to F. Guicciardini, 15 March 1526), trans. Atkinson and Sices, 382 (modified). Thus over many years, Machiavelli’s use of stima/re seems to have been very constant.

20 Machiavelli, Lettere, 481 (to F. Vettori, 20 December 1514). As mentioned above, Wolin, “Economy of Violence,” 200, has stipulated an economy of force: “which resulted from the people’s feeling a sense of common involvement with the political order made it in the interests of the prince to cultivate their support. Lacking this, he would have to draw on his own fund of violence and the eventual result would be ‘abnormal measures’ of repression.” On Machiavelli’s indebtedness to Aristotle’s Politics for his ideas on contempt and hatred, see Gilbert, Prince and its Forerunners, 154.

21 Machiavelli, Principe, 98 (chap. 14, § 4–6), trans. Gilbert I, 55: “The first reason why being unarmed brings you trouble is that it makes you despised [contennendo]; this is one of the stigmas [una delle infamie] from which the wise prince guards himself, as I explain below. Between an armed and an unarmed man there is no reciprocity [proporzione alcuna], and for an armed man gladly to obey one who is unarmed is unreasonable. An unarmed prince cannot be without fear among armed servants [i.e. his condottieri], because when the servant feels contempt [sdengo] and the master feels distrust, by no possibility can the two work well together. Therefore, besides the bad effects already mentioned, a prince unskilled in warfare cannot be esteemed [stimato] by his soldiers or rely on them.”

22 Machiavelli, Principe, 149 (chap. 21, § 11), trans. Gilbert I, 82: “Further, a prince is respected [stimato] when he is a true friend and a true enemy, that is, when without reservation he takes his stand as an ally of one prince against another.” See also Machiavelli, Discorsi, 327 (II, 14, 9), trans. Gilbert I, 359.

23 I am under the impression that – at least in the Principe – Machiavelli has a distinctly male persona in mind when he talks of the prince. In the Discorsi, the situation may be slightly different. See, for instance, Kodera, “Virtudi ed omori,” 22–6.

24 Machiavelli, Principe, 105 (chap. 16, §1–5), trans. Gilbert I, 59: “in order to keep up among men the name of a liberal man, you cannot neglect any kind of lavishness [suntuosità]. Hence, invariably a prince of that sort […] is forced in the end […] to burden his people excessively and to be a tax - shark and to do everything he can to get money. This makes him hateful [odioso] to his subjects and not much esteemed [poco stimato] by anybody, as one who is growing poor. […] Seeing this and trying to pull back from it, he rapidly incurs reproach as stingy [incorre subito in la infamia del misero].” For a discussion of ideas that actually overturns the traditional concept of a liberal prince, see Skinner, Hobbes and civil science, 90–109, and his seminal analysis of Machiavelli’s use of the rhetorical figure of paradiastolé.

25 Wolin, “Economy of Violence,” 206: “Machiavelli’s advice to the prince was to seek the favor of the people, to establish a principato civile. This choice was dictated by the belief that the people represented more suitable matter, not in the sense of being more virtuous, but of being more governable.”

26 A case in point is the execution and display of the remains of Remirro de Orco at the behest of the Cesare Borgia, cf. Machiavelli, Principe, 45–7 (chap. 7, § 24–29), trans. Gilbert I, 31. For a detailed discussion of the incident in a religious key, see McCormick, “Prophetic Statebuilding.” Fischer, “Political Psychology,” 811, reads the execution more accurately, I believe, in tune with a medical purge of the soul. Rebhorn, Foxes and lions, 110, and De Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell, 327–9, emphasize the histrionic element of the incident, whereas Holman, Democratic innovation, 118–21, reads the execution as a sign of good government.

27 Machiavelli, Principe, 126 (chap. 19 § 23), trans. Gilbert I, 70: “wise princes have affairs that bring hatred [cose di carico] attended to by others, but those that bring thanks [cose di grazia] they attend to themselves.” See also Aristotle, Politics, 1315a. Carico also means “taxes”.

28 Machiavelli, Discorsi, 119 (I, 24, 7–8), trans. Gilbert, I, 251: “And though a republic be poor and able to give little, it should not hold back from that little, because the smallest gift given to anybody in recompense for a good deed, even though great, will always be esteemed by him who receives it as honorable and very great [sarà stimato, da chi lo riceve, onorevole e grandissimo].”

29 Machiavelli, Principe, 111–12 (chap. 17, §13–14), trans. Gilbert I, 62–3: “this he will always achieve if he refrains from the property of his citizens and his subjects and from their women. And if he does need to take anyone’s life, he does so when there is proper justification and a clear case. But above all, he refrains from the property of others, because men forget more quickly the death of a father than the loss of a father’s estate [ma sopratutto astenersi da la roba di altri perché gli uomini sdimenticano piú presto la morte del padre che la perdita del patrimoinio].”

30 Thus the prince has to chart a rather delicate middle course between the two classes of people, as Machiavelli explains, Principe, 126 (chap. 19, § 24), trans. Gilbert I, 70: “a prudent prince shows esteem for the rich [grandi], but does not make himself hated by the people [populo].” See also Machiavelli, Discorsi, 372 (II, 28, 15), and the discussion in Holman, Democratic innovation, 129–31 and passim. The ruler is faced with the arduous task of upholding a fragile balance between the different pressure groups, which secures his esteem in his stato. On the different uses of the term stato (as signifier for territory, community, juristic body, republic) in Machiavelli, cf. Chiappelli, Nuovi Studi, 33–6; Skinner, Hobbes and civil science, 384–5.

31 In a similar way, Chabod, Machiavelli and the Renaissance, 66, has claimed that the prince must gain the “friendship of the people.” In my analysis, it is rather esteem and reputation that can be gained form a princely performance which may accommodate the fickle nature of popular opinion on which, see, for instance, Machiavelli, Principe, 10 (chap. 3, § 1), trans. Gilbert I, 12, and ibid., 36 (chap. 6, § 22), trans. Gilbert I, 26: “the people are by nature variable; to convince [persuadere] them of a thing is easy; to hold them to that conviction [persuasione] is hard.”

32 For Machiavelli’s ideas on fraudulence as being a prerequisite to social ascent, see Machiavelli, Discorsi, 324 (II, 13, 2). On this kind of tokensim in Aristotle’s Politics, 1315a, see Gilbert, Prince and its forerunners, 154.

33 Rebhorn, Foxes and Lions, 42 calls the prince: “a clever show – man who creates compelling spectacles for his people.” Thus, “princes make objects of faith out of their persona.”

34 This famous passage has, to the best of my knowledge, never been examined from the perspective of stima. See also Machiavelli, Discorsi 550 (III, 34, 23). In a letter to Vettori, Machivelli writes that Fernando’s frenetic military and political activity was just to gain reputation, and that Fernando was effectively quite erratic, imprudent, and unwise, and that Fernando hoped that he would succeed either by luck or by his art (of deception). Machiavelli, Lettere, 378–9 (29 April 1513); cf. Rebhorn, Foxes and Lions, 138–40; Tarlton, “Prince as Literary Text,” 44–5, characterizes the Prince as a picaresque account of the adventures of princes. Holman, Democratic innovation, 117, comments: “The prince’s manipulation of appearance and his strategic adoption of multiple personae ultimately for the sake of the continuation of action, for the sake of the maintenance of the prince’s status as an actor.”

35 Ferdinand II, The Catholic (1452–1516).

36 Machiavelli, Principe, 146–9 (chap. 21, § 1–8), trans. Gilbert I, 81.

37 I wish to thank the anonymous peer reviewer for the content of this sentence.

38 Gilbert, Prince and its forerunners, 165, has pointed to Aristotle, Politics, 1313b, as a source.

39 Gilbert, Prince and its forerunners, 165 writes: “The idea that the prince should strike his subjects with wonder does not so far as I know, appear in the works de regime principium before Machiavelli.” See also ibid., 168.

40 Machiavelli, Principe, 153 (chap. 21, § 28), accordingly emphasizes the necessity of feasts and spectacles for the maintenance of princely power; see also De Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell, 330.

41 According to Rebhorn, Foxes and Lions, 111, the people are “the largely passive audience” of the prince’s “continuous masquerade.” In my reading, the audience is actually quite active in the transfer of stima. I therefore also disagree with Najemy, Between friends, 134, who says that Fernando mainly produced “confusion and bewilderment […] in the minds of those who […] tried to understand him.” Chabod, Machiavelli and the Renaissance, 66, observes more correctly, I believe, that: “The prince must take [the communal bourgeoisie] into account, […] and give examples of humanity and magnificent as if he were a juggler who hast to win the favour of an indifferent public.” In my analysis, the audiences are only initially passive. Once the admirable show has begun, they transfer stima.

42 Cf. Machiavelli, Discorsi, 120 (I, 25, 2).

43 Reisch, Margarita philosophica (X. 2. 21–2); cf. Park, “Organic Soul,” 471. On faculty psychology, see Park, “Organic Soul,” passim. Fischer, “Political Psychology,” 793–4, 805, discusses imaginatio but not the virtus aestimativa.

44 For a valuable treatment of the concept of ambizione in Machiavelli, see Höntzsch, “Machiavellis Appell an den Ehrgeiz.” I wish to thank the anonymous reviewer for this reference.

45 Garver, “Rhetoric and Prudence,” 104–7, has argued that, according to Machiavelli, the predictability of the actions of the prince is a substitute for the trust of his subjects. However, I disagree with Garver’s further claim that the prince’s subjects have to understand what the prince does in order to appreciate it (ibid., 112–13).

46 It should be noted that, in rhetoric, the entymeme (a characteristic form of proof) aims at short-circuiting that process. It consists in demonstrating the common validity of a verdict from merely one or two instances (as when we infer from an offense committed by a defendant in the past that he is guilty now of a present accusation).

47 Rebhorn, Foxes and lions, 137, in describing the prince as an “epic hero,” maintains that princes will never be able to enjoy their power, because they must be “too tough, too self-disciplined too relentlessly serious.” See also Germino, “Political Anthropology,” 46.

48 Machiavelli writes about these problems in the context of the dangers of falling prey to flattery. Machiavelli, Principe, 156 (chap. 23, § 2): “gli uomini si compiacciono tanto nelle cose loro proprie, e in modo vi si ingannono, che con difficultà si difendano […] [da gli adulatori].” Trans. Gilbert I, 86: “men are so well satisfied with themselves and their doings and so deceive themselves about them, that with difficulty they protect themselves.” See also Machiavelli, Discorsi, 476 (III, 6, 58): “gli uomini si ingannano il più delle volte dello amore che tu guidichi che uno uomo ti porti.”

49 As with the majority of Renaissance correspondence, some of Machiavelli’s letters were not addressed to only one person but were copied or read out to other people; the letter was the literary form in which Machiavelli also discussed and tested some of the ideas that would later appear in his treatise. Cf. Najemy, Between Friends, 9–22. For an introduction to the letters, which belong to the most studied epistles of the Renaissance, see Doglio, Arte delle lettere, 75–89. Doglio characterizes Machiavelli’s private letters as the medium in which he refers to himself as an expert in state matters, but often an ironic and playful tone (ibid., 84).

50 For a highly readable and detailed account of these events, see Najemy, Between Friends, 60–1, 68, 92–8.

51 Machiavelli, Lettere, 387–8 (26 June 1513 to G. Vernacci).

52 As Najemy, Between Friends, 94, explains: “Machiavelli emerged from the ordeal confused humiliated and unwelcome in the halls of government and diplomacy that had been his workplace […] it was the beginning of his second life, in which enforced leisure, reading and writing replaced politics and the stuff of his days.”

53 This does not imply that one could neatly divide Machiavelli’s texts or his literary achievements into two periods: e.g. one as a statesman and one as a theorist. Cf. Chiappelli, Nuovi studi, 9–10, 15, 104–6, 110, 156–7, 167–8.

54 Not many private letters predating November 1512 are still extant. See Najemy, Between friends, 13.

55 On their relationship, see Najemy, Between Friends, passim and esp. 9–14, on Vettoris’s crucial role as interlocutor for Machiavelli, as well as the chronology given here.

56 On their relationship, see Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, 240–3, 273–82, and passim.

57 The wording and use of mi voglio bene is similar to carità propria, which occurs in the Principe 10, § 11, 71–2, trans. Gilbert I, 43: “When the people have property outside the city and see it burned, they lose patience, and the long siege and their self-love make them forget [e la carità propria li farà sdimenticare] the prince.” The passage is discussed by Price, who supplies, among other translations, the term self-esteem. Price does not discuss this letter; cf. Price, “Self Love, ‘Egoisme’ and Ambizione,” 41, f. 20. On the uses of amor propio in Machiavelli’s day, see ibid., 241–3, f. 17, 20, and 251.

58 Machiavelli, Lettere, 363 (18 March 1513).

59 Ibid., 423–8 (10 December 1513).

60 Ibid., 426 (10 December 1513), trans. Atkinson and Sices, 264.

61 Ibid., 427 (10 December 1513), trans. Atkinson and Sices, 264 (modified). As Najemy, Between Friends, 235, has observed, such imaginary conversations were far from unusual, as the examples of Petrarca, Boccaccio, or Alberti show.

62 Rebhorn, Foxes and Lions, 221, emphasizes that Machiavelli often assumes the persona of the teacher, “offering his services to people whose social inferior he himself inexorably remained.” Raimondi, “Rhetoric of the Warrior,” 12, diagnoses “an extraordinary theatrical intelligence that allowed [Machiavelli] to insert himself into his characters.” See also Najemy, Between Friends, 62.

63 Machiavelli, Discorsi, 120 (I, 25, 2): “lo universale degli uomini si pascono così di quel che pare come di quello che è: anzi, molte volte si muovono più per le cose che paiono che per quelle che sono.”

64 Six months later, in another letter to Vettori, Machiavelli’s complaints become even more pressing, and he writes “it wears me out [mi logoro]” and that he fears to be soon constrained to leave his family behind, because he is used to spending money and he cannot live without spending. Machivelli, Lettere, 462 (10 June 1514): “Ma egli è impossibile che io possa stare così perché mi logoro, e veggo, quando Iddio non mi si mostri più favorevole, che io sarò un dì forzato ad uscirmi di casa […] e lasciare qua la mia brigata, […] sendo avvezzo a spendere, e non potendo fare senza spendere.”

65 Machiavelli, Lettere, 428 (10 December 1513, to F. Vettori): “lungo tempo non posso star così che io non diventi per povertà contennendo.” The pages of many of Machiavelli’s letters in the years to come are filled with such complaints. Ibid. cf. also 494–5 (8 June 1517 to G. Vernacci).

66 Machiavelli, Discorsi, 521 (III, 21, 11): “Perché colui che troppo desidera essere amato, ogni poco che si parte dalla vera via, diventa disprezzabile; quell’altro che desidera troppo di essere temuto, ogni poco ch’egli eccede il modo, diventa odioso.”

67 Machiavelli, Lettere, 428 (10 December 1513, to F. Vettori). Machiavelli’s use of the figure of speech “of rolling a rock,” which recalls the myth of Sisyphus, has often been seen as a Machiavellian allegory for politics in general and, more specifically, a reference to Lucretius; cf. Raimondi, Politica e commedia, 165–72.

68 Kodera, “Letter Games,” 97–116.

69 Machiavelli, Lettere, 521 (17 May 1521), trans. Gilbert I, 199.

70 Ibid., 521 (17 May 1521), trans. Gilbert I, 199.

71 Ibid., 528 (19 May 1521), trans. Gilbert I, 204.

72 I wish to thank the anonymous reviewer for suggesting I look into Machiavelli’s theater, but cannot comply with their request for the lack of space.