Captains Must Be Good Orators

• In Event: Machiavelli, Locke, and Hume

Abstract

Despite his obvious mastery of the art of rhetoric, Machiavelli devotes virtually no attention to teaching rhetoric in his major works. I argue that this near-silence does not reflect Machiavelli’s wholesale contempt for the idea that speech can be politically efficacious, but that it does reflect a sharp divergence from both his contemporaries and their classical authorities. Aristotle, Cicero, and the Renaissance humanists had defended rhetoric as a means of persuasion, whereby speakers can change the mind of an audience and lead them toward harmony and the common good. Machiavelli dismisses this kind of rhetoric as largely impotent. Instead, he defends a kind of rhetoric drawn more from battlefield oratory than political deliberation. This kind of speech seeks not to change judgments but to enflame and inspirit listeners to greater vigor in their actions. In exploring Machiavelli’s views of the power and limitations of rhetoric, we can also gain further insights into his vision of human psychology and the nature of politics.

Author

• Michael Collins Hawley, UNC Chapel Hill