Machiavelli

Whatever the circumstances the business of ruling is, as we have remarked, always carried out in accordance with the principles of raison d’état. Raison d’état may be deflected or hindered by real or imaginary obstacles, but it is part and parcel of ruling. It is not realized, however, as a principle and an idea until a particular stage of development has been reached; namely when the State has become strong enough to break down those obstacles, and to lay down its own unqualified right to existence in the face of all other vital forces. An account of this process from the standpoint of universal history would have to embrace and compare all cultures; it would have to begin by examining the idea of raison d’état in the ancient world, and analysing its relationship with the spirit of that epoch. For both the free city-states and the monarchies of antiquity are teeming with the problems of raison d’état and with attempts to formulate it. In the dialogue between the Athenians and the citizens of Melos, given by Thucydides in Book 5 (ch. 85 ff.), the harsh and frightening aspects of raison d’état and power politics are stated very succinctly. In his Phoenician Virgins, Euripides makes Eteocles say: ‘For if one must do evil, then it is good to do it for the sake of authority; but otherwise one ought to act rightly.’ ¹ In Book 5 of his Politics, Aristotle gives a picture of the rationally conceived way in which a tyrant can rule. In Book 3 of De officiis, Cicero discussed fully from the Stoic point of view the conflict between morality and what is useful to the State, and stated regretfully: Utilitatis specie in republica saepissime peccatur (ch. 11). The great historical works of Tacitus are steeped in the idea of raison d’état; as evidence of this we may quote one statement, from the lips of Cassius in Book 14 of the Annals: Habet aliquid ex iniquo omne magnum exemplum, quod contra singulos utilitate publica rependitur. Subsequently, after he had been republished by Justus Lipsius in 1574, Tacitus became the great teacher of raison d’état (though not to any great extent for Machiavelli, who drew chiefly on Livy, Aristotle and 26Xenephon); then for a whole century there blossomed a literature of Tacitists ¹ who exploited him politically. Justus Lipsius himself put together his grammar of politics (Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae libri sex, qui ad principatum maxime spectant, 1589) entirely out of maxims from antiquity, principally from Tacitus; he thus made available a mine of information (which is still valuable today) about the opinions of the ancient world on the subject of raison d’état. And even if the ancients had not coined for it any particular expression which was in general use, yet we frequently meet with ratio reipublicae in Cicero, and ratio et utilitas reipublicae in Florus. ²