Machiavelli and Fanon: Ethics, Violence, and Action

Gerald E. Tucker

doi:10.1017/S0022278X00002494

Machiavelli and Fanon: Ethics, Violence, and Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008

Gerald E. Tucker

Article contents

Extract
References

Get access

Rights & Permissions

Extract

Niccolo Machiavelli and Frantz Fanon are in the tradition of political philosophy. Do they not address themselves to the notion of freedom, the concept of legitimacy, and the moral basis of political action? This article will further argue that there exists a notable correspondence of thought between them.

The political thought of Machiavelli enjoys ubiquitous fame. Its pristine vigour is attested to by the fact that, through the past four and a half centuries, dictators and democrats have embraced its values.1 Yet there is no patent contradiction in this if one realises that Machiavelli deals compellingly with what is while not rejecting what ultimately ought to be; his prince is a sort of political Everyman concerned with realising the kingdom of earth.

Type: Articles
Information: The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , September 1978 , pp. 397 - 415

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X00002494 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

^{page 397 note 1} Evidence of the compatibility of modern democratic theory and the manipulative elements in Machiavelli's ruler is illustrated by Laswell, Harold and Kaplan, Abraham when they declare in Power and Society (New Haven, 1965), pp. x and xiv,Google Scholar that ‘the present work is much closer to the straightforward empirical standpoint of Machiavelli's Discourses’, and that ‘political science, as an empirical discipline, is the study of the shaping and sharing of power’. Laswell further states in Politics: who gets what, when, how (New York, 1965), p. 27,Google Scholar that ‘the fate of an élite is profoundly affected by the way it manipulates the environment; that is to say, by the use of violence, goods, symbols, practices’.

^{page 399 note 1} Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Prince and the Discourses, translated by Ricci, Luigi (New York, 1950), p. 92.Google Scholar

^{page 399 note 2} Machiavelli illustrates this by pointing to some prominent historical figures as follows: ‘And in examining their life and deeds [Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus] it will be seen that they owed nothing to fortune but the opportunity which gave them matter to be shaped into what form they thought fit; and without that opportunity their powers would have been wasted, and without their powers the opportunity would have come in vain.’ Ibid. p. 20.

^{page 399 note 3} Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Farrington, Constance (New York, 1966), pp. 47 and 117.Google Scholar

^{page 400 note 1} Prezzolini, Giuseppe, Machiavelli, translated by Savini, Gioconda from Machiavelli anticristo (New York, 1967), pp. 189 and 193.Google Scholar

^{page 400 note 2} Sforza, Carlo, The Living Thoughts of Machiavelli, translated by Troutman, Doris E. and Livingston, Arthur (New York, 1958), p. 158,Google Scholar my emphasis.

^{page 401 note 1} In a letter to Piero Soderini; ibid. pp. 119–20.

^{page 401 note 2} Carr, E. H., What is History? (London, 1967), P. 83.Google Scholar

^{page 401 note 3} On Machiavelli's modernity, a similar conception of morality may be found in Friedrich Nietzsche's observation that: ‘To recognize untruth as a condition of life – that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.’ Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1966), p. 12,Google Scholar my emphasis. Thus, Machiavelli's prince must ‘be able to do evil if constrained’; The Prince, p. 65.

^{page 402 note 1} Thus, Sartre, Jean-Paul states that ‘to choose to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose…because we can never choose evil.’ ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’, in Novack, George (ed.), Existentialism Versus Marxism (New York, 1966), pp. 74–5, my emphasis.Google Scholar

^{page 402 note 2} Historically speaking, man is always defined by action, but this, like ‘liberty’, is not boundless, and has consequently to be seen as establishing relationships. Moreover, action is that medium through which ‘we insert ourselves into the human world’, and so it speaks of taking the ‘initiative’, setting ‘something into motion’. It is in this sense that we would seek to situate action in the thought of Machiavelli and Fanon. See Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (New York, 1959), p. 157.Google Scholar

^{page 403 note 1} The Prince, p. 38.

^{page 403 note 2} Maritain, Jacques, The Range of Reason (New York, n.d.), p. 141.Google Scholar

^{page 404 note 1} ‘Having now considered all the things we have spoken of, and thought within myself whether at present the time was not propitious in Italy for a new prince, and if there was not a state of things which offered an opportunity to a prudent and capable man to introduce a new system that would do honour to himself and good to the mass of the people, it seems to me that so many things concur to favour a new ruler that I do not know of any time more fitting for such an enterprise.’ The Prince, p. 94.

^{page 404 note 2} Fanon, , The Wretched of the Earth, p. 255.Google Scholar

^{page 404 note 3} Ibid.

^{page 404 note 4} The Prince, p. 96.

^{page 404 note 5} Prezzolini proclaims virtù as: ‘The concrete exercise of liberty typical of a man of energetic and conscious willpower not to stop or control, but to mould the course of action in which he lives in order to stamp it with his own impr int, for the purpose not only of setting a goal but of translating action into reality.’ Machiavelli, p. 22, a quotation from Ercole, Francesco, La politica di Machiavelli (Rome, 1926).Google Scholar

^{page 405 note 1} The Discourses, p. 138.

^{page 405 note 2} On the theme of political action, it is interesting to compare Machiavelli's doctrine of raison d'état with Abraham Lincoln's famous reply to Greeley's, Horace ‘Prayer of Twenty Millions’, in 1862:Google Scholar ‘My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery … What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union’. Heffner, Richard D. (ed.), A Documentary History of the United States (New York, 1965), p. 154.Google Scholar

^{page 405 note 3} The Discourses, p. 406.

^{page 405 note 4} The Prince, p. 60.

^{page 405 note 5} The Discourses, p. 138.

^{page 406 note 1} Fanon, , The Wretched of the Earth, p. 30, my emphasis.Google Scholar

^{page 406 note 2} The Prince, p. 96.

^{page 406 note 3} Fanon, Frantz, Black Skin White Masks, translated by Markmann, Charles Lam (London, 1968), p. 216.Google Scholar

^{page 406 note 4} Ibid. pp. 213–14.

^{page 407 note 1} Fanon, , The Wretched of the Earth, p. 190.Google Scholar

^{page 407 note 2} Ibid. P. 252, my emphasis.

^{page 407 note 3} Gendzier, Irene L., review of The Wretched of the Earth, in The Middle East Journal (Washington), 20, 10 1966, pp. 534–44.Google Scholar

^{page 408 note 1} Fanon, , The Wretched of the Earth, p. 33.Google Scholar

^{page 408 note 2} Ibid.

^{page 408 note 3} Fanon, , Black Skin White Masks, p. 229.Google Scholar

^{page 408 note 4} Fanon, , The Wretched of the Earth, p. 34.Google Scholar

^{page 408 note 5} Ibid.

^{page 408 note 6} According to Gendzier, loc. cit. p. 541: ‘The violence that Fanon preached was the retroactive violence of the oppressed turning against his oppressor; not merely to avenge the past, but paradoxically, to regain his humanity for the future. It is by the purifying force of their hatred, their only treasure, said Fanon, that the colonized will become human again. By this final overthrow of the colonial behemoth of the West, the dependent world will be finally freed of the force that has kept it in the shadows of another.’

^{page 408 note 1} Sartre defines ‘authenticité’ as ‘having a lucid and truthful awareness of the situation, in bearing the responsibilities and risks which the situation demands, in taking it upon oneself with pride and humility, sometimes with horror and hatred’. Manser, Anthony, Sartre. A Philosophic Study (London, 1966), p. 155,Google Scholar a translated quotation from Réfiexions sur la question juive.

^{page 408 note 2} Carmichael, Stokely and Hamilton, Charles V., Black Power: the politics of liberation in America (New York, 1967), p. x;Google Scholar the authors are quoting from Douglass, Frederick, West India Emancipation Speech, 08 1857.Google Scholar

^{page 410 note 1} I am here thinking of Georg Siminel's theory of social organisation which postulates Kampf or conflict as a force within the dynamic that attracts and repels individuals, and finally leads to uneasy combinations. He sees stability as a temporary balancing of forces: ‘Conflict is thus designed to resolve divergent dualisms; it is a way of achieving some kind of unity … This is roughly parallel to the fact that it is the most violent symptom of a disease which represents the effort of the organism to free itself of disturbances.’ Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations, translated by Wolff, Kurt H. and Bendix, Reinhard (London, 1964), p. 13.Google Scholar

^{page 410 note 2} Niebuhr, Reinhold, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York, 1960), p. 180.Google Scholar

^{page 410 note 3} Lerner, Max, ‘Introduction’ to The Prince and the Discourses, p. xxx.Google Scholar

^{page 410 note 4} Machiavelli, , The Discourses, p. 115.Google Scholar

^{page 410 note 5} Ibid. p. 144.

^{page 411 note 1} Fanon, , The Wretched of the Earth, p. 150.Google Scholar

^{page 411 note 2} Ibid. p. 162.

^{page 411 note 3} As Gerhart K. Grohs put it: ‘There is much evidence that violence may be necessary in African countries which are or were dominated by white settler groups…But…The outcome of much violent action in Europe and the U.S.A. in recent years has shown that violence as a means of revolution has to be viewed far more discriminately. It is time to think afresh about the roots, the efficiency, and the controllability of violence. This means going beyond the ideas of Frantz Fanon’; ‘Frantz Fanon and the African Revolution’ in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), VI, 4, 12 1968, pp. 544–5.Google Scholar

^{page 412 note 1} Finley, M. I. (ed.), The Greek Historians (New York, 1960), p. 297.Google Scholar

^{page 412 note 2} The gravamen of Pico Della Mirandola's public disputation thus reads: ‘Thou, constrained by no limits, in accordance with thine own free will, in whose hand we have placed thee, shalt ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature. We have set thee at the world's centre… We have made thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom of choice and with honor, as though the maker and the molder or thysell thou mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer.’ ‘Oration on the Dignity of Man’, in Cassirer, Ernst, Kristeller, Paul Oskar, and Randall, John Herman Jr. (eds.), Vie Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago, 1963), p. 225.Google Scholar

^{page 413 note 1} Tarlton, Charles D., ‘The Symbolism of Redemption and the Exorcism of Fortune in Machiavelli's Prince’, in The Review of Politics (Notre Dame), xxx, 07 1968, p. 332.Google Scholar

^{page 413 note 2} Antonio Gramsci's rendering of Machiavelli's transpositional qualities is a case in point. He states that ‘Machiavelli makes himself the people, merges himself with the people… the “logical” work is only a reflection of the people, an internal reasoning which takes place inside the popular consciousness and has its conclusions in an impassioned, urgent cry.’ The Modern Prince and Other Writings, translated by Louis Marks (New York, 1957), p. 136.Google Scholar

^{page 413 note 3} Gasset, Ortegay, The Revolt of the Masses, translated anonymously (London, 1963), p. 10.Google Scholar

^{page 414 note 1} Fanon, , The Wretched of the Earth, p. 30.Google Scholar

^{page 414 note 2} Fanon, Black Skin White Masks, p. 231.Google Scholar

^{page 415 note 1} Cabral, Amflcar, Revolution in Guinea. Selected Texts, translated and edited by Handyside, Richard (New York, 1969), p. 69.Google Scholar

Article contents

Machiavelli and Fanon: Ethics, Violence, and Action

Extract

Access options

References

Save article to Kindle

Save article to Dropbox

Save article to Google Drive

Reply to: Submit a response

Your details

You have entered the maximum number of contributors

Conflicting interests