On the efficacy of virtue

The point of maximum difference between Machiavelli and Castiglione rotates around the treatment that the two authors reserve for the concept of virtue related to political practice. The lesson we can learn on this topic from the Principe is peremptory: the virtues traditionally prescribed for men of government, by Plato and then by all classical and humanist literature, are useless; goodness in the affairs of state is inefficient and, indeed, damaging. “Perché gli è tanto discosto da come si vive a come si doverrebbe vivere, che colui che lascia quello che si fa, per quello che si doverrebbe fare, impara più presto la ruina che la perservazione sua: perché uno uomo che voglia fare in tutte le parte professione di buono, conviene che ruini in fra tanti che non sono buoni. Onde è necessario, volendosi uno principe mantenere, imparare a potere essere non buono e usarlo secondo la necessità” (Because he is so distant from how we live compared to how we should live, that who leaves what is done for what should be done, discovers his ruin faster then his salvation: because a man who in everything wants to be professionally good, will find ruin among many who are not good. Therefore it is necessary, wishing a prince to survive, to learn to be not good and to use this according to necessity) (N. Machiavelli, Il principe, edited by G. Inglese, Turin 1995, 102-103). On the basis of a bitter anthropological realisation (the congenital “evil” of human nature), Machiavelli theorised a radical diaphragm between the level of morality and that of reality. It therefore follows that for the prince it is legitimate to take recourse in actions and behaviour that are expressly malicious, that are contrary to common ethical values, so as to preserve and defend his power.

This is a point of view that Castiglione is in no way prepared to share, not because of abstract idealism but because of a different human temperament. His choices, both biographical and literary (starting with his affectionate predilection for Guidubaldo di Montefeltro), demonstrate that at the heart of his behaviour there is an ideology opposite to that of Machiavelli: in fact, to his eyes, as is affirmed in the fourth book of The Cortegiano, the final objective must not be immediate success, but the pursuit of an ideal, how far it may be from the field of practicality not rendering it useless. It is not true, we read between the lines of The Cortegiano, that someone who is human and virtuous, honest and loyal, is for this very reason condemned to defeat; but even if it were so, Castiglione found it preferable not to betray oneself and one’s own dignity than to pursue victory at any cost. In fact, the moral conquests and intellectual successes are worth more than those won on the field of battle.