Houses That Are Half Brick

Sociology and Politics conference

En una de las entrevistas que He nry Kissinger brindó a la revista The New Republic , se le preguntó, después de oírle hablar sobre los consejos the President, if he considered himself a "Machiavellians." Kissinger does not hide his annoyance he answers, "no, no way." The reporter, puzzled, asks, "but, at least, have you received any influence of the Italian diplomat, Kissinger's insistence, answered emphatically," Absolutely not. "

Why Kissinger rejected with explicit as it defined as "Machiavellian"? or asking more broadly, why be termed a "Machiavellian" in politics is so negative? the answer is clear, but no right-"Machiavelli is the representative of the policy that seeks power as an end in itself without worrying about the media" or "Machiavelli believes the end justifies the means, it is the policy without project, no morals, no values \u200b\u200bor ethics. "

No doubt any politician would like to scream pragmatic n out of ideas, but is Machiavelli who is to blame for such ideas? The answer is negative.

Now do not just want to make certain defenses to Machiavelli (an issue already made by many authors), but I want to raise what for me is the most significant contribution to the policy of Machiavelli.

As stated Mauricio Virolli (in "Maquiavelli and Republicanism") is not lower than in the text where Machiavelli makes the couple advice Prince to stay in power (root from which Machiavelli subsequently attack that frees the author to the politics of morality), Machiavelli never used the word "political" to define actions. From this perspective, the concept of "political" Machiavelli would have to look elsewhere. It is here that republicanism suggests that the most suitable place to find the fundamental features of politics in Machiavelli so n "Discourses of the First time of Tito Livio." The foundations of Machiavelli is closer to the political vision of the ancient Romans, and who emphasize politics and life in the Republic , life in the free cities, where civic virtue is developed and lives According to law, and not arbitrary actions of despots.

policy Machiavelli refers to freedom, I the latter as the desire not to be mastered, no dependencies and arbitrary interference by subjects of power, and therefore, raising the inability of the political and despotic governments that prevent citizens to establish ties and linkages built only master-subject, which prevent the development of freedom.

This view of Machiavelli as a republican author, who, as son of the Renaissance, presents a categorization of the political as own republics and focused on the broad freedom to create a citizenry devoid of domination by foreign bodies to Republic is clearly novel breaks with the traditional pragmatic Machiavellian and amoral. On the contrary, the author shows how a policy that links and values \u200b\u200bsuch as liberty, fraternity ( Republic is perpetuated only in fraternity, hence the value of citizenship) and no domination.

While this is correct, we can not say that such ideas are unique Machiavellian thinking. In some Thus, such proposals, and Machiavelli himself acknowledges, comes from ancient Rome and its cities, and going back further back, come from Aristotle and his own idea as a space policy that seeks the common good through citizen consensus ( clear in his day were not all citizens, without a minority, but the important thing is that it did emphasize the common good and the consensus among the citizens of damage City).

Where to find the breaking point of Machiavelli? Where do you see any "epistemological break", to paraphrase Althusser-? Where Machiavelli not only gives new answer to old questions, but new questions to old problems? In short, where Machiavelli makes an "exodus" of the consensus at that time?

The issue is complex, and much has been said about . Giovanni Sartori (in " Policy"), and with it much of Science current Policy, argues that Machiavelli is the first to find a new object of study, to lay the foundations or pillars a new science, the science of politics. The reasoning is not at all superficial. If Machiavelli manages to remove the power of his frame religious, moral, finally, metaphysical, and see the power as such, naked, there is no reason not to reject the assumption that what has been discovered is an object hidden under study metaphysics, and see, at a time, those justifications of power in, for example, ideas "emanating from God" as an act so natural and human as power and keep looking. If correct this, what has been now a new problem, which generates an own language, its own set of concepts that they can understand. Machiavelli has built an epistemic framework, has broken with his present you.

But this is only correct to some extent, seen in Machiavelli's new, but I think their response is inadequate. When analyzing Machiavelli as the founder of a new rationality, a new object, it is within view of Machiavelli as the father of the "Reason of State" is, like the one managed to get the power of any moral roots. is seen elo Machiavelli as the founder of a science that justifies the actions of the state according to their power and not metaphysical, which monitors the state as an entity separate from civil society, institutional set requires a new set of ideas for consideration. Political science, with Machiavelli as a "founding father" would be to study the state of its development, its logic, behavior, oblivious to the logic of "civil society" (object of sociology), material production (or URPOSE independent of the economy) and normative values \u200b\u200b(now the subject of philosophy). These "Uses of Machiavelli" (as Portantiero then write about the uses of Gramsci) reduce this author to state defense counsel sa c unitary object, reified, and independent and have their symptoms in the current use in subdiscplina of Science Policy, International Relations, Machiavelli is one of the fathers of realism, which sees as the only subject on the international scene these objects unit with its particular logic, States.

Where do we fit into this view of Machiavelli, his conception of "virtue", the reasons why the failure of C analyzed Esar Borgia, and his vision Fortune ? I believe that, in fact, Machiavelli is one of the founding fathers of the policy, but a very different political categorized by Sartori, and also a policy that goes beyond his republican normative basis ( search of freedom, subject to the frames of the Republic , etc.). Machiavelli allows us to analyze the correlations of unspecified forces, contingency as an area subject to the clash of wills, where there is no Newtonian law, but given the chaos prigogiano (if it is physical), where the social sphere and is not come from heaven or less natural, but a clash, subject to the organizational capacity of wills (do not we are fast approaching the Gramscian vision of the modern prince?).

In Machiavelli's fortune, as the contingency lose its sacredness, untouchable. Power no longer is associated with divine values, immutable and therefore non-human action. Machiavelli admired Cesare Borgia not because their ideas of the world, but by his way of dealing with contingency, particularly as related co No power, not as a private institution subject to unearthly values, but rather, as a field of conflict, subject to the particular ways in which we organize our will. Policy goes from heaven to earth, the great divine ideas into concrete action of wills in conflict.

Machiavelli, then, managed to make a criticism of other leaders Borgia, where they criticized the failure to change its strategy to remain in power at the rate at which changes of fortune, contingency, the clash of wills. o Machiavelli, therefore, the action exceeds the determination and build a field "empty" subject to the volatile conflict of wills. It is in that field indeterminate, unstable and contingent where Machiavelli building a new place for politics.

This allows us to understand the meaning of "virtu" in Machiavelli. Virtu is the capability or set of qualities that be developed to address the "fortune" or, in contemporary terms the situation and attempt to tame it, control it to some extent. It is this ability that dominates the writings of Machiavelli, is this capacity to cope with contingency and guide them to our advantage. This is the new ethic that Machiavelli's policy inserts (very close to the ethical responsibility of Max Weber) and is far removed from the traditional view of "the end justifies ic media."

Machiavelli suggests an undetermined field is the theoretical, to paraphrase the important contribution of Althusser to the Florentine thinker's understanding of the situation, in that space of what " Finally Althusser "(is not it paradoxical to talk about a" last "," mature "as opposed to a" young "Althusser, while Marx himself categorizing dividing the young humanist Marx and the mature Marx, science?) called "aleatory materialism" and emphasizing the field where neither Fortune or Divine, are inserted in this field, dominated by the c forces Hoque, where virtu triumphs.

is in this sense we can understand the words of Gramsci when he says that "The Prince" is a "revolutionary manifesto" because it contains no criticism of the rulers (much to the contrary! this text was written Maqui Avelo to prove to the Medici which has the capacity to be diplomatic, and be employed) or because it contains explanations of why the social structure was unfair, but it is "revolutionary" by something deeper, because "Naked King" shows the power as something mundane, subject to action and will not as something alien to our ability to practice. The field of conflict, the policy that Foucault described as "war by other means" (Clausewitz investing), this instability is precisely the proper field of politics. At the time of Machiavelli inserted politics in this area unstable, uncertain and conflicting, power strips and "fortune" once again subordinated groups. Macchia veil is demonstrating that the powerful are those with something as mundane as their ability to prevail and put the rest, not divine values. In the Florentine thinker any teleology disappears in the ongoing conflict, many s sometimes latent, but always subject to the will of the social partners.

is precisely that spirit against any teleology which prompted authors such as Antonio Gramsci to see the correlation of forces in the key moment of political action. Against the economic determinism of the Second Communist International, Gramsci notes that the time "active and operative" in that it space in which social groups beyond their corporatism and enter the field in which struggles for their ideas, worldviews, and their bearing Weltschauung Universal, is Hegemonic . This field of hegemonic struggle and cotrahegemónica is an active field, subject to the organization of the will, the ability to structure a speech that builds hegemony.

As Gramsci and Machiavelli before come together in the same track. The political, understood as the field undetermined volume confluence NTAD to organize (virtu) and build their power over the rest. It is a "deterministic chaos" as Fortune (as a clash of wills) is always a certain relation of forces, and when you come in, come in this particular articulation of social forces. But it is a chaos, as it is not certain, lacks any historicism or telos, and is subject to the conflict. "Men make their history but not under conditions they choose," said Marx, perhaps more accurately, we can say that these "conditions" are contingent products of old correlation of forces unstable, subject to modifications, alterations or, default radical change.

Machiavellian That's the contribution I think is most important to recover today. In an era where the whole social field is seen as natural, given, subject to technical calculations neutral and objective (the goal of Chilean society has already been imposed, to grow by strengthening the export model, to perpetuate a political system subject to the procedures election every four or eight years and maintain collective goods in private hands to "encourage investment "), where the conflict are just anomalies or irregularities in the cold social order and where any questioning of the consensus (Gramsci would say hegemonic) in place (fire and blood to remember), to remember that politics is the technique efficiency of how we can perpetuate the purposes provided to society, or the art of state (raison d'état), but the unstable area where the end decided that we propose as a society and as such is a battlefield, conflict, open and uncertain, but in this sense is a field open to all imagined possible, open to all possibilities, it is precisely this area where we think the purposes of society, without being subject to a particular telos.

For Aristotle, politics was the art of human excellence, because he sought the greatest good of mankind, the good of the community. Yes, politics can be the ultimate human art, but not because I seek the good of the community, but because the field is unknown where the clash of wills, the war between the groups can generate a space open to the imagination, to break frames as possible and where can collide different visions of what is the common welfare. If the policy of Machiavelli gives us something today, is that we opens the mind to the impossible, what is now unthinkable, broke with tradition, this perspective is that Machiavelli is, in its deepest sense, a revolutionary.