Machiavellian Implications

But Glaucon’s answer to the question of trust also has a truly disturbing implication. This is that, if I am not confident that others are sufficiently afraid of detection and punishment, I should expect them to try to harm or steal from me for their own self-interest. I should therefore be prepared to defend myself and indeed, to pre-empt their attacks with attacks of my own. Thus if I think that the doctor is so set on using me as a guinea pig that she is prepared to risk detection and punishment, I should consider self-defence classes, a stronger lock on my door, and the price of hit men. She, on the other hand, should expect me to consider such things, and so should take measures of her own to resist and overcome them. We are likely to quickly reach a dangerous, even catastrophic, state of mutual distrust. Glaucon’s argument thus seems a recipe for disaster.

Glaucon, however, is confident that detection and punishment in Athens are sufficient to dissuade his fellow Athenians from crime, and he does not consider the disturbing implication of his argument. This implication was brought home forcefully to Niccolò Machiavelli, however. He had been second Chancellor of the Florentine republic, but when the Medici family took power through a coup d’Ètat, they accused him of plotting against them and subjected him to an excruciating torture called the ‘strappado’ (the ‘torn’). Recovering outside the city, he wrote The Prince, a book of advice for new authoritarian rulers such as the Medici. (He even proposed to send them a copy, in the hope of being offered a job.) In it, he writes, ‘One can make this generalisation about men: they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, they shun danger and are greedy for profit; while you treat them well, they are yours…but when you are in danger they turn away’. Machiavelli concludes from this not just that the Medici should be careful whom they trust. Rather, Machiavelli proposes that they take the brutal Cesare Borgia as their example and be prepared to be cruel, murderous, dishonourable, deceptive, and miserly whenever necessary to maintain their power. ‘I draw up an original set of rules’, Machiavelli writes nonchalantly.

Glaucon’s sorry picture of human nature seems to leave us in a sorry state. If we accept that human beings’ only reason not to harm or steal from each other in the pursuit of their self-interest is fear of detection and punishment, then it follows that when I am not confident that others have enough such fear, I should be prepared to pre-empt their attacks with attacks of my own. Since they also know that I will be prepared to do this, they should take measures to resist and overcome my attacks, and our distrust and attacks will spiral, ending only with the victory of the most brutal and cunning.

But before we ditch our qualms ...