Machiavelli and the Imagination of Cruelty

In contrast to political liberals who disavow the role of cruelty in politics, Machiavelli insists on the centrality of cruelty to state-formation in early modern Europe. Drawing on _The Prince_, I argue that, for Machiavelli, cruelty is a non-coercive modality of violence. In contrast to coercive forms of violence that obtain political effects by compelling recalcitrant subjects, cruelty establishes political effects through the use of spectacular and gratuitous violence that is publicly performed and addresses third-party audiences. We tend to think that states seek to hide the cruelty of their repressive apparatuses, but Machiavelli suggests that such disavowals are only one among multiple political strategies. If _The Prince_ theorizes cruelty from the point of view of princes, the _Discourses_ and especially the _Florentine Histories_ offer a perspective on cruelty from the point of view of the people. In these texts, it becomes clear that for Machiavelli, cruelty is a form of violence typically directed against social superiors. Cruelty is a mode of violence that target the particular class-dependent values of the _grandi_, namely their conceptions of honor, privilege, social prestige, and reputation. Machiavelli, I argue, derives his theory of cruelty from Seneca and the Roman Stoics. For these authors, cruelty is characterized by irrationality and degradation, a modality of violence that attacks the dignity of its target. I contend that Machiavelli adopts a modified neo-Roman conception of cruelty, even though he narrows what counts as irrationality and excess. In order for cruelty to perform this political function, it must be mediated by sensation and imagination. While Machiavelli does not have a coherent political psychology, he is influenced by three main theoretical traditions (Roman rhetorical theory, Lucretian natural philosophy, as well as Renaissance debates about mental images), which collectively shape his conception of images and appearances.