MACHIAVELLI AND THE POLITICS OF DEMOCRATIC INNOVATION This page intentionally left blank CHRISTOPHER HOLMAN Machiavelli and the Politics of Democratic Innovation UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press 2018 Toronto Buffalo London utorontopress.com Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4875-0393-2 Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Holman, Christopher, 1979–, author Machiavelli and the politics of democratic innovation / Christopher J. Holman. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4875-0393-2 (cloth) 1. Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469–1527 – Criticism and interpretation. 2. Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469–1527 – Political and social views. 3. Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469–1527. Principe. 4. Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469–1527. Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio. I. Title. JC143.M4H65 2018 320.1 C2018-902598-0 This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the fi nancial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement of Canada du Canada Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 3 Part One: Methodology 1 Machiavelli and the Constellative Mode of Historical Appropriation 15 Part Two: Philosophical Anthropology 2 The Contingency of Being: On Worldly and Human Indetermination 43 3 Politics and the Human Essence: T he Prince as a Model of Human Subjectivity 75 Part Three: Political Ontology 4 Ambition and the People: The Popular Form of the Desire for Creation 131 5 Social Equality and the Contingent Being of the Great 185 6 Institutionalizing Ambitious Expression: The Republic as the Self-Overcoming Regime 217 Works Cited 275 Index 301 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments My thanks to the anonymous reviewers of earlier versions of this man- uscript for their detailed critical commentary, which improved the fi nal product immensely. I am grateful to the entire staff at the University of Toronto Press involved in the production of this book for their contri- butions, in particular Daniel Quinlan for providing his usual editorial expertise throughout the entire publication process. James Leahy, fur- thermore, provided comprehensive and detailed copy editing, greatly improving the readability of the book. Material from this book has been presented at various meetings of the Western Political Science Association, the Canadian Political Sci- ence Association, and the International Herbert Marcuse Society, as well as the 2015 conference “Radical Democracy and Utopia” at the University of Paris Diderot, and the 2014 workshop “Moral Revolu- tions: Institutional and Ideational Dimensions” at Nanyang Techno- logical University. The questions from many of the participants at these meetings were helpful in clarifying certain issues for me, and orienting the direction of the project. Finally, my thanks to all of the usual friends, colleagues, and teach- ers from York University, Stony Brook University, NTU, and elsewhere with whom I have discussed Machiavelli and democratic theory over the years. Abbreviated versions of chapters 1 and 2 appeared earlier as “Machi- avelli’s Constellative Use of History,” Theory and Event 19, no. 2 (2016), and “Machiavelli’s Philosophical Anthropology,” European Legacy 21, no. 8 (2016): 769–90. This page intentionally left blank MACHIAVELLI AND THE POLITICS OF DEMOCRATIC INNOVATION