The Machiavellian Cosmos (review)

Abstract

464 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3t:3 JULY 199 3 contrast with the Thomist tradition, on the important philosopher-theologian Antonio Trombetta, and on Saint Anthony of Padua himself. There is also a long and rich general study on the attitude of Franciscans toward Averroism from the thirteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Bonaventure and Ockham are among the figures analyzed. In the revised and expanded edition of his introduction to Paduan Aristotelianism, Poppi presents once again his valuable essay on the lineaments of the history of the Paduan school of philosophy and his survey of studies on Aristotelianism during the Italian Renaissance for the years 1958-1969. To them he has added some forty pages in which he discusses more recent scholarship on Renaissance Aristotelianism and on the study of Aristotle at Padua in particular. There are separate notes concerning Pietro d'Abano, Pietro Pomponazzi, Iacopo Zabarella and Galileo Galilei. As with all of Poppi's books and editions, these two books belong on the shelves of any research library frequented by scholars who are seriously interested in the history of late medieval and Renaissance philosophy and theology. A fine command of the sources and an ever thoughtful and balanced judgment mark Poppi's scholarship. EDWARD P. MAHONEY Duke University Anthony J. Parel. The Machiavellian Cosmos. New Haven: Yale University Press, 199u. Pp. 2o3. Cloth, $3o.oo. In his The Machiavellian Cosmos Anthony Parel destabilizes the modernist reading of Machiavelli's writings by arguing that Machiavelli's "new" approach to politics and history is based on traditional astrological and premodern anthropological theories. In doing so he suggests that, while Machiavellians like Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke may reach the same conclusions as Machiavelli himself, they nonetheless base their positions on assumptions of causation very different from those of the early sixteenth-century Florentine. After dealing in an introductory chapter with astrological thought from the ancient world down to the sixteenth century, Parel endeavors to locate Machiavelli within that tradition. Bringing together Machiavelli's scattered references to the effect of heavenly bodies on the action of countries and individuals, Parel maintains that, for Machiavelli, the existence of both is significantly governed by the movement of the stars, especially by the conjunctions of particular ones in the case of the former. At the same time, whereas the stars are directly responsible for the ordered, stable aspects of the universe , fortune explains the fortuitous and chance character of much that happens. In an inexplicable way fortune has the power to manipulate deterministic influences at will and arbitrarily to favor or disfavor countries and individuals. Within such a cosmos the area of human freedom available to v/rtfi, the particular human capacity by which we pursue the summum bonum of human beings, riches and glory, must be very limited. Machiavelli's frequent identification of virtft with animo or BOOK REVIEWS 465 spirit--in contemporary usage referring to the life of the body and contrasting with anima or soul--emphasizes the materialistic origins of this human power. Its ties to the body become even clearer since, accordinng to Parel, virtfLlargely derives from and is conditioned by three other elements, the particular mixture of humors which constitute our nature, ingegno (natural talent), and fantasia (imagination), all given us at birth or conception. Therefore, tied as it is to the body, the individual's virile, both in origin and throughout the course of life, is subject to the movements of the heavens. Because the historical situation on which the human actor wishes to impose his will is similarly conditioned by the stars, it is a matter of fortune whether the astrological "time" harmonizes with his humors and temperament. Individuals vary in their ability to act with flexibility, but the range of even the ideal prince is limited. Because on a larger scale the responsibility for the rise and fall of empires falls to fortune as well, autonomous activity on the part of individuals, particularly political leaders, is still more restricted than Machiavelli's anthropology would imply. According to Parel, Machiavelli conceives of political regimes as the effects of the conflicts between the humors of their constitutive groups. As opposed to the tendency to impose on Machiavelli...