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Strauss’s Machiavelli and Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor1 3 3to conceal his true intentions, in reality, as stressed by Strauss, “Machiavellireplaces God…by Fortuna.” 55 The world can be governed either by blind fateor by divine providence. According to Christian theology, the ChristianGod is omnipotent. Everything happens according to his plan and, while hecauses “his sun to rise on the evil and the good” (Matt. 5:45), he neverthelesslistens to the prayers of those who obey his commandments (John 9:31).In this sense, if one accepts the premise of Christian theology concerningdivine providence, then a break with traditional Christian morality, the aimof which is “to guide man toward the rational society, the bond and the endof which is enlightened self-interest or the comfortable self-preservation ofeach of its members,” 56 could only lead in the end to the same outcome thatresulted from the attempt to build the Tower of Babel, a biblical episode which,according to Dostoyevsky and to his Grand Inquisitor, reflects the essence ofthe modern adventure. 57 Thus, if Christ exhorts his followers to trust Godand leave to him the concern for one’s material necessities (Matt. 6:25–34),Machiavelli views man as a being thrown in a senseless universe, subject toa blind and cruel fate, and who can have no hope of redemption in anotherworld. On the other hand, Strauss emphasizes the fact that in the Discourses,when Machiavelli speaks of the un-Christian and inhuman measures thata new prince may need to take in a newly conquered state, he enumeratesthose of King David, “who filled the hungry with good things and sent therich away empty.” 58 But, as Strauss points out, the phrase is a quotation fromthe Magnificat, Mary’s song of praise to God from the first chapter of theGospel of Luke. The inevitable conclusion, Strauss argues, is that we are dealinghere with “an enormous blasphemy” 59 that reveals Machiavelli’s beliefthat the God of the Christian theologians is a tyrant. This view would bemotivated, according to Strauss, by the doctrine concerning hell, 60 as well as55Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 209.56Ibid., 296.57The same view is shared by Maistre, who, reflecting on the revolutionary terror and wars, but aboveall, on the irremediable dissolution of the social bond that resulted from a whole century of deisticand atheistic propaganda, raises the following question with regard to the modern attempt “to destroyeverything and then rebuild it without” God: “How did God punish that execrable delirium?” Tothat he answers: “He punished it as he created the light, with a single word. He said: PROCEED —And the political world crumbled” (Joseph de Maistre, Essay on the Generative Principle of PoliticalConstitutions and other Human Institutions, in Collected Works, vol. 1, chap. 66, InteLex Past Masters.Accessed June 10, 2014).58Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1996), 1.26.59Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 49.60According to Jean-Yves Pranchère, the dogma regarding eternal punishment in hell has been “themain objection” that “the thinkers of the Enlightenment,” and Diderot in particular, have raised