Theological Origins of Modernity

92 chapter three
ambition. 75 Human beings are directed not toward the common good and
God but toward their own good, and it is a good that is always enjoyed at
the expense of others. Pride, envy, sloth, ambition, hate, cruelty, and deceit—Machiavelli’s
version of the seven deadly sins—run rampant. 76 Under
such circumstances, human beings must constantly struggle in order
not to be swallowed up by ill fortune. Only a well-founded and well-run
state can ameliorate this condition and protect humans from depredation,
and those able to found and sustain such states are rare. Th ese founders,
however, provide human beings with the highest good and are thus immensely
valuable.
While Machiavelli’s account of the social world is in many ways similar
to that of Petrarch, the consequences that he draws from it are diff erent.
For Petrarch, the key to happiness is a kind of equilibrium or balance,
and this is achieved by mastering oneself. Th e greatest danger to such an
equilibrium, as he sees it, comes not from adversity but from success, that
is, not from bad fortune but from good. Th is is why he fi nally believes that
only the private life off ers the possibility of true happiness. For Machiavelli,
good fortune is not a danger, or at least is a danger only insofar as it puts
us off our guard. It is crucial that we recognize the unremitting pressure of
bad fortune and that we constantly be prepared for it. Machiavelli’s world
thus may have been created by God but it is not governed by divine love.
Indeed, it is governed by sin, and it is only by understanding how to sin in
the interest of the common good that we can make any headway and provide
any space for human thriving. Th e world that Machiavelli inhabits is
thus very like the world that nominalism uncovered two centuries before,
but it is a world in which God does nothing and in which even those with
the greatest human strength and ingenuity can only succeed in part and
for a short time. Ordinary men, by contrast, may succeed momentarily
but only by pure chance. Th us, Machiavelli’s humanism is both heroic and
tragic. In his thought we see the ultimate apotheosis of the individual in
the practical realm, but we also see that even these new titans are not titanic
enough to master the dizzying chaotic world that spins about them.
His humanism therefore off ers a sorry solace to those who seek peace and
stability, and only the slightest hope to those who long for glory or hope
for wisdom.
northern humanism: desiderius erasmus
Th e heroic humanism that played such an important role in Italy was
moderated when it moved north across the Alps by the encounter with