Canvas Foreword
The following content is a discursive “canvassing” exercise intended to: process ideas and prime them for more formal publication; foreground thought processes in the spirit of auto-discourse (see A Primer on Auto-Discourse); garner feedback from peers; establish conceptual provenance for ideonomic archiving purposes.
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Picking up from the inquiries outlined in Notes on an Ethical Hermeneutics of Machiavelli and Intimations of a Post-Machiavellian Moral-Tactical Calculus, I am now of the notion that certain heuristics may be devised to encapsulate a moral pragmatism of realpolitik. It is in this note that I will attempt the scaffolding of such a heuristic, and explore various tangential lines of thought, in the interest of determining whether or not such a prospect is of any real substance.
Preface on Discursive Method
Worth noting here is a certain spirit of discursive bricolage and ideonomic provenance which is, as of yet, largely unrefined in terms of methodology. That is, in attempting to articulate concepts which certain readers may eventually find useful, I am attempting, in the manner of what I call auto-discourse, to comprehensively outline the contours and limitations of my own understanding of the concepts at hand, to better contextualize these concepts in the subjective fallibility of their mode of transmission, namely discourse.
While the method and aim of auto-discourse is basically well enough defined for now, this additional methodological aspect of ideonomic provenance is yet totally ambiguous. The intention here is the treatment of ideas as living intersubjective artifacts, whose usage entails a constantly shifting semiotic context and thus a profound churn of denotative and connotative meaning. In this respect, I reckon the work of Patrick Gunkel may be of some relevance, as well as the work of certain poststructural semioticians like Derrida. That said, this is not the place for further elaboration of this method, but I did think it worthwhile to touch upon it, seeing as much of the ensuing inquiry is deeply nested under the layers of such methodology.
Also worth noting, on the topic of auto-discourse, are some recent developments in my approach to the didactic dualism of “external” and “internal” publications. Where the former is concerned with succinctly conveying ideas to an intended readership, the latter (such as this note) is more concerned with elaborating and proliferating existing ideas with less regard for external legibility. This methodological distinction, I’ve found, lets me isolate the two distinct priorities (conveying ideas and developing ideas) so as to avoid their confusion. For example, this note and the preceding note will function, I hope, to inform a resultant external publication which takes the relevant topics at hand and distills them into a more intuitive and focused expression. For more on the intended functionality of this corpus of notes, see Notes on Experimental Zettelkasten Methodology and Notes on Experimental Zettelkasten Methodology, Part 2.
Exposition on Conceptual Provenance
Having now read several of Machiavelli’s major works (Discourses on Livy, The Prince, and The Art of War) and some prominent secondary scholarship (Felix Raab’s The English Face of Machiavelli), I feel I am making progress in mapping out this particular landscape of ideas and ascertaining what seem to be the frontiers thereof. In particular, this inquiry and discursive project is concerned with the domain not only of Machiavelli’s ideas, but of the wider domain of political theory with a view to the emergence of secular realpolitik in the collective imagination, and the tactics thereby involved.
One of Machiavelli’s major points, and a point which resonates with the very premise of realpolitik, is the notion that moral integrity is often at odds with sheer tactical prudence. From Book One, Discourse 26. In a City or Province which he has seized, a New Prince should make Everything New:
Such methods are exceedingly cruel, and are repugnant to any community, not only to a Christian one, but to any composed of men. It behoves, therefore, every man to shun them, and to prefer to live as a private citizen than as a king with such ruination of men to his score. None the less, for the sort of man who is unwilling to take up this first course of well doing, it is expedient, should he wish to hold what he has, to enter on the path of wrong doing. Actually, most men prefer to steer a middle course which is very harmful, for they know not how to be wholly good or wholly bad.
Throughout his works, this sensibility is echoed and evoked, but never is it, to my awareness, fleshed out into a practical conceptual model for navigating the conflicts between moral integrity and tactical advantage. It is in this capacity that I seek to devise a heuristic for such navigation, to function as a sort of baroque algorithm for sensemaking and agency. I hope to sketch out such a heuristic and to develop it in parallel to my ongoing engagement with the domain of discourse at hand.
A Heuristic for Moral-Tactical Calculus
Taking the Eisenhower Matrix as an example of a viable and intuitive heuristic for sensemaking and decision-making, I suspect there could be a similar apparatus for navigating tradeoffs between moral integrity and tactical advantage. This is of interest to me for a number of reasons: firstly, as an exercise of developing my own intuition for the navigation of such things; secondly, as a praxis to recommend to my associates who may stand to benefit from such epistemic accoutrements; and thirdly as a means of more deeply engaging with the domain of discourse at hand, in attempting to distill a good chunk of it into a tangible and practical device.
Specifically, I think one would benefit from having a more systemic awareness of the conditions under which they would sacrifice certain moral bearings in light of circumstantial tactical advantage. In this respect, one might develop a consciousness of their own moral pragmatism, rather than haphazardly charting the sort of “middle course” which Machiavelli seemed so scornful toward. Indeed I do not believe this attitude of his was anti-dialectical in nature, but rather an attitude against a piecemeal or inconsistent approach to moral pragmatism.
If someone is committed to some moral principle of conduct while they wade deeper into scenarios of intense realpolitik wherein principled conduct loses much of its perceived virtue but retains its particular tactical disadvantage, it would behoove them to be preemptively aware of when such disadvantages are incurred, and whether and how they’d like to proceed in light of these disadvantages. Indeed such awareness makes the difference between naivete and nobility, and moreover I believe that Machiavelli’s aversion to the “middle course” was really an aversion to switching courses imprudently.
This is the sort of moral pragmatism I aim to explore and encapsulate into some heuristic, functioning as a sort of conduit between the lens of moral integrity and the lens of political tactics. Moreover, I believe such a framework would have dialectical affordances for true middle courses, in the sense of sublating certain tradeoffs between the moral course and the tactical course. Indeed I believe this dialectical capacity for reconciling moral integrity with tactical prudence may hold the key to what could truly be considered a post-machiavellian realpolitik; that is, a paradigm wherein morality can better compete with amorality.
A Logic of Moral Pragmatism
As for how such a heuristic would be articulated, I am considering a diagram, perhaps a matrix with some number of axes, which can be navigated using well-defined if/then logic. Ultimately, the model should serve to concisely communicate a simple praxis of moral pragmatism, from which a more elaborate philosophy may be unpacked. The model, and more importantly the sensibility it instills, should inform the decisions of the agent as they navigate the tradeoffs between moral integrity and tactical prudence.
For the purposes of iteration, I will start with a simple two-dimensional quaternary matrix, consisting of an axis of tactical prudence (geared around a given end pursued by the agent) and an axis of moral soundness (geared around a given moral principle upheld by the agent), which can be used to evaluate the favorability of a given means by these two metrics.
| Figure 1 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Tactically Prudent by | Tactically Imprudent by | |
| Morally Sound by | Generally favorable | Situationally favorable |
| Morally Unsound by | Situationally favorable | Generally unfavorable |
Assuming some distribution of possible means, or actions oriented toward attaining the end , the above succeeds in illustrating how the two courses (adherence to moral principle versus adherence to sheer tactical advantage) diverge according to the moral soundness and tactical prudence of a given means, according to predicted favorability of outcomes, as subjectively determined by the agent. This shows how means which are both morally sound and tactically prudent are generally advisable, while those which are both morally unsound and tactically imprudent are generally inadvisable.
Of course, a heuristic like this is only as good as the intuition and judgement of the agent, and will be of little aid to those lacking such a sensibility. To really practice this moral-tactical calculus in a post-Machiavellian sense requires an aptitude in various capacities: a broadly attuned model of reality for realistically ascertaining the likelihood of outcomes of given actions, as well as their favorability toward a given end; a broadly attuned optical awareness, regarding the moral perception of one’s actions; a viable and worthwhile end to work toward; well-defined moral bearings and a knowledge of the sort of situations which necessitate their abandon; an awareness of one’s own willingness to enter into such situations at the potential cost of either one’s moral integrity (if the ascertained tactical course is chosen over the ascertained moral course) or one’s tactical advantage (if the ascertained moral course is chosen over the ascertained tactical course). This holistic moral-tactical sensibility is what enables one to populate the above matrix with possible courses of action to choose from.
The cultivation of such a sensibility is another topic altogether, but equally if not more important than the efficacy of any guiding heuristics. Indeed, arguably the central purpose of such a heuristic would be to aid in the cultivation of the agent’s intuition, such that an ongoing formal reliance on the heuristic itself proves unnecessary. Ultimately I don’t think the above matrix is all that useful, beyond merely illustrating the fundamental logic of how adherence to a given moral principle sometimes agrees and sometimes disagrees with a given means toward a given end.
If the goal of such a heuristic is to instill in the agent the aforementioned sensibility, then this example, I am afraid, is inadequate. However, it does succeed in establishing a point of departure for the ongoing refinement of such a heuristic.
