From the 4th chapter of Leo Strauss'
Thoughts On Machiavelli:
Many writers have called Machiavelli a pagan. Most of them mean by this that, “loving his fatherland more than his soul,” he forgot or denied the other world, and being enamored of the worldly glory of pagan Rome, he forgot or rejected the imitation of Christ. They mean that he forgot to think about everything which is not political in the narrow sense or that he was so self-complacent as to rest satisfied with rebelling passionately and blindly against Christian morality without giving dispassionate thought to the theological premises of that morality.They imagine that he was another Cosimo de' Medici who said among other things that states cannot be kept with paternosters and was therefore slandered as a man who loved this world more than the other world. A man of this sort is not properly called a pagan.
Paganism is a kind of piety and one does not find a trace of pagan piety in Machiavelli's work. He had not reverted from the worship of Christ to the worship of Apollo. On the other hand, it is not misleading to count Machiavelli among “the wise of the world.” He informs us that Savonarola's sermons are full of accusations of “the wise of the world” and of invectives against them. According to Savonarola,“the wise of the world” do in fact say that a state cannot be ruled with paternosters. But they also say that they do not wish to believe anything except what rational discourse proves; they therefore regard the Biblical prophecies as “things for women”; Savonarola has heard them say in their disputations that, speaking philosophically and disregarding the supernatural, the world is eternal, God is the final and not the efficient cause of this world and there is only one soul in all men; they say that faith is nothing but opinion. Those “wise of the world” who transcend the limits of political cleverness reject not only the myths of the pagans but above all revelation and the characteristic teachings of revelation on the ground indicated. They are falāsifa or “Averroists.”
Without taking a side, or deliberately avoiding taking a side, my interest is in pointing out 1) the basic, eternal and core problem that we all face in life: our undeniable complicity with and in those systems that operate around us and are historically determined, and 2) that to the degree that we become active and powerful agents in this world, is exactly the degree to which we submit to *the Devil's bargain*.
My argument, or this presentation of "facts" is
not a theological argument -- I mean in the sense of that of a believer or an advocate of that specific metaphysics. The present unfolding multi-layered and explosive situation in Israel/Palestine right now, which looks as if it is capable of setting the world aflame,
seems to be a capsule of all or nearly all the primary concerns which operate so strongly -- both intellectually and emotionally -- in our Modernity.
Thus we
realize, and here I refer to
guilty complicity, that our own nations and cultures have been built on and indeed became possible as a result of a destruction which I will compare to the invasion of Canaan by God's People. We are all settler/colonizers and indeed we are also slavers, and that what we achieved, and what we have constructed, is built with the bones of those we destroyed. But to say this is only to acknowledge that this is how people (in the West) actually conceive of their nations and their societies. The reason why *what is happening in Israel* is so explosive is because it lights up every issue, every conflict, but what I principally wish to point out is that to turn against what Israel is doing right now, with all that moral indignation that out-flows like lava from an unsettled, overheated soul, is a form of
projection.
I do not think this is a minor issue or one that can or should be dismissed. We have in a sense normalized the Machiavellian political philosophy, which is to say that whatever the
other philosophy is -- I use the symbol of Jesus being tempted with the *whole world* which he refuses and thereby is 'ministered by angels' -- as a way of visualizing our own situation. Which is as I say
deeply complicit. Complicity is, in fact, our game and defines our condition.
What I find interesting in the present unfolding situation is the Jewish and Israeli insistence that *you had better get on our side*
or you will suffer consequences. And the *right side* is presented as being God's side and the side of the Sons of Light (these are actually terms being used). And yet, when examined through a Christian lens which is to say through a competing metaphysical lens, to associate with Israel, and with the general Jewish proclamation, can be described (again using the New Testament biblical model) as aligning oneself with Satanic power. That is, the terrestrial power and the entire zone where the demonic is said to have free rein. Don't blame me for presenting the issues through these lenses, I did not invent them, I am aware however that they are being applied in strange, convoluted and confusing ways. In this sense it is all a Giant Mess and there hardly seems a way to sort through things.
There is another and I think tragic aspect that can be referred to and I will try to explain what I mean. The World itself, or perhaps *chance*, or one could even go theological and say "God" -- that terrible double-crosser Yahweh -- has set a trap for God's people. That trap is bound up with the land called Israel which, after the European catastrophe (Shoah means catastrophe and is very similar to the word 'Nakba'), became the focus of historical salvation in the minds of Zionists. Israel, Jews, and Zionism have become nearly inseparable in the minds and hearts of diaspora Jews and Israelis. And it is with a traditional gusto and
joie de vivre (
l'chaim) that Israel was both reconquered violently and cruelly, but also resuscitated with a traditional Jewish zealousness.
Am Chai Yisrael is the mantric underpinng of Jewish hope and desire, but as it happens -- as it unfolds -- the *project* looks as if it is crumbling right before all our eyes.
I do not mean to say that I am qualified to predict where this will go -- I do not know. But what is curious, in a dark sort of way, is to see how fragile Israel is in fact. And also to see that Israel has been made a victim through its own, and very human, and very typical, desire. The same sort of desire we all have. The same sort of desire to build and construct -- even if it is on the bones and the labor of those we conquered and enslaved in one way or another.
I have also tried to point out that *turning against the world* and renouncing the demands and if you will the responsibilities of power & attainment, results in the undermining of one's own position in the world. Turning against what your ancestors did because a turning against your own self. You invalidate and condemn them simultaneously as you invalidate and condemn yourself. So in this sense Europe turns against itself. And certainly we who are located either in Canada, the US, Australia or New Zealand are in precisely the same situation as Israel is now: a settler/colonizer people.
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Here, for anyone interested, is a very interesting exposition by a Muslim man when asked what he would say to the Israeli people. I only present it because I found it compelling.
