Abstract

A term of art, originally Italian, becoming common usage in other European vernaculars in the late sixteenth century. It meant practical reflection, albeit in writing and general in form, about all aspects of statecraft (reason = reasoning, discussing, considering, but also a ground or justification for acting; state = government, the prince’s position, the institutional order of a “commonwealth” or “principality”). It claimed practical usefulness in virtue of its grounding in experience and history, contrasting itself with ‘‘mirrors of princes,’’ which were supposedly ignorant of the realities of politics. More narrowly, reason of state meant a ‘‘Machiavellian’’ disregard for legal, moral, and religious considerations when the ‘‘interests of the state’’ or ‘‘necessity’’ required it. Particularly contentious were the justifiability of dishonesty, duplicity, breach of faith and even treaty obligations, violence against opponents and competitors, illegal taxation, disregard ofthe claims of traditional institutions and officeholders, and the practice of religious toleration. opponents of ‘‘reason of state’’ attempted to demonstrate that, on the contrary, adherence to religion, morality, and legality was the best policy, in that it earned providential rewards, but also that in strictly pragmatic terms it was most likely to bring political success. However, these proponents of‘‘true reason of state’’ acknowledged that strict adherence to these norms was sometimes impossible, and when it was, statesmen must attempt to avoid the greater evil. Having become the subject of a vast literature and even a standard university topic, reason of state faded as an issue in the later seventeenth century. Realpolitik from the nineteenth century onwards resembles it, with the state representing a morality superior to the norms of legality and private morality, a view in turn contested by advocates of human rights and international morality.

Reason of state is often identified with the contention that the state and its agents are not bound by some of the rules of ordinary morality; more theoretically, that the wellbeing of the state is the ultimate value, which overrides, or is autonomous of, the demands of morality or religion (e. g., Meinecke). But no early modern author explicitly endorsed the latter contention, whereas no one who acknowledged political authority as legitimate could deny the former (private persons were not, for example, morally entitled to ennoble, expropriate, imprison, interrogate, execute, fight wars, etc). The distinctive identity of early modern reason of state is better understood in terms of its specific linguistic and historical context.

The adoption of the term presupposes that stato, state, etat, etc. were already familiar in the sixteenth century, usually to designate princely regimes. Reason of state became common usage among political cognoscenti in Italian in the 1540s (it does not occur in Machiavelli), in other European languages from the 1580s, but in German only in the early seventeenth century; the Latin-ization ‘‘ratio status’’ is also relatively late. This was a time of unparalleled religio-political conflict and belligerence.

Botero’s Della ragion di stato (1589) was the first book to use the term in its title. Like most authors, both Catholics and Protestants, who articulated the concept, he explained it as meaning discussion of the ‘‘means for preserving stable rule over a people’’ to which his book was devoted, the ars gubernandi as it came to be called. Botero noted, however, that reason of state was used in a more restricted sense to refer to extraordinary actions required by emergencies, and also to the noxious attitudes and policies prescribed by Machiavelli, and all too commonly practiced. Machiavelli was already a byword for contempt for morality, legality, and religion. Gentillet (1576) had blamed the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of Huguenots on the ‘‘Machiavellian philosophy’’ of Catherine de’ Medici and her court. ‘‘Machiavellians,’’ ‘‘atheists,’’ and ‘‘politicians’’ (a word already acquiring pejorative connotations) were commonly linked. ‘‘True reason of state’’ (e. g., Ribadeneira), ‘‘prudence,’’ civilis prudentia or civilis doctrina (Lipsius, Mariana), or arcana (Clapmarius, Besold) was presented as in part a critique of Machiavelli’s ‘‘false and impious’’ reason of state. Its authors nevertheless made significant concessions to it, although their endorsement of Machiavellian propositions was equivocal and circumspect (e. g., Boccalini, Mariana). Most of them were fully conversant with The Prince and other works of Machiavelli, which became increasingly available in Italian and in translation in the latter years of the century. His thought was often misrepresented (he did not, for example, actually say that ‘‘the end justifies the means,’’ the epitome of Machiavellianism). But he invited such misinterpretation by his delight in shocking, his incomplete trains of thought, extravagant generalizations, limited political experience and knowledge of history, which Bodin, Possevino, and Fitzherbert, for example, pointedly criticized, and what to Anti-Machiavellians seemed parodies of Christian religion and moral philosophy.

Reason of state thus presented itself as practical reflection about politica, intended for princes and their advisers, and based on the twin teachers of prudence: experience and history. These were summarized in maxims which, with the aid of new or newly fashionable concepts, served to express a cynical and pessimistic view of politics and human nature. The disorder of the time evidently made such a view particularly plausible. Fashionable concepts included ‘‘interest’’ as the summary term for motives, usually selfish ones, the terminological family politics, police, policy, politica, politique(s), Polizey, etc., and new coinages like “statecraft.” Maxims passed from book to book included: a state cannot be governed with rosaries; a man who does not know how to dissemble does not know anything about ruling; oderint dum metuant (it does not matter if they [i. e., the subjects] hate, so long as they fear); ‘‘dead men don’t bite’’ etc. Tacitus became fashionable as an appropriately excoriating political commentator on arcana imperii (the secrets of ruling). Lipsius and Ammirato set out their reason of state in the form of commentaries on his work, and even Botero, who paired him with Machiavelli as authorities for those who preferred reason of state to conscience, evidently found him highly instructive.

Reason of state was premised on pessimistic ‘‘descriptions’’ of politics and human nature. These were, however, neither new nor heterodox: Aristotle and Augustine could be cited in support. But it also offered prescriptions premised on these descriptions. Mirrors for princes and moral philosophy instructed rulers to advance the wellbeing and safety of their subjects and also their virtue and their pietas, by defending and upholding true religion. They moreover required princes to respect moral, legal, and religious norms and obligations, not least in order to set a good example to their subjects. The premise was that they could do all this without endangering themselves or their state. The reason of state literature could not base itself on this premise, because it envisaged princes whose positions and states were vulnerable to competing factions and allegiances, civil war, and foreign enemies, who often joined forces with domestic dissidents and rebels. In these conflicts religion, relied on by all known peoples as the principal social cement, was itself the foremost cause or justification of division and insubordination.

Reason of state thinkers, therefore, argued for the restoration of religious uniformity and the suppression of religious dissent (‘‘heresy’’), by whatever means might prove effective. Religious toleration of dissenting politically organized communities was decried as ‘‘false reason of state,’’ a subordination of the religious obligations of rulers to ‘‘policy’’ which was both impious and contrary to political prudence, since religion was the indispensable underpinning for political obedience, and ‘‘heretics’’ were by nature insubmissive. Bodin and the French politiques were counted atheists and Machiavellians for advocating it. However, where the enforcement of religious uniformity demonstrably endangered the prince, the state, or favored minorities, Catholic as well as Protestant reason of state was perfectly prepared to endorse religious toleration. The justifications were political ‘‘necessity,’’ which ‘‘has no law,’’ as another maxim said, and the orthodox moral principle of choosing the lesser evil (ad maiora mala vitanda), the greater evil being the weakening or even elimination of a prince or regime. ‘‘Necessity’’ thus licensed departures from strict rules of religion and morality. It was a concept with a respectable pedigree in moral philosophy and casuistry, which recognized that there can be no moral duty to do what is morally impossible.

Again, partly but not only in the same context of religio-political conflict, reason of state licensed extralegal, duplicitous, or possibly violent measures against domestic political competitors, conspirators, and factions, and in the conduct of foreign affairs generally. With respect to ‘‘heretics,’’ especially Calvinists, Botero argued for divide and rule, depriving them of public office, arms, and resources (even by extralegal taxation), destroying their morale by fomenting suspicions among them, eliminating ringleaders, and operating swiftly and in secrecy to stamp out rebellion and conspiracy at birth. Reason of state endorsed the expulsion or forcible conversion of the moriscos in Spain. In short, prudent and religious ends evidently licensed efficacious means, however morally suspect. Even assassination might be justifiable, as when the Emperor Ferdinand II authorized Wallenstein’s assassination in 1634. Overriding legal and moral duties was a fortiori permissible in diplomacy and in war, in which morality was always at a discount (inter arma silent leges), despite natural law and ius gentium. Reason of state could even justify alliances with heretics and Turks against coreligionists.

Not only adherence to legality, but all the traditional princely virtues must be tempered by ‘‘prudence.’’ Thus clemency might need to be overridden by the demands of exemplary justice. Liberality, again, must not be confused with profligacy, and husbanding and increasing public resources was the prince’s duty (Contzen). This meant increasing taxation. Political resistance to increased taxation was justified by appeals to traditional legal rights and ‘‘fundamental laws.’’ Bodin’s theory of sovereignty could be used to neutralize such ‘‘legal’’ justifications for political resistance (even if he himself had not done so in the case of taxation). But reason of state was not principally juridical in character: it was always (in its most favorite term) ‘‘political,’’ that is concerned with interests, ways, and means, and what worked, and it was the requirements of ruling, irrespective of legal ‘‘niceties’’ that counted.

Duties of veracity and keeping promises presented special difficulties, given the absolute theological prohibition of lying as in all circumstances evil; moreover treaties, contracts and promises were manifestly indispensable for civil and diplomatic relations, which depended on consistent adherence to the natural law principle pacta sunt servanda (promises/treaties must be kept). Machiavelli had notoriously argued that princes might need to break their word, on the grounds that in a wicked world, inflexible fidelity merely made them vulnerable. Reason of state here maintained a strictly anti-Machiavellian position, even insisting on keeping faith with heretics. All the same, duplicity might be indispensable, and various distinctions needed to be made. Secretiveness was a positive virtue in princes and counsellors, and essential for successful implementation of policy. But it was morally unproblematic since it violated no other duty. Again, amphibology (ambiguous speech) relied on the gullibility of others, and was therefore their problem. Simulation and dissimulation (pretending not to know or want or be what one does know or want, or vice versa) seem to fall into the same category, even though Aquinas had condemned them as lying. The Jesuit theologian Lessius straightforwardly allowed even outright lies as the lesser evil in very serious matters, such as defending the innocent. His friend Lipsius more cautiously distinguished three degrees of duplicity: he allowed dissimulation and secrecy (distrust) as ‘‘slight’’ and morally inconsiderable, bribery (of counsellors of foreign princes) and deception more reluctantly as ‘‘moderate,’’ but condemned violations of faith, removal of privileges and open aggression against foreign countries as unjustifiable. The heading for his discussion was ‘‘mixed prudence’’: that is, mixing honestas, prudence, and deception.

Reason of state in the narrower sense became a standard topos in German Protestant Universities in the seventeenth century, as well as in manuals of statecraft such as Contzen’s, and then fell out of fashion. Nineteenth-century proponents of Realpolitik may be regarded as continuators of the tradition.

See also: > Mirrors for Princes > Natural Law > Natural Rights > Political Philosophy