Fear’s Dominion and Liberty’s Fragility: Reconciling Virtù, Necessity, and Freedom in Machiavelli’s
S Tominaga
@CsTominaga
·
18 feb.
I. Introduction
Niccolò Machiavelli’s political thought endures as both a cornerstone of realist theory and a perennial source of controversy, his writings oscillating between the ruthless cunning of The Prince and the republican enthusiasm of Discourses on Livy, prompting accusations of incoherence. The tension lies most acutely in his treatment of virtù, fear, and liberty—a constellation of ideas that seems, at first glance, riddled with contradiction. Machiavelli lauds virtù, an agile, forceful capacity to master fortuna, as the highest political quality. Yet this celebration of political skill coexists with his profoundly pessimistic view of human nature: men are self-serving, deceitful, and obedient only when shackled by necessity.[1] This anthropology leads him to insist that fear—particularly the fear of violent reprisal—is the most reliable foundation of order.[2] At the same time, he elevates liberty (libertà) as the supreme good of the republic, depicting Rome’s plebeians as zealous defenders of freedom against the encroaching ambitions of the nobility.[3] These juxtapositions give rise to a fundamental question: Is Machiavelli guilty of theoretical disarray, advocating liberty while anchoring order in fear? Or do these seemingly disparate elements coalesce into a coherent system?
The charge of inconsistency, most forcefully advanced by liberal and neo-republican theorists such as Quentin Skinner and Hannah Arendt, asserts that fear undermines liberty by fostering submission and eroding civic virtue.[4] Liberty, in this view, consists in the absence of arbitrary power—non-domination—and any political structure predicated upon fear risks devolving into servility.[5] Arendt, reflecting on twentieth-century totalitarianism, argues that fear’s corrosive effect on civic engagement precludes the vibrant public sphere upon which republican liberty rests.[6] Machiavelli’s invocation of fear, it is claimed, is therefore not a necessary guardian of freedom but its mortal enemy.
Yet this liberal critique misapprehends the essence of Machiavelli’s realism. When read not through the lens of moral idealism but through the harsh prism of necessity, Machiavelli’s thought reveals itself as rigorously coherent. Fear, far from being antithetical to liberty, emerges as its precondition in a world governed by power struggles. Machiavelli’s liberty is not the autonomy of the atomised individual but security from domination—the preservation of one’s life and possessions in a landscape where power is omnipresent.[7] This freedom can only endure if power is contested and constrained, and fear—reciprocally distributed across social classes—becomes the engine of that equilibrium. The nobles fear the plebs, the plebs fear the nobles, and both fear the magistrates and the law. It is in this structured contestation that liberty is born, not from the absence of power but from its mutual restraint.
John Mearsheimer’s offensive realism provides a modern parallel to this Machiavellian logic. In the international realm, anarchy and the absence of a Leviathan compel states to seek power as the sole guarantee of survival; cooperation is fleeting, and security lies in deterrence.[8] Similarly, Machiavelli’s republic thrives not on trust but on the calibrated friction between competing fears, producing stability through balance rather than harmony. Hans Morgenthau’s classical realism reinforces this view, positing that power, not morality, is the central currency of politics; aspirations to transcend this reality are naïve and dangerous.[9] Morton Kaplan’s systems theory further complements this perspective, suggesting that stability arises not from benevolence but from structural constraints that prevent any single actor from achieving hegemony.[10] Ayn Rand’s rational egoism, though often dismissed as antithetical to

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