The English Solomon

Abstract

The tragedy that men see as the greatest tragedy is the uncushioned fall from the loftiest human power and achievement to the lowest human depths. So we speak of the tragedy of statesmen, of kings and conquerors, who bring guilty and innocent alike down with them in their fall, who move, in the span of a single lifetime, from the zenith to the nadir. As this is the stuff of tragedy, its antithesis often seems to us the stuff of greatness, and we speak with admiration, though sometimes grudgingly, of those who move from nadir to zenith, bring order out of chaos, create where nothing was created before - even though the order may be set in violence and justice created in injustice. Machiavelli’s praise of the founders of religions, commonwealths, and principalities is not simply “Machiavellian.” Political philosophy has long recognized the special character of the situation when law and order are things to be created rather than to be obeyed, modified, and cautiously reformed.¹ But Machiavelli’s comment that of all the men praised, those most praised are founders of religion and, next to those, founders of commonwealths and principalities, while it is a traditional comment, in one sense, includes the radical thesis that this rare situation, the situation of the founding fathers, is, politically, the critical and relevant one, and the capi and ordinatori not only are, but, indeed, ought to be most highly honored.