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Volume 26
Studies in the History of Law and Justice
Series Editors
Mortimer Sellers
University of Baltimore, Baltimore, MD, USA
Georges Martyn
Law Faculty, University of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium
Editorial Board
Antó nio Pedro Barbas Homem
Faculty of Law, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
Emmanuele Conte
Facolta di Giurisprudenza, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Roma, Italy
Maria Gigliola di Renzo Villata

Law & Legal History, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy
Markus Dirk Dubber

Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
William Ewald
University of Pennsylvania Law School, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Igor Filippov
Faculty of History, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
Amalia Kessler
Stanford Law School Crown Quad, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Mia Korpiola
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Helsinki, Finland
Aniceto Masferrer
Faculty of Law, Universidad de Valencia, Valencia, Spain
Yasutomo Morigiwa
Nagoya University Graduate School of Law, Tokyo, Japan
Ulrike Mü ßig
Universität Passau, Passau, Germany
Sylvain Soleil
Faculté de Droit et de Science Politique, Université de Rennes, Rennes,
France
James Q. Whitman
Yale Law School, New Haven, CT, USA
The purpose of this book series is to publish high quality volumes on

the history of law and justice. Legal history can be a deeply provocative
and influential field, as illustrated by the growth of the European
universities and the Ius Commune , the French Revolution, the American
Revolution, and indeed all the great movements for national liberation
through law. The study of history gives scholars and reformers the
models and courage to question entrenched injustices, by
demonstrating the contingency of law and other social arrangements.
Yet legal history today finds itself diminished in the universities and
legal academy. Too often scholarship betrays no knowledge of what
went before, or why legal institutions took the shape that they did.This
series seeks to remedy that deficiency.
Studies in the History of Law and Justice will be theoretical and
reflective. Volumes will address the history of law and justice from a
critical and comparative viewpoint. The studies in this series will be
strong bold narratives of the development of law and justice. Some will
be suitable for a very broad readership.
Contributions to this series will come from scholars on every
continent and in every legal system. Volumes will promote
international comparisons and dialogue. The purpose will be to provide
the next generation of lawyers with the models and narratives needed
to understand and improve the law and justice of their own era. The
series includes monographs focusing on a specific topic, as well as
collections of articles covering a theme or collections of article by one
author.
Equality and Vulnerability in the

Context of Italian Political Philosophy
Italian Efficacy
Department of Law, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena,
Italy
ISSN 2198-9842 e-ISSN 2198-9850

Studies in the History of Law and Justice
ISBN 978-3-031-35552-3 e-ISBN 978-3-031-35553-0
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35553-0
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive

license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively
licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks,

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Contents
1 Introduction:Teaching Under Unusal Circumstances
1.1 Equalities
1.2 Vulnerability
1.3 Equality as a Practice
References
2 Dante Alighieri, Hans Kelsen, and the Principium Unitatis
2.1 Kelsen on Dante
2.2 The Power of the Principium Unitatis
2.3 Borders and Limits
References
3 Niccolò Machiavelli and Efficacy
3.1 The Prince’s Ruin
3.2 Contingency and Vulnerability
3.3 Normative Systems and Efficacy
References
4 Gerolamo Cardano and Italian “Realism”
4.1 Locks and Poisons
4.2 “et licet vulpinari cum alia vulpe”
4.3 Efficacy and Virtue
References
5 Efficacy in the Italian Tradition:From Giovanni Della Casa to
Giovanni Nevizzano
5.1 Efficacy at Work
5.2 Nevizzano’s Rule
5.3 Efficay Bubbles and Vulnerability Problems
References
6 Paradoxes of Equality:Giambattista Vico
6.1 The Philosopher of Marriage
6.2 Basic Equality vs.Equality as a Goal
6.2.1 Basic Inequalities
6.3 Patricians, Plebeians, and Heroic Truths
6.4 The Fight for Equality
6.5 Efficacy Phenomena and Vulnerability
References
7 Cesare Beccaria and the Narrative of Neutral Equality
7.1 It Is About Individuals
7.2 On Families and Power Asymmetries
7.3 “A Firm and Constant Voice of the Law”
7.4 Efficacy and Pluralism
References
8 Equality and Vulnerability in The Duties of Man: Giuseppe
Mazzini
8.1 An Idiosyncratic Reading
8.2 God as a Self-Defeating Concept
8.3 Normative Vulnerability
8.3.1 Situated Vulnerabilities
References
9 Social Pluralism, Efficacy and Equality: Rethinking The Legal
Order by Santi Romano
9.1 An InstitutionalistNarrative
9.2 The Legal Order
9.3 The Risks of Selective Equality
References
10 From Emilio Salgari to Cesare Lombroso – Racism and Law in
Italy:Situated Vulnerability
10.1 Books for Italian Children
10.2 Lombroso and Racism
10.3 Italian Racisms
10.4 Arguments and Motivations
References
11 The Limits of Law and Arturo Carlo Jemolo’s Islands
11.1 Italian Conscientious Objection
11.2 “So Far As The Law Is Concerned”
11.3 Borders and Limits of the Law
11.4 Incompatible Narratives
11.5 Rocks Among the Waves
References
12 The Italian “Braibanti Affaire”:A Tale of Two Vulnerabilities
12.1 A Landmark Case
12.2 A Tale of Two Vulnerabilities
12.3 Vulnerability and Equality Practices
References
13 We, the People:Of Poets and Priests.Pasolini’s Very Hard Poem
13.1 Pasolini’s Poem
13.2 Law ad Morality
13.3 Two Notions of Vulnerability, Again
13.4 Vulnerable Positions
References
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
G. Zanetti, Equality and Vulnerability in the Context of Italian Political Philosophy, Studies in the History of Law and Justice 26
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35553-0_1
1. Introduction: Teaching Under Unusal Circumstances

Gianfrancesco Zanetti1
(1) Department of Law, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy
An old science-fiction story by Frederick Pohl, “The Gold at the Starbow’s End,” starts out with a fictional
experiment. Some children are in a room cluttered with stuff, and they are told to reach another room down
the corridor, as fast as they can, without touching the floor with their feet—a task they manage to carry to
completion by tying to their feet some long wooden boards they find in the room, and then sliding their way
to their assigned destination. In a second phase of the experiment, only one board is left in the room: the
children promptly tie the very same rope to one end of that wooden board and hop lightly while pulling the
rope. This latter device significantly improves their performance: they succeed in reaching the second room
in a shorter time. The problem, the obstacle, was the second board. Too much of a good thing, as they say.1
When I was appointed to the Chair of Italian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, I found
myself in a similar predicament. I had to plan my Ph.D. classes in the middle of the health emergency
brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and that meant, apart from other quite unhelpful circumstances, no
access to any library. I had to rely on my own tiny personal library at home, and on my memory (and, well,
the Internet). For some reason, however, I felt less clever than Pohl’s fictional children. It was challenging
and somewhat distressing. The subject I had agreed to lecture on was “Equality and Vulnerability in the
Context of Italian Political Philosophy”.
Since it was of course mandatory to teach online, but it was almost verboten to do so remotely—that is,
from outside the mainland US—I had to happily hop a flight to San Francisco.
Because of a quarantine, and of the other COVID-19 restrictions, I would spend most of my time in the
city secluded in a comfortable basement (my personal library had shrunk to a suitcase) reading over and
again (and then again) some famous pages written by Cardano and Machiavelli, poetry by Campanella and
by Vico, legal musings by Santi Romano and Arturo Carlo Jemolo. The lack of time constraints made it
possible to settle into an unusual frame of mind for my studying routine.
My students, on the other hand, were exceptionally gifted and supportive. I could never quite understand
how they could follow my classes in such an easy, almost relaxed way (despite all the inconvenience of the
pandemic environment, and despite my cute Italian accent, as one student described it). Their questions
were challenging and focused. We had the time to go back to the original text any time we felt the need, or
the whim, to do so. They could evidently read both Italian and Latin. One of the students was Brenda Rosado,
who like me was a Townsend fellow.2 Our chair was the indefatigable Timothy Hampton, and every Tuesday
it was one fellow’s turn to discuss a paper chosen (and posted online) by one in our number, on a subject
that most of the time, most of us were completely unfamiliar with (it fell to me to comment on a remarkable
paper by Bob Sharf on a Buddhist sect’s notion of time: it did prove to be a busy week, that one). It was more
than interesting to be exposed to so many different stimuli, to get the benefit of engagement with a group of
fellows intellectually so diverse, to converse with colleagues who did not share my outlook and were not
privy to my academic jargon, to face a gentle and yet challenging and sharp audience. And it was, of course,
fun.
The confluence of such unusual circumstances was perhaps responsible for my idiosyncratic approach to
the subject of the course. Thus Hans Kelsen, the father of modern Continental jurisprudence,3 is mentioned
mostly as a Dante scholar; Gerolamo Cardano comes up as a favorite author of Marcello Dell’Utri, a political
ally of (former libertine Italian prime minister) Silvio Berlusconi who served time in prison because of his
alleged connections with the Sicilian mafia, Cosa Nostra; the work of Giuseppe Mazzini is discussed, among
other reasons, because of the bold parallel he drew between three vulnerable groups: women, black slaves
in the American South, and republican Italians.
The idea, in working these angles and pursuing these tangential trains of thought, was to see if in some
key texts in the tradition of Italian political philosophy there could be detected a realistic notion of efficacy,
and this was the first problem I had in mind. The subtext all through the course—and the second problem
addressed in prodding and canvassing these key texts—was that of equality and vulnerability, the idea here
being to see if this problem could be tackled without invoking a specific notion of, say, natural law: to this
end it was enough to rely on a bare notion of efficacy, and one that was not even deliberately articulated with
any special theoretical awareness.
To make a long story short, on a notion of efficacy of this kind, normative horizons within which legal
and political decisions can, and do, flourish are self-originating phenomena (a notion I introduce by a
cursory reading of a lesser-known author like Nevizzano). These phenomena nevertheless offer their own
legitimizing narrative. Such a narrative, to this end, must present itself in a certain guise, as grounded in
universal values, for example, or as a having a theoretical and genetic prius with respect to the phenomena
themselves. Efficacy phenomena, however, do not really need to function according to the narrative they
historically radiate; on the other hand, it is almost impossible to conceptualize these phenomena except
through that very narrative (or through some other narrative), that is, except by endorsing or criticizing,
validating or debunking that specific narrative.
Efficacy is the notion I use in canvassing Machiavelli’s texts, where these problems can first be somehow
detected. When Gerolamo Cardano tries to find a name for this special factor, he actually calls it, very much
en passant, efficacy, efficacia (quae maximum est).4
Such efficacy is not going to create nicely shaped systems endowed with unity: we actually have only
efficacy phenomena, more or less arbitrarily subsumed under a system by a narrative that radiates from the
phenomena themselves. The narrative is precisely what allows the observer to perceive them as such, that is,
as efficacy phenomena, coexisting with a narrative, no matter how crude, that is not just a noetic condition
for understanding them but is also an alethic condition for their existence. The narrative, on the other hand,
exists because of them, and has no status or function other than that of making those phenomena intelligible
and existing as efficacy phenomena.
This respect for efficacy phenomena gives to some Italian authors a specific (and well-known) flavor of
hard realism, a pragmatic gusto, which is even stronger when it does not sound theoretically deliberate or
intentionally provocative—and therein, of course, and quite often, lies part of their charm.
Most of these authors were directly engaged in contemporary politics: they held office and were often
responsible for making legal, political, or military decisions. They had to struggle and fight: some of them
(Machiavelli, Lottini, Campanella) were physically tortured; others (Dante, Mazzini) spent part of their lives
in exile; one (Pasolini) ended up being killed; Cardano and Braibanti served time in prison. Only few of them,
like the Marquis Beccaria or Vico, were lucky enough to have had sources of distress that, for the most part,
were only private (Beccaria had issues with his father, Vico with his son); Santi Romano, after a stellar
professional life, happened to die before his old age could be disturbed by the political and legal
consequences of his allegiance to Mussolini and Fascism. This is a peculiar gang of fellows, and I picked them
mostly because I find them intriguing, and because I thought my Berkeley students would enjoy reading
them. Apparently, they did.5
Needless to say, the idea is not that Italian authors deliberately carry on a special tradition, but rather
that specific themes run through different texts, resurfacing here and there, while different motivating
factors urge the different authors to touch those theoretical points.
There is a resemblance with these scholars’ intertextuality. Most of them were avid readers of Latin
authors, and they sometimes mention them and sometimes just quote them taking for granted that their
readers can recognize the sources. So, for example, to read Matteo Palmieri without being acquainted with
Cicero and Sallust is almost to read a different author. The point, nevertheless, is that there is not a Latin
philosophical doctrinal tradition that is upheld by these scholars: there are themes, catchwords, famous
passages which it feels good to quote, and which seem to support a specific mode of critical thought, and
there is also a way of dealing with some concrete contemporary problems.
There is therefore no Italian political-philosophical agenda, nor, certainly, is there any shared awareness
of such a specific thread: but the thread is there, and though it takes the form of a patchwork of
afterthoughts and hints dropped in the margins, it is nevertheless interesting (at least I hope it is), and it
sheds some indirect light on a few intriguing corners of this tradition. One of such dark corner is the notion
of equality as a practice.
1.1 Equalities
In the chapter on Vico, the only one previously published as a freestanding paper,6 a distinction is drawn
between two kinds of equality. The notion according to which human beings are equal in some fundamental
and compelling sense (basic equality) is distinguished from equality as a policy aim (normative equality).
There can be little doubt that we need a notion of basic equality to advance our egalitarian aims, and that
while much has been written about equality, modern literature deals far less with the background idea that
humans are, fundamentally, one another’s equals.7 This is, of course, the grand scheme to be found, for
instance, in Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Equality first, then, and it is a basic equality—
human beings are (created) equal: unalienable rights will imply some kind of normative equality.
The problem is that, as I would argue, notions of basic equality can be conceived as cultural
constructions (albeit of the most valuable kind): they can be the outcome of normative equality practices.
If, for example, I believe in the basic equality of all human beings, I will likely be ready to fight for the civil
rights of subjugated minorities, just as Giambattista Vico’s famuli (plebeians) seem ready to fight for their
equal rights while realizing that the patricians “did not come from heaven,” after all. But that is not yet a
complete description of Vico’s philosophy of equality. The famuli fought, first and foremost, because, as it
happens, they must have grown weary (se ne dovettero attediare) of being oppressed and subjugated.8 At the
end of the day, no special philosophical argument was required. They wanted equality, period. In fighting
and by fighting they became equal, because they changed the normative horizon within which both they and
the patricians dwelled.
In other words, the idea is that some kind of inequality and discrimination is eventually perceived as
such, and that these painful circumstances trigger a practice of normative equality that in turn will create a
new set of shared beliefs, a new world of meanings, and a new (more inclusive) kind of basic equality. This
perceived injustice does not need to be exhaustively deduced, as such, from any set of moral absolutes, from
any metaphysically grounded anthropology, from any notion of natural law; and, conversely, the practice
does not need to be justified in absolute theoretical terms. This is the residual legacy of the background
notion of efficacy: it shows itself in self-originating phenomena. Needless to say, equality practices will
themselves secrete some kind of narrative, some (normative) arguments for equality.
This path from equality practices to basic equality does not seem intuitively consistent with a religiously
inspired tradition of natural law. While it is intuitive that, if we are all children of the same God, we probably
enjoy some kind of basic equality, the counterintuitive idea of a basic equality that is not found, but rather
forged, achieved, obtained, or seized, feels puzzling and somehow troubling. Indeed, the first time we were
urged to reach equality (rather than acknowledge it), to create some equality where there is none, the plea
came from the Serpent itself: Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum ac malem,9 the words beloved by Goethe’s
Mephistopheles,10 and it did not end up well.
This means that it is possible to conceptualize basic equality as an effect, a posterius, a result, an
outcome, a point of arrival, while a practice of normative equality can be deemed as the starting point, the
input, the cause, the prius, the necessary pragmatic assumption. This, of course, means that we need to ask
what can be the motivating factors of normative equality practices—the “reasons” for such practices.
It should be noted that there is no logical contradiction between the two alternative conceptual paths,
from basic equality to equality as an aim, and from equality as an aim to basic equality; Vico was well aware
of the former path. Even so, the very possibility of the counterintuitive path from equality as a goal to basic
equality, next to the traditional path moving in the opposite direction, dramatically alters the overall
argumentative meaning of the standard (liberal) notion of equality. Unfortunately, domination and
oppression can and do make groups of humans basically unequal, as both Vico and Giuseppe Mazzini found
out. This is specifically cruel, like trying to breed human beings destined to submission and oppression.
Inequalities, in the plural, are often hidden in plain sight, just like the purloined letter imagined by Poe.11
Yes, Vico’s famuli fight for universal equality: that is achieved only when full citizenship rights are granted to
everybody within the boundaries of the Empire. The only fly in the ointment is that, well, women—roughly
half the population—are left out. It is not so much that the answer to the question “Which men (i.e., which
males) deserve to be citizens, to be ‘equal’?” can change. It is that the relevant question itself can change
when one can step outside the circle of those shared beliefs that crystallize within a given institutional and
normative horizon.
Most famously, those inequalities that are the outcome of a given (contingent) institutional horizon
usually conceptualize themselves as eminently natural: aliquid monstri aliter, mumbles the patrician who
suspects that his pregnant wife had lain with a slave;12 growing in that womb is a chimera, a monster with
two different natures. The republican Italian “apostle,” Giuseppe Mazzini, would bitterly mention that old
biased argument: Italians are not apt, not ready, for political autonomy and freedom.
1.2 Vulnerability
Inequalities come in a variety of flavors. Equalities, in the plural, are those political and legal practices, not
necessarily peaceful, that challenge a given and perceived inequality. From this point of view there is no
(capital E) Equality—a perfect state of affairs, a “value” that can be fully grasped and described; there are
only equality practices. While Equality must each time claim to be universal, it can never achieve that status.
Especially aware of this open texture of equality practices is Mazzini, who particularly stresses this point.
All that we are left with are therefore situated equalities. There is no such thing as universal equality:
there are only practices of normative equality that, in different circumstances, once different kinds of
inequality and discrimination have been detected, reshape the notion of basic equality implied by different
norms, institutions, and practices. A different normative horizon, one that conceptualizes itself as more
inclusive, then emerges from within those norms, institutions, and practices.
Equality is a therapy—actually, a diverse condominium of therapies—for quite different kinds of
diseases: it is not a state of good health. Equality is an aequalitas aequans, never an aequalitas aequata.
Against every normative equality practice there can be levied the charge of having forgotten about those
who in one way or another are left out, and there is always somebody who is left out. There is always a
specifically relevant issue, a situated, hot-button problem—sometimes smoldering in silence, sometimes
burning and blasting.
The very possibility of challenging a given allocation of wealth or status, a contingent normative horizon,
is quite meaningful. From this point of view, any legal and political order comes with those limits built into
the possibility of such a challenge. Such limits are not conceived as “boundaries”: they rather dwell in those
interstitial gaps that lie in the overlap of different narratives. Jemolo would speak of “islands” that the law
can only lap but never submerge, islands like the family, an institution that for the Catholic lawyer was
supported by different and powerful narratives that were alternative to the legal narrative, and potentially
incompatible with it (though narrative is a word that, ca va sans dire, Jemolo would never have used): family
is thus a kosmion of primal instincts and of religion, incendiary stuff that can put up a good fight against the
disciplinarian power of abstract legal systems.
This, however, is a critical point. Uncomfortable though this may make us feel, there is no need to
conceive a normative horizon as a monad sealed out from competing and overlapping narratives. Legal
systems are no exception. It is of course quite tempting to fashion normative horizons into nicely shaped,
mutually exclusive entities. Normative phenomena, however, do not need to adapt to any intellectual or
doctrinal comfort zone.
Even when a legal system conceives of itself as absolute, one could argue, its limits will lie not around it,
like boundaries, but within it. Even the Enlightenment and enlightened thinker Cesare Beccaria eventually
had to admit as much when he faced the normative reality of that special encompassing group of gentlemen
who would feel duty-bound to break the law by entering into a duel to protect their honor—a notion at odds
with some tenets of the legal system, but which nevertheless had to be housed within it. Nothing prevents
other normative systems from dwelling within the same normative horizon. We do not have to conjure up
the challenges of postmodern multicultural phenomena to shed light on the softly unsettling reality of
normative pluralism. Such pluralism famously becomes one of the main tenets in the thought of Santi
Romano, who more than a century ago, and even before embracing Fascism and Italian racism, challenged
Kelsenian normativism and offered his bold, almost outrageous, version of a plural institutionalism.
Such a pluralism, if conceived as a constitutive, inescapable feature of legal and political systems,
provides a useful background assumption for the notion at play of “equality practices”: normative
arguments, one could argue, will radiate from the minority, encompassing groups whose shared and
alternative beliefs can challenge the mainstream narrative. Normative arguments can pierce through the
bubble-like sphere of those shared beliefs that contingently can turn into an efficacy point, a point which
narrates itself as a justified normative horizon, and which can discriminate and displace, hurt and
intimidate: it can create and make some kind of (basic) “inequality,” that is, a specific vulnerable group.
Discrimination, oppression, or displacement can take quite different forms: coming in handy at this stage
of the discussion is the notion of vulnerable groups.
Rather than focusing on an essentialist notion of human vulnerability—something I am not ruling out in
the least: that is actually a promising research avenue—it is here more interesting to lay emphasis on
heterogeneous, contingent, “situated” forms of vulnerability. There is no need for any notion of human
nature (no need to reject the possibility, or the potential usefulness, of such a notion, either).
Any institution implies some kind of potential exclusion, framing a specific inequality in the very
normative horizon it identifies itself with: Dante’s most powerful attempt to conjure up a universal
institution—using up, in the process, all the power of the principium unitatis—ends up giving us a world:
what it gives us, therefore, is rich with exclusions (but it must nonetheless claim it harbors none). As was
previously mentioned, it is very rarely that these inequalities and exclusions can be clearly perceived as
such, because they are embedded in the very horizon from which a critical argument should radiate (the
work of Cesare Beccaria played a role in the obliteration of situated vulnerabilities, an obliteration which, it
may be argued, lies at the core of Western liberal democracies). The process by which an equality argument
arises out of a given normative horizon, questioning and challenging that inequality, is the same process by
which a form of situated vulnerability starts to be perceived as such.
Situated vulnerabilities, however, are not like colors or musical notes: they do not have to share any
common feature or logic. Situated vulnerabilities are bound up with the contingent scenarios that originate
together with a dotlike bubble of normative efficacy, which is why their emergence cannot be easily
predicted or their logic shared by those who, by choice or by lot, dwell within the “limits” of that given set of
institutions—the perceivable side of the efficacy bubble, the graspable narrative radiating from that given
normative horizon.
Italian racism was (and is) more multifaceted (and probably quite worse) than it looks at first sight: the
one and the same Italian Jewish scholar (Lombroso) could elicit scorn from racists because of their racism
and from others because they thought he was racist. The one and the same Italian author of children’s books
(Salgari) had no qualms about glamorizing what elsewhere would have been labeled as miscegenation—
love between Caucasians and Asians—while indulging in some most racist remarks about other Asians. The
one and the same Italian subgroup (the Etruscans) could be held up as a noble race that enriched the Italian
bloodline, while also being dismissed as a temporary, and ultimately negligible, stain on the genetic makeup
of the Italian Aryan race (and in fact both positions could be found in the same racist journal). Racism is a
motivating factor that can give rise to cruel efficacy phenomena; such phenomena radiate arguments that
should rationalize the motivating factor, but that do not need to be consistent with one another.
Finally, the perceived vulnerability of the institutions themselves, of the contingent scenario, is just a
special case of situated vulnerability—one that can sometimes trigger the most extreme reactions.
Exemplifying the severe, cruel interaction of different kinds of vulnerabilities is the dark tale of the infamous
“Braibanti affair”, where the overlapping, intersectional vulnerability implicit in membership in different
outside-the-mainstream minorities violently clashed with the perceived fragility of the same normative
horizon that needed to marginalize and displace such figures of vulnerability—and therefore needed to
crush the life of Braibanti himself.
Equality arguments are therefore both an answer to and a symptom of a perceived situated vulnerability,
if and when normative horizons are conceived as mere efficacy phenomena understood through the
narrative they radiate. In the Italian tradition of political and legal philosophy there is this theme that
occasionally crops up here and there without any clear line of development.
1.3 Equality as a Practice

The realist and pragmatic attitude of some of these authors is therefore linked to a perceived phenomenon
of vulnerability, to the emotions this phenomenon entails, to the pain and weariness attendant on
oppression of one kind or another—and this perception (which in itself is no rational argument) can take
the form of an equality practice (which can, by contrast, be an argument).
This link developed in a rather simple way: there is nothing mysterious, nothing glamorous about it. The
“realist” attitude of some Italian authors—for example, and most notably, the author of the The Prince
himself, Machiavelli—implied an utmost respect for so-called technical rules, rules which state the
appropriate kind of means to a given end, but which are unable to choose the end itself. Technical rules,
however, exhibit a specific feature—they seem unable to fully explain efficacy phenomena without the aid of
other kinds of rules, constitutive rules that crystallize shared beliefs of some kind into a set of institutions,
like a civic religion or a patriotic army. Machiavelli obviously never dreamed of using terms such as
constitutive rule, but the point is that while an army of citizen-soldiers is technically expedient, because
other kinds of armies are quite dangerous, it is still true that also implicit in such an army are emotions,
feelings, values, or fundamental choices that cannot fully be understood in terms of technical expediency (or
of a rational maximizer’s self-interested computations).
Some authors need to negotiate the fine line between the world of functional expediency, the realm of
technical rules, and the world of institutions, where duties and obligations arise and dwell. This is just
another way of saying that efficacy phenomena present themselves through the narrative they radiate: the
power asymmetry implemented by way of technical rules cannot be fully thought if we bracket away the
institutional world shaped by those shared beliefs.
Such institutions are themselves vulnerable, because they necessarily imply some kind of situated
vulnerability of an encompassing group (or of some such groups) and can therefore be challenged by
equality practices (which practices most likely conceive themselves as fully revolving around a substantive
notion of equality).
Equality as a practice is no sport for anime belle: it is not the leisure activity of well-meaning soft souls,
blissfully unaware of the tough rules of the political world; it is a way of making sense of that very world, at
the same time criticizing those valuable narratives of universal equality that are meant to somehow
legitimize bare efficacy phenomena.
On the other hand, the criticizing is often done by exposing what lies behind the legitimizing narratives:
the bare cruelty of exclusions, the stark inequalities. It is a procedure that scrutinizes “the king’s scepter”
and13
There is a constant going back to some harsh, painful political reality, a disdain for utopian dreams, a down-
to-earth attitude, and a cold realism. There is a sanguine acknowledgment of the power asymmetries behind
normative horizons: and a red thread connects Vico’s merciless description of a heroic aristocracy to Santi
Romano’s dry remark that institutions are not meant to necessarily embody any equality. One must resist
the temptation to call it a pars destruens. It would be such, a pars destruens, if it could be set in contrast to a
pars construens. But that is not the case: it is only about negotiating the fine line between the logic of efficacy
phenomena and the kind of equality practice one feels motivated to instantiate.
One last, and most important, caveat. This red thread is certainly not the key to understanding Italian
political thought. There are, I am sure, far more important aspects, critical problems, and fundamental
questions. The idea was just to elaborate on a cluster of problems that seem to crop up here and there as we
read some Italian authors—a reading exercise that could shed light on some corners of their trains of
thoughts, leaving some vaster areas in the dark. This is just a way of allowing some of their texts to react to
such a deliberately non-neutral reading. In other words, no (new) interpretation of Italian political thought
is offered here: just some Discorsi on some problematic aspects in the thought of a few Italian authors.
They had not originally been thought as chapters of a book. I made no attempt to edit them and polish
them—they are still the texts of my Berkeley classes, that I would post on line for my students after the
Wednesday afternoon class. These “lectures” make use of different methodological approaches: for example,
Dante is explored through a single reading of his work (by Hans Kelsen); Machiavelli is mostly approached
through a “mechanical” text analysis; The Duties of Man by Giuseppe Mazzini is read as a text almost
independent from the historical contingencies that motivated its creation; and so on.
My biggest debt is with Thomas Casadei; his support was always generous, intelligent, and
compassionate. Mariano Croce, Tommaso Greco, Antonio Merlino, Giorgio E.M. Scichilone, Elio Tavilla have
all read and commented parts of this book. Their comments and wise advice were invaluable. Special thanks
go to Rosaria Pirosa for reviewing the entire work with great care and expertise; and for helping me to deal
with some thorny theoretical issues. I shall miss our conversations at the CRID (Research Center on
Discriminations and Vulnerabilities, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) in the summer of 2022.
I am grateful to Albert Russell Ascoli, Timothy Hampton, Brenda Rosado, Mortimer Sellers, Barbara
Spackman, and Kendall Thomas for their encouragement and support. Mia Fuller, chair of the Department of
Italian Studies, was a most gracious, generous, and intelligent host. The rettore of the University of Modena
and Reggio Emilia, Carlo Adolfo Porro shielded me from many bureaucratic poisons that could have
prevented me from enjoying my UC Berkeley adventure. The Berkeley students who attended my course
were the Menschen every instructor would like to teach to and engage with—and to them are owed my final
and most heartfelt thanks.
References
Cardano G (1630) Proxeneta, seu De Prudentia. Paulus Marceau, Genoa. Italian edition: Cardano G (2001) Il Prosseneta ovvero della
politica (trans: Cigada P). Mondadori, Milan
Doreen B (2020–21) Townsend Center for the Humanities, Berkeley
Foscolo U [1807] (2015) Of the Graves. Trans. Bianchi V. In: Bianchi V, Rediscovering Foscolo: a Translation of the ‘Sepolcri’ and of t
https://www.academia.edu/22334674/REDISCOVERING_FOSCOLO_A_TRANSLATION_OF_THE_SEPOLCRI_AND_OF_
2015
Goethe W [1808] Faust. English Edition: Goethe W (1843) Goethe’s Faust (trans. Lefevre G, M.D.) Charles Juge, Frankfurt o.M
Losano MG (2008) Scritti autobiografici. Diabasis, Reggio Emilia
Poe E-A [1844] The Purloined Letter. Poe E A (1945) The Portable Poe. In: Van Doren Stern P (ed) Viking, New York, pp 439–462
Pohl F (1972) The gold at the Starbow’s end. Condé Nast, New York
Pohl F (1982) Starburst. Ballantine New York
Publius Terentius Afer, Andria, 250, quoted by Vico G, [1744] Scienza Nuova. Italian edition: Vico G (1990) Opere (ed: Battistini A)
pp 688, 740. 743
Vico G [1744] Scienza Nuova. Italian edition: Vico G (1990) Opere. In: Battistini A (ed) Mondadori, Milan
Vico G [1744] Scienza Nuova. English edition: Vico G (1999) The New Science (trans: Marsh D) Penguin, London
Waldron J (2002) God, locke, and equality. Christian foundations in locke’s political thought. Cambridge University Press, Cambrid
[Crossref]
Zanetti GF (2011) Vico on equality and marriage. Ratio Juris Int J Jurisprud Philos Law 24(4):461–470
Footnotes
1 “ Pohl (1972). See also the extended version: Pohl (1982).
2 Doreen (2020–21).
3 The Austrian legal philosopher and jurist, incidentally, taught at UC Berkeley. See Losano (2008).
4 Cardano (1630), Caput LVIII. See footnote 82.

5 With the exceptions of New Science by Vico and Proxeneta by Cardano, we mainly focussed on relatively short texts. It was,
however, unfortunate that I had to neglect Paruta, Lottini, Campanella, and many others. Skipping Gianfrancesco Lottini was
particularly painful.
6 Zanetti (2011), pp. 461–470.
7 Waldron (2002), pp. 2–7.
8 Vico [1744] (1990) edited by Andrea Battistini (Mondadori), p. 696. See also Vico [1744] (1999) in the English translation by
David Marsh (Penguin).
9 Gen 3:5. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
10 Wofgang Goethe, Faust, Act I, Scene IV. “This Serpent’s adage round your memory twine,/You’ll one day fear your human face
divine”: Goethe’s Faust [1808] (1843) translated by George Lefevre, M.D. (Charles Jugel) p. 78. The wise words that advise not to
get involved in an equality practice are those addressed by Abdiel to Satan in Milton (Paradise Lost VI, 174–181):
.
11 Poe (1844), ed. Van Doren Stern (1945), pp. 439–462.
12 Publius Terentius Afer, Andria, 250, quoted by Vico (1990); cp. pp. 688, 740. 743.
13 Foscolo [1807] (2015), pp. 156–158.; “Of the Graves” in “Rediscovering Foscolo: a Translation of the ‘Sepolcri’ and of three
sonnets”, translated by Valentina Bianchi.
G. Zanetti, Equality and Vulnerability in the Context of Italian Political Philosophy,
Studies in the History of Law and Justice 26
2. Dante Alighieri, Hans Kelsen, and the

Principium Unitatis
(1) Department of Law, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia,
Modena, Italy
2.1 Kelsen on Dante

Dante is, of course, too large a subject for a single lecture, chapter, or
even book. His works defy our current typologies. The Comedia itself is,
yes, a work of poetry, but it is at the same time a work of philosophy
and of politics, of theology and law. This is, again, not news to anyone.
The De rerum naturae by Lucretius is first and foremost poetry, but it is
at the same time one of the most important sources in order to
understand the Epicurean philosophy. The Summa Theologiae by
Aquinas is, well, mostly theology, and yet it is a key text for natural law
scholars and others. It is certainly legitimate to label the works by
Dante Alighieri sometimes as poetry and sometimes as political
philosophy, but such labels are only a starting point, not the outcome of
a deep scrutiny.1
I would like to focus on a given interpretation of Dante, the
interpretation given by Hans Kelsen. Kelsen did teach at Berkeley
(where he died in 1973).2 He came to the United States when the
shadow of Nazi politics was falling on Europe. His very life was in
danger, because he was Jewish. As every law student knows, Kelsen was
probably the most important philosopher of law, the most outstanding
jurisprudence scholar, in Europe at that time. His works are, even now,
a cornerstone and a landmark for the scholarly community. He is the
key author used in order to understand Legal Positivism, the notion
that law is something artificial, man-made. Something which is not
found in the realm of nature or reason but created by a human
authority.
According to Kelsen, legal systems were nothing else but pyramids
of norms (although this trope of the pyramid, often and correctly
associated with Kelsen, is not directly mentioned in his works), and
States were nothing but such legal systems. Natural law played no role
in such a consistent, rigorous idea of legal system, and morality would
dwell in a separate domain, because any content, never mind how
twisted and unfair, could be “law”.—Daher kann jeder beliebige Inhalt
Recht sein.3
In Kelsen every norm has its origin in another norm. Rudolf
Virchow (and before Virchow the great scientist and politician Francois
Vincent Raspail) had suggested that omnis cellula e cellula (every cell
comes from a cell).4 There is a basic consistency and unity in living,
organic entities. And there is some kind of purity as well, because such
entities are made of cells, and by nothing else, and cells come from cells,
and from nothing else. According to Kelsen, as it were, omnis norma e
norma; the State, i.e., the legal system, is nothing but norms on different
steps of a hierarchic pyramid. His theory is “pure” because it
acknowledges this fact. It does not need to meddle with religion or
morality, with politics or theology.
Italian scholars reacted to his “pure theory” with a sense of
discomfort. They sometimes felt that it was too abstract. The first
footnote of Santi Romano’s masterpiece, L’ordinamento giuridico, was a
critique of Kelsen.5 Fascist scholars were outraged that the State, with a
capital S, could be dissolved into a dry network of legal norms, laws and
statutes and judicial decisions. On the other hand, after World War II,
some other scholars attacked Kelsen’s pure theory because at the end
of the day it has nothing to offer against the threat of totalitarian
regimes, which use law as an instrument of raw power.6
Kelsen, however, did not first appear in Italian scholarly journals
because of his jurisprudence genius: but because of Dante. The
Italianisti at that time were quick on the uptake, and they did not miss
Kelsen’s contributions to Dante’s Monarchia,7 Dante’s Staatslehre (State
Theory).8 One could even state that Kelsen’s fortuna in Italy starts and
ends with Dante, because after 60 years the Bologna publisher Boni
asked his permission to print again his book on Dante, a permission
that Kelsen granted under condition that it would be clearly stated that
it was just the same book printed again, and not a “second edition”.
While Kelsen seems to perfectly master the whole corpus of Dante’s
works, he focuses primarily on De Monarchia. His book is structured in
the old-fashioned way. First the historical background. Next Dante’s
general philosophy. Then state theory, and afterwards connections
parallels and differences with contemporary authors and scholars.
Vittorio Frosini genially wrote that with such a Monographie Kelsen
could have become Privatdozent.9
2.2 The Power of the Principium Unitatis

It is crystal clear that a key notion in Kelsen’s Dante is the principium
unitatis, the principle of unity. Kelsen stresses that the notion of
pluralism, of varieties of any kind that cannot be subsumed into some
form of unity, are most repulsive to the Middle Ages mind.
This is perfectly shown in Dante’s cosmic geography, where a static
round earth is surrounded by the heavenly spheres of the planets and
of the “fixed stars” of the Ptolemaic astronomy, by the primum mobile
(an in-between spherical “sky”, kind of an intermediary step between
Creator and creation), and finally by the Empyrean—which is at the
same time outside (so that the weight of the whole universe is
pressuring and castigating Lucifer, blocked by his sin at the center of
the earth) and center of the cosmos. There is an Aristotelian flavor in
this hierarchy of movements that needs to end up in an “unmoved
mover” or “prime mover”, primum movens—The Empyrean Sky, God
Almighty Himself.
Unity is consistent with hierarchy—even in the hierarchy of evil and
pain, the inverse pyramid of the funnel-shaped hell described in the
Commedia.10 I would add that there is something reassuring in this
geocentric order. The human mind can grasp this unity in an almost
natural way, with the additional bonus that the whole universe seems
to revolve around humanity, with a sprinkle of cosmic narcissism that
flatters our vulnerability and weakness.
This unity principle takes many shapes. A famous one is the allegory
of the tunica inconsutilis,11 Christ’s seamless coat that the soldiers could
not cut. Interestingly, this allegoric figure is used by Pope Bonifacius
VIII, Dante’s archenemy, in the notorious Unam Sanctam (One and
Holy), a document where the Pope claims for himself plenitudo
potestatis, power above every creature including the King of France
(who in that moment was more dangerous than any Emperor). The
Church is One, just like the seamless coat that the soldiers took from
Jesus before the Crucifixion. Since “the coat was without seams, woven
from the top throughout”, the soldiers could not “rend it”, and they
decided to “cast lots for it”.12 The head of the Church, in the hierarchical
pyramid of the ecclesiastic institution, is the Pope. More than this, the
Pope is on the top of every hierarchical pyramid of human institutions.
He is, theoretically, above the kings and the Emperor, because his power
comes directly from God.
Dante makes use of this very same image. The Empire is one, and it
controls, or should control, all human beings living in all the territories
of the Earth. Such an Empire is, in Dante’s time, wildly utopian. There
was no sign in Europe that nations and peoples, kings and princes,
could somehow bend their knee in front of a common and shared
imperator omnium. It does not matter. When Dante speaks of the state,
says Kelsen, he always means the world state, the universal state.
There is here, again, more than an echo of “the Philosopher”. The
philosopher par excellence is of course Aristotle. There is, at the very
beginning of Aristotle’s Politics, the famous tale of the origins of the
polis (the city-state). Men and women are attracted because of
reproduction, while master and slave congregate because of
“conservation” or survival issues. The overlapping of these relations
gives birth to the first community, the household or family (oikos).
Several families congregate because of those needs that a single family
cannot take care of, and such is the origins of villages (komai). Villages
too are not enough, so that they have to congregate to form a city-state,
polis, which is perfect not because it is faultless but because it does not
need to grow anymore. It is independent.13 This is the origin tale of the
polis by Aristotle, a tale “from the beginning” (ex arches). Dante uses
this same scheme, adding two steps: cities need to be unified into
kingdoms, and kingdoms finally under one Empire.
It is critical to understand that Aristotle’s tale, ex arches, is not
necessarily a wholly scientific description, the way we could say: first
there is an egg, then a tadpole, and finally a frog. A frog can grow old
but it does not need to turn into another being. If we see something that
looks like a frog but that has never been first an egg and then a tadpole,
that being is not a frog. It is something else, (a toy, a robot, whatever).
Aristotle was perfectly aware that there were city-states (poleis) that
did not have this kind of origin—the colonies. His origin tale has a
normative meaning. We should reason about the polis as if this were its
origin. In other words, this tale basically explains the most important
features of the city-states from an Aristotelian point of view. For
example, the almost biological process by which different communities
blend together into more articulate and complex entities makes sure
that in a given polis there are some shared values (religion, mores, etc.).
While different cities go hunting for happiness in different ways,14 and
have therefore different ways of life, within a given city-state, there is
not much room for minority lifestyles of any kind.
The tale of the origins of the Empire provided by Dante presents
itself as an empirical account of the way the universal state should and
will take shape. It is, however, an account that presents itself as
definitely more nuanced than any empirical description. If we think of
cities and kingdoms as naturally subject to a monarchia not identified
with the Church, we create the ideological background we need in order
to accordingly conceptualize State and Church. Kelsen, most famously,
kindly rebukes Dante for not having been brave enough to claim for the
Emperor the top position. When everything is ready to take this final
step, when all the premises are clearly stated, at the very end of his
treatise, in a short paragraph Dante hastily adds that Cesar should look
up to Peter with a reverent attitude, the way the elder son looks at his
father.15 It is a pyramid with two tops, it is something unacceptable for
Kelsen.
On the one hand Kelsen’s Dante is to be understood only by
acknowledging the role played by the principium unitatis. On the other,
Dante is criticized by Kelsen because he does not dare to draw the
consequences from such a principle. Caesar should be the one, single
top of the pyramid.
2.3 Borders and Limits

The principium unitatis is quite active in Dante’s consistent praise of
monarchy as the best possible form of government. This too was a
theme well known by Aristotle, and Aquinas.
First, it is worth remarking (and Kelsen does) that Dante often
speaks of genus humanum. The whole of mankind is and should be
subject to the power of the Emperor. The unity of mankind is somehow
necessary, for Kelsen-Dante. It is a logical premise of the universal
monarchy. This unity seems to assume the necessity of a universally
shared Christian faith, a notion that would have stressed the key role of
the Church, a thorny issue for Dante. The territory of the universal
empire was all the earth, the mundus. Thanks to his geocentric
astronomy, Dante could truly claim a strong notion of universality for
the territory of his Monarch. The globe was the whole human universe.
He could therefore speak about sections of the planet that neither he
nor anybody else had ever personally visited. Hans Lindahl, however,
distinguishes globe from world. Globe is the surface of a sphere, the
imperfect sphere of planet earth. A global law has no borders. It is an
inside with no outside. World, however, is an intersection of meanings,
an overlapping of human understandings lit up from within. A world
must have some limits, because it necessarily excludes something. The
opposition is no longer domestic versus foreign, but known versus
strange.16
It is crystal clear that the power wielded by Dante’s Emperor is
without borders. He has legitimate claims on territories and peoples we
can only dream of. Dante’s Monarchia has therefore no borders. Dante’s
Monarchia, however, describes and makes understandable a normative
world with its own limits. The autonomy of the cities, the independence
of the first national States (like the Kingdom of France), the Papacy as
endowed with plenitudo potestatis, “fullness of power”, are bracketed
away within the world that Dante, while describing, is actually trying to
bring to life. They are pushed in the area of the strange, beyond the
normative limit of his performative description.
‘Limits’ does not simply mean that we know that there are other
institutional orders available “out there”, but that within that
institutional order some kind of exclusion must take place.17
Just as Aristotle must have been aware that his tale of the origins, ex
arches, could have not possibly been a scientific description of every
city-state, (i.e., the description of city-states in a general way), Dante
must have been somehow aware that his universal monarchy, whose
origins he describes in a longer sequence than Aristotle’s, was also a
normative notion. Dante, in a nutshell, is interested in creating a world
more than in describing the political history of the globe.
The notion is that Dante’s global monarchy has no borders, and it is
therefore different from the kingdoms of other princes. This is clearly
stated by Dante, and duly stressed by Kelsen. Caesar’s jurisdictio
terminatur oceano solum: the territory he controls is simply described
by a universal geographic limit, the great ocean that engulfs all the land.
But, this does not contingit principibus aliis, quorum principatus ad alios
terminatur, this does not happen to the other princes, whose kingdoms
have borders created by other kingdoms.18
On the other hand, Dante could not be clearer about what we
conceptualize as limits: his monarchy must be fully Christian, and it will
last forever. There is no room for diversity: pagans should be converted,
so that the Empire wanted by God himself can come to exist. There is no
need to stress that Dante’s freedom is never a modern religious
freedom—respect for all religions as a condition for the flourishing of
human beings.
Kelsen stresses exactly this point: the power of the Emperor on the
other kingdoms is not described with a geographic, territory-related,
image. The Emperor is like Moses, the leader of the whole Hebrew
people, while the different tribes have their own leaders who decide on
minor issues. This image is definitely not about borders. It is about a
world.
The territory at stake here is, if any, the territory hinted to by
Hannah Arendt:
“territory” as the law understands it, is a political and a legal

concept, and not merely a geographical term. It relates not so
much, and not primarily, to a piece of land as to the space
between individuals in a group whose members are bound to,
and at the same time separated and protected from, each other
by all kinds of relationships, based on a common language,
religion, a common history, customs, and laws.19
There is, of course, a clearly stated geographic, territory-related cluster

of political issues in Dante’s Monarchia, and in Kelsen’s reading of it.
While the Emperor is entitled to imperare, the princes have only the
duty to regere. The (geographic) extension of the Emperor’s power is
much larger than the extension of the princes’ authority, but the
intensity is lower, because it decides only on very general and most
important issues. While any prince’s authority is geographically
circumscribed but endowed with a stricter intensity. The same happens
in the universe ruled by the one God who controls (impera) every
square inch of the cosmos but directly rules (regge) in hell.20 Kelsen
always had special attention for the geographic, territory-related
problems of legal systems. The “shape” of the State, he famously stated,
was that of an inverted cone,21 whose top is in the center of the earth—
something like Dante’s funnel-like inferno.
While there is little doubt that Dante would have admitted to
differences in different kingdoms, (such as mores, languages,
gastronomic habits, sport preferences etc.), within the borderless
wholeness of his universal monarchy, the principium unitatis implies a
kind of homogeneity unthinkable in the ancient empires.
The most famous disciple of Aristotle was Alexander the Great, who
went beyond the conceptual threshold of the city-state described by his
master creating, via military excellence, an empire of people of different
“races” and different religions. The Roman empire tried to
institutionalize such openness to religious diversity in the Pantheon, a
temple where there was a niche for every deity. It was later turned into
a Catholic Church, and still is (the most ancient Church in Rome).
Dante’s monarchy is on the contrary built on the assumption of a
remarkable religious homogeneity, which he could take for granted as
something highly valuable.
The power of the principium unitatis is difficult to grasp. It is not
just one land, one prince (although, as it has been shown, this aspect is
of critical impact on Dante’s proposal). The analogon of the Emperor is
God himself: and the one thing God almighty cannot do is to create
another God. That would be logically inconsistent. Just as there are
words and concepts inherently plural (friend, baseball team: you need
at least two teams if you want to play the game, and a team that by
assumption cannot play is not a team), God is a term/notion inherently
singular. The Gods of the Greek myths had little to do with the One God
of the Old Testament, and the difference between Monotheism and
Polytheism is qualitative, not quantitative (despite the language). Just
the same, despite Diocletian’s attempts, the Emperor cannot have
another Emperor at his side.
The power of the principium unitatis is no neutral force: the analogy
with the One God ruling the Universe makes the Christian Religion the
very stuff of which the universal monarchy is made—and the Empire is
directly wanted by God. The world culturally trigged by the
performative power of Dante’s work is rich with exclusions, but it must
claim there is none. Not just pagans, Muslims, atheists, or heretics are
pushed to the borders of political legitimacy, but eventually all those
who do not share Dante’s views. It is only a matter of choosing the right
circle of hell for each of them—a power that, apparently, Dante reserves
for himself.22
Our contemporary notion of vulnerability takes shape and color
from such dynamics of exclusion. De Monarchia by Dante, as read by
Hans Kelsen, is a perfect study in case, because it strives to conjure up
an universal institution, using up in the process all the power of the
principium unitatis—and all the wisdom of the age: philosophy,
theology, poetry, and most importantly a deep knowledge of Roman
History and of the Scriptures.
A term/notion, well known to Aristotle, is conspicuously absent in
De Monarchia: equality. Other political values like justice, or freedom,
and above anything else peace, are cornerstones of Dante’s building. An
easy explanation is that, as mentioned above, the principium unitatis
seems to imply hierarchy.
This is correct, but it is intellectually lazy as well. Dante’s unity
principle is operative at a deeper level. It creates a normative horizon
where there is no need of a restorative equality, as all the pieces fall into
place because of the rule of the Emperor, just like the universe works
like clockwork because of the rule of God Almighty. The principium
unitatis hides any possible vulnerability. The princes and Caesar will
simply take care of the occasional injustice.
From this universal point of view there is no exclusion, and
therefore no “militant” equality, no “equality-as-a-practice”, is required.
The making of invisible exclusions is, in a nutshell, the legal and
political structure of the notion of (situated) vulnerabilities.
References
Arendt H (1965) Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the Banality of Evil. Viking
Press, New York
Ascoli A-R (2008) Dante and the making of a modern author. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge
[Crossref]
Capograssi G (1952) Impressioni su Kelsen tradotto. Rivista trimestrale di diritto

pubblico 4:767–810
Cau M (2004) Hans Kelsen et la théorie de l’Etat chez Dante. Laboratoire italien.
Politique et societé. Droit et literature 5:125–150. https://doi.org/10.4000/
laboratoireitalien.431
[Crossref]
Dante [1312–1313] De Monarchia. English edition: Dante (1996) In: Shaw P (ed)
Monarchy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Dante [1312–1313] (2015) De Monarchia. In: Quaglioni D (ed) Monarchia.

Mondadori, Milan
Eisenberg L (1986) Rudolf Virchow: the physician as politician. Med War 2(4):243–
250
[Crossref]
Kelsen H (1905) Die Staatslehre des Dante Alighieri. Leipzig, Wien. Italian edition:
Kelsen H (2017) Lo stato in Dante. Una teologia politica per l’impero (Preface by
Monateri P-G and Afterword by Frosini T-E). Mimesis (Fuochi Blu Series), Milan
Kelsen H (1934) Reine Rechtslehre. Einleitung in die rechtswissenschaftliche

Problematik. English edition: Kelsen H (1992) Introduction to the problems of legal
theory (trans: Litschewski Paulson B and Stanley L. Paulson S-L). Clarendon, Oxford
Kelsen H [1934] (1985) Reine Rechtslehre. Einleitung in die rechtswissenschaftliche
Problematik. Scientia Verlag, Aalen (short treatise)
Kelsen H [1945] (2005) General Theory of Law and State (1945). Taylor & Francis
Ltd, New York
Kelsen H (1960) Reine Rechtslehre. Verlag Franz Deuticke, Wien
Lagi (2008) Il pensiero politico di Hans Kelsen (1911-1920). Le origini di Essenza e

valore della democrazia. Name, Genoa
Lindahl H (2018) Authority and the globalisation of inclusion and exclusion.

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
[Crossref]
Musa M (ed) (1995) The Portable Dante. Penguin, London
Romano S (2017) The legal order. Routledge, London

[Crossref]
Solmi A, Kelsen H (1907) Die Staatlehre des Dante Alighieri. Bullettino della Società
Dantesca Italiana 13:98–111
Steinberg J (2013) Dante and the limits of the law. The University of Chicago Press,
Chicago-London. Italian Edition: Steinberg J (2013) Dante e il confine del diritto
(trans: Sara Menzinger). Viella, Rome
Waldenfels B (2006) Grundmotive einer Phänomenologie des Fremden. Frankfurt:

Suhrkamp. English edition: Waldenfels B (2011) Phenomenology of the Alien: basic
concepts (trans: Kozin A, Stähler T). Northwestern University Press, Evanston
Footnotes
1 See Steinberg (2013).
2 See at least Kelsen (1934); Kelsen (1992), translated by Bonnie Litschewski

Paulson and Stanley L. Paulson (Clarendon Press Oxford).
3 Kelsen (1960), p. 201. In other words: “To be sure, the law is no longer presupposed
as an eternal and absolute category; its content is recognized as subject to historical
change, and the law itself, as positive law, is recognized as a phenomenon
conditioned by temporal and spatial factors”. Kelsen (1992), p. 21.
4 Virchow was an amazing figure. See for instance Eisenberg (1986), pp. 243–250.
5 Romano (2017), p. 1. See in this volume, Social Pluralism, Efficacy & Equality.
Rethinking The Legal Order by Santi Romano, section 9.
6 Capograssi (1952), pp. 767–810.
7 Arrigo Solmi wrote a critical note with a nationalist flavor. See Solmi and Kelsen
(1907), pp. 98–111.
8 Kelsen (1905); Kelsen (2017), namely Lo stato in Dante. Una teologia politica per
l’impero, with a Preface by Giuseppe Monateri and Afterword by Tommaso Edoardo
Frosini (Mimesis).
9 See Cau (2004) and Lagi (2008), pp. 32–34.
10 A complete translation of the Commedia is to be found, for example, in Musa

(1995).
11 Dante (1112–1113); Dante (2015) edited by Quaglioni, pp. 150, 440. I found the
contribution by Quaglioni invaluable.
12 John 19: 23–24.
13 Aristotle, Politics, I: 2.
14 Aristotle, Pol. VII: 8.
15 Dante (1312–1313); Dante (1996), edited by Prue Shaw (Cambridge University

Press), p. 94: “Let Caesar therefore show that reverence toward Peter which a
firstborn son should show his father, so that, illumined by the light of paternal grace,
he may the more effectively light up the world, over which he has been placed by
Him alone who is ruler over all things spiritual and temporal”.
16 Lindahl (2018), pp. 28, 35. Lindahl elaborates on Bernhard Waldenfels’s

phenomenology of the alien (Phänomenologie des Fremden). See Waldenfels (2011)
and, previously, the original publication: Waldenfels (2006).
17 Lindahl (2018), p. 38.
18 Dante (2015), pp. 150, 440, p. 96.
19 Arendt (1965), pp. 262–263.
20 Inf. I, 127. Commedia is to be found, for example in Musa (1995).
21 “The territory of a State is usually considered as a definite portion of the earth’s

surface. This idea is incorrect. […] Since the earth is a globe, the geometrical form of
this space - the space of the State - is approximately an inverted cone. The vertex of
this cone is in the center of the earth, where the conic spaces, the so-called
territories of all the States, meet.” Kelsen [1945] (2005), n. 1, pt. 2, II, A, f, p. 217;
General Theory of Law and State (Taylor & Francis Ltd).
22 While all the mistakes are exclusively mine, I am deeply in debt with Albert
Ascoli, for the many on-line enlightening conversations on Dante and other authors
of the Italian cultural and political tradition. See Ascoli (2008).
G. Zanetti, Equality and Vulnerability in the Context of Italian Political Philosophy,
Studies in the History of Law and Justice 26
3. Niccolò Machiavelli and Efficacy

(1) Department of Law, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia,
Modena, Italy
3.1 The Prince’s Ruin

Machiavelli’s texts have been studied by a legion of first-class scholars.
They have been scanned and prodded and scrutinized by some of the
keenest minds in the community of political thinkers, as well as in the
Italian studies research field. It must be very clearly stated that there is
no attempt, here, to say anything really new, to offer any
groundbreaking interpretation of The Prince or of The Discourses. The
main goal of this chapter is to shed light on some already known
aspects of Machiavelli’s position, which may play a role in the
argumentative structure of this text.
First and foremost, it is interesting to remark that the vulnerability
figure, in The Prince, is the prince himself. All of the wise advice,
truthful counsel, and concerned admonitions that are to be found in the
text are to help the prince to succeed and, above all, to prevent him
from failing. It is a difficult path that the prince treads on, full of traps
and dangers. The point of view of the author, very often, seems to be a
sincere concern about the prince he is counseling, so that the prince
may make no mistakes; it seems to be a wisdom shared in order to
prevent him from ruinare (ruination).
While to ruin and ruinare are not necessarily exactly the same, it is
worth checking how often the word get used (or the concept conjured
up). Just a few examples from The Prince: “he who does not follow this
course […] will be plagued by infinite difficulties”1; “He who helps
another man to power is setting himself up for ruin […]2”; “And
whoever becomes the ruler of a city that is used to living free without
destroying it can be expected to be destroyed by the city”3; “unarmed
prophets came to ruin” […] “Girolamo Savonarola, who came to ruin
with his new order when the multitude lost belief in him”4; “Those who
follow the first path can maintain their position […]. The others cannot
possibly survive5; “He should fear them as if they were declared
enemies, because in adversity they will inevitably help to bring about
his ruin”,6 “[…] he who spurns what is actually done for what ought to
be done will achieve ruin […]”7; “For there are cases in which people
might think a certain path is valorous, but following it would be the
prince’s ruin […]”8; “He will be vulnerable to the slightest unrest and
fall prey to the first danger”9; “In our times we have seen great deeds
accomplished only by those who were considered miserly; all the
others came to ruin”10; “A prince who has based everything on their
word without taking other precautions is ruined […]”11; “Pertinax
inspired hatred, and as he was an old man, contempt as well, so he
came to ruin […]”12; “Antoninus […]. Such rush conduct was bound to
bring about his own ruin, and it did”13; “the ruins of the emperors I
have mentioned”14; “The irresolute prince will most often follow the
path of neutrality in order to avoid immediate danger, and will most
often come to ruin”15; “If advisers and princes are of this kind, they can
have confidence in one another. If they are not, then things will end
badly for one or the other”16; “A prince who acts otherwise will either
come to ruin because of his flatterers, or grow increasingly irresolute
by following conflicting advice, which will result in losing respect”17;
“the shortness of his life did not allow him to experience reverse,
because if times had changed so as to compel him to act with caution,
he would have come to ruin […]”.18
This is not simply teaching how to run a principato. This means
stressing over and over again that to run a principato is a dangerous (if
exciting) game, that no mistake is allowed, and that the price for a
mistake is often to ruin. Machiavelli is not first and foremost teaching
how to be happy—he is advising princes how not to fail, when failing is
so easy, and that is precisely what makes his lesson very valuable.
The subtext is something like “underestimate this book (and my
wisdom) at your own peril”.
This has obviously to do with the fact that Machiavelli is trying to
sell himself to the Medici, and it is critical that they perceive how
important it can be to hire him, in order to avoid, thanks to his
intelligence and skills, their own downfall. Sometimes one almost gets
the feeling that the pages of The Prince are supposed to scare the
reader, to create a special concern, a fear. It is so easy, after all, to make
a mistake, and a prince’s mistake can and often do have
disproportionate consequences. There is not so much about the risks
that the counselors run, and this makes sense, since the subject of the
work is stated in the very title.
The reasons for the prince’s vulnerability are mostly the ever-
changing background conditions of his political actions, the power of
fortuna, and the general leaning toward evil that human beings display,
(“men are a sorry lot”). This latter reason also plays a key role (as we
shall see) in Machiavelli’s way to contain and harness such contingent,
mutable circumstances (implied by the former).
3.2 Contingency and Vulnerability

There is a tension (almost an opposition), in The Prince, between an
intense notion of contingency, of impermanency, of fluid and tragic
variability of key circumstances for the flourishing of the rational
political action, and the bold assumption that is possible, and of the
utmost importance, to know the eternal and unchangeable laws of
politics.
Sometimes it is critical to be bold and audacious, like Pope Julius II.
His successful enterprises were born out of his ardent temperament,
that he certainly did not choose, but that perfectly suited the
background circumstances in which he found himself making decisions
and acting. Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator, on the other end, fought
well by quietly postponing any critical battle, biding his time, while at
the same time his enemies were getting weary and uneasy. Quintus
Fabius was simply the right man at the right time. He had that kind of
virtue that was more appropriate under the circumstances. A man like
Julius would have been ruined in such a scenario, just as Quintus
Fabius, the Temporiser, would primarily have lacked the impetus
needed to succeed in Julius’s times.
This feeling about the power of ever-changing circumstances,
clearly born out of Machiavelli’s personal experiences and studies, is
sometimes almost palpable in the text: it pops out here and there. Some
examples: “[…] the affairs of this world are so changeable that one
cannot sit idly and wait outside a city with a besieging army19; “[…] but
one cannot lay this matter out in broad terms, since it varies with every
case”20; “fortresses can be useful or not, depending on the time”21; “Nor
should any state believe it can always make secure choices: In fact, all
choices should be considered dubious […]”22; “[…] he will be ruined if
he does not change his manner of proceedings. One cannot find a man
prudent enough to be capable of adapting to these changes […]”.23 One
wonders, if you cannot find a man this prudent, and if you are not
willing to wish a short, successful life to the prince you are advising,
how is it possible to avoid “to ruin”? Other valuable passages, from the
Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius, are to be found in I, 6
(“as all affairs of this world are in motion and will not remain fixed,
they must either rise or fall”, “sendo tutte le cose degli uomini in moto, e
non potendo stare salde, conviene che le salghino o che le scendino”24);
III, 17 (“E perché a simili disordini che nascano nelle repubbliche non si
può dare certo rimedio, ne sèguita che gli è impossibile ordinare una
repubblica perpetua, perché per mille inopinate vie (“thousand
unpredictable ways”) si causa la sua rovina”25). There are reflections
(e.g., Series C, 182, 186) by Francesco Guicciardini which most famously
harp on the same cords.26 The same could be said, and even in stronger
terms, for Paolo Paruta.27
On top of that, there are also bad luck streaks that human beings
cannot really prevent or successfully face. The death of Pope Alexander
VI, Cesare Borgia’s father, and (at the same time) the Valentino’s illness
during the conclave, were events that were simply out of Cesare’s
control. There was nothing he could do about it, and Machiavelli is
adamant on this point, that he had made no mistakes and was ruined
anyway.
There is, however, a competing feeling that radiates from The
Prince’s pages. The text is filled to the brim with blunt maxims, general
rules and universal laws on political actions from the very beginning:
All states and dominions that have had and continue to have
power over men were and still are either republics or
principalities.28
Machiavelli was a learned man. He must have been perfectly aware that
he was not informed about all the regimes of the world (the world was
yet far from having been fully explored, though learned Europeans
already knew that there were far-away lands of which little was
known), let alone of the ancient times, from Egypt to far away Asia. A
statement like that, therefore, for the very reason that it was not and
could have not been supported by adequate empirical evidence, is a
blunt rhetorical position of impressive intensity. In the light of such an
intensity, all the general rules stated by Machiavelli seem not so much
the theorems of a treatise, or the maxims of a political handbook, but
the literary attempt to create a narrative where political wisdom in
general, and therefore Niccolò’s personal political wisdom (potentially
useful to the Medici family) in particular, becomes a graspable,
understandable notion.
Against a shape-shifting and basically ungraspable world,
Machiavelli conjures up an alternative vision of homogeneity and the
substantial equality of all possible scenarios. Not to take a position in
the fight between two neighbors is “always” dangerous. It is always the
same. It is better to be feared rather than to be loved. It is always the
same. This is, of course, his basic attitude. Just a few examples: “This is
the result another natural and basic inevitability […]”29; “men who
manage to acquire are always applauded”.30 They key chapter, is of
course, Chapter Fourteen, Of a Prince’s Duties Concerning the Military.
Here Machiavelli states a geographic homogeneity. The Prince, studying
his own territory, is actually studying all territories, because at the end
of the day they are all more or less the same:
[…] First, he will familiarize himself intimately with his own

country and understand how to defend it; second, with the
knowledge and experience of his own terrain, he will more
easily get to know any foreign terrain he might have to explore,
because any hill, valley, river, plain, or marsh that exists in
Tuscany will resemble those of other provinces. In short,
familiarizing with the terrain of one’s own province helps to
familiarize one with the terrain of other provinces as well.31
This is about the exercise of the body. The reason I indulged in such a
lengthy quote is that I find remarkable the rhetoric pressure
Machiavelli is exercising: “any hill, valley, river, plain, or marsh […]”. The
summing up of the second sentence makes sure the reader “gets it”. The
physical world does not change—spatial distance it is not an issue. And
most famously, time distance is not an issue either:
As for the exercise of the mind, a prince must read histories and
study the actions of great men so he can see how they conducted
themselves in war and examine the reasons for their victories
and defeats, in order to imitate the former and avoid the latter.32
The exercise of the prince’s body implies geographic homogeneity

(space); the exercise of the prince’s mind implies historical
homogeneity (time). Relevant, and very famous, passages in the
Discourses are for example: I, 39 (“E’ si conosce facilmente per chi
considera le cose presenti e le antiche, come in tutte le città ed in tutti i
popoli sono quegli medesimi desideri e quelli medesimi omori, e come
vi furono sempre”33); II, 5, where Machiavelli stresses homogeneity
between religions, verging on blasphemy; III, 43 (“Sogliono dire gli
uomini prudenti, e non a caso né immeritatamente, che chi vuole
vedere quello che ha da essere consideri quello che è stato: perché tutte
le cose del mondo in ogni tempo hanno il proprio riscontro con gli
antichi tempi. Il che nasce perché essendo quelle operate dagli uomini
che hanno ed ebbono sempre le medesime passion, conviene di
necessità che sortischino il medesimo effetto”34).
Even Machiavelli’s negative anthropology, the notion that human
beings are basically selfish and leaning to evil, is not just the content of
an empirical observation, and the outcome of personal experience, but
also a necessary postulate for such universal “laws of politics” (and
therefore for Machiavelli’s own narrative of political wisdom): if human
beings are selfish maximizers, driven by greed and fear, then they are
also essentially predictable (a most interesting quality for a prince’s
counselor). Love can make human beings strange, creative, and
unpredictable. Fear is an emotion shared by non-human animals; they
can be tamed and domesticated by a rational use of fear. Greed is just a
trifle more complex, and in quite an interesting way, but it still
something that increase a reasonable predictability as far as human
beings are concerned.
It is in fact critical that Machiavelli, and his prince, can foresee the
behavior of the other characters in the political arena: the subjects, the
powerful citizens, the neighboring princes, and of course armies. Fear
and greed play a key role in Machiavelli’s understanding of armies.
This means that the two main causes of a Prince’s everlasting
danger, fortuna and our human selfish attitude (fear and greed), can be
played one against the other. Machiavelli’s negative anthropology
creates that stable, immutable background, where virtue can challenge
fortuna.
The logic inherent to the motivation horizon is not the same logic
that belongs to the argumentation horizon. Motivational factors do not
necessarily need to be completely consistent with one another,
perfectly transparent and open to rational understanding. The Prince
seems sometimes to host conceptual oppositions not ready to be fully
disentangled and clarified. It is therefore doubtful that it would be
advisable to try to read the text the way the Middle-Ages Glossatori
would try to read the Roman Law, (i.e., explaining away the—allegedly
only apparent—contradictions, and neutralizing them in a system of
distinctions and text comparisons).
Simply stating general rules would make Machiavelli’s personal
contribution no longer useful. One would just need an autographed
copy of the book, and make sure his ministers carefully read it in order
to master the power of contingency and circumstances. There is a hint
to this possibility when he addresses Lorenzo de’ Medici: “Your
Magnificence will recognize that I cannot offer You a greater gift than
the prospect of Your understanding in the shortest period all that I have
learned over so many years and with so much danger and hardship”.35
Simply denying the existence of such rules, however, could turn the
decision makers into paralyzed doubters, provided they are not
endowed with Pope Julius’s temperament. Rules are needed, but also
fear of ruinare and greed of ampliamento: Machiavelli is shrewdly
exposing his princely reader to the same motivating factors he is willing
to recommend for ruling his subjects and defeating his enemies.
On the other hand, there is this tragic feeling of human vulnerability.
A vulnerability that Machiavelli had experienced in the flesh—he had
been actually tortured. The difficult-to-harness power of fortuna is
conjured up in The Prince to make sure the reader is constantly
reminded of the lack of stability of human enterprises. No one like the
prince seems to experience such exciting and yet dreadful dangers.
Harnessing such a vulnerability means to state, against all odds,
some kind of equality and homogeneity in the world of politics and war,
of diplomacy and court. Without such equality and homogeneity no
political science is possible, and Machiavelli’s “treatise” turns into an
arbitrary bunch of maxims, the legacy of his personal experiences and
of some enjoyable reading. At the same time, Machiavelli needs to state
his potential role. His potential role is based both on the vulnerability of
the princes and on the possibility to (at least provisionally) harness it.
3.3 Normative Systems and Efficacy

This is just scratching the surface of the problem. While The Prince is
not an oration, it certainly tries to persuade and convince; it wants to
make a difference. Each single maxim can be accepted and put in use,
but the text, as a whole, is in its turn a performative act, that creates a
narrative within which Italy needs prince(s), princes need counselors,
and the Medici need Machiavelli. In a theoretical nutshell: Vulnerability
implies equality/homogeneity, punctual circumstances imply efficacy.
The Prince itself is a political action, that is supposed to fit the special
circumstances determining both the Italian political situation and
Machiavelli’s existential position.
Part of that self-asserted “objective reality”, la realtà effettuale della
cosa, is Machiavelli’s intervention into the political arena by writing the
text.
While the performance was less than successful from a biographical
point of view, it certainly worked on the level of a history of political
thought. It is perhaps not, I submit, that Machiavelli merely gave new
and fascinating answers to some urgent, and critically important,
political questions which radiated from the time he lived in and from
his personal biography. Machiavelli also selected which key questions
were to be deemed as relevant. The very act of writing that book was
evidence of this new motivational point of view.
There is not, in other words, an archidemic point from which to
contemplate The Prince and “understand” its theoretical content. Part
of the meaning of The Prince could be the book as a political practice
aspiring to efficacy. Such an efficacy does not rely on universal laws, but
on itself.
The complex set of circumstances that determine the successful or
unsuccessful outcomes of political practices may include, it seems, the
awareness of the existence of such set. From this point of view the
knowledge of politically wise maxims is just one of these
circumstances, if a very important one. The political wisdom expressed
within universal maxims, however, includes the knowledge of the
powerful impact of circumstances, that sets important limits to the
rationality of those universal maxims.
When the prince/counselor acts, he is therefore already caught in
an efficacy paradox. He knows that his political practice is bound to
achieve efficacy only because of itself, since the factors that can impact
the final outcome are too many, too different, and largely unpredictable.
In order to conceptualize that successful practice, however, the
prince/counselor needs to, “must”, claim that its efficacy radiates from
adherence to a universal rule, which he has followed. An extreme case
of such an universal rule, however, is that political deeds are successful
if and only if they are supported by fortuna, i.e. an unpredictable power
that nevertheless seems to have unreasonable preferences for young
and brave condottieri (audaces fortuna iuvat).
Moral philosophers have theorized the so-called Paradox of the
Preface.36 When an author writes the Preface of his book he must
assume that there are no mistakes in it, otherwise he would have a
moral obligation to correct them. On the other hand, an author has the
moral duty to be aware that no book is faultless. That his book can be
no exception and that therefore, there must be one or more mistakes in
it. Publishing a book means to claim that there are no mistakes in it,
perfectly knowing that there must be more than one. Machiavelli
“must” offer a number of maxims or rules, boldly claiming that they
have universal validity, while at the same time reminding himself and
the Prince he is counseling that no rule has or can have such a universal
validity. An efficacy decision has this complex structure.
If fortuna were truly and fully the mistress of human affairs, we
would not claim she is. We would simply be blown away by her power,
and we could not write about it, and Machiavelli could have not written
The Prince. It is possible to write about it because it is possible to
conjure up a spiral of universal maxims on wisdom that should, at least
partially, contain and harness that very power—without ever deleting it
from the background limits of such a (political) practice.
Those maxims, however, are neither like the Owl of Minerva, that
“first takes flight with twilight closing in”, a knowledge that can explain
(or claim to explain) the past only after the deed is done, nor be a
perfect expression of prudentia endowed with overriding powers of
prediction, giving full control to the future. The vulnerability of the
prince is such that efficacy rests ultimately on the unique array of
circumstances that describe the practical horizon where the action
takes place. The general rule, used to fit an array of circumstances,
would not be very informative if such array of circumstances were
unique, freshly new, largely unpredictable, and/or possibly impacted by
factors on which human beings can have little or no control at all.
If political maxims could actually and successfully control fortuna,
on the other hand, we would not speak of efficacy, either. Prudentia,
wisdom, political art, and so on, are notions only understandable in the
background of a potentially effective adverse power. If maxims were
perfectly effective, there would be no “game”. The Abbot Chitarella
wrote the famous De Regulis Treseptem ac Scoponis, a text with the
original rules, and precious tips for the players, of two ancient Italian
card games.37 If Chitarella’s tips were so good, that, by following them
you would always end up being the winner, the Abbot would have killed
the game. It would not be a game anymore. Efficacy is something
related to a unique array of circumstances, and while it must be
possible to give advice, that advice must run the risk of being non-
effective. The world homogeneity includes the power of contingent
circumstances, just like circumstances create tentative (and temporary)
bubbles of predictable homogeneity.
Political practice, as a (successful) reaction to a vulnerable situation,
radiate self-interpretations that can achieve relative autonomy,
crystallizing themselves into maxims and rules that must claim
universal validity without ever achieving it. They can have a limited
scope, and the meta-limit is that it is impossible to determine where
that limit lies. Hence, the power of fortuna.
The background of a disobedient and reluctant matter makes more
valuable the artist’s skill. Giacomo Casanova wrote thousands of pages
telling the tale of his life, showing off and boasting about his own
cunning, cleverness, and prudence. What he truly thinks about the
human condition, however, is sealed within a single sentence: Non
siamo che atomi pensanti, e andiamo là dove ci porta il vento. “We are
nothing but thinking atoms, and we simply go wherever the wind blows
us”. Wisdom is not just trying to successfully carry out a given
enterprise, the seduction of beautiful lady or being the winner in a
dangerous Eighteenth-century duel. It is first and foremost being aware
that no universal reason controls human actions nor their final, often
unpredictable, outcome.
Efficacy is a key notion both in the art of war, where a successful
military decision must be taken under the given circumstances, and
within normative and legal systems, where decisions de lege lata
(judicial) or de lege ferenda (legislative) must be taken, again under
given circumstances. An obvious difference is that in the art of war, and
of politics, the vulnerable figure is the prince/commander-in-chief
himself (as far as The Prince is concerned), while situated
vulnerabilities may dwell among those who “receive” the normative
impulse (the law), too, rather than just among those who “emit” it.
This is where a notion of vulnerability ex parte populi takes place.
Machiavelli establishes a link between the two spheres. He writes:
We have said above that a prince must have laid firm

foundations, otherwise he will of necessity come to grief. And
the principal foundations of all states, the new as well as the old
or mixed, are good laws and good armies. And since there
cannot exist good laws where there are no good armies, and
where there are good armies there must be good laws, I shall
leave aside the treatment of laws and discuss the armed forces.38
Here we have one of those universal rules that Machiavelli so boldly

states, “must”, “of necessity”, apply to “all states, the new as well as the
old”. The rule is about the necessity of good laws and good armies. Good
armies, however, are both the necessary condition of good laws (“there
cannot exist good laws where there are no good armies”), and the
sufficient condition of good laws (“where there are good armies there
must be good laws”). Armies are the necessary and sufficient condition
of good laws.
Needless to say, good armies are efficient armies, and this first and
foremost, means never to hire or use auxiliary or mercenary troops.
They simply cannot do the job (as a general rule).
Good laws are, by the same token, efficient laws. Good laws cannot
be deemed as good from any other possible point of view, otherwise
good armies could not be the necessary and sufficient condition of good
laws. Good armies, when armed citizens fight for their homeland driven
by patriotic feelings, are nevertheless not a neutral, merely technical,
concept. They seem to imply a whole host of republican values.
This means that normative practice as well, is structured around an
efficacy paradox. It will be (1) a practice radiating from a vulnerable
situation. The situation will be (2) a unique array of circumstances, so
that the normative decisions will take the shape of a situated practice.
This means, in turn, that (3) such practices cannot firmly rely on any
metaphysical truth, any universal rule that may grant them a reassuring
seal of correctness. Such practices, however, (4) necessarily radiate a
self-interpretation that is part of their very efficacy.
Normative systems seem therefore to look like efficacy bubbles,
whose scope and duration can be extremely different and
unpredictable. These bubbles are “just efficacy”, and therefore they can
be charged with lack of consistency from the point of view of a
concerned observer, who can always create principled arguments in
order to criticize (or re-legitimize) those “institutions”. The lesson of
the Ancients, for example, is used to criticize the modern ordini, but the
principles at stake dwell within the criticized institutions, because of
the already established homogeneity between the Ancient and the
Modern World. There is no need of any natural law. Machiavelli’s
political wisdom is justified.
References
Chitarella (1840) De regulis ludendi ac solvendi in Mediatore, et Tresseptem – Delle
Regole di giocare e pagare nel mediatore e nel tressette, del Signor Chitarella.
Tipografia Cattaneo, Naples
Guicciardini F [1530] (1965) Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi) (trans: Domadi M).
University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia (with an introduction by Rubinstein
N)
Lottini G (1942) Avvedimenti civili. In: Mancini G (ed) Zanichelli, Bologna
Machiavelli N [1531] (1983) Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio. In: Vivanti C
(ed) Einaudi, Torino (followed by “Considerazioni intorno ai Discorsi del
Machiavelli” of Francesco Guicciardini)
Machiavelli N (2007) The essential writings. In: Constantine P (ed) Random House,
Modern Library, New York (with an introduction by Albert Russell Ascoli)
Margalit A (1996) The decent society. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Paruta P (1943) Discorsi politici. Zanichelli, Bologna
Viroli M (ed) (2004) Libertà politica e virtù civile. Significati e percorsi del
repubblicanesimo classico. Edizioni Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, Turin
Footnotes
1 Machiavelli (2007), p. 12; The Essential Writings edited and translated by Peter
Constantine with an introduction by Albert Russell Ascoli. (Random House, Modern
Library).
2 Machiavelli (2007), p. 16.
3 Machiavelli (2007), p. 20.

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insolence and pleasure. All they wanted now was what she herself
wanted only a few short hours ago: to be bowed to when they
caught certain people’s eyes; to be invited to one more dull house;
to be put on the Rector’s Executive Committees, and pour tea at the
Consuless’s “afternoons”.
“May I?” a man’s voice fluted; and a noble silver-thatched head with
a beak-like nose and soft double chin was thrust into the doorway.
“Oh, Mr. Paly!” cried Mrs. Merriman; and murmured to the nearest
ladies: “For the music— I thought he’d better come today.”
Every one greeted Mr. Paly with enthusiasm. It was poky, being only
women and the Rector. And Mr. Paly had the dearest little flat in one
of the old houses of the “Vieux Port”, such a tiny flat that one
wondered how any one so large, manly and yet full of quick
womanish movements, managed to fit in between the bric-a-brac.
Mr. Paly clasped his hostess’s hand in a soft palm. “I’ve brought my
young friend Lion Carstairs; you won’t mind? He’s going to help me
with the programme.”
But one glance at Mr. Carstairs made it clear that he did not mean to
help any one with anything. He held out two lax fingers to Mrs.
Merriman, sank into an armchair, and let his Antinous-lids droop over
his sullen deep gray eyes. “He’s awfully good on Sicilian music ...
noted down folk-songs at Taormina....” Mr. Paly whispered, his
leonine head with its bushy eye-brows and silver crown bending
confidentially to his neighbour.
“Order!” rapped the Rector; and the meeting began.
At the Casino that night Kate Clephane, on the whole, was more
bored than at the Rectory. After all, at the Merrimans’ there was a
rather anxious atmosphere of kindliness, of a desire to help, and a
retrospective piety about the war which had served them such a
good turn, and of which they were still trying, in their tiny measure,
to alleviate the ravages.
Whereas the Betterlys—
“What? Another begging-list? No, my dear Kate; you don’t! Stony-
broke; that’s what I am, and so’s Harry—ain’t you, Harry?” Marcia
Betterly would scream, clanking her jewelled bangles, twisting one
heavy hand through her pearls, and clutching with the other the
platinum-and-diamond wrist-bag on which she always jokingly
pretended that Kate Clephane had her eye. “Look out, Sid, she’s a
regular train-robber; hold you up at your own door. I believe she’s
squared the police: if she hadn’t she’d ’a been run in long ago.... Oh,
the war? What war? Is there another war on? What, that old one?
Why, I thought that one was over long ago.... You can’t get anybody
I know to talk about it even!”
“Guess we’ve got our work cut out paying for it,” added Horace
Betterly, stretching a begemmed and bloated hand toward the wine-
list.
“Well, I should say!” his wife agreed with him.
“Sid, what form of liquid refreshment?” And “Sid”, a puffy Chicago
business man, grew pink in his effort to look knowing and not name
the wrong champagne....
It was odd: during her drive with Mrs. Minity, at Madame Lanska’s,
and again at the Rectory, Kate Clephane had meant to proclaim her
great news—and she had not yet breathed a word of it. The fact
was, it was too great; too precious to waste on Mrs. Minity’s
inattention, too sacred to reveal to Madame Lanska’s bridge-players,
and too glorious to overwhelm those poor women at the Rectory
with. And now, in the glare and clatter of the Casino, with the Sids
and Harrys exchanging winks, and the Mrs. Sids and Harrys craning
fat necks to see the last new cocotte, or the young Prince about
whom there were such awful stories—here, of all places, to unbare
her secret, name her daughter: how could she ever have thought it
possible?
Only toward the end of the long deafening dinner, when Marcia and
Mrs. Sid began to make plans for a week at Monte Carlo, and she
found herself being impressed into the party (as she had, so often
and so willingly, before) did Mrs. Clephane suddenly find herself
assuming the defensive.
“You can’t? Or you won’t? Now, you Kate-cat you,” Marcia
threatened her with a scented cigarette, “own up now—what’s
doing? What you onto this time? Ain’t she naughty? We ain’t grand
enough for her, girls!” And then, suddenly, at a sign from Horace,
and lowering her voice, but not quite enough to make the
communication private: “See here, Kate darling—of course, you
know, as our guest: why, of course, naturally.” While, on the other
side, Mrs. Sid drawled: “What I want to know is: where else can
anybody go at this season?”
Mrs. Clephane surveyed her calmly. “To New York—at least I can.”
They all screamed it at her at once: “N’York?” and again she
dropped the two syllables slowly from disdainful lips.
“Well, I never! Whaffor, though?” questioned Horace from the depths
of a fresh bumper.
Mrs. Clephane swept the table with a cool eye. “Business—family
business,” she said.
“Criky!” burst from Horace. And: “Say, Sid, a drop of fine, just to
help us over the shock? Well, here’s to the success of the lady’s
Family Business!” he concluded with a just-perceptible wink,
emptying his champagne goblet and replacing it by the big bubble-
shaped liqueur glass into which a thoughtful waiter had already
measured out the proper quantity of the most expensive fine.
III.
AS Kate Clephane stood on deck, straining her eyes at the
Babylonian New York which seemed to sway and totter toward her
menacingly, she felt a light hand on her arm.
“Anne!”
She barely suppressed the questioning lift of her voice; for the
length of a heart-beat she had not been absolutely certain. Then ...
yes, there was her whole youth, her whole married past, in that
small pale oval—her own hair, but duskier, stronger; something of
her smile too, she fancied; and John Clephane’s straight rather
heavy nose, beneath old Mrs. Clephane’s awful brows.
“But the eyes—you chose your own eyes, my darling!” She had the
girl at arms’-length, her own head thrown back a little: Anne was
slightly the taller, and her pale face hung over her mother’s like a
young moon seen through mist.
“So wise of you! Such an improvement on anything we had in
stock....” How absurd! When she thought of the things she had
meant to say! What would her child think her? Incurably frivolous, of
course. Well, if she stopped to consider that she was lost.... She
flung both arms about Anne and laid a long kiss on her fresh cheek.
“My Anne ... little Anne....”
She thirsted to have the girl to herself, where she could touch her
hair, stroke her face, draw the gloves from her hands, kiss her over
and over again, and little by little, from that tall black-swathed
figure, disengage the round child’s body she had so long continued
to feel against her own, like a warmth and an ache, as the
amputated feel the life in a lost limb.
“Come, mother: this way. And here’s Mr. Landers,” the girl said. Her
voice was not unkind; it was not cold; it was only muffled in fold on
fold of shyness, embarrassment and constraint. After all, Kate
thought, it was just as well that the crowd, the confusion and Fred
Landers were there to help them over those first moments.
“Fred Landers! Dear old Fred! Is it you, really? Known me anywhere?
Oh, nonsense! Look at my gray hair. But you—” She had said the
words over so often in enacting this imagined scene that they were
on her lips in a rush; but some contradictory impulse checked them
there, and let her just murmur “Fred” as her hand dropped into that
of the heavy grizzled man with a red-and-yellow complexion and
screwed-up blue eyes whom Time had substituted for the thin loose-
jointed friend of her youth.
Landers beamed on her, silent also; a common instinct seemed to
have told all three that for the moment there was nothing to say—
that they must just let propinquity do its mysterious work without
trying to hasten the process.
In the motor Mrs. Clephane’s agony began. “What do they think of
me?” she wondered. She felt so sure, so safe, so enfolded, with
them; or she would have, if only she could have guessed what
impression she was making. She put it in the plural, because, though
at that moment all she cared for was what Anne thought, she had
guessed instantly that, for a time at least, Anne’s view would be
influenced by her guardian’s.
The very tone in which he had said, facing them from his seat
between the piled-up bags: “You’ll find this young woman a handful
—I’m not sorry to resign my trust—” showed the terms the two were
on. And so did Anne’s rejoinder: “I’m not a handful now to any one
but myself—I’m in my own hands, Uncle Fred.”
He laughed, and the girl smiled. Kate wished her daughter and she
had been facing each other, so that she could have seen the whole
stretch of the smile, instead of only the tip dimpling away into a half-
turned cheek. So much depended, for the mother, on that smile—on
the smile, and the motion of those grave brows. The whole point
was, how far did the one offset the other?
“Yes,” Mr. Landers assented, “you’re a free agent now—been one for
just three weeks, haven’t you? So far you’ve made fairly good use of
your liberty.”
Guardian and ward exchanged another smile, in which Kate felt
herself generously included; then Landers’s eye turned to hers.
“You’re not a bit changed, you know.”
“Oh, come! Nonsense.” Again she checked that silly “look at my gray
hair.” “I hope one never is, to old friends—after the first shock, at
any rate.”
“There wasn’t any first shock. I spotted you at once, from the pier.”
Anne intervened in her calm voice. “I recognized mother too—from
such a funny old photograph, in a dress with puffed sleeves.”
Mrs. Clephane tried to smile. “I don’t know, darling, if I recognized
you.... You were just there ... in me ... where you’ve always been....”
She felt her voice breaking, and was glad to have Mr. Landers burst
in with: “And what do you say to our new Fifth Avenue?”
She stood surveying its upper reaches, that afternoon, from the
window of the sitting-room Anne had assigned to her. Yes; Fred
Landers was right, it was a new, an absolutely new, Fifth Avenue;
but there was nothing new about Anne’s house. Incongruously
enough—in that fluid city, where the stoutest buildings seemed like
atoms forever shaken into new patterns by the rumble of
Undergrounds and Elevateds—the house was the very one which
had once been Kate’s, the home to which, four-and-twenty years
earlier, she had been brought as a bride.
Her house, since she had been its mistress; but never hers in the
sense of her having helped to make it. John Clephane lived by
proverbs. One was that fools built houses for wise men to live in; so
he had bought a fool’s house, furniture and all, and moved into it on
his marriage. But if it had been built by a fool, Kate sometimes used
to wonder, how was it that her husband found it to be planned and
furnished so exactly as he would have chosen? He never tired of
boasting of the fact, seemingly unconscious of the unflattering
inference to be drawn; perhaps, if pressed, he would have said there
was no contradiction, since the house had cost the fool a great deal
to build, and him, the wise man, very little to buy. It had been, he
was never tired of repeating, a bargain, the biggest kind of a
bargain; and that, somehow, seemed a reason (again Kate didn’t see
why) for leaving everything in it unchanged, even to the heraldic
stained glass on the stairs and the Jacobean mantel in a drawing-
room that ran to Aubusson.... And here it all was again, untouched,
unworn—the only difference being that she, Kate, was installed in
the visitor’s suite on the third floor (swung up to it in a little jewel-
box of a lift), instead of occupying the rooms below which had once
been “Papa’s and Mamma’s”. The change struck her at once—and
the fact that Anne, taking her up, had first pressed the wrong
button, the one for the floor below, and then reddened in correcting
her mistake. The girl evidently guessed that her mother would prefer
not to go back to those other rooms; her having done so gave Kate
a quick thrill.
“You don’t mind being so high up, mother?”
“I like it ever so much better, dear.”
“I’m so glad!” Anne was making an evident effort at expansiveness.
“That’s jolly of you—like this we shall be on the same floor.”
“Ah, you’ve kept the rooms you had—?” Kate didn’t know how to put
it.
“Yes: the old nursery. First it was turned into a schoolroom, then into
my den. One gets attached to places. I never should have felt at
home anywhere else. Come and see.”
Ah, here, at last, in the grim middle-aged house, were youth and
renovation! The nursery, having changed its use, had perforce had
to change its appearance. Japanese walls of reddish gold; a few
modern pictures; books; a budding wistaria in a vase of Corean
pottery; big tables, capacious armchairs, an ungirlish absence of
photographs and personal trifles. Not particularly original; but a
sober handsome room, and comfortable, though so far from “cosy.”
Kate wondered: “Is it her own idea, or is this what the new girl
likes?” She recalled the pink and white trifles congesting her maiden
bower, and felt as if a rather serious-minded son were showing her
his study. An Airedale terrier, stretched before the fire, reinforced the
impression. She didn’t believe many of the new girls had rooms like
this.
“It’s all your own idea, isn’t it?” she asked, almost shyly.
“I don’t know—yes. Uncle Fred helped me, of course. He knows a lot
about Oriental pottery. I called him ‘Uncle’ after father died,” Anne
explained, “because there’s nothing else to call a guardian, is there?”
On the wall Kate noticed a rough but vivid oil-sketch of a branch of
magnolias. She went up to it, attracted by its purity of colour. “I like
that,” she said.
Anne’s eyes deepened. “Do you? I did it.”
“You, dear? I didn’t know you painted.” Kate felt herself suddenly
blushing; the abyss of all she didn’t know about her daughter had
once more opened before her, and she just managed to murmur: “I
mean, not like this. It’s very broad—very sure. You must have
worked....”
The girl laughed, caught in the contagion of her mother’s
embarrassment. “Yes, I’ve worked hard—I care for it a great deal.”
Kate sighed and turned from the picture. The few words they had
exchanged—the technical phrases she had used—had called up a
time when the vocabulary of the studio was forever in her ears, and
she wanted, at that moment, to escape from it as quickly as she
could.
Against the opposite wall was a deep sofa, books and a reading-
lamp beside it. Kate paused. “That’s just where your crib used to
stand!” She turned to the fireplace with an unsteady laugh. “I can
see you by the hearth, in your little chair, with the fire shining
through your bush of hair, and your toys on the shelf in front of you.
You thought the sparks were red birds in a cage, and you used to try
to coax them through the fender with bits of sugar.”
“Oh, did I? You darling, to remember!” The girl put an arm about
Kate. It seemed to the mother, as the young warmth flowed through
her, that everything else had vanished, and that together they were
watching the little girl with the bush of hair coaxing the sparks
through the fender.
Anne had left her, and Mrs. Clephane, alone in her window, looked
down on the new Fifth Avenue. As it surged past, a huge lava-flow
of interlaced traffic, her tired bewildered eyes seemed to see the
buildings move with the vehicles, as a stationary train appears to
move to travellers on another line. She fancied that presently even
the little Washington Square Arch would trot by, heading the tide of
sky-scrapers from the lower reaches of the city.... Oppressed and
confused, she rejected the restless vision and called up in its place
the old Fifth Avenue, the Fifth Avenue still intact at her marriage, a
thoroughfare of monotonously ugly brown houses divided by a thin
trickle of horse-drawn carriages; and she saw her mother-in-law, in
just such a richly-curtained window, looking down, with dry mental
comments, on old Mrs. Chivers’s C-spring barouche and Mrs.
Beaufort’s new chestnut steppers, and knowing how long ago the
barouche had been imported from Paris, and how much had been
paid for the steppers—for Mrs. Clephane senior belonged to the
generation which still surveyed its world from an upper window, like
the Dutch ancestresses to whom the doings of the street were
reported by a little mirror.
The contrast was too great; Kate Clephane felt herself too much a
part of that earlier day. The overwhelming changes had all
happened, in a whirl, during the years of her absence; and
meanwhile she had been living in quiet backwaters, or in the steady
European capitals where renewals make so little mark on the
unyielding surface of the past. She turned back into the room,
seeking refuge in its familiar big-patterned chintz, the tufted lounge,
the woolly architecture of the carpet. It was thoughtful of Anne to
have left her.... They were both beginning to be oppressed again by
a sense of obstruction: the packed memories of their so different
pasts had jammed the passages between them. Anne had visibly felt
that, and with a light kiss slipped out. “She’s perfect,” her mother
thought, a little frightened....
She said to herself: “I’m dead tired—” put on a dressing-gown,
dismissed the hovering Aline, and lay down by the fire. Then, in the
silence, when the door had shut, she understood how excited she
was, and how impossible it would be to rest.
Her eyes wandered about the unchanged scene, and into the equally
familiar bedroom beyond—the “best spare-room” of old days. There
hung the same red-eyed Beatrice Cenci above the double bed. John
Clephane’s parents had travelled in the days when people still
brought home copies of the Old Masters; and a mixture of thrift and
filial piety had caused John Clephane to preserve their collection in
the obscurer corners of his house. Kate smiled at the presiding
genius selected to guard the slumbers of married visitors (as Ribera
monks and Caravaggio gamblers darkened the digestive processes in
the dining-room); she smiled, as she so often had—but now without
bitterness—at the naïve incongruities of that innocent and
inquisitorial past. Then her eye lit on the one novelty in the room:
the telephone at her elbow. Oh, to talk to some one—to talk to Fred
Landers, instantly! “There are too many things I don’t know ... I’m
too utterly in the dark,” she murmured. She rushed through the
directory, found his number, and assailed his parlour-maid with
questions. But Mr. Landers was not at home; the parlour-maid’s
inflexion signified: “At this hour?” and a glance at the clock showed
Kate that the endless day had barely reached mid-afternoon. Of
course he would not be at home. But the parlour-maid added: “He’s
always at his office till five.”
His office! Fred Landers had an office—had one still! Kate
remembered that two-and-twenty years ago, after lunching with
them, he used always to glance at his watch and say: “Time to get
back to the office.” And he was well-off—always had been. He
needn’t—needn’t! What on earth did he do there, she wondered?
What results, pecuniary or other, had he to show for his quarter-
century of “regular hours”? She remembered that his profession had
been legal—most of one’s men friends, in those remote days, were
lawyers. But she didn’t fancy he had ever appeared in court; people
consulted him about investments, he looked after estates. For the
last years, very likely, his chief business had been to look after
Anne’s; no doubt he was one of John Clephane’s executors, and also
old Mrs. Clephane’s. One pictured him as deeply versed in will-
making and will-interpreting: he had always, in his dry mumbling
way, rather enjoyed a quibble over words. Kate thought, by the way,
that he mumbled less, spoke more “straight from the shoulder,” than
he used to. Perhaps it was experience, authority, the fact of being
consulted and looked up to, that had changed the gaunt shambling
Fred Landers of old days into the four-square sort of man who had
met her on the pier and disentangled her luggage with so little fuss.
Oh, yes, she was sure the new Fred Landers could help her—advice
was just what she wanted, and what, she suspected, he liked to
give.
She called up his office, and in less than a minute there was his calm
voice asking what he could do.
“Come at once—oh, Fred, you must!”
She heard: “Is there anything wrong?” and sent him a reassuring
laugh.
“Nothing—except me. I don’t yet know how to fit in. There are so
many things I ought to be told. Remember, I’m so unprepared—”
She fancied she felt a tremor of disapproval along the wire. Ought
she not to have gone even as far as that on the telephone?
“Anne’s out,” she added hastily. “I was tired, and she told me to rest.
But I can’t. How can I? Can’t you come?”
He returned, without the least acceleration of the syllables: “I never
leave the office until—”
“Five. I know. But just today—”
There was a pause. “Yes; I’ll come, of course. But you know there’s
nothing in the world to bother about,” he added patiently. (“He’s
saying to himself,” she thought, “‘that’s the sort of fuss that used to
drive poor Clephane out of his wits’.”)
But when he came he did not strike her as having probably said
anything of the sort. There was no trace of “the office”, or of any
other preoccupation, in the friendly voice in which he asked her if
she wouldn’t please stay lying down, and let him do the talking.
“Yes, I want you to. I want you to tell me everything. And first of all
—” She paused to gather up her courage. “What does Anne know?”
she flung at him.
Her visitor had seated himself in the armchair facing her. The late
afternoon light fell on his thick ruddy face, in which the small eyes,
between white lids, looked startlingly blue. At her question the blood
rose from his cheeks to his forehead, and invaded the thin pepper-
and-salt hair carefully brushed over his solidly moulded head.
“Don’t—don’t try to find out, I beg of you; I haven’t,” he stammered.
She felt his blush reflected on her own pale cheek, and the tears
rose to her eyes. How was he to help her if he took that tone? He
did not give her time to answer, but went on, in a voice laboriously
cheerful: “Look forward, not back: that’s the thing to do. Living with
young people, isn’t it the natural attitude? And Anne is not the kind
to dig and brood: thank goodness, she’s health itself, body and soul.
She asks no questions; never has. Why should I have put it into her
head that there were any to ask? Her grandmother didn’t. It was her
policy ... as it’s been mine. If we didn’t always agree, the old lady
and I, we did on that.” He stood up and leaned against the mantel,
his gaze embracing the pyramidal bronze clock on which a heavily-
draped Muse with an Etruscan necklace rested her lyre. “Anne was
simply given to understand that you and her father didn’t agree;
that’s all. A girl,” he went on in an embarrassed tone, “can’t grow up
nowadays without seeing a good many cases of the kind about her;
Lord forgive me, they’re getting to be the rule rather than the
exception. Lots of things that you, at her age, might have puzzled
over and thought mysterious, she probably takes for granted. At any
rate she behaves as if she did.
“Things didn’t always go smoothly between her and her
grandmother. The child has talents, you know; developed ’em early.
She paints cleverly, and the old lady had her taught; but when she
wanted a studio of her own there was a row—I was sent for. Mrs.
Clephane had never heard of anybody in the family having a studio;
that settled it. Well, Anne’s going to have one now. And so it was
with everything. In the end Anne invariably gets what she wants.
She knew of course that you and her grandmother were not the best
of friends—my idea is that she tried to see you not long after her
father died, and was told by the old lady that she must wait till she
was of age. They neither of them told me so—but, well, it was in the
air. And Anne waited. But now she’s doubly free—and you see the
first use she’s made of her freedom.” He had recovered his ease, and
sat down again, his hands on his knees, his trouser-hem rather too
high above wrinkled socks and solemn square-toed boots. “I may
say,” he added smiling, “that she cabled to you without consulting
me—without consulting anybody. I heard about it only when she
showed me your answer. That ought to tell you,” he concluded gaily,
“as much as anything can, about Anne. Only take her for granted, as
she will you, and you’ve got your happiest days ahead of you—see if
you haven’t.”
As he blinked at her with kindly brotherly eyes she saw in their
ingenuous depths the terror of the man who has tried to buy off fate
by one optimistic evasion after another, till it has become second
nature to hand out his watch and pocket-book whenever reality
waylays him.
She exchanged one glance with that lurking fear; then she said:
“Yes; you’re right, I suppose. But there’s not only Anne. What do
other people know? I ought to be told.”
His face clouded again, though not with irritation. He seemed to
understand that the appeal was reasonable, and to want to help her,
yet to feel that with every word she was making it more difficult.
“What they know? Why ... why ... what they had to ... merely
that....” (“What you yourself forced on them,” his tone seemed to
imply.)
“That I went away....”
He nodded.
“With another man....”
Reluctantly he brought the words out after her: “With another man.”
“With Hylton Davies....”
“Hylton Davies....”
“And travelled with him—for nearly two years.”
He frowned, but immediately fetched a sigh of relief. “Oh, well—
abroad. And he’s dead.” He glanced at her cautiously, and then
added: “He’s not a man that many people remember.”
But she insisted: “After that....—”
Mr. Landers lifted his hand in a gesture of reassurance; the cloud
was lifted from his brow. “After that, we all know what your life was.
You’ll forgive my putting it bluntly: but your living in that quiet way—
all these years—gradually produced a change of opinion ... told
immensely in your favour. Even among the Clephane relations ...
especially those who had glimpses of you abroad ... or heard of you
when they were there. Some of the family distinctly disapproved of—
of John’s attitude; his persistent refusal ... yes, the Tresseltons even,
and the Drovers—I know they all did what they could—especially
Enid Drover—”
Her blood rushed up and the pulses drummed in her temples. “If I
cry,” she thought, “it will upset him—” but the tears rose in a warm
gush about her heart.
“Enid Drover? I never knew—”
“Oh, yes; so that for a long time I hoped ... we all hoped....”
She began to tremble. Even her husband’s sister Enid Drover! She
had remembered the Hendrik Drovers, both husband and wife, as
among the narrowest, the most inexorable of the Clephane tribe. But
then, it suddenly flashed across her, if it hadn’t been for the episode
with Chris perhaps she might have come back years before. What
mocking twists fate gave to one’s poor little life-pattern!
“Well—?” she questioned, breathless.
He met her gaze now without a shadow of constraint. “Oh, well, you
know what John was—always the slave of anything he’d once said.
Once he’d found a phrase for a thing, the phrase ruled him. He
never could be got beyond that first vision of you ... you and
Davies....”
“Never—?”
“No. All the years after made no difference to him. He wouldn’t
listen. ‘Burnt child dreads the fire’ was all he would say. And after he
died his mother kept it up. She seemed to regard it as a duty to his
memory.... She might have had your life spread out before her eyes,
day by day, hour by hour ... it wouldn’t have changed her.” He
reddened again. “Some of your friends kept on trying ... but nothing
made any difference.”
Kate Clephane lay silent, staring at the fire. Tentatively, fearfully, she
was building up out of her visitor’s tones, his words, his reticences,
the incredible fact that, for him and all her husband’s family—that
huge imperious clan—her life, after she had left them, had been
divided into two sharply differentiated parts: the brief lapse with
Hylton Davies, the long expiation alone. Of that third episode, which
for her was the central fact of her experience, apparently not a hint
had reached them. She was the woman who had once “stooped to
folly”, and then, regaining her natural uprightness, had retained it
inflexibly through all the succeeding years. As the truth penetrated
her mind she was more frightened than relieved. Was she not
returning on false pretences to these kindly forgiving relations? Was
it not possible, indeed almost certain, that a man like Frederick
Landers, had he known about Chris, would have used all his
influence to dissuade Anne from sending for her, instead of exerting
it in the opposite sense, as he avowedly had? And, that being so,
was she not taking them all unawares, actually abusing their good
faith, in passing herself off as the penitential figure whom the
passage of blameless years had gradually changed from the
offending into the offended? Yet was it, after all, possible that the
affair with Chris, and the life she had led with him, could so
completely have escaped their notice? Rumour has a million eyes,
and though she had preserved appearances in certain, almost
superstitious, ways, she had braved them recklessly in others,
especially toward the end, when the fear of losing Chris had swept
away all her precautions. Then suddenly the explanation dawned on
her. She had met Chris for the first time less than a year before the
outbreak of the war, and the last of their months together, the most
reckless and fervid, had been overshadowed, blotted out of
everybody’s sight, in that universal eclipse.
She had never before thought of it in that way: for her the war had
begun only when Chris left her. During its first months she and he
had been in Spain and Italy, shut off by the safe Alps or the neutral
indifference; and the devouring need to keep Chris amused, and
herself amusing, had made her fall into the easy life of the Italian
watering-places, and the careless animation of Rome, without any
real sense of being in an altered world. Around them they found only
the like-minded; the cheerful, who refused to be “worried”, or the
argumentative and paradoxical, like Chris himself, who thought it
their duty as “artists” or “thinkers” to ignore the barbarian
commotion. It was only in 1915, when Chris’s own attitude was
mysteriously altered, and she found him muttering that after all a
fellow couldn’t stand aside when all his friends and the chaps of his
own age were getting killed—only then did the artificial defences fall,
and the reality stream in on her. Was his change of mind genuine?
He often said that his opinions hadn’t altered, but that there were
times when opinions didn’t count ... when a fellow just had to act. It
was her own secret thought (had been, perhaps, for longer than she
knew); but with Chris—could one ever tell? Whatever he was doing,
he was sure, after a given time, to want to be doing something else,
and to find plausible reasons for it: even the war might be serving
merely as a pretext for his unrest. Unless ... unless he used it as an
excuse for leaving her? Unless being with her was what it offered an
escape from? If only she could have judged him more clearly, known
him better! But between herself and any clear understanding of him
there had hung, from the first, the obscuring mist of her passion,
muffling his face, touch, speech (so that now, at times, she could
not even rebuild his features or recall his voice), obscuring every fold
and cranny of his character, every trick of phrase, every doubling
and dodging of his restless mind and capricious fancy. Sometimes, in
looking back, she thought there was only one sign she had ever read
clearly in him, and that was the first sign of his growing tired of her.
Disguise that as she would, avert her eyes from it, argue it away,
there the menace always was again, faint but persistent, like the tiny
intermittent pang which first announces a mortal malady.
And of all this none of the people watching her from across the sea
had had a suspicion. The war had swallowed her up, her and all her
little concerns, as it had engulfed so many million others. It seemed
written that, till the end, she should have to be thankful for the war.
Her eyes travelled back to Fred Landers, whose sturdy bulk, planted
opposite her, seemed to have grown so far off and immaterial. Did
he really guess nothing of that rainbow world she had sent her
memory back to? And what would he think or say if she lifted the
veil and let him into it?
“He’ll hate me for it—but I must,” she murmured. She raised herself
on her elbow: “Fred—”
The door opened softly to admit Anne, with the Airedale at her
heels. They brought in a glow of winter air and the strange cold
perfume of the dusk.
“Uncle Fred? How jolly of you to have come! I was afraid I’d left
mother alone too long,” the girl said, bending to her mother’s cheek.
At the caress the blood flowed back into Kate’s heart. She looked up
and her eyes drank in her daughter’s image.
Anne hung above her for a moment, tall, black-cloaked, remote in
the faint light; then she dropped on her knees beside the couch.
“But you’re tired ... you’re utterly done up and worn out!” she
exclaimed, slipping an arm protectingly behind her mother. There
was a note of reproach and indignation in her voice. “You must
never be tired or worried about things any more; I won’t have it; we
won’t any of us have it. Remember, I’m here to look after you now—
and so is Uncle Fred,” she added gaily.
“That’s what I tell her—nothing on earth to worry about now,” Mr.
Landers corroborated, getting up from his chair and making for the
door with muffled steps.
“Nothing, nothing—ever again! You’ll promise me that, mother, won’t
you?”
Kate Clephane let her hand droop against the strong young shoulder.
She felt herself sinking down into a very Bethesda-pool of
forgetfulness and peace. From its depths she raised herself just far
enough to say: “I promise.”
IV.
ANNE, withdrawing from her mother’s embrace, had decreed, in a
decisive tone: “And now I’m going to ring for Aline to tuck you up in
bed. And presently your dinner will be brought; consommé and
chicken and champagne. Is that what you’ll like?”
“Exactly what I shall like. But why not share it with you downstairs?”
But the girl had been firm, in a sweet yet almost obstinate way. “No,
dearest—you’re really tired out. You don’t know it yet; but you will
presently. I want you just to lie here, and enjoy the fire and the
paper; and go to sleep as soon as you can.”
Where did her fresh flexible voice get its note of finality? It was—
yes, without doubt—an echo of old Mrs. Clephane’s way of saying:
“We’ll consider that settled, I think.”
Kate shivered a little; but it was only a passing chill. The use the girl
made of her authority was so different—as if the old Mrs. Clephane
in her spoke from a milder sphere—and it was so sweet to be
compelled, to have things decided for one, to be told what one
wanted and what was best for one. For years Kate Clephane had had
to order herself about: to tell herself to rest and not to worry, to eat
when she wasn’t hungry, to sleep when she felt staring wide-awake.
She would have preferred, on the whole, that evening, to slip into a
tea-gown and go down to a quiet dinner, alone with her daughter
and perhaps Fred Landers; she shrank from the hurricane that would
start up in her head as soon as she was alone; yet she liked better
still to be “mothered” in that fond blundering way the young have of
mothering their elders. And besides, Anne perhaps felt—not unwisely
—that again, for the moment, she and her mother had nothing more
to say to each other; that to close on that soft note was better, just
then, than farther effort.
At any rate, Anne evidently did not expect to have her decision
questioned. It was that hint of finality in her solicitude that made
Kate, as she sank into the lavender-scented pillows, feel—perhaps
evoked by the familiar scent of cared-for linen—the closing-in on her
of all the old bounds.
The next morning banished the sensation. She felt only, now, the
novelty, the strangeness. Anne, entering in the wake of a perfect
breakfast-tray, announced that Uncle Hendrik and Aunt Enid Drover
were coming to dine, with their eldest son, Alan, with Lilla Gates
(Lilla Gates, Kate recalled, was their married daughter) and Uncle
Fred Landers. “No one else, dear, on account of this—” the girl
touched her mourning dress—“but you’ll like to begin quietly, I know
—after the fatigue of the crossing, I mean,” she added hastily, lest
her words should seem to imply that her mother might have other
reasons for shrinking from people. “No one else,” she continued,
“but Joe and Nollie. Joe Tresselton, you know, married Nollie Shriner
—yes, one of the Fourteenth Street Shriners, the one who was first
married to Frank Haverford. She was divorced two years ago, and
married Joe immediately afterward.” The words dropped from her as
indifferently as if she had said: “She came out two years ago, and
married Joe at the end of her first season.”
“Nollie Tresselton’s everything to me,” Anne began after a pause.
“You’ll see—she’s transformed Joe. Everybody in the family adores
her. She’s waked them all up. Even Aunt Enid, you know—. And
when Lilla came to grief—”
“Lilla? Lilla Gates?”
“Yes. Didn’t you know? It was really dreadful for Aunt Enid—
especially with her ideas. Lilla behaved really badly; even Nollie
thinks she did. But Nollie arranged it as well as she could.... Oh, but
I’m boring you with all this family gossip.” The girl paused, suddenly
embarrassed; then, glancing out of the window: “It’s a lovely
morning, and not too cold. What do you say to my running you up to
Bronx Park and back before lunch, just to give you a glimpse of what
Nollie calls our New York? Or would you rather take another day to
rest?”
The rush through the vivid air; the spectacle of the new sumptuous
city; of the long reaches above the Hudson with their showy
architecture and towering “Institutions”; of the smooth Boulevards
flowing out to cared-for prosperous suburbs; the vista of Fifth
Avenue, as they returned, stretching southward, interminably,
between monumental façades and resplendent shop-fronts—all this
and the tone of Anne’s talk, her unconscious allusions, revelations of
herself and her surroundings, acted like champagne on Kate
Clephane’s brain, making the world reel about her in a headlong
dance that challenged her to join it. The way they all took their
mourning, for instance! She, Anne, being her grandmother’s heiress
(she explained) would of course not wear colours till Easter, or go to
the Opera (except to matinées) for at least another month. Didn’t
her mother think she was right? “Nollie thinks it awfully archaic of
me to mix up music and mourning; what have they got to do with
each other, as she says? But I know Aunt Enid wouldn’t like it ... and
she’s been so kind to me. Don’t you agree that I’d better not?”
“But of course, dear; and I think your aunt’s right.”
Inwardly, Kate was recalling the inexorable laws which had governed
family affliction in the New York to which she had come as a bride:
three crape-walled years for a parent, two for sister or brother, at
least twelve solid months of black for grandparent or aunt, and half
a year (to the full) for cousins, even if you counted them by dozens,
as the Clephanes did. As for the weeds of widowhood, they were
supposed to be measured only by the extent of the survivor’s
affliction, and that was expected to last as long, and proclaim itself
as unmistakably in crape and seclusion, as the most intolerant
censor in the family decreed—unless you were prepared to flout the
whole clan, and could bear to be severely reminded that your veil
was a quarter of a yard shorter than cousin Julia’s, though her
bereavement antedated yours by six months. Much as Kate
Clephane had suffered under the old dispensation, she felt a slight
recoil from the indifference that had succeeded it. She herself, just
before sailing, had replaced the coloured finery hastily bought on the
Riviera by a few dresses of unnoticeable black, which, without
suggesting the hypocrisy of her wearing mourning for old Mrs.
Clephane, yet kept her appearance in harmony with her daughter’s;
and Anne’s question made her glad that she had done so.
The new tolerance, she soon began to see, applied to everything; or,
if it didn’t, she had not yet discovered the new prohibitions, and
during all that first glittering day seemed to move through a
millennium where the lamb of pleasure lay down with the lion of
propriety.... After all, this New York into which she was being
reinducted had never, in any of its stages, been hers; and the fact,
which had facilitated her flight from it, leaving fewer broken ties and
uprooted habits, would now, she saw, in an equal measure simplify
her return. Her absence, during all those years, had counted, for the
Clephanes, only in terms of her husband’s humiliation; there had
been no family of her own to lament her fall, take up her defence,
quarrel with the clan over the rights and wrongs of the case, force
people to take sides, and leave a ramification of vague rancours to
which her return would give new life. The old aunts and indifferent
cousins at Meridia—her remote inland town—had bowed their heads
before the scandal, thanking fortune that the people they visited
would probably never hear of it. And now she came back free of
everything and every one, and rather like a politician resuming office
than a prodigal returning to his own.
The sense of it was so rejuvenating that she was almost sure she
was looking her best (and with less help than usual from Aline)
when she went down to dinner to meet the clan. Enid Drover’s
appearance gave a momentary check to her illusion: Enid, after
eighteen years, seemed alarmingly the same—pursed-up lips, pure
vocabulary and all. She had even kept, to an astonishing degree, the
physical air of her always middle-aged youth, the smooth
complexion, symmetrically-waved hair and empty eyes that made
her plump small-nosed face like a statue’s. Yet the mere fact of her
daughter Lilla profoundly altered her—the fact that she could sit
beaming maternally across the table at that impudent stripped
version of herself, with dyed hair, dyed lashes, drugged eyes and
unintelligible dialect. And her husband, Hendrik Drover—the typical
old New Yorker—that he too should accept this outlawed daughter,
laugh at her slang, and greet her belated entrance with the remark:
“Top-notch get-up tonight, Lil!”
“Oh, Lilla’s going on,” laughed Mrs. Joe Tresselton, slipping her thin
brown arm through her cousin’s heavy white one.
Lilla laughed indolently. “Ain’t you?”
“No—I mean to stay and bore Aunt Kate till the small hours, if she’ll
let me.”
Aunt Kate! How sweet it sounded, in that endearing young voice! No
wonder Anne had spoken as she did of Nollie. Whatever Mrs. Joe
Tresselton’s past had been, it had left on her no traces like those
which had smirched and deadened Lilla. Kate smiled back at Nollie
and loved her. She was prepared to love Joe Tresselton too, if only
for having brought this live thing into the family. Personally, Joe
didn’t at first offer many points of contact: he was so hopelessly like
his cousin Alan Drover, and like all the young American officers Kate
had seen on leave on the Riviera, and all the young men who
showed off collars or fountain-pens or golf-clubs in the backs of
American magazines. But then Kate had been away so long that, as
yet, the few people she had seen were always on the point of being
merged into a collective American Face. She wondered if Anne would
marry an American Face, and hoped, before that, to learn to
differentiate them; meanwhile, she would begin by practising on Joe,
who, seating himself beside her with the collective smile, seemed
about to remark: “See that Arrow?”
Instead he said: “Anne’s great, isn’t she, Aunt Kate?” and thereby
acquired an immediate individuality for Anne’s mother.
Dinner was announced, and at the dining-room door Kate wavered,
startled by the discovery that it was still exactly the same room—
black and gold, with imitation tapestries and a staring white bust
niched in a red marble over-mantel—and feeling once more
uncertain as to what was expected of her. But already Anne was
guiding her to her old seat at the head of the table, and waiting for
her to assign their places to the others. The girl did it without a
word; just a glance and the least touch. If this were indeed a
mannerless age, how miraculously Anne’s manners had been
preserved!
And now the dinner was progressing, John Clephane’s champagne
bubbling in their glasses (it seemed oddest of all to be drinking her
husband’s Veuve Clicquot), Lilla steadily smoking, both elbows on
the table, and Nollie Tresselton leading an exchange of chaff
between the younger cousins, with the object, as Kate Clephane
guessed, of giving her, the newcomer, time to take breath and get
her bearings. It was wonderful, sitting there, to recall the old “family
dinners”, when Enid’s small censorious smile (Enid, then in her
twenties!) seemed as inaccessible to pity as the forbidding line of old
Mrs. Clephane’s lips; when even Joe Tresselton’s mother (that lazy
fat Alethea Tresselton) had taken her cue from the others, and
echoed their severities with a mouth made for kissing and forgiving;
and John Clephane, at the foot of the table, proud of his house,
proud of his wine, proud of his cook, still half-proud of his wife, was
visibly saying to himself, as he looked about on his healthy
handsome relatives: “After all, blood is thicker than water.”
The contrast was the more curious because nothing, after all, could
really alter people like the Drovers. Enid was still gently censorious,
though with her range of criticism so deflected by the huge
exception to be made for her daughter that her fault-finding had an
odd remoteness: and Hendrik Drover, Kate guessed, would be as
easily shocked as of old by allusions to the “kind of thing they did in
Europe”, though what they did at home was so vividly present to him
in Lilla’s person, and in the fact of Joe Tresselton’s having married a
Fourteenth Street Shriner, and a divorced one at that.
It was all too bewildering for a poor exile to come to terms with—
Mrs. Clephane could only smile and listen, and be thankful that her
own case was so evidently included in the new range of their
indulgence.
But the young people—what did they think? That would be the
interesting thing to know. They had all, she gathered, far more
interests and ideas than had scantily furnished her own youth, but
all so broken up, scattered, and perpetually interrupted by the
strenuous labour of their endless forms of sport, that they reminded
her of a band of young entomologists, equipped with the newest
thing in nets, but in far too great a hurry ever to catch anything. Yet
perhaps it seemed so only to the slower motions of middle-age.
Kate’s glance wandered from Lilla Gates, the most obvious and least
interesting of the group, to Nollie Shriner (one of the “awful”
Fourteenth Street Shriners); Nollie Shriner first, then Nollie
Haverford, wife of a strait-laced Albany Haverford, and now Nollie
Tresselton, though she still looked, with her brown squirrel-face and
slim little body, like a girl in the schoolroom. Yes, even Nollie seemed
to be in a great hurry; one felt her perpetually ordering and sorting
and marshalling things in her mind, and the fact, Kate presently
perceived, now and then gave an odd worn look of fixity to her
uncannily youthful face. Kate wondered when there was ever time to
enjoy anything, with that perpetual alarm-clock in one’s breast.
Her glance travelled on to her own daughter. Anne seemed eager
too, but not at such a pace, or about such a multiplicity of unrelated
things. Perhaps, though, it was only the fact of being taller, statelier
—old-fashioned words still fitted Anne—which gave her that air of
boyish aloofness. But no; it was the mystery of her eyes—those eyes
which, as Kate had told her, she had chosen for herself from some
forgotten ancestral treasury into which none of the others had
dipped. Between olive and brown, but flecked with golden lights, a
little too deep-set, the lower lid flowing up smooth and flat from the
cheek, and the black lashes as evenly set as the microscopic plumes
in a Peruvian feather-ornament; and above them, too prominent,
even threatening, yet melting at times to curves of maiden wonder,
the obstinate brows of old Mrs. Clephane. What did those eyes
portend?
Kate Clephane glanced away, frightened at the riddle, and absorbed
herself in the preoccupying fact that the only way to tell the Drovers
from the Tresseltons was to remember that the Drovers’ noses were
even smaller than the Tresseltons’ (but would that help, if one met
one of either tribe alone?). She was roused by hearing Enid Drover
question plaintively, as the ladies regained the drawing-room: “But
after all, why shouldn’t Anne go too?”
The women formed an interrogative group around Mrs. Clephane,
who found herself suddenly being scrutinized as if for a verdict. She
cast a puzzled glance at Anne, and her daughter slipped an arm
through hers but addressed Mrs. Drover.
“Go to Madge Glenver’s cabaret-party with Lilla? But there’s no real
reason at all why I shouldn’t—except that my preference, like
Nollie’s, happens to be for staying at home this evening.”
Mrs. Drover heaved a faint sigh of relief, but her daughter, shrugging
impatient shoulders out of her too-willing shoulder-straps, grumbled:
“Then why doesn’t Aunt Kate come too? You’ll talk her to death if
you all stay here all the evening.”
Nollie Tresselton smiled. “So much for what Lilla thinks of the charm
of our conversation!”
Lilla shrugged again. “Not your conversation particularly. I hate
talking. I only like noises that don’t mean anything.”
“Does that rule out talking—quite?”
“Well, I hate cleverness, then; you and Anne are always being clever.
You’ll tire Aunt Kate a lot more than Madge’s party would.” She stood
there, large and fair, the features of her small inexpressive face so
like her mother’s, the lines of her relaxed inviting body so different
from Mrs. Drover’s righteous curves. Her painted eyes rested
curiously on Mrs. Clephane. “You don’t suppose she spent her time
in Europe sitting at home like this, do you?” she asked the company
with simplicity.
There was a stricken pause. Kate filled it by saying with a laugh:
“You’ll think I might as well have, when I tell you I’ve never in my
life been to a cabaret-party.”
Lilla’s stare deepened; she seemed hardly able to take the statement
in. “What did you do with your evenings, then?” she questioned,
after an apparently hopeless search for alternatives.
Mrs. Drover had grown pink and pursed-up; even Nollie Tresselton’s
quick smile seemed congealed. But Kate felt herself carrying it off on
wings. “Very often I just sat at home alone, and thought of you all
here, and of our first evening together—this very evening.”
She saw Anne colour a little, and felt the quick pressure of her arm.
That they should have found each other again, she and Anne!
The butler threw open the drawing-room door with solemnity. “A
gentleman has called in his motor for Mrs. Gates; he sends word
that he’s in a hurry, madam, please.”
“Oh,” said Lilla, leaping upon her fan and vanity bag. She was out of
the room before the butler had rounded off his sentence.
Mrs. Drover, her complacency restored, sank down on a plump
Clephane sofa that corresponded in richness and ponderosity with
her own person. “Lilla’s such a baby!” she sighed; then, with a freer
breath, addressed herself to sympathetic enquiries as to Mrs.
Clephane’s voyage. It was evident that, as far as the family were
concerned, Anne’s mother had been born again, seven days earlier,
on the gang-plank of the liner that had brought her home. On these
terms they were all delighted to have her back; and Mrs. Drover
declared herself particularly thankful that the voyage had been so
smooth.
V.
SMOOTHNESS, Kate Clephane could see, was going to mark the first
stage of her re-embarkation on the waters of life. The truth came to
her, after that first evening, with the surprised discovery that the
family had refrained from touching on her past not so much from
prudery, or discretion even, as because such retrogressions were
jolting uncomfortable affairs, and the line of least resistance flowed
forward, not back. She had been right in guessing that her questions
as to what people thought of her past were embarrassing to
Landers, but wrong in the interpretation of his embarrassment. Like
every one else about her, he was caught up in the irresistible flow of
existence, which somehow reminded her less of a mighty river
tending seaward than of a moving stairway revolving on itself. “Only
they all think it’s a river....” she mused.
But such thoughts barely lit on her tired mind and were gone. In the
first days, after she had grasped (without seeking its explanation)
the fact that she need no longer be on her guard, that henceforth
there would be nothing to conjure away, or explain, or disguise, her
chief feeling was one of illimitable relief. The rapture with which she
let herself sink into the sensation showed her for the first time how
tired she was, and for how long she had been tired. It was almost as
if this sense of relaxation were totally new to her, so far back did her
memory have to travel to recover a time when she had not waked to
apprehension, and fallen asleep rehearsing fresh precautions for the
morrow. In the first years of her marriage there had been the
continual vain effort to adapt herself to her husband’s point of view,
to her mother-in-law’s standards, to all the unintelligible ritual with
which they barricaded themselves against the alarming business of
living. After that had come the bitterness of her first
disenchantment, and the insatiable longing to be back on the
nursery floor with Anne; then, through all the ensuing years, the
many austere and lonely years, and the few consumed with her last
passion, the ever-recurring need of one form of vigilance or another,
the effort to keep hold of something that might at any moment slip
from her, whether it were her painfully-regained “respectability” or
the lover for whom she had forgone it. Yes; as she looked back, she
saw herself always with taut muscles and the grimace of ease;
always pretending that she felt herself free, and secretly knowing
that the prison of her marriage had been liberty compared with what
she had exchanged it for.
That was as far as her thoughts travelled in the first days. She
abandoned herself with the others to the flood of material ease, the
torrent of facilities on which they were all embarked. She had been
scornful of luxury when it had symbolized the lack of everything
else; now that it was an adjunct of her recovered peace she began
to enjoy it with the rest, and to feel that the daily perfection of her
breakfast-tray, the punctual renewal of the flowers in her sitting-
room, the inexhaustible hot water in her bath, the swift gliding of
Anne’s motor, and the attentions of her household of servants, were
essential elements of this new life.
At last she was at rest. Even the nature of her sleep was changed.
Waking one morning—not with a jerk, but slowly, voluntarily, as it
were—out of a soundless, dreamless night, a miraculous draught of
sleep, she understood that for years even her rest had been
unrestful. She recalled the uncertainty and apprehension always
woven through her dreams, the sudden nocturnal wakings to a
blinding, inextinguishable sense of her fate, her future, her past; and
the shallow turbid half-consciousness of her morning sleep, which
would leave her, when she finally woke from it, emptied of all power
of action, all hope and joy. Then every sound that broke the night-
hush had been irritating, had pierced her rest like an insect’s
nagging hum; now the noises that accompanied her falling asleep
and awakening seemed to issue harmoniously out of the silence, and
the late and early roar of Fifth Avenue to rock her like the great
reiterations of the sea.
“This is peace ... this must be peace,” she repeated to herself, like a
botanist arrested by an unknown flower, and at once guessing it to
be the rare exquisite thing he has spent half his life in seeking.
Of course she would not have felt any of these things if Anne had
not been the Anne she was. It was from Anne’s presence, her smile,
her voice, the mystery of her eyes even, that the healing flowed. If
Kate Clephane had an apprehension left, it was her awe—almost—of
that completeness of Anne’s. Was it possible, humanly possible, that
one could cast away one’s best treasure, and come back after nearly
twenty years to find it there, not only as rare as one had
remembered it, but ripened, enriched, as only beautiful things are
enriched and ripened by time? It was as if one had set out some
delicate plant under one’s window, so that it might be an object of
constant vigilance, and then gone away, leaving it unwatched,
unpruned, unwatered—how could one hope to find more than a
dead stick in the dust when one returned? But Anne was real; she
was not a mirage or a mockery; as the days passed, and her
mother’s life and hers became adjusted to each other, Kate felt as if
they were two parts of some delicate instrument which fitted
together as perfectly as if they had never been disjoined—as if Anne
were that other half of her life, the half she had dreamed of and
never lived. To see Anne living it would be almost the same as if it
were her own; would be better, almost; since she would be there,
with her experience, and tenderness, to hold out a guiding hand, to
help shape the perfection she had sought and missed.
These thoughts came back to her with particular force on the
evening of Anne’s reappearance at the Opera. During the weeks
since old Mrs. Clephane’s death the Clephane box had stood severely
empty; even when the Opera House was hired for some charity
entertainment, Anne sent a cheque but refused to give the box. It
was awfully “archaic”, as Nollie Tresselton said; but somehow it
suited Anne, was as much in her “style” as the close braids folded
about her temples. “After all, it’s not so easy to be statuesque, and I
like Anne’s memorial manner,” Nollie concluded.
Tonight the period of formal mourning for old Mrs. Clephane was
over, and Anne was to go to the Opera with her mother. She had

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Equality and Vulnerability in the

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1. Introduction: Teaching Under Unusal Circumstances

1.3 Equality as a Practice

Doreen B (2020–21) Townsend Center for the Humanities, Berkeley

Losano MG (2008) Scritti autobiografici. Diabasis, Reggio Emilia

Pohl F (1982) Starburst. Ballantine New York

4 Cardano (1630), Caput LVIII. See footnote 82.

6 Zanetti (2011), pp. 461–470.

7 Waldron (2002), pp. 2–7.

11 Poe (1844), ed. Van Doren Stern (1945), pp. 439–462.

2. Dante Alighieri, Hans Kelsen, and the

2.1 Kelsen on Dante

2.2 The Power of the Principium Unitatis

2.3 Borders and Limits

“territory” as the law understands it, is a political and a legal

There is, of course, a clearly stated geographic, territory-related cluster

Capograssi G (1952) Impressioni su Kelsen tradotto. Rivista trimestrale di diritto

Dante [1312–1313] (2015) De Monarchia. In: Quaglioni D (ed) Monarchia.

Kelsen H (1934) Reine Rechtslehre. Einleitung in die rechtswissenschaftliche

Kelsen H (1960) Reine Rechtslehre. Verlag Franz Deuticke, Wien

Lagi (2008) Il pensiero politico di Hans Kelsen (1911-1920). Le origini di Essenza e

Lindahl H (2018) Authority and the globalisation of inclusion and exclusion.

Musa M (ed) (1995) The Portable Dante. Penguin, London

Romano S (2017) The legal order. Routledge, London

Waldenfels B (2006) Grundmotive einer Phänomenologie des Fremden. Frankfurt:

2 See at least Kelsen (1934); Kelsen (1992), translated by Bonnie Litschewski

6 Capograssi (1952), pp. 767–810.

9 See Cau (2004) and Lagi (2008), pp. 32–34.

10 A complete translation of the Commedia is to be found, for example, in Musa

12 John 19: 23–24.

15 Dante (1312–1313); Dante (1996), edited by Prue Shaw (Cambridge University

16 Lindahl (2018), pp. 28, 35. Lindahl elaborates on Bernhard Waldenfels’s

17 Lindahl (2018), p. 38.

18 Dante (2015), pp. 150, 440, p. 96.

19 Arendt (1965), pp. 262–263.

20 Inf. I, 127. Commedia is to be found, for example in Musa (1995).

21 “The territory of a State is usually considered as a definite portion of the earth’s

3. Niccolò Machiavelli and Efficacy

3.1 The Prince’s Ruin

3.2 Contingency and Vulnerability

[…] First, he will familiarize himself intimately with his own