The Problem of Gratitude and the Conditions of Liberty in Machiavelli’s Political Thought

Abstract

Political scientists and theorists are increasingly concerned with the rise of personalist leaders in democracies. But they have neglected to study one of personalism’s crucial psychological foundations: gratitude. This paper examines the relationship between gratitude and liberty in the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli. Machiavelli argues that human beings naturally hate ingratitude and admire gratitude, and thus republics must prevent and punish ingratitude among their citizens and leaders to prevent the formation of politically destabilizing grievances. But gratitude also endangers liberty. For the experience of gratitude depends on an ignorance of the motives of politicians, whose apparent beneficence is truly the product of necessity or prudent self-interest. Popular gratitude is therefore easily manipulated by would-be tyrants. It further undermines the foundations of freedom—the rule of law and civic equality—by encouraging excessive leniency for the present crimes of past benefactors and by fostering excessive devotion to outstanding citizens. Republics must therefore balance the need to be both grateful and ungrateful to maintain their freedom. This paper therefore demonstrates the centrality of Machiavelli’s reflections on gratitude to his republicanism and reveals how these reflections illuminate the causes of and remedies for the rise of personalism in democracies.

The Politics of Gratitude and Contemporary Democratic Decline

Political scientists have become increasingly preoccupied with the threats to liberal democracy posed by the rise of personalist leaders (Baturo et al. 2024; Frantz et al. 2021, 2022; Kendall-Taylor et al. 2017; Kostadinova and Levitt 2014; Lioy 2023). Though the concept remains contested, leaders are commonly designated “personalist” whose individual personality dominates their political realm to the extent that they are no longer restrained by parties and other established norms and institutions (Frantz et al. 2021; cf. Kostadinova and Levitt 2014). Their power is primarily founded on patron-client relationships and other more personal, “charismatic” connections to their supporters, though their dominance may also cause the emergence of “personalist parties” that give the leader “free rein to concentrate power and ignore or attack democratic institutions” (Rhodes-Purdy and Madrid 2020, 322; Gunther and Diamond 2003; Kostadinova and Levitt 2014). Scholars contend that personalist leadership weakens democracies by heightening polarization, weakening legal mechanisms of accountability, diminishing the authority of parties, and encouraging power grabs (Frantz et al. 2021, 2022; Kendall-Taylor et al. 2017; Musella 2022; Rhodes-Purdy and Madrid 2020).

Yet while the effects of personalist leadership on democratic institutions have been the subject of prodigious scholarly effort, much less has been devoted to the examination of its psychological foundations. In particular, the preeminent role of gratitude in constituting and solidifying popular support for personalist leaders has been neglected. Not only is the inculcation of gratitude a crucial aspect of the patronage networks upon which personalist leaders often rely (Azgin and Kaymak 2025; Ricardo 2020), but popular gratitude for a leader—either for benefits done or for their recognition and validation of popular grievances—fuels the powerful sense of personal loyalty that characterizes such leaders (Fierman 2020). However, with scattered exceptions, contemporary political science (Greene 2024; Panagopoulos 2011) ¹ and normative political theory (Callard 2019; Gerver 2022) ² have generally neglected to examine the political significance of gratitude. Gratitude has been the subject of intense study in the field of social psychology, where it is almost universally lauded as a crucial communal bond and a key predictor of psychological well-being (Komter 2004; McCullough et al. 2001; Watkins 2014). However, social psychologists have tended to restrain themselves from applying their findings to the political sphere. ³ We are therefore confronted by an unsettling divide between the laudatory assessments of gratitude’s effect on individuals and communities made by one discipline and the fearful depictions of a form of leadership founded on gratitude presented by the other. Yet we lack a sustained treatment of the political role of gratitude that might help us better understand its importance.

This article will attempt to further our understanding of the place of gratitude in politics by turning to the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli. Machiavelli is not the only figure in the history of ideas who thought deeply about the social and political implications of gratitude; figures as diverse as Xenophon (Davis 2025), Seneca (Harpham 2004), and Adam Smith (Min 2002) have treated it as a matter of philosophic interest, not to mention its importance as a virtue in the Christian and Confucian traditions (Harpham 2004; Lee 2021). But Machiavelli is unique in both elevating gratitude to a political matter of the highest importance and in primarily considering it with a view to its relevance for the maintenance of republican freedom (Machiavelli 2001, I 2, 28–32; I 28, 143–145; I 29, 145–151; Sullivan 1996, 162–164; Coby 1999, 98–100). ⁴ His thought therefore recommends itself as a crucial tool for evaluating our own similar anxieties. Further, in revealing both the constructive and destructive effects that gratitude can have on political liberty, Machiavelli provides a deeper account of this phenomenon that can be made to address the divide between the unbridled optimism of social psychology and the brooding pessimism of political science.

Gratitude and ingratitude play a major role in Machiavelli’s political thought. Not only did the Florentine dedicate a poem to the character of ingratitude and its pernicious presence in politics (Machiavelli 2012, 91–105), but the natural human concern that gratitude be shown, and our corresponding hatred of ingratitude, are also central to Machiavelli’s account of the origins of political society (D I 2, 20–21) and the proper relationship between the great and the people, the “two humors” of the body politic that he highlights in The Prince and the Discourses on Livy (D I 4, 34; Machiavelli 2006, 163–164). Accordingly, the three chapters in the first book of the Discourses that Machiavelli devotes to the subject of gratitude (D I 28–30, 143–154) together with the following two thematically continuous chapters on the mercy and liberality of the Romans (D I 31–32, 155–160) contain some of Machiavelli’s most forthright statements about the ends of a free city, human psychology, the proper way for the people to manage, reward, and punish the great in a republic, and the proper way for the great to manage the people. The central issue of these chapters is the grave question of whether our most natural moral passion—gratitude—is compatible or in conflict with the ends of a republic—acquiring and maintaining its freedom. Machiavelli’s reflections on this question will prove to crucially inform his conception of a well-ordered republic.

These discussions are fruitful, yet relatively untilled ground for investigating the character of Machiavelli’s republicanism. For even as most scholars acknowledge the necessity of grasping Machiavelli’s psychology for understanding his political thought, they tend to emphasize its other elements, above all fear (Boucheron 2018; Osborne 2017; Sullivan 1996), but also hope (Mitchell 2024), insolence (McCormick 2021), ambition (Duff 2011), love of glory (Zmora 2007), and love of one's fatherland (Viroli 2013). Fischer’s attempt to elaborate the first “systematic” and “comprehensive account” of Machiavelli’s political psychology lists the necessary attributes of Machiavellian man’s psyche: “spirit that animates the body; mind with faculties of ingenuity, imagination, and memory; desires for preservation, glory, power, freedom, wealth and sexual pleasure; and four humors received from the stars” (Fischer 1997, 789–790). The concern for gratitude is omitted; it is relegated to the realm of habituation, along with religiosity and law-abidingness. ⁵ Even those that do afford some importance to Machiavelli’s understanding of gratitude have treated it in a limited fashion (Martelli 2006; Coby 1999, 99–100, 202–203).

Sullivan (1996, 162–171) has provided the most extensive treatment to date of Machiavelli’s reflections on the political consequences of gratitude; indeed, in several particulars I follow her argument that Machiavelli is ultimately critical of the political effects of gratitude and endorses fear-inspiring acts of ingratitude as a countermeasure. However, my interpretation differs from hers in two major respects. First, whereas I will argue that Machiavelli demands that republics must balance the need to show gratitude for public service with the need to ungratefully crush overweening ambition, since to neglect either is to endanger freedom, Sullivan argues that Machiavelli does not think that a well-ordered republic needs to be seriously concerned with the observance of gratitude ⁶ and thus emphasizes his concern with the danger that gratitude poses to a republic (Ibid., 162–163, 166–167). This is in part because—the second major difference—she treats Machiavelli’s endorsement of ingratitude as one instance of his attack on Christianity, which esteems gratitude as virtue, through the secular appropriation of elements of its doctrine, in this case original sin (Ibid., 162–6). I will argue instead that Machiavelli arrives at his endorsement of occasional ingratitude as an imperfect though necessary solution to a problem immanent to politics given our natural—if fundamentally deluded—concern with gratitude. Machiavelli’s reflections on gratitude do not reveal his engagement with Christianity as much as the way in which he thought that our wayward natures, tossed about both by restless acquisitiveness and moral passion, vex our attempts to establish and maintain a well-ordered republic.

This paper will therefore both elaborate Machiavelli’s evaluation of the political effects of gratitude in the Discourses on Livy and, in doing so, restore gratitude to its place of conceptual importance in his political thought. I will argue that, according to Machiavelli, gratitude poses a paradox for free regimes. On the one hand, Machiavelli argues that regimes stand or fall by their ability to win the gratitude, and consequently the loyalty, of their people and by their capacity to prevent and punish acts of ingratitude. On the other hand, Machiavelli argues that the moral passion of gratitude is the cause of great dangers to freedom, not the least of which is the rise of would-be tyrants who found themselves on their supporters’ grateful devotion to them. Ingratitude, as a means of crushing aspiring despots, is an indispensable political tool for republics; the moral demands of gratitude and the maintenance of liberty cannot be perfectly reconciled. Republics must learn to balance the importance of fostering popular gratitude toward political leaders with the necessity to guard against its dangerous excesses. His analysis therefore contributes to contemporary democratic debates by elucidating the ineradicable causes and ever-present dangers of personalist leadership and by indicating the proper way that republics ought to respond to this challenge. In doing so, it reveals the enduring importance for political scientists and theorists to reflect on the political manifestations of gratitude as a crucial yet volatile aspect of free government.

Ingratitude, Justice, and the Origins of Political Society: The Necessity of Gratitude

Gratitude and ingratitude rank among the most important moral phenomena in Machiavelli’s writings. According to the Florentine, gratitude is composed of three parts: the acknowledgment of a received benefit, the disposition to return like benefit, and the actual reciprocation of the benefit (Machiavelli 2012, 95–96). Our concern to show gratitude toward our benefactors and our hatred of ingratitude are deeply rooted natural passions that are directed above all toward our perceived rulers, mortal or divine (D I 2, 21; 29, 149–151; 32, 158–160; Machiavelli 2012, 411–6). ⁷ But it is the practice of ingratitude that is ubiquitous in human affairs. In his poem De Ingratitudine, Machiavelli describes three types of ingratitude of increasing malignity: the first “makes a man acknowledge a benefit, but without repaying it ”; the second “makes the benefitted man forget,” yet without injuring his benefactor; the third, which “pierces to the bone,” is that which “makes a man never remember a benefit, but with all his ability tear and bite his benefactor” (Machiavelli 2012, 95–96). As with gratitude, the roots of ingratitude are natural and ineradicable: “Never is she spent; a thousand times she is reborn, if once she dies, because her father and mother are immortal” (Machiavelli 2012, 96). Ingratitude’s “father” and “mother” are Avarice and Suspicion, with Envy as her “nursemaid” (Machiavelli 2012, 93–94); speaking less poetically in the Discourses, Machiavelli asserts that the “vice of ingratitude arises either from avarice or from suspicion” and that since “the nature of men is ambitious and suspicious and does not know how to place a limit on any fortune,” princes “cannot defend themselves” from suspicion and the ingratitude that follows (D I 29, 146–148). While ingratitude may make “her chief seat” “in the breast of princes and kings,” she “delights more in the heart of the people when it is lord,” since popular envy and ignorance breeds suspicion (Machiavelli 2012, 94, 96). Thus, in the Discourses, Machiavelli discusses not the grateful city but the least ungrateful, for in all republics one finds “some species of ingratitude against their citizens” (D I 28, 143).

The omnipresence of ingratitude among rulers and the contravening natural concern for gratitude together make the uncertain performance of gratitude a central problem of political life. And in the Discourses, to which I shall now turn for Machiavelli’s most thorough meditation on gratitude and ingratitude, this problem comes to light as the original problem of human society. Gratitude and ingratitude are first treated in the second chapter of the Discourses during Machiavelli’s discussion of the origins of political society. His account largely follows that found in the sixth book of Polybius’ Histories but includes several crucial alterations that reveal Machiavelli’s disagreements with that Greek historian of Rome (Mansfield 1979; Sasso 1958). The most important of these, for our purposes, are his departures from Polybius regarding the relationship between gratitude and justice and the consequences of this relationship for political life.

Polybius begins his account of the origins of political society by considering the state of mankind after a natural cataclysm: human beings in such as state, weak and exposed, would herd together “just as the other animals” do, and it was “necessary” that “one exceeding in strength of body and courage of soul would assume command” (12v). ⁸ Thus, the first arrangement of rule is monarchy and the limit of that rule is the strength of the ruler (13r). But when “in time intimacy and experience came about in these gatherings, kingship first arose; and the first thought (cogitatio) of the right and the honest and their contraries arose among men” (13r). More precisely, the observation of the ingratitude of a child toward their parent provokes in the observer displeasure, both because the act offends the observer’s natural sympathy and because the observer reckons that they could suffer similarly. “Out of these things arises among every man a certain reflection (cogitatio) by which he can contemplate the force of duty. This, truly, is the beginning and end of justice” (13v). Thus, the idea of justice is the idea of what duties one has toward others, a notion that arises naturally, if negatively, from the observation of ingratitude and consequent reflection upon it. The new notion of justice transforms politics by leading the people to prefer the ruler who “appears to his subjects to distribute to each according to their worth” to men of strength and courage, even if the just ruler is old and frail (13v).

Machiavelli’s account departs from Polybius in several striking particulars. In the “beginning of the world”—not in the wake of a natural cataclysm—human beings “lived for a time dispersed, like beasts” (D I 2, 20). Having multiplied, the early humans first banded together and, “in order to be able to defend themselves better they began to look among themselves to he who was more robust and of greater heart, and they made him like a head, and obeyed him” (D I 2, 20). Whereas in Polybius, the natural character of early human society finds support in its reflection of animal “monarchies”—the instinctual actions of beasts being the “truest work of nature”—here human beings are more similar to beasts while dispersed, and obedience to the strongest is presented more as the result of forethought rather than natural instinct (Polybius nd, 12v; D I 2, 20). Social and political life is, accordingly, much more conventional on Machiavelli’s telling.

Further, whereas Polybius claimed that from this stage of social life arose “the first thought of the right and the honest” (13r), according to Machiavelli, “from this arose the knowledge of the honest and good things” (D I 2, 20–21). ⁹ The reason why Machiavelli denies the knowledge of right or justice to these early human beings emerges in his own discussion of gratitude:

For seeing that if one hurt his benefactor, hatred and compassion among men came of it, blaming the ungrateful and honoring those who were grateful, and thinking also that these same injuries could be done to them, in order to flee similar evil they were reduced to make laws and to order punishments for those who acted against them; whence came the knowledge of justice (D I 2, 21).

As in Polybius, the experience of ingratitude provokes a natural reaction of hatred and compassion in human beings that leads them to blame the ungrateful and honor the grateful. But it also provokes a fear of suffering ingratitude that leads them to do more than just consider the proper attribution of praise and blame. ¹⁰ For Machiavelli, the thought, also present in Polybius, that we too may suffer ingratitude leads to the need, not present in Polybius, for laws and punishments that codify our hatred of ingratitude, our compassion for its victims, and our admiration of the grateful. The creation of law is a necessary but constraining development—early human beings “were reduced” to making laws and punishments. Law is a yoke we must impose on ourselves. ¹¹ The knowledge of justice therefore comes to light as distinct from the knowledge of the honest insofar as it is especially connected to the knowledge of those laws and punishments that we human beings create to codify and support our notions about gratitude and ingratitude. This legalistic understanding of justice surfaces throughout the book: three of the remaining five mentions of giustizia in the Discourses refer to when the Fabii, Roman ambassadors to the Gauls, engaged in combat with the Gauls “against the law of nations.” ¹²

Yet Machiavelli departs from Polybius in a subtle yet crucial particular when he claims that from the creation of laws and punishments came the “knowledge” (cognizione) of justice. Polybius does not go so far, claiming instead that from instances of ingratitude arises for the first time the “thought” (cogitatio) or, as in the original Greek, “notion” (ἔννοια) of duty, and with it of justice. The idea of justice is not yet the knowledge of it ¹³ ; Polybius concludes that in this way the “first thought of the right and the honest” arises among men (13r, italics added). As Mansfield (1979, 37) notes, this formulation implies the existence of “a higher and more complete understanding” of justice, beyond the knowledge of laws and punishments. Machiavelli, however, implicitly denies any such need to ascend from justice as the knowledge of (humanly created) laws and punishments. For by presenting our concern for gratitude as more natural than, and the natural basis of, our concern for justice, he elevates gratitude above justice as the moral concern of greatest theoretical import. Machiavelli does, however, agree with Polybius regarding how the new knowledge of justice transforms nascent political life: the people, “having thereafter to elect a prince,” no longer favored the “most robust” but instead he who was “more prudent and more just” (D I 2, 21). The knowledge of justice supplants strength as the standard of legitimate rule; politics henceforth becomes thoroughly preoccupied with justice and therefore also—since it provides the basis of the laws with which justice concerns itself—with gratitude.

When one turns to Machiavelli’s analysis of mature political communities, one sees that there too he emphasizes the need to combat the harmful effects of ingratitude. In the tumultuous republics geared toward expansion, like Rome, that Machiavelli endorses in the Discourses, anger at perceived ingratitude or injustice is a common cause of tumults, especially popular tumults, since the people seek to combat the nobles either because of their desire to “avenge themselves” against the great or their belief that they deserve those riches and honors “that they see being used badly by others” (D I 5, 41; 8, 56–57, II 28, 492–494). As Machiavelli’s examples in the seventh and eighth chapters of the Discourses illustrate, republics must allow for public accusations and combat calumnies in order to stifle the dangerous designs of those who believe themselves victims of ingratitude or injustice: in Chiusi, when the sister of Arruns was violated by Lucumo, and Lucumo’s power in the city prevented Arruns from “avenging himself,” he sought revenge through convincing the Gauls to invade his own city (D I 7, 55); in Rome, Manlius Capitolinus stirred up the plebs against the Senate out of indignation that Camillus had received more honor than him for his role in saving Rome from the Gauls (D I 8, 56); in Florence, the ruin of the republic followed from the indignation of the friends of Messer Giovanni Guicciardini at the calumnies that he had suffered after his defeat at Lucca (D I 8, 60–61). And while, as Davis (2023) notes, Manlius’ plot was squashed in Rome through the virtue of its orders, the death of the Roman republic followed from its later failure to avoid ingratitude and manage the tumults that resulted from it. For Caesar “through force took for himself that which ingratitude denied him” (D I 29, 149). Thus, the dangers that follow from indignation at ingratitude necessitate a city that wishes to remain free to avoid or limit ingratitude toward its citizens and to order itself so that it can properly channel this indignation when it arises.

Not only must a free city avoid ingratitude to prevent threats to its liberty, but it must also observe justice in rewarding the deeds and punishing the errors of its citizens. If a citizen rises to great reputation in a city and begins to think that “he can, without fear of penalty, do some work that is not good, he will become in a brief time so insolent that any civility will be dissolved” (D I 24, 133). Thus, punitive justice must be strictly applied to quash this insolence. But Machiavelli warns that the efficacy of fear of punishment depends on the proper distribution of rewards to citizens; fear will effectively prevent dangerous acquisitiveness only if it is paired with the hope of gain from benefitting the city (D I 24, 133). One must reward citizens for their good deeds, for not to reward an individual is at the same time to offend them (D I 29, 146). And Machiavelli suggests that the popular belief that they have acted gratefully toward a virtuous citizen may make them more willing to punish the later misdeeds of that same citizen. For the gift that Manlius received for saving the Capitol, “according to the fortune that there then was in Rome, was great, and of such quality that, Manlius being moved later either by envy or his wicked nature to try to raise sedition in Rome, he was, without any respect for his merits,” thrown from the Tarpeian Rock (D I 24, 134–135). Free cities therefore have a vested interest in gratefully rewarding their virtuous citizens.

Finally, Machiavelli advises the rulers of a republic to foster popular gratitude if they wish to maintain liberty in times of danger. Machiavelli describes the successful “liberality” of the Roman Senate toward the plebs in relieving them of the salt tax and other duties when the Etruscan king Porsenna marched on Rome, seeking to restore the Tarquins (D I 32, 158; Livy 1919, II 9). This “liberality” did not arise out of a “disposition of the Senate to benefit” the plebs, as the people believed, but from the Senate’s fear that the people would “more readily accept kings than sustain war” (D I 32, 158–159; Livy 1919, II 9). Yet the gratitude that the people felt toward this apparent public-spiritedness of the Senate made them willing “to endure siege, hunger, and war” rather than pine for a return to a monarchical peace (D I 32, 159). Thus, the preservation of a republic depends in great part on the observance of gratitude toward deserving citizens, the fostering of popular benevolence toward their leaders, and the prudent management of indignation.

The Tension Between Freedom and Gratitude

However, this last example reveals a disquieting implication about the power of gratitude. For the gratitude of the people was misguided, unaware as they were that the Senate benefitted them out of fear rather than goodwill. Indeed, while Livy describes Rome during this affair as a “harmonious city” (concordem civitatem – Livy 1919, II 9), Machiavelli instead contends that there was merely a façade of harmony, soon to be dispelled when the threat of the Tarquins faded (D I 3, 30–31). And as one examines Machiavelli’s various passages about gratitude, one finds that despite Machiavelli’s acknowledgment of the importance of gratitude in politics and his poetic lamentations of the harm that ingratitude has wrought, he is just as aware of the dark side of gratitude and the potential utility of ingratitude well used. There are three distinct reasons why gratitude can be dangerous for a free city. First, the expression of gratitude rests upon a blindness to the power and scope of necessity in politics. Second, this blindness means that popular gratitude is often mistakenly directed at would-be tyrants and provides them a smooth path to the usurpation of freedom. Finally, the observance of the demands of gratitude may undermine legal justice and civil equality, the foundations of republican freedom.

Gratitude’s Blindness to Political Necessity

The case of the Senate’s “liberality” reveals that gratitude is based on a mistaken understanding about the power of necessity in politics. The Senate successfully retained the loyalty of the people in the face of hardship by benefiting them anew and consequently earning their gratitude. But Machiavelli notes that the Senate only succeeded in doing so because the state was new, the hated memory of monarchy was fresh, the people saw that some laws had been made for their benefit, and they had not yet seen that “poison” toward them that the Senate “had held in their breasts” (D I 3, 31; I 32, 159). Had this not been the case, Machiavelli observes, the people would have seen that these benefits came from the approach of the enemy rather than the beneficence of their rulers and would not have felt any sense of “obligation” that might shore up their willingness to endure hardship (D I 32, 159). For we do not feel grateful for all benefits that we receive, but only for those benefits that we believe were freely undertaken out of a sincere concern for our interest rather than that of the benefactor. The newness of the Roman republic meant that the Roman people did not yet understand that the Senate was only restrained from offending the people by their fear of the Tarquins and so “it could be persuaded that the good that had been done to them” followed from “the disposition of the Senate to benefit them.” (D I 32, 159). That is, the Roman people did not understand the Machiavellian lesson that “men never work any good unless through necessity,” and thus did not suspect that the compelling force of the fear of the loss of their state was the “hidden cause” of an apparently public-spirited act (D I 3, 30). If, indeed, men never work any good unless through necessity, and gratitude rests on the belief that men might freely seek to serve the good of others, then a blindness to the power of necessity is the prerequisite for the experience of gratitude.

But even if rulers do not, in fact, truly deserve popular gratitude, it is still the case that they need to be able to draw upon it in times of crisis, and therefore must examine how they might act toward the people in ordinary as well as extraordinary times such that they might possess this resource (D I 32, 159–60). The prudent ruler will therefore continually benefit the people out of a cold calculation of interest. For the error of the Senate, according to Machiavelli, was not that they failed to selflessly devote themselves to the public good, for this would be to ask too much of human beings, who are “ungrateful, volatile, simulators, evaders of danger, desirous of gain,” and “wicked” (Machiavelli 2006, 229–230). Rather they erred by not understanding the need to continually restrain their wish to exploit for the sake of guarding against popular revolt in times of crisis. The pseudo-liberality of the Senate therefore reveals the ignorance about necessity that underlies gratitude and the incentive that rulers have to keep the populace deceived about their true motivations. And if in this case the Senate’s deception also aided the people by hardening them against the wish to return under the yoke to escape war, nevertheless it also reveals the susceptibility of the people to more malicious deception, which I will treat below.

Machiavelli further argues that our uneducated hatred of perceived ingratitude also leads us to mistakenly attribute praise and blame. He begins the set of chapters in the Discourses on gratitude by contrasting Rome and Athens and asserting that the former was much less ungrateful than the latter (D I 28, 143). The cause of this is that “the Romans had less cause to suspect their citizens than the Athenians,” who, having had their freedom taken away from them by Pisistratus under “a deception of goodness,” became extremely suspicious of their leading citizens (D I 28, 143). But while this may seem to be a point in favor of praising Rome over Athens, Machiavelli instead claims that he who consider this “will not blame Athens in this, nor praise Rome, but will accuse only necessity, because of the diversity of accidents that arose in these cities” (D I 28, 144). Now, while Machiavelli will later acknowledge that Rome, too, had its freedom taken away by Appius Claudius under a deception of goodness (D I 35, 172–3; I 40, 198–202), if only for a brief time, this discussion still reveals that our hatred of ingratitude leads us too quickly to overlook the political necessities that give rise to ingratitude, and thus to ignorantly praise and blame republics. While in the case of the liberality of the Senate, the gratitude of the people rested upon a misunderstanding of the psychology of the great, the praise of Roman republic and the blame of the Athenian democracy rest upon a misunderstanding of the psychology of the people, whose characteristic desire to live free and proclivity for suspicion render them particularly wary of the “shadows of errors” cast by their fellow citizens, though the degree and intensity of their suspicion may vary with the circumstances (D I 28, 143). Machiavelli indeed acknowledges that the popular suspicion and severity that lead to the exile of Tarquinius Collatinus and the near exile of Publius Valerius reveals that the same seeds of ingratitude that flowered in Athens were present in Roman soil (D I 28, 144–145). Collatinus, though a leader of the anti-monarchical uprising against the Tarquins, was run out of republican Rome because he shared their name; if this is not a mere “shadow of an error,” one would be hard pressed to say what is (D I 28, 143; Livy 1919, II 2). Thus, the blame of ingratitude and the praise of those republics who refrain from it most are also founded upon a failure to appreciate political necessity and its psychological roots.

Gratitude and the Path to Tyranny

Further, the gratitude that citizens feel toward their leaders may blind them to the ambitions of those leaders and thus open them to manipulation by would-be tyrants. ¹⁴ Machiavelli explains that ambitious individuals in a republic seek “to be unable to be offended, not only by private individuals but also by the magistrates,” and thus accumulate political power through friendships that they acquire “in ways honest in appearance,” though not in truth (D I 46, 224). This apparent virtue “easily deceives everyone” and thus is not stamped out, such that when the danger is realized, the ambitious individual has already risen to so much power that the republic “must either seek to eliminate him with danger of sudden ruin or, leaving him be, enter into a manifest servitude” (D I 46, 224). Examples abound in the Discourses. In explaining the cause of Athens’ extreme ingratitude, Machiavelli notes that Pisistratus seized Athens’ freedom under “a deception of goodness” in its “most flourishing time,” such that it became extremely suspicious of similar deceptions when it recovered its freedom (D I 28, 143). Pisistratus’ deception of goodness succeeded because it was founded on the gratitude of the Athenians and their suspicion of the nobility. Having attained the “favor (grazia) of the people” by conquering the Megarians, “one morning he went out wounded, saying that the nobility had injured him out of envy” and consequently attained popular support for a personal armed guard, with the help of which he quickly became “tyrant of Athens” (D III 6, 592). While Machiavelli first claims that Rome differed from Athens in this matter, he later acknowledges that Rome had its freedom taken away during the Decemvirate, whose leader, Appius Claudius, took power by convincing the people that he was their friend (D I 35, 172; D I 40, 201–2). Appius, too, had gained the favor of the plebeians by pretending to leave behind his past as a “cruel persecutor of the plebs” and to take on a “new nature and a new character” as a public advocate of the people among the nobility (D I 40, 200). The popular belief in the sincerity of Appius’ miraculous transformation—clearly a façade in the eyes of the nobility—together with their ire against the consulate and their desire for “perfection” in the new law code that Appius promised led them to grant him so much power that he became tyrant of Rome (D I 40, 201–206).

In fact, the susceptibility of the people to gratefully elevate their benefactors without suspicion was one of Machiavelli’s key criteria for identifying the health of a republic. In the early years of the Roman republic, an ambitious consul named Spurius Cassius wished “to seize extraordinary authority in Rome and to gain the plebs to himself by bestowing many benefits upon them” (D III 8, 601; Livy 1919, II 41). The Senate exposed his ambitions to the people, who became so suspicious of Cassius that they refused his offer of the public money derived from a recent shipment of grain from Sicily, thinking that he “wished to give them the price of their liberty” (D III 8, 602). Machiavelli notes that Cassius’ ambitions were only successfully stymied because the Roman people were not corrupt in those times, but “if such a people had been corrupt, it would not have refused the stated price, and it would have opened that way to tyranny that it had closed” (D III 8, 602). The health of a republic depends on whether the people’s suspicion of great benefits is stronger than their desire for gain; a corrupt people is blinded by their greed from seeing the true cause of these benefits and thus bestows its grateful favor upon the would-be tyrant. Further, ten years after the Decemvirate deprived Rome of its freedom, a wealthy Roman equestrian named Spurius Maelius endeavored to buy up a large private store of grain and distribute it freely among the people, gaining their favor (D III 28, 701; Livy 1922, IV 13–4). The suspicious Senate appointed a dictator to crush Maelius before his “liberality”—the same term that Machiavelli had previously used to describe the Senate’s own self-interested beneficence toward the plebeians—bestowed too much favor upon him. Machiavelli concludes from this story that “many times works that appear merciful, and which cannot reasonably be condemned, become cruel and are very dangerous for a republic if they are not corrected in good time” (D III 28, 702). A well-ordered republic, therefore, closes the way to such private methods of gaining reputation and is willing to crush those who dangerously accrue popular gratitude even if they apparently wish only to benefit their fellow citizens (D III 28, 702–704).

This last example shows how the problem of ambition for a republic demands that it practice ingratitude toward its citizens. Given that “the nature of men is ambitious and suspicious and does not know how to place a limit upon its own fortune” (D I 29, 146), the danger of ambitious individuals rising through the ranks and gaining great reputation is unavoidable, and even salutary for republics like Rome who rely on the virtue of glory-seeking individuals (D I 30, 153–4; I 60 291–4). Republics must therefore institute orders that guard against citizens working evil “under shadow of good” (D I 46, 225), which is best achieved through instilling a powerful fear of transgressing the limits in them (D I 29, 149; III 1, 528–9). The practice of ingratitude is an especially effective way of inculcating this fear. Now, Machiavelli does call this an “error” that proceeds from too much love of freedom and acknowledges that in a corrupt republic ingratitude is the cause of “great evils” (D I 29, 149). “Nonetheless,” he counters, “in a republic that is not corrupt,” ingratitude can be the “cause of great goods” and preserve its freedom (D I 29, 149). Indeed, if many dangerous works “appear merciful” and “cannot reasonably be condemned,” then it is necessary sometimes to condemn unreasonably in the name of freedom. There are modes that a republic may take to limit their ingratitude, such as fostering so many great individuals that they all serve to check each other’s ambitions (D I 30, 153–154). But given that the road to tyranny is paved with the appearance of good intentions, ingratitude may be an extremely useful tool for a republic, just as gratitude may bring great dangers.

Gratitude and the Foundations of a Free Way of Life

The powerful human concern to show gratitude may also undermine the foundations of a free way of life by fostering excessive lenience toward the wrongs done by our benefactors and by demanding that we favor individuals of surpassing virtue so much that it overturns civil equality. As to the first, we have established above Machiavelli’s assessment of the importance of proportionately rewarding and punishing citizens for a free city. Yet our gratitude for the past virtuous deeds of a citizen may incline us to leave present crime unpunished. When Horatius, who had just preserved the freedom of Rome by defeating the Curiatii in battle, killed his sister, who had been betrothed to one of the Curiatii and wept for him, the Roman people brought him to trial for his life (D I 22, 127; Livy 1919, I 25–6). Machiavelli chides those who would call this “popular ingratitude” (D I 24, 133), claiming instead that what was blameworthy was that the Roman people absolved him. And while Machiavelli at first suggests that they absolved him “more because of the prayers of his father than his own merits” (D I 22, 127), he later recasts this episode solely as a lesson in why “no well-ordered republic ever cancels the demerits of its citizens with their merits” (D I 24, 133). This leniency, stemming from gratitude for the deeds of the accused or compassion for their loved ones, encourages that dangerous insolence in reputed citizens that threatens freedom.

Grateful leniency may also aggravate threats from outside the city, as is evident from the story of the Fabii. These three brothers were sent as the Roman ambassadors to the Gauls, who had invaded Italy and were threatening the city of Clusium, which Machiavelli refers to by its modern name, Chiusi (Livy 1924, V 32–5). They failed to dissuade the Gauls from their aggression and, when the fighting began, “being on the spot and more suited to acting than to speaking,” they joined the front lines of the battle against the Gauls and killed the Gallic leader (D II 28, 492). The Gauls were incensed by this violation of the “law of nations” and complained to the Romans, who, rather than punishing their rogue envoys, elected them tribunates with consular power in the next year (D II 28, 493). Livy observes that while the Roman senators knew that the Gaul’s complaint was just, “their partisanship in the case of men of such nobility stood in the way of their decreeing what they really felt” (Livy 1924, V 36). Thus, a too great respect for nobility led to Fabian impunity, which inflamed the Gauls to turn “against the Roman all the indignation they had against the Tuscans” and to bring Rome to the brink of ruin (D II 28, 492–493).

But there is a further, more fundamental tension between the demands of gratitude and the preservation of civil equality upon which freedom rests. For gratitude itself may demand that the people reward their benefactor with so much power and authority that it effectively overturns the freedom of a city. Machiavelli presents this problem in what he calls the sole case of Roman ingratitude: the accusation of Scipio Africanus. On Machiavelli’s account, Scipio Africanus was one of the great examples of a captain who understood how to win the love of the people (Machiavelli 2006, 232–234) and how to attain the highest glory through his virtuous actions on behalf of the fatherland (D I 10, 70–1; I 29, 149–51). As a young man, Scipio first rose to prominence by saving his father’s life in battle and then later by coercing the Roman people, under threat of death, to swear an oath not to abandon their fatherland after the disastrous Roman defeat at Cannae (D III 34, 735). These actions, Machiavelli claims, “were the beginning of his reputation and made a ladder for him to the triumphs of Spain and Africa” (D III 34, 735–6). In Spain, Scipio won the adoration of the whole province through his acts of chastity and conquered the key Carthaginian city of New Carthage (D II 32, 513–4; III 20, 666). He then eradicated the Carthaginian threat by defeating Hannibal in Africa before prevailing over Antiochus in Asia Minor (D II 12, 376; III 31, 715–6). Scipio was and was remembered as a citizen of exceptional virtue.

But precisely that exceptional virtue was the problem. For Scipio’s fellow citizens began to fear his authority, a fear that arose “from the greatness of the enemy that Scipio had conquered, from the reputation that victory in a long and dangerous war had given him, from its quickness, and from the favor that youth, prudence, and his other memorable virtues acquired for him” (D I 29, 150). This authority, according to Cato Priscus, was so great that it effectively nullified the liberty of Rome, for “a city could not call itself free where there was a citizen who was feared by the magistrates” (D I 29, 150). Nor was the fear of Cato and his fellow magistrates baseless, for Machiavelli reports that Scipio convinced the unwilling Senate to allow him to attack and ruin Carthage only after “he threatened to propose it to the people,” since Scipio knew well how much the people are attracted to great hopes and promises (D I 53, 254–5). Thus, Scipio had already demonstrated that he was both able and willing to use his great virtue and popular favor to force his own policies over the heads of the Senate. His surpassing virtue and authority broke the relative civic equality upon which Roman republicanism depended.

And yet, that very act of coercion brought about the defeat of Hannibal and Carthage, who had come so close to eliminating Roman freedom. Scipio’s only “vice” being his excessive virtue, he could not be punished without ingratitude. Gratitude would demand that he be rewarded for his virtuous service with extraordinary authority to match his “extraordinary way of life” (D I 29, 150) and achievements. And perhaps this means that Scipio deserved not only to possess so much authority that republican rule would be effectively replaced by the rule of the first man, but, even more, to wield princely rule outright. Machiavelli’s semi-Polybian tale of the first political communities already suggested that gratitude naturally directs us to reward the greatest individuals with kingship. For there, after the knowledge of justice was discovered, the people looked to whoever was “more prudent and more just” and made him their “prince”; republican government arose only after the character of the prince degenerated due to the emergence of hereditary rather than elective succession (D I 2, 21–22). Thus, the story of Scipio illustrates that, in the case of individuals of surpassing virtue, the political community faces an inescapable choice between showing due gratitude and preserving its freedom. Ingratitude is both useful to terrify the potentially vicious and necessary to cut down the outstandingly virtuous.

Republics find themselves in a terrible bind. For the paradox of gratitude is that they must be both grateful and ungrateful. They must respond to the natural concern for gratitude that animates their citizens while severely guarding against its excesses. A republic must squarely face up to this necessity and prudently navigate the problems that it poses, or else it will soon be numbered among the grateful dead.

Conclusion: Machiavellian Lessons for Modern Republics

What do Machiavelli’s reflections on gratitude matter to political scientists and theorists today? Most immediately, the above argument demonstrates the importance of gratitude for Machiavelli’s moral and political thought. Certainly, the treatment of gratitude in this article has not been exhaustive. There are still depths to be plumbed, especially regarding the importance of gratitude for Machiavelli’s analyses of religion and political obligation. ¹⁵ But I hope to have shown that these depths are likely to contain sunken treasures. Further, this examination offers a corrective to the still-influential position, memorably expressed by Croce, that Machiavelli discovered “the necessity and autonomy of politics, of politics which is beyond or, rather, below moral good and evil” (2019, 45). Machiavelli does conclude that the prudent politician must be capable of transgressing ordinary morality, of condemning that which “cannot reasonably be condemned,” but this conclusion follows from the consideration that republican politics as practiced cannot escape its preoccupation with morality and its accompanying dangers. In considering the origins of republics, Machiavelli shows the necessity to be grateful; in considering the threats to liberty, he reveals the necessity to be ungrateful. It is the impossibility of obeying the demands of both liberty and justice that requires leaders to “know how to enter into evil when necessitated” (Machiavelli 2006, 241). One must avoid mistaking the Machiavellian “ought” from the “is,” for this is to overlook how that “ought” emerges from a consideration of the defects of the “is.”

Beyond scholarly debates, how can Machiavelli’s analysis of gratitude shed light on the contemporary rise of personalist leaders? First, it can help us better understand its causes. Machiavelli asserts that the appearance of personalist leaders is a natural, recurring feature of republican government; the danger that personalism poses to freedom ¹⁶ follows from its foundation in a powerful passion—gratitude—that structures human society. ¹⁷ For this reason, “all political systems feature some degree of personalism” (Frantz et al. 2021, 95). Yet since well-ordered republics can curtail the ill effects of such leaders, their current preponderance indicates that those in power have failed to foster popular gratitude for their rule and their institutions. For our modern personalist leaders tend to resemble not Scipio, whose outstanding virtue provoked excessive gratitude, but Tarquin, who threatened liberty by appealing to popular dissatisfaction with the current orders. As the Senate worried that the Romans would be alienated from the republic by burdensome wars and heavy taxation, so today many are alienated by wealth inequality and “forever wars.”

Further, Machiavelli’s insistence on the importance of fostering gratitude to the republic indicates two reasons for the resilience of the current wave of personalism. The first concerns the role of the manipulation and fragmentation of the information environment in recent years. While scholars have observed how personalist leaders endanger democratic deliberation by creating epistemic cleavages between citizens (e.g., Bergmann 2020, 251–262), one might further add that this distortion transforms the battleground upon which these leaders and their opponents compete for popular favor. These epistemic divides aid the formation of gratitude toward individual leaders by permitting only that information which supports the narratives of personalist leaders, so much so that the Tarquins among them begin to appear to the people as Scipios. At the same time, this transformation of the flow of information obstructs the efforts of their opponents to critique personalist leaders and to make their case to an increasingly alienated populace.

The second cause of this resilience is the insufficiency of the prevailing response to the rise of personalist leaders, which has been to cast suspicion on their character and credentials (Berman 2021, 81). Both may indeed be suspect, and yet such individuals did not attain prominence for these qualities, but rather because they tapped into powerful popular grievances. A critique of these leaders, unaccompanied by a successful effort to win back an aggrieved people, is bound to leave the public with the impression that it must choose between two evils, and while Machiavelli himself counseled the wisdom of embracing the “least inconvenient” option despite its flaws (D I 6, 45), a lesser evil rarely inspires gratitude. Machiavelli’s analysis, in revealing the roots of our current condition, indicates that we have merely been hacking at leaves.

But in elucidating the causes of personalist leadership, Machiavelli’s analysis also indicates the proper response. In the spirit of Machiavelli’s thought, I can only speak generally here about solutions; the proper approach to a given crisis will vary with the circumstances and therefore can only arise out of the prudent deliberation of scholars and politicians on the particulars of their situation. What one can say generally is that defenders of the old institutions must go beyond the critique of personalist leaders and compete with them for gratitude of the people (Berman 2021, 81; cf. D I 52, 244–249). This will prove difficult given both the widespread grievances that personalist leaders seize upon and these leaders’ greater experience in manipulating the modern information environment. The challenge that confronts the defenders of modern republics is therefore twofold: they must provide a compelling defense of the existing orders, and they must improve those orders to make them more deserving of popular gratitude. Modern Roman senators are needed to ward off modern Tarquins. But as the paradox discussed above indicates, this solution is not without a great danger, namely, that the very people who will emerge to compete with the current crop of personalist politicians risk fostering the same personal devotion toward themselves that they seek to deprive from others. For inordinate gratitude for service to the republic, and not merely for the validation of popular resentment, poses a danger to republicanism.