Connolly asked:

Machiavelli and Seneca take seemingly different positions. Friendship is highly important to Seneca,
whilst Machiavelli would much rather be feared than loved. But are their claims really contradictory?

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But this is an interesting question to me, for another reason. What are you after here? It is certainly
possible to take writings by virtually anyone, especially people long dead who have written in another
language, and interpret their positions in virtually any way one wants. The so-called "deconstructivist"
movement specializes in that sort of thing. And many people, including myself, are getting very
impatient with it. I've no doubt that with sufficient effort, ingenuity, and research you can argue that
Machiavelli and Seneca are in agreement, or are incompatible, and have a great deal of fun with that.
Does it demonstrate something? Certainly it does notdemonstrate that their positions were either
compatible or not. Certainly it does notdemonstrate that they in fact had no positions, nor that if one
could actually ask them, that they would not come to blows over their disagreements. Or the opposite,
that they would agree. What it doesdemonstrate is that with insufficient facts one can argue for any
interpretation.

So you might ask yourself: do you actually want to go as far as you can, with admittedly poor
evidence, towards finding out the actual truth? A truth which didin fact exist? That is, as I said, if you
could have brought Machiavelli and Seneca together you wouldhave found out that truth. So it did
exist. The question for a historian, as contrasted to a deconstructivist, then, is how close one can
come to ascertaining that truth. Not how convincing one can make an argument for either position,
nor how convincing one can make an argument that it is difficult to determine the actual truth.

Steven Ravett Brown