Welcome back to New Thinkery. My name is David Barr, who is me as always this like good friend Alex, but you're right Alex. I'm doing well just for the folks at home. This is our fifth attempt to start this thing.
It's like a comedy of years, but I think we're going to be okay this time. I'm doing well. How are you? I'm well and our good friend Greg McBrayer.
How are you? Hey, good times of charm. I'm feeling great. It's good to be here.
I did see Professor Lynch, longtime fan, longtime guest. We have the third time to charm and this is good time. What is the SNL, like fifth host club where they have these Tom Hanks? Yeah, I don't know who's made it is Professor Zukert, Snakelight.
Yeah, and then Eric Adler, the class. So really quick. It's like a money. Our listeners will are students of political philosophy, Noel, who will know well the name Christopher Lynch.
He's a professor of political science and the department head of the political science and philosophy department at Missouri State University. He's a Johnny, which is always nice to see and I feel like he got him out in social pot, which is the most fabulous program in the world, I think. But his career, he's devoted by and large to Machiavelli. So in 2003, he came out with the translation of Machiavelli's Art of War.
And he is here today to discuss with us his book Machiavelli on War, which came out through Cornell Press just last year. Welcome, Chris. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Yeah. And so if you don't mind, if I could start a little bit of the introduction, I will, since we've recorded this a few times, let me select another sentence that I found interesting. No, people have just to give some background. Everybody notices the theme of war in Machiavelli.
Some people, especially when I was an undergrad, and he started talking about tactics, I totally missed the point. I thought that was the most boring part of the prints. And so I can understand why they would just kind of gloss over the theme or think, well, of course, he's going to use it as the backdrop to explaining some of his political science. But here in the introduction on page five, Chris says there is a certain, well, this is he's quoting Leo Strauss, a certain similarity between warfare proper and spiritual warfare, a suggestion that the present study takes as his chief hypothesis.
Can you talk a little bit about that? Maybe it's a jumping off point, Chris, if it's appropriate. Yeah, I mean, people do notice, as you indicated, that war is all over the place in Machiavelli, but they don't really try to get at why. And in particular, that passage that you just quoted from Strauss, or that I alluded to in the passage of quoted from my book, that is something that a few people have paid attention to, that is to say the parallel between physical warfare on the one hand and intellectual warfare on the other.
Mansfield has paid attention to that Strauss himself. But this book is the first time anyone's made it the exclusive focus. And the book really does, especially in the first parts, it focuses on physical warfare and Machiavelli's own involvement in organizing the militia in Florence and actually meeting it, an important military operation. And then the writing strategic thought from those experiences and from his reflections on history, the nature of war.
But then in the later parts of the book, I really take up what is the suggestion that Strauss makes and that I think there's abundant confirmation of in Machiavelli, I hope in my book, that when he's talking about physical warfare, he's often also talking about intellectual warfare, that is to say, captains, as he refers to military generals or commanders, captains are in his representation, symbolic of thinkers at different levels and even at the highest level of philosophic thinkers. So I'm trying to do both pay attention to the physical warfare and the spiritual warfare and kind of get out of Machiavelli. Everything that's on offer about each of them and about how the two of them are in parallel. Yeah, it's weird to hear you say this, you think, oh, well, of course, and how do you miss it?
But had I read Xenophon more attentively, especially his minor works that are on Greg McBrayer translated, not too long ago, like on hunting with dogs, you see this this parallel use of the intellectual warfare and martial warfare already developing. Oh, yeah, it's a trope that's being used and it's something it's like staring you in the face of Machiavelli, but we're missing it. Yeah, he picks up on that Xenophon and is the last chapter in the Discourses on Liberty that he mentions, Xenophon, who is, I think Strauss is clearly writing indicating that this is his favorite author. The last chapter picks up on Xenophon on hunting and has an image of war and this pervades Plato's laws, it's constant metaphor there.
So he's definitely picking up on it. Some people have noticed, like Erica Benner, an interpreter of Machiavelli, who I completely disagree with her about the significance of Machiavelli's you know, dip in into that metaphor about the classics. He says, oh, that makes him kind of a classical political philosopher, not in opposition to them. I disagree with that, but she too notices, sure, he's dipping into that well-established metaphor and going all the way with it.
Yeah, I think, you know, it's a kind of stressing trope, right, that the moderns build on low but solid ground. And a lot of that is tied right to Hobbes's sort of emphasis on the fear of violent death, right? And but I think in a way, you show that in Machiavelli, there is a kind of lower but and more solid ground that the ancient spilt on in Machiavelli's estimation. And it's one of these insights that really, when I read it, I was like, oh, of course, that ground is actually just war.
If you can build the theoretical life, somehow on the strategizing of the general, well, one could floss in a firmer basis, but also made it far more useful or given it at home. I was wondering, could you say something generally about war or the art of war in Machiavelli? And obviously, this is the whole book in a way, maybe you could just start walking us through the book. Can you say something about how he begins to connect the practice of war to a kind of distinctively modern theorizer?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're right. That is kind of the whole book. And you characterize what I try to do in the movement of the book, which is to show that Machiavelli is as interested as the ancients were in trying to justify the theoretical life.
But he does it on the basis of, which are calling a little and solid ground. And I'll gloss as necessity. He wants to say, instead of saying to a glaucon and Adam Antis or whatever ambitious ancient figure we want to focus on instead of saying to them, let me point you towards the highest good and tell you that it's about the well-wearing of your soul and the pursuit of the truth. And instead of that, he's going to say, well, what you really want already, which is security and glory, and not to be killed and to gain stuff.
Tell you what, I'll show you how to do that. And not only that, I'll show you that you have to engage in warfare in order to do that. But in order to engage in warfare effectively, you're going to have to become a knower. You're going to have to become a knower, not just of, you know, tactics and strategy, but a knower of the human passions that really drive everyone and clean yourself.
But then also, and most importantly, you have to have self-knowledge. And that self-knowledge is absolutely key. So yeah. Chris, I have a question.
War, what is it good for? No, I'm just kidding. That's not my question. I was at a panel the other day on Plato's letters, Ariel Halfe, or a friend of ours, just a translation.
Then they're going on and on about Floss for Kings and how the letters speak to that. And I said to myself, no, no, no, no, I said that loud, actually. They're just like, come on, it's kind of ridiculous to me to think that the Flosser actually could rule. And what is it about doing Floss?
It actually makes you know something about the Office of Management and Budget or something like this. But you're making the case here, it seems that Machiavelli doesn't just know something about spiritual or intellectual warfare, but does know about war. And so he knows about both. I mean, yeah, yeah, right.
So maybe you can just go through the first part though that he knew about war and where he would pick that up. And yeah, yeah. Yeah. Something to that.
Can I piggyback on to that? What's so funny, Alex? That was thinking about piggybacking. And I'm like, well, now I can't otherwise.
There's just going to be like us overwhelming Chris. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, he just won't release the Greg's up.
If you could include in your answer, if Machiavelli could had a practical understanding of war, since he fought, he'd take over peace, I tried to divert the War, or something like this, that master's book, which is hilarious. I read so long ago. Does he contend that one must know it firsthand, or is a theoretical understanding of war, i.e. reading the history is sufficient?
When you say sufficient, I guess I have sufficient for what? To be effective on an actual field of battle, yeah, you're going to have to have an actual practical experience. To be one's philosophic teacher. Yeah, no, I don't think so.
I don't think one needs to have experience in war for that. And the reason in my book, in the first part, that I pay attention to Machiavelli's own career, he spent 14 years utterly consumed. He did some writing that was not directly related to military things in those 14 years, but not much. He was utterly consumed with primarily issues of foreign and defense policy and creating a military where there wasn't one in Florence.
And the reason I spend a lot of time on that is interpreters of Machiavelli really often get him wrong for the same reason, but then they take that same reason in two different directions. A lot of people say, oh, Machiavelli was just his armchair. I generally didn't know what he was talking about. And this, he just has a bunch of silly stuff about war.
And that allows them to say things like, because he was so enamored of the Romans that he couldn't see past them as an example in blah, blah, blah. That's one mistaken way that one can go if one doesn't understand that he really knew what he was talking about. Another way are sort of stressing in the brethren will say, oh, well, you know, we didn't know what he was talking about. And therefore, it must be that there is some symbolic significance to what he's saying.
Now, I agree, there's symbolic significance, but you can't get there generally by saying, oh, well, he made the silly statement about cavalry or infantry or artillery, because he's generally right about those things. And the relationship to one another, and fortresses and so on. And I didn't know that until I really studied about the military history and his own career. So it's important for an interpreter of Machiavelli to be clear on that.
Is it a philosopher who's following in Machiavelli's footsteps in spiritual warfare and intellectual warfare to really know about military tactics like Machiavelli did? No, I don't think so. I don't see any reason why that would be a bacon doesn't need to know that, even though it didn't need to know that. Spinoza said, or they didn't need to know war like Machiavelli did.
Where did you learn about Machiavelli's experience and war just biographies? Yeah, but in the book, the thing that I really pay attention to, the two things I pay attention to the most, because you look at biographies and whatever, what are they based on? They're based on the, what contemporaries say. And sometimes what Machiavelli says, but I really tried to, in part one of the book, focus on the things he wrote in office while he was in office about his own military political context, first of all.
And that's these poems that are really, really, rarely interpreted and read. Do we even have English translations of them? Yeah, they're not great. They're going to be in.
What's that? Oh, I think Gilbert was the ones we have right? Yeah, there's Gilbert and there's another one that's that's very, very difficult to use. But but Nathan Parkoff and I in our book, which is my blog, in the book that we're going to finish by August 15th, we say, we're going to be translating all of his poems and most stories and many of his letters and these poems for quite long will be in there.
And so I concentrate on that, which is him characterizing the military political situation of Florence in Italy, and then turn to his writings while in office, especially focused on his own preparation for in the use of the military that he established there. So I really wanted to see it from his eyes and help help readers see his military political situation from his eyes. I do know the military history from other sources, contemporaries with his and contemporary to us, you know, so I can kind of keep a check on him. But I wanted in my book to bring it through his eyes.
That's great. So there's four parts to this. Yeah, the second and third are called Warren politics and politics and war, respectively. I guess you ran out of titles and you just decided to switch them up a little bit.
But then the first and the fourth are Secretary of War and Philosophy of War. And I was just looking at these and I kind of got the sense what Warren politics politics and war looks like, war surrounds or contains politics there. But the book seems also to be about how Machiavelli went from a Secretary of War to a philosopher of war. A philosopher of war, maybe the most expansive sense possible.
So maybe you can run us through why you structured the work this way, and maybe also with an eye to Machiavelli's own development. How did the philosopher of war come into being out of the Secretary of War? Yeah, that, you know, I will not do that last thing. And instead, no, I have a good reason to support.
Because there's no other one smiling at my dodge here. It's really quite deliberate in my book. I really wanted to tell sort of a conceptual story and you just outlined it, right? But it is to go from the, you know, the degree of war to the relationship of war to politics, then politics to war, then him as a philosopher of war, and to do as we were talking about earlier, you know, follow conceptually a march from the necessities of war to the necessity of thinking.
And to the necessity of thinking at the highest level and most fundamentally in about oneself. So I traced that out and kind of imposed that on Machiavelli. Now there is a book that came out just a little bit before mine did that is on, it's called Life in War in English and will be on gay. And it's really a very good book that does what you were just asking for.
So read that book, Alex. I'm not going to give you the actual parallel between Zankarini and Fornel, or the two authors. It's a very impressive book, but it very much, you know, it follows, it takes the chronology, it takes chronologically his life in war. It goes from his earliest writings to his latest writings.
I don't do that, right? I go from the more narrowly military to the more expansively philosophic to make that philosophic case that the necessities of war lead to the heights of thinking if you follow Machiavelli's thought. I just want to think, as I was hearing you speak about that, and as I was looking through the table contents and skipping some around a little bit, Socrates early on was in war, is anything went to war? And you do wonder to what extent, maybe this is way too simplistic, but just how war provides you, like you realize that the walls of the political society that you live in are so fragile, or you might sort of begin, maybe sort of lends itself to a kind of conventionalism that otherwise might not be there.
I don't know, it calls you the question justice in a serious way. Yeah, no, I mean, and that's a crucial part. I mean, maybe I should do what Alex was suggesting and stop on that thought in the practice of my book, it just interrupt me, as I just sort of say how I lay it out, I already told you, yeah, please, that's part. But then the second part, I give Machiavelli's understanding of the origins of the military political dysfunction that in the first part I showed him having to deal with and trying to correct, and look at his own positive prescriptions for how to actually build a military in his time that would be able to beat any other European military about his day.
And at the same time, I draw out in this one chapter something that I think should be a lot of interest to students of strategic law. I try and say, okay, here's his actual strategic law, what puts him in the same ball park as Klaus Fitz and Sun Tzu and Mahan and Jean-Manide, who are familiar strategic thinkers to people who do that kind of stuff. And then in the third part, which is politics and war, that's where I kind of look at spending the most time on the prints and the discourses, but also on the less often read Life of History, Chocastricony of Lugo, which is just a marvelous work that we talked about in an earlier episode, and then a poem on a gratitude. And there in some ways, it's the core of the book, even though I think it'll make sense for us to settle down on the fourth part, this third part in a way is the core because it really does give an interpretation of the prints primarily, but then also provides a core for interpretations that pervade the book of the discourses on Livy.
But in it to touch on something you mentioned, Greg, from one of the things that emerged from that part is the necessity of injustice, regardless of the political form that you are going to establish, whether it's a national monarchy, as seems to be recommended in the prints, whether it's imperial or public, that seems to be, but it's not in my reading, recommended discourses, or whether it is more plausibly suggested, as I think is preferred alternative, a lead of republics, because I think is clear, meaning or not clear, but truer, practically speaking meaning. That all comes out in the third part, but the real core is the of that chapter is the idea that the military political relationship between the prints and the captain reveals the necessity for injustice in human life that you have got to, in that relationship, see that each of them is in a security dilemma that is irresolvable by anything other than one becoming the other. The prints must become the captain, the captain must become the prince, or the other's going to get it. Whoever realizes that first must commit the injustice of ingratitude.
You can graduate as that, you basically might not be standing for injustice. So that case is made in that third part, but in fourth part, we can settle down on maybe after we talk about these first three parts, but that's just- I have a question about one of the last thing you said in part three about the League of Republics. It's been a while since I've read those parts of the discourses, but wasn't it kind of like Wink-a-Nod, not a League where there's a kind of a maybe this is just moving out of that controversial, maybe of course you have to have a kind of leader amongst the republics who make up the League. But isn't it kind of like there's one republican charge and he's kind of making the others go along with it, maybe making them a strong word, but it's not equals, right?
No, it's not equals. But you know, and Michael Harnequist, who's a good interpreter of Machiavelli on Empire, he has a kind of a fun interpretation of that. He says, look, Machiavelli puts this case for a League of quasi or ostensibly equal republics forward, but he's doing it exactly as you say, Greg, with a wink-a-nod that says, okay, really, anyone who's going to ever see what's going on here is going to try to be the League of Republic and then that League of Republic is going to end up being, and here's where I think he missteps, like Rome, and it's going to end up conquering all the others and being an expansive imperial republic like Rome, so that the idea is to become like Rome from having been the first among ostensible equals. I just don't see the reason for that step to saying that's the tactic or the recommendation on a contrary.
He puts this option of a League of Republics together, right in the context he puts this together and is showing that the consequences of Rome's conquest of the world is absolutely catastrophic. Catastrophic for Rome, which once it's conquered the world, it leads to complete corruption internally and catastrophic for the world because it destroys politics throughout the world. So he's actually sort of a ridithio out of sort of the Roman Republic and in the midst of that, ridithio out of sort of is this little alternative of the League of Republics, which does not have the key defect of having to gallop throughout the world conquering one thing after another and in fact has a built-in constitutional inability to do that but still have more of a big deal and in fact have the militaries of those republics themselves be mercenaries. This is another thing that comes out if you're in a different press, but not against mercenaries, these against depending on them.
If you could be one, go for it. There are limits, it would be better to be in something other than a mercenary system but if you're in one, then you have to be a mercenary, be good at it. So these republics can be made up of, or I mean the republics themselves, which make up this League are very military and they're constantly at war but they're making money instead of breaking the bank, destroying politics. So it'd be wrong to think that this League will make the world more peaceful than, yeah, I don't think that there's any reason to be more peaceful.
I mean, whether or not that League is a metaphor for or a kind of model of how all the nations of any region or even the world could be related to one another or various groupings of them could be related, whatever it is, I guess to finish that thought out, there could be kind of a tense everyone's well-armed and therefore everyone sort of cooperating against some other League or some other King far away, some other Prince far away, and it could be kind of a tense alliance or it could be that there's lots of well-armed people and de facto peace because there's a kind of concert of Europe mutual deterrence but there's still going to be military regimes, there's still going to have strong militaries to make that quasi-peace function. So moving on from that to the fourth part, you go from that, you have this comes up in the Kistruccio chapter but you kind of bring it up again in the final part, that the choice of this life of a kind of warrior, Prince, you know, a Prince in case you're in the art of war, Kistruccio makes that choice over the life of the priest. And this brings us to the more philosophic dimension, right? Because this brings in Machiavelli's tension with the ancients, right?
If you take the the effectual truth of Potonic Aristotunan thoughts seems to be something like the rule of Krice. Yeah, exactly. And that it's crucial to see in that chapter that I wrote on the Kistruccio, just what you said, and I do something a little different in the last chapter that in word four that we'll settle down on, but it is crucial to see that that existential choice that you mentioned that Kistruccio, this character faces in this work, it's the only cradle to grave account of a life that Machiavelli presents. And the crucial moment or acrucial moment is the one you just outlined for Machiavelli in his time what he is saying by having Kistruccio as a young man, boy, 14 years old, choose to stay with his foster father, priest, or go with his mentor Condotee O'Kandotiero, mercenary captain, having to choose between those two things on the surface is saying you got to choose in this Christian world to either capitulate to Christianity or oppose it with strong military might that's on the surface.
And I think that's very important surface, it doesn't go away when you go past the surface. But once you think about the work and realize that this life of Kistruccio is then has appended to it, 34 sayings from the lives of the eminent philosophers by Badgene Cleyersius, which is bizarre, but you get this really delightful charming life of Kistruccio. And then he puts at the end of it these 34 sayings that he wanted which come from the lives of the eminent philosophers, you really are being invited to think, well, okay, is this choice really more a choice between the priesthood or a philosophic life? And that's what I pursued in the last part.
Yeah, when you start reading the life of Kistruccio, it feels like you start reading like, oh, this is like one of Plutarch's lives. But then you end up like, wait, this is the life of an eminent philosopher, the life of Kistruccio. So it's a really ironic turn that Machiavelli forces you to make, the second you just throw in those. Yeah, good.
Yeah, just a small point Chris, when I was reading your chapter on this, I thought there's such a nice, it's so obvious maybe, but I didn't think about it like life of Kistruccio lives of the eminent philosophers. The emphasis on life is on life action, right? When small point is it helped me make sense finally of why Machiavelli changes the name of the education of Cyrus perhaps in the Prince, right? Xenophonic.
It's the life of Cyrus. Absolutely. He wants you to focus on the action, not the thought, not flossy. This is the, it's a real, I mean, I think it's actually quite intended homage to Xenophonic saying, Xenophon's life, that is the touchdown for me.
Machiavelli's saying, for ancient philosophy and a way of life, political way of life. And this is my modern equivalent, the life of Kistruccio. I think you're absolutely right. It's, it's, it's significant and that allows us to, you know, kind of put the two side by side and think about it.
And Machiavelli really encourages us to think about the life of Cyrus and how to read it and, you know, skivios and misreading of it to him covers the interpretation of the Prince. But, but if I'm, if I may, maybe I'll, I'll say a little bit about this last chapter that picks up. Oh yeah. Last chapter, mind book that picks up, you know, substantively when it really gets going, it looks at those, those things at the end of the Kistruccio.
But let me tell you a little bit how I get there in the chapter. I mean, what I, what I notice is what seems like at least attention and is perhaps contradiction between Machiavelli, you know, quite aggressively attacking, not just, you know, imagine, imagine a republic's and principalities, but you know, the life of contemplation, the life of, you know, of knowing for its own sake. He does that in Discourses 2-2. It's implied in Prince 15 and more than one way.
But on the one hand, on the other hand, he ex-rolls reason above all other things. This is it. This is, this is the thing more than force and authority that I will follow. I will never change my, trying to sift through my opinions and come to knowledge of how things really are.
That's something that, I will always do. That must mean that he knows that that is the thing that, that he should do. It's not some decision as commitment. It's a reflection of his knowledge.
So on the one hand, he attacks theoretical life. On the other hand, he seems to take reason, and then if we look at the future of the life of reasoning about human things to be the highest standard, how to think about that. So I go from, from looking at that contradiction to saying, well, let's look at some key passages in the Prince and the Discourses that might indicate what he's up to. And it's been a little time on the Prince, chapter 15, emphasizing what's usually not emphasized, I think quite enough in that really famous first paragraph of Prince 15, emphasizing the intellectualism of that passage more than gets immoralism.
Mostly people say, ah, he's saying you got to be bad in order to succeed. And sure, he's saying you have to be able, you have to learn to be able not to be good, and to use that thing that you're able to do now and not use it, according to necessity. So what that really I think means is he's saying, you need to kind of intellectual virtue to use the risk of interminality. Intellectual virtue needs to free itself from any dependency on moral virtue.
And in fact, we need to learn to be able not to be good. It doesn't mean be bad. It doesn't mean be bad all the time. It's use your ability to be good or bad as necessity requires.
But then the key thing is well, what's necessity? You must come to know it. You must come to know what cannot be. That has that involves some serious knowledge.
You have to know what is isn't is not possible. You have to know the insofar as they know about the necessary cause and effect relationships among human passions as they lead to praise and blame, which is what chapter 15 is about. Anyhow, it's a comparable passage in the Discourses, famous passage in 2-2. Look at that a little bit.
But then I, you know, that I get into the meat of it and look at those things in the Kastrucho. And then look at the only presences in his writings of Plato and Aristotle. He does mention each of them. And he mentions their disciples.
If Fichino and Pico in the Renaissance, we get one mention of Plato, one mention of Aristotle in his greatest comprehensive work, the Discourses. Then in his longest book, on his time, we get one mention of the disciple, the key Renaissance disciple of Plato, and one mention of the key disciple of Aristotle and kind of more than just Aristotle because Pico is very eclectic. And people have never really focused on those four mentions. So then I really settle down on those four and see what we can understand of them before then turning to developing the whole metaphor of Machiavelli, the commander as representative of the philosopher.
And that's how I finished looking at a couple of big characters from the Discourses. So I want to get to that point, because I think it's interesting. But one thing I think you do that's really helpful, and you raise a problem here that I think is helpful. So as you trace these quotes from Diadgetes L'Arteus, Diadgetes L'Arteus presents the history of philosophy as this kind of genealogy in these sort of tables.
And you sort of situate the figures within this sort of grand sort of, there's Doric and Ionian sphere, right? Yeah, which I guess classed to say this is just nuts, right? But it was a really often read text. It was the source you went to to understand ancient philosophy in the Renaissance as a comprehensive account.
It's one thing to just sort of say, oh, well, this is nuts. And it's not but he might still be playing with it, right? Even if it's even if he doesn't ultimately think this is, you know, a sound interpretation. But you kind of situate them and sort of develop this sort of relationship between Machiavellian Socrates.
Yeah. And a little later, you try to dispel, I'll use the strong word dispel first often, but then ultimately dispel this idea of Machiavellia as like a Lucretian style, right? And I think that was extremely helpful to point out that there's nothing of the sort of stoic indifference to fate or something like that or to fortune, right? And just being able to endure all things.
Obviously, there's an attempt to control it. And this is quite different, right? From Christian Epicurean retirement to your garden or something like that. So, can you talk about this a little bit about this misconception of Machiavelli and Lucretius?
And then also push us in the direction of, I don't know if you want to go so far as to speak of Machiavellian's Socrates, but maybe just talk about the relationship between Machiavellian Socrates. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
I think it's not a simple mistake, I think, to emphasize the Lucretian elements within Machiavelli. They are quite pronounced and Alice in Brown has written a very good book on the discovery of an important document where Machiavelli really comments in detail on Lucretius. And he really, really showered some attention on it. He, there are all sorts of uses of the kind of language, the atomistic language of simple bodies and complex bodies and so on that Lucretius is all about.
So, it's there, right? But what's its status and how do you put it together with what you mentioned, Alex, which is that it is quite clear that Machiavelli, it's not just that Machiavelli doesn't himself withdraw from politics or recommend, you know, avoid recommending that people withdraw. He goes out of his way in the second chapter of the third book of the Discourses to say, you can't do that. It does, it's, you cannot withdraw from politics.
If you are a man of quality and you say, oh, don't mind me, I'm just over here reading my books. You said you will be heard and you will not be believed. So, you need to go ahead and situate yourself with respect to politics in the, in the least bad way. And that's, that's what he is trying to do in his politics.
So, you know, how could he be a Lucretian and say you have to devote yourself to war in politics? Because if you don't, you'll be ruined. That needs to be settled down on it. As a question, Paul Ray raises it to his credit and his very good book on that touches on this.
But he doesn't really tackle it entirely. And I have a suggestion for how to do so. Isn't that, that's that moment struck me, I don't think you made this connection. I'm going to miss the note or something like that.
But who's the guy in the memorabilia that Socrates, that's struck me as a sukraic moment, a guy who acts like he just traveled around Greece and he's fine. He's completely divorced from politics. Yeah, that's right. And Socrates tries, it's the, it's actually in the Hercules thing, it's Aristopus.
And then it's, and then there's the virtue vice thing that comes after. So he thinks he can avoid it in fact, he's trying to tell him that their middle ground is not possible. Anyway, yeah, it does sound very xenophonic. Yeah, no, I think it is.
I mean, I think the closeness of Machiavellian Xenophon on, on the Socrates, and the other thing that you're mentioning is very, I think pronounced. Yeah. Maybe Chris, I can move this is a good way to segue into something one of the most fascinating parts of the this chapter to me. I'll just lead off on page 255, you say that Machiavell is trying to destroy the theoretical life for the sake of saving it.
And one of the things that's going on, maybe this is about the Socrates is that so many of the philosophers have really done a bad job of making philosophy allies with things that undermine it. And this is where I see Machiavell more like Xenophon and I think Xenophon is actually critiquing Plato on this as well. And the part that I found with the most interesting or the most persuasive I never thought of before was how Machiavell he tries to elevate Thumos or Spiritiveness. So there's something wrong with the platonic notion of putting a reason above all else and it lends itself to misinterpretation.
And this goes along the lines of saying that you've got to be political. So I like that Machiavell is not just saying, hey, you have to be political. It's also this spiritual politicalness, if that makes sense. I don't know.
He's like, Thumos is now in the middle of things as opposed to below reason. That was kind of all over the place, Chris. But it was inspired by what you had. So maybe you can say that in my head.
Yeah, no, I think that there is the similarities as Xenophon. There is this difference from classical thinkers in a lot of ways. I mean, say two things, I'll respond both to the nature, what it is that Machiavell is attacking in right political philosophy, what he's similar on. And then how I think the most might figure in things.
So I think it's a little different than what you were suggesting in the whole picture. But I think you got half of it, but it's got to be put together with another thing. So what Machiavell is attacking is the tradition of political philosophy. A tradition of philosophy is a contradiction in terms.
You can't have a philosophic tradition and have a B genuinely philosophic. What's it made up of? It's made up of teachings. What are teachings?
There's substitutes for thinking. And philosophy is thinking. And what Machiavell wants to do is say, I want to jar you and make you think. Not only is it any teaching going to be a problem, but the way exotericism has practiced by the ancients ended up functioning was setting it up to be appropriated by what really is its chief enemy, that is religion.
And then the biblical version of that is the most potent version of it. So that an exotericism which paid lip service to morality and the gods ends up being appropriated and the exoteric teaching gets scooped right up by those religious authorities. And now they have what looks like philosophical justification for what is actually according to Machiavellian and epic Socrates, and it is actually anti-philosophic. Now we're in a big world of hurt in the western world.
And this is what Machiavell characterizes the situations being. We're stuck. There should be a civilizational change in order to disorder, but the union of philosophy and religion that Christianity is has a stuck in a situation where the world is now weak. And that really means also unable to clearly philosophize anymore.
So he's trying to get us out of that. But go ahead. How do you flip this on Machiavelli? Because we had Chris Kelly on the book, flip this on Machiavelli, which is we had Chris Kelly on the book, we were talking about Roussaint-Rouss D'Ojacchaca.
And in that work, we got the sense that Roussaint-Rouss is dealing with a more politically driven form of philosophy that allies with state power. And that looks a lot like ideology. Strauss and Thosamaki-Belly obviously talks about spiritual warfare and propaganda. Isn't the reverse thing that you, instead of getting philosophy turning into the philosophers being replaced by priests, don't you get philosophers replaced by ideologues?
And don't you end up a few centuries later with somebody like Roussaint feeling persecuted and the state feeling like it has. Yeah. I mean, look, you can turn on Machiavelli, but then he can turn back and say, Prudence consists in judging among the qualities of inconveniences and picking the less bad as good. So yeah, there is no adequate solution to the, there is no perfect solution to how to relate philosophic thought to society.
You go the way of the ancients and the danger you face is the deification of philosophy. And you go the way of Machiavelli and the thing you risk is the reduction or bestialization and then, etiologizing, understanding all human things in terms of some reductionistic understanding that then becomes all comprehensive, whether it's communism or what have you, that's tough. But there is no adequate, there's no final solution. What there is is each philosophic era has to deal with whatever the inconveniences are to use Machiavelli's expression and pick the less bad as good and it'll last for a while.
Now, if it leads to a Holocaust, one has good reason for looking back and saying, boy, if we had a redo, would we do it again? Maybe not, but maybe still. And you can say to Machiavelli, well, you aren't you the guy that judges things by their effects and look at your effects and don't you have to take back everything you said? I don't know.
I mean, how much foresight can I have? Is force entries a foresight pretty good? I think pretty good. And I can just say that, as far as having thought about this a little bit, I just I don't know that there's a good answer to this.
How do you preserve philosophy? It seems like all the exoteric wrappings come with some kind of a tradeoff. Yeah. Yeah, I think so.
Yeah, so I think the question is where was he at his time and did he make the calls, the prudential calls, to use Strauss's phrase, did he practice philosophical politics in a manner? And I think the answer is yes, is it perfect? No. But if I could go back and I just want to stand this a little bit more.
No, I want to hear about this. I think the way that that ends up working out is, sure, Machiavelli within the political realm does allow his version of spirit in this, which is Hanymo. Mansfield is good on this. We always can mix Hanymo.
Machiavelli does too, to bodily things. It doesn't become a disembodied thing. But it did his version of Thumos. That is at the center of politics.
But that's only half of human life, according to him. And that's part of what I do in the next chapter of my book is to the point of seeing, well, okay, there is Machiavelli in Warren politics. And Thumos is if not all at all, then as you said, at the center of things. But then there's something that's equivalent to, or the parallel to, arrows, and that is love and sex.
And Machiavelli portrays himself. And that's himself with some of his key characters, including Castruccio, as alternating between the realm of politics and the realm of love and sex. And by doing that, by alternating, that is the specific variability of things or variation of things, the imitation of which is the life, according to nature, according to him. And that's its justification.
Now, that's different, right? From everything I've been saying, I've told that in a way, the whole book has been just sticking on the military political side and watching this secular ascent, as it were, sort of a DMITian rise, up driven by necessity from a below instead of drawn by beauty from above. That's all happening in the political realm, in the political military. But on the business other side of things, which once you fall into, you look back at Warren politics and you say, what a waste of time.
I get nothing but grief, get me out of that, just get me back to my lover, whether it's a man or woman or multiple of each of those. You know, just this, or pig, sorry, running gag on the show. Really? Because it is, at the end of his last, you know, this thing that we're translating, there is a pig.
There's not, is it the Golden Ass, please not? It is in his version of the Golden Ass. That's fantastic. You know better than any of us that it's pink and not golden.
What's wrong with you? What's wrong? I'm just playing off your Twitter. All right.
I was going to read this beautiful passage that you had on arrows and thumbos, actually, this is on page 283. Oh, okay. You say Machiavelli's innovation would then consist, or at least be reflected in his transposition of pumos and arrows, or spiritedness and erotic desire from a vertical to a horizontal plane. His situation on the mind between, rather than clearly above these elements, would then vouch save the freedom from deification of the altogether free and entirely human mind skipping.
And the mind itself would be always at work, but always one with itself, never having to choose. I like that. And then this alternating between the most scenarios is very good. And it seems that the mind is doing this alternating.
And again, I could help it be drawn back to Socrates, who is at least presented as being entirely free from pumos. And I would argue probably also entirely free from arrows. So Machiavelli is much more in the world. Yeah, very good.
But then you know, sort of strangely free from each and so far as he's the captive of the other. Oh, yeah. He's always back and forth between them. Yeah.
And like, he portrays himself this way. He portrays Lorenzo Dementici this way. There's a quasi portrayal of Kastruccio this way. And it's quite, you know, poetic in his case too, as he depicts himself in his friend, Princess Capittori, as alternating between these two realms.
Right. There's a great letter that that's right. That's right. That's all.
This letter. We got to read that. That's so good. You speechlessly quoted, let me say.
You say whoever we're just the our letters, honorable computer. Make clear what you're reading. This is Machiavelli. The letter Machiavelli was a story.
He's just been talking about high poetry and he's warning the Tory on about to switch things up a bit. And see their diversity would be very amazed because he would seem that we are grave men now entirely turned toward great things and then into our breasts can never fall any thought that did not have in itself decency and greatness. But then turning the page to them that self-same us would seem to be light and constant, lascivious, turned toward vain things. This motive proceeding it to someone it seems to be reprehensible.
To me, it seems laudable because we imitate nature, which is variable. And whoever imitates her cannot be reproved. And although we usually make this variation in several letters, I want to do it within this one letter. As you will see if you read the next page.
When does he say after that you don't quote? Oh, it's great. He continues with a bunch of if you look at the structure of it more divisions. But basically he turns now to politics and in a way in a low way because he's basically talking about a nephew of a Tory who's trying to get a job with the Medici and she turns to another instance of divisional immunity.
And that is there's a divided king divided principality and how can it be united and how can this nephew operate within that. So it's just a switch to politics and then the same question of not letting us forget that back in the first section he was talking about the division between these two realms and how they're united. Then when we turn to politics, it's the division of an actual realm and how it can be united. So division and unity gets echo again in this in the grave part of the letter.
That was a very competent and clear answer. I mean, mostly the next line where he says to hold some phlegm. Where he says what? Oh, yeah.
Yeah. I believe that I'm not recommending the knock-ups and phlegm. Yeah. Yes, I did not translate that line.
But it will be in Nathan Tarkov's in my translation for Oxford University Press of Machiavelli's stories and comedic letters. So we want for that for sure. Yeah. I feel like we've really run the game.
I'm not sure how much more you want to cover. We've already done lightning round with you. I don't know. Is there anything you want to say before?
I've... I'm good. I mean, this has been good fun. You know, we can always do more details and grand things.
But I think we've done like you say a lot. So, no, I'm happy. So I was wondering, since you've been translating these lesser works, I was wondering if there's... you talked about the Stute Show.
So maybe that'll be your answer. And if it is, maybe choose something else. But isn't there just like one little gem? Because he has so many little things scattered around his corpus and his letters, these official reports he did.
Are there any really under-appreciated gems? A letter here or there? You've already pointed out one, obviously a big one that we just discussed. But so anything out there that you just...
Is like a sort of Machiavelli deep cut? Yeah. To me, it might be my favorite work, including my favorite work of Machiavelli, including the Prince and Discourses. It's known as Valfa Gore.
It's just called... Or the Devil or the Devil something other? Yeah. It's...
These are Machiavelli's titles. It's it's it's... It's a Balfa Gore or it's called Balfa Gore or the Devil who took a wife. Right.
And took a wife as a little translation and get married. Yeah. Devil got married. But Machiavelli just calls it tail, probably.
It says it's only title and it is fabulous, so to speak. Doesn't he... Doesn't he like the Devil gets married and like forget it, I'm just going back. Like there's some bet and he's like, if you can handle this woman, but if not, you got to go back to hell.
I just remember being like the Devil gives up or something like this. Oh, yeah. The Devil's finally driven back to hell prefers health and courage. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And but the reason he goes to earth to begin with and leaves Hades is because there's so many reports that all these men who are coming to hell are there driven by the the the awthowness of their wives and their marriages and they got to go and check out whether or not these men are justly condemned to hell or not. And so the Devil goes up and ends up coming back in the end.
But what happens in between is both a charming story with charming characters, but then also, I think Machiavelli's deepest accounts of incarnation, resurrection, and the relationship between the realm that he never mentions in the prince and discourses, the other world and this world. That's the great thing about these these as you call them lesser works, Alex, I hope you're not dismissing them as he's less or less or less or less. That's sort of appreciated. Yeah.
Okay. Lesser appreciate. There's a way in which he is freeer there because he is not burdened by his grand project. He allows himself to speak in the mode of the ancient sword, Renaissance thinkers, talk about the soul, talk about hell, talk about the other world, so that we can see him in this different different mode.
That's not to say that. It's very important. It is very important that he never mentions certain things like the soul in his comprehensive works. But it's good to see what he does when he does mention those things.
You can really learn a lot. So the Belfogors is just absolutely delight. We have to do that for an episode done. I mean, that's just what got to happen.
Oh my gosh. I've been playing last time when we did that episode with Nathan's Have You Guys On where the book is ready. We should just do Belfogar. I mean, like a whole episode on Belfogar as a way to go.
It'll be great. Yeah. But it's interesting how Foster's will write these. I get this feeling like we just did an episode that had Marcus.
And you get the feeling you read this, you're like, you know, would the Botanic Corpus be like, you know, less effective if that Marcus did this? Probably not. And you get the sense that that Plato maybe like as he's writing one of these major works, he could sit down and just kind of play around with the short 12 page work, right? Or the way that's done on Greg, Greg McRigman, if I'm wrong, in these shorter non-socratic works that you helped bring, you know, part.
You get a sense that, okay, everyone's going to be looking at his history escapades and his relationship to Socrates. Here's something people will find interesting. I'll put some gems in there. But it's, you know, because it's peripheral, I can do something a little little more out there or something like that, or have a little more fun than my hair down.
Oh, yeah, no question. I mean, yes, of course, the hunting with dogs is the one that makes sense there. But also, I think that his account of Socrates is much more revealing than Plato's even in the symposium. How he just sort of called time is actually his midst to being a little tipsy.
And so he lets some things slip that he otherwise wouldn't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Good analogy. And you know, maybe it's like differences that with Machito, he really does have a, you know, to use a phrase that, oh, yeah, he has a world historic project that he's getting off with the prints and the discourses that puts a burden on them that he's free from when he's when he's not in this project. And then it does allow you to see his thoughts sort of refracted through a different medium. I will, Chris, I think that was excellent.
I know you guys, you guys got anything? I enjoyed I admittedly kind of skimmed big parts of it. I read it somewhat carefully, chapter nine. It's fascinating.
I can't wait to go back and reread from the beginning and make my way through a little more carefully. But it's a great book. Machiavelli and more, Chris for Lynch, Cornell University Press, they're fans of the show, we're appreciative. Go out and get it right now on Amazon or wherever you buy.
Oh, you know what? And there's, do you, should I tell promo code to dis? Absolutely. It's only here on New Thinkery.
It's only on the New Thinkery. No one else has access to the promo code. You heard it here first. Yeah, please Chris.
I mean, if you go to the Cornell Press site itself, you can use the discount code that is a 009B card. So 009 letter B, letter C or A, R, D, 009B card, you'll say like 15 bucks and it gets it down into the 30s. It becomes an affordable, affordable book. I hope it's $39.
It's fewer than that, right? Oh, well, all right. I didn't feel like the code's seen by day mad by night or something like that. Which by the way, I wish I knew that I wish I knew that saying back in my 20s that would have used it.
I think I wrote something along that line in the march. It's actually that. It's been great fun. Don't forget to like, read, subscribe folks.
Yeah, thanks for coming on Chris. Thank you guys. It's really been a delight. I really appreciate the invitation.
Yeah, awesome.