Interview: Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli's Mandragola | The New Thinkery Ep. 76

Welcome back to The New Thinkery. I'm David Barr and with me as always is my good friend Greg McBrayer. How are you Greg? Doing great.

Really excited for tonight. Excellent. And you dressed up Greg. That's nice.

I actually, unlike you, I've actually been working all day. And so I never took a break to go and dressed casually. Yeah. Well, that's right.

Greg, because unlike you, I have three children. Oh, that's amazing. Sometimes works, gets dirty. How are you doing, Alex?

I'm doing well. Are you excited this evening? I think very excited. Yeah.

With our guest Harvey Mansfield. So we're pleased to welcome him to the show. He's so well known to our audience that I think standard introductions, someone old hat. So what follows are some intellectual facts about Harvey?

You may not know. So Mr. Mansfield has long been a professor of political science at Harvard University. Where some years ago, he was appointed by then-president Charles William Elliott.

His first book, Statesmanship and Party Government, a study of work in Bullingbrook, was described by Margaret Datscher as the finest work on political parties since an appeal from the new to the old wigs. In the late 70s, during a sacred pilgrimage to the Basilica of San Lorenzo, he was imbued with a secret and special wisdom. Decades of Machiavelli's scholarship followed, including a book like commentary on the disc courses and the translation of the prints in the Florentine histories. As an act of repentance, he would later give the English speaking people the best translation of Tocqueville's Democracy in America to date.

In 2007, his book, Manliness, caused third wave feminist to skip over waves four, five, and six, a feat unmatched in history. And contrary to popular belief, Mansfield Park is not about his childhood. The rapper, Manny, brushes his cousin. But welcome, Harvey.

I know that some of those are half truths, but we'll let people figure out which ones. Yeah, so thank you for your fact-filled introvert. I feel quite comfortable with the wise you told. OK.

So Alex, what do we or Greg rather? Would you like to introduce the episode? Sure, yeah, no problem. First up, we're just tickled to have Harvey on the show.

And we're going to discuss a book that he's written on, or a play, in fact, that he's written on. Machiavelli's Mandragala. We're using a mere Flamin-Haff translation of the Mandragala, which, in fact, Harvey has blurred on the fact as, assuming on the back is an excellent translation that makes Mandragala available to serious students at Machiavelli. So we're going to read a play.

It's a comedy. Apparently, Machiavelli wrote a number of comedies. And Harvey has said in print that the Mandragala is a good introduction to Machiavelli's thought generally. And I know that Alex and I were texting about this episode ahead of time.

Thought that might be a good launching off point. Maybe I'll return to a synopsis of the play. I'll give a synopsis of the play, and then ask Harvey to explain why the Mandragala is a bit intro. So this is a comedy, as I mentioned.

It's very short. All the action takes place in the course of 24 hours. And the drama of the play is there's a married couple, an old man, or not old man, sort of a man of middle-aged to late middle-aged, who's married to a young bride. And they are incapable of conceiving.

At the same time, there's a young man who is Italian, but who happens to be in France, who hears of the most beautiful woman in the whole world, Lucrezia, who happens to be the wife of this man and the two of them can't have children. So the drama or the plot seems to revolve around this man successfully attempting to bed this beautiful woman who happens to already have a husband. They sort of have to enlist the aid of a number of people, some unsavory characters, the servants, a priest, perhaps the mother of the bride. And then let's give away the climax, so to speak.

But at the end of the play, the young man, Calimico, is actually able to successfully embed the woman in Lucrezia. There are a number of characters I should mention. I suppose Lucrezia's husband is named Messer Mecia. We're told that he's a doctor of law.

The mother of Lucrezia's name is Strada. There are a couple of sort of what he called him, right-hand men or something like this, henchmen, l'Lagario, Ligurio, and, oh, zero is the other. So I guess that's pretty much it as far as it's not just. It's basically a domestic love story in true Machiavelling fashion with a gold tree and all sorts of other things.

So I'll ask Alex this question. Why Professor Mansfield is this such a good introduction to Machiavelli's thought generally? I don't know. My driver being a comedy makes you think of comic things.

Comic things don't take serious things seriously. And so Machiavelli several times in the discourse in the Prince speaks of his lack of respect. Sans Alcomuray's respect, without any respect as late, he's going to treat his subject matter. That means he's not going to be impressed by things that are impressive to worldly people.

But he's going to look at things differently from the way they do. And that's especially possible in a comedy, which is meant to make fun of things. When you make fun of things, you sometimes bring out hidden truths, which are otherwise covered up by respectable people. So my driver is about really a very unrespectable event in the successful episode of the Dalsary.

And beyond that, so all the other, and the way I think I also just tell you that he has a comic mind. He's different from the rest of us. This is even a different comedy from the usual comedy. So for all of that, I think it does make a good introduction to Machiavelli.

And when I teach Machiavelli, and of course, I'm a modern political floss, I begin with a lecture in the men's rivalry. Yeah, I think one of the first thing we were going to talk about is the role of morality in the play. And I think when you think about morality in the play, and this play has an introduction to his thought, you have to have in mind Machiavelli's sort of deconstruction of ordinary morality in chapters 15 on, in the Prince 15 through 19 in the Prince, right? Where he shows, for instance, that to be excessively merciful is actually cool.

And to be properly cool is actually be merciful. I think there's something similar going on here at the sort of, the fact that morality does not always teeny in that it says it will. So maybe you can talk a little bit about how morality operates in the play and how it reflects Machiavelli's larger political teacher. Yes, morality means doing things that are good.

When you do things that are good, you expect not to suffer from it. You expect that good people will return the good that you've done for them. But if that doesn't happen, then you have to consider. And Machiavelli says, usually, or at least to an extent, you can't predict and therefore you have to take account of, you'll be taken advantage of.

Most people who are not good will take advantage of it when you're good. And they make this point that when you do good, you don't always get a good result. In fact, you make it an evil result. So if you do good by following the Christian morality against adultery, so it's that adultery is wrong.

It's an offense against God. You may not get a child as a consequence. You may be childish in me. And this is what happens to Lucrezia and her husband, Machia, they don't get a child.

Whereas if they do evil as what happens in this play, maybe arrange a successful episode of adultery, they'll do good. So it turns out in the sequel to Mandragla, called the Cleatsia of Machiavelli, another play, that they did get a son. And it was blamed on the priest, the brother Timothy, and this in the Mandragla. We need to mention him, by the way, in the list of characters, the priest.

So doing good brings you evil, but doing evil can bring you good, negative, they do get the son that they want from the act of adultery. And this is what is generally called Machiavellianism. The doing of dirty tricks in order to effect the result that you want to get. And it's what is given Machiavellian bad reputation.

It's only philosopher, it really has a certain act. And it has a name for a certain act. And everybody knows what Machiavellianism is, even though they may not know the first thing about Machiavellian himself, except maybe that he's a talent. And so.

Harvey, would this have somehow shocked audiences? Does it's time? Yeah, Machiavellianism does shocked people. It's meant to come at you and attack the principles.

You hold dear or cherish, even a few of yourself don't always live up to them. At least your thinking is made up of your belief in these ordinary moral principles. And there's this sort of some of what I said was, in fact, to some extent taken from the 15th chapter of the Prince that was mentioned, that where Machiavellian makes the remark about what happens to you. You come to ruin it if you tried to do good amongst so many who don't do that.

And so the principle that he cites there is that you must align yourself with the effectual truth of a thing, very thought that you are really effectual truth, rather than with the imagination of it. So good people, in order to suppose that people are going to be good in return to them, have to imagine this. They imagine a society in which everyone does this, a good society. And so they take their bearings from that good society.

And that's what Plato and Aristotle did. In general, and the whole Socratic tradition of philosophy. And so the effectual truth is what is necessary to do. Not according to nature, but according to necessity.

According to nature, I tell you to follow the nature of a thing. As we said before, the nature of mercy is to make you merciful and to make recipients of your mercy better than that's the imaginary truth of being merciful. But in fact, merciful makes forces you to be cruel if necessity arrives and tells you that you can't follow the nature of mercy you have to follow. Sometimes, in order to be merciful, a certain degree of cruelty, tough love, you might say.

So necessity replaces nature. Now, when you do that, you see that morality has a certain character. And this is shown with the behavior of Lucretia in the mandrogula. She's a pious woman who believes in chastity, that is, she never had sex with anyone, not her husband.

And she says at one point in the play that she couldn't believe that this would ever be permitted to her. And if the whole repopulating the whole human race depended on an act of adultery, she wouldn't do it. And so, in this extreme statement, nonetheless, reveals that morality has a kind of sticking point, that you can't be moral unless you were moral, when all the consequences tell you not to be moral, or not to do the moral thing. So morality seems to require a sticking point.

I wouldn't do this if you were the last man on earth. Ernie, can I press you on this? And this is something that Alex and I talked about before that we've heard you mentioned before. I want to press you just a little bit, or just press you to expand a little bit here.

In the end, Act III, scene, I think it's 11, when Timotteo was talking to La Crecia. And precisely in what you said, where she says, she wouldn't do it for all the world. And then he talks about a lot in the example of lot's daughters. And so, I don't know how to connect this except to say that it's not clear to me that the Bible, it seems that Machiavelli's Bible does not speak unequivocally about evil.

And I think that this is something I've heard you say before that the Bible on one hand commands X, and on the one hand it commands Y, and they're in some tension with one another. So for example, go forth and multiply on one hand, no adultery on the other. And in the case of lot's daughters, who thought they might be the last, maybe not women on earth, but maybe Jews on earth, there seems to be some excuse, listeners at home may not know what lots of daughters do, but there's some excuse perhaps for what the daughters of lot are said to have tried to do. So is that, yeah.

That's very much exactly the point there, that Brother Timothy is able to bring up this example from the Bible to show that the Bible follows human necessities. If it were really the case that these were the last human beings on earth, then incest, that's what, that's the years do, they have sex with their father. And I wasn't gonna mention it, but you know. No, to repopulate.

Yeah. Things to have a picture, a painting of lot's daughters, and then my wife maybe take it down. I got jokers at old printings, a nice print book, Adicall. Yeah, well, there you are.

So yeah, so the Bible contradicts itself, but on the one hand it wants you to be fruitful and multiply, on the other hand, it wants you to be chased, and that means even when chastity doesn't lead to generation. And I don't even know that St. Paul's did better and Mary even burn. Yeah, but best not to be made.

That's a certain recognition of human necessity. Right. And yet at the same time, it's a promotion of chastity, which means no sex, not just actually you're right. I will know which of chastity of a priest.

Maybe that's a good time for us to pivot or turn to this next question that we brought about in the run of show and the topic you want to speak about, just religion generally. But I guess by way of giving you some starting points here, obviously there's this character, Brother Timothy, Frat de Timotayo, he's the priest who seems to be corrupt. The main character LaCrisia seems to be Pius, and she seems also to be chased. And the theme of religion seems to be central, of course, and everyone readers will know it to Machu Picasso.

But also here in this play, the men straddle. Yes, so where does religion come in? The religion comes in as a necessity of morality, because the moral people want a good result from their morality. And so they say that if this good result doesn't happen in this world, well, I'm alive.

I get fried and murdered or sticking to the principles of Christianity. Nonetheless, in the next world, I'll be taken care of. And I'll go to heaven. And those who murdered me will go to hell.

So that morality, in order to work, seems to require religion. And I think this is what Akiva believes in. The moral person will never be sufficiently moral without religion, because there will always be, there's always some reason, some necessity why one shouldn't follow morality. People can give you little arguments to say that it's necessary or it's other people do it.

You enjoy it always. Kind of remarks that eager lovers make to break down the will of a woman who's refusing them. So, and those are always just an extent powerful. So what you need then is a belief in God, which tells you that the result of your morality will be surely good, even if it's not in this world.

So, goodness requires any effect. So this is my revelation of factual truths, that religion is the effectual truth of morality. And the people today who think it could be moral and perfectly secular, why they wrong? Because they'll abandon morality when they're under extreme pressure, and they won't have any justification for it, for any reason.

So, he doesn't want to do away with religion, at least on the evidence, so undragtly, I think. But, so, and in this way too, Machiavelli is against the advice of other philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, who don't want to do away with religion, or at least, even though they may not fully accept its principles, but they do want to reform it or change it, and they want to keep God from being a punching God or a jealous God. They criticize the Greek religion, and it would have criticized the Christian religion, because that's, it depends on it. And the God that punishes it, especially the region of hell.

So, so this is a requirement, religion is a requirement of morality. And how does religion operate? Especially the Christian religion? And to answer that question, you can look at the scene between a woman and...

David's favorite scene. Yeah, which is... Three. Did you want to read that?

I would be happy to read this. This is scene three of Act Three. The dramatist persona here are Brother Timothy and a woman. David, do you have a Sandy?

Do you, I mean, I need Timotayo and UB woman. Okay, that strikes me as entirely fair, Greg. Yeah, what page are you on? I'm on page 29.

I need to use only a fair that your Mercer role since Greg has a feminine voice. I'll be the one that's fine. I'll be the one that's fine. My page is a Greg.

Page 29, this is the bottom of page 29. The heck's for UB scene three. UB Timotayo fine. If you want to confess, I'll do what you want.

Not today. Someone's waiting for me. And it's enough for me to have unbuzzamed myself a bit here. Have you said those masses of our lady?

That's Madonna. Now, take this floor in. And every Monday for two months, say the mass of the dead for the soul of my husband. Even though he was a big, nasty man, still to flesh down his pole.

I can't help but feeling it again when I remember it. But do you believe that he's in purgatory without a doubt? I really don't know that. You know well what he did to me sometimes.

Oh, how much I complained about it to you. I stayed out of his way as much as I could. But he was so insistent. Oh Lord.

I think that's a vision, Greg. No, it's not. Okay, I have no doubt the clemency of God is great. If a man doesn't lack the will, he will never lack time to repent.

Do you believe that the Turk is coming to Italy this year? If you don't say your prayers, yes. My faith, God help us with these devil'sries. I have a great fear of that in failing.

But I see here in church, a woman who is some friend of mine. I want to go meet her. Have a good day. Go in health.

I feel like the Turkish part was a very imperative to understanding what's happening in that passage. Can I just add what Timitteo says afterwards, which does how Machiavellian of apprentices says, the most charitable people there are are women and the most annoying. Whoever drives them away, it avoids both annoyances and profit. Whoever deals with them gets the profit and the annoyances together.

And it's the truth that there's no honey without fly. So he found a good middle ground. I'll just hear their titillating confessions. Oh, I don't tell these down.

And I get paid for it as well. Not so bad. Well, she's done with herself there before. I said there's implication that they've done other things before.

But there are two things I think that, you know, Harvey was talking about religion. So one of my questions is, what does Machiavelli, is it true that the women are more pious than the men in this play? And if that's true, what is that? What does Machiavelli try to teach us?

But the second point, Harvey, do we want to make clear the point of that joke that was just made in Act III, scene III or no? But we have careful listeners, correct? They'll understand what was happening. They'll get the impaling as a reference to, okay, fair enough.

Right. Well, obviously this woman is full of sexual desire, suppressed or self-limated sexual desire. And poor lady, her husband is dead. Right.

And all she can do is try to help them out in the purgatory. Although she wants, whether what she says is going to send them to heaven or to hell. Because anyway, she just, even though she regards them, of course, I'll find she'll agree. That's the, she'll have a good time with him apparently while he was alive.

But notice the first words about the other tenet theater, he says, if you want, so then this points to the voluntary nature of a confession, it's something that, yeah, you ask for, you ask for absolution from a punishment. That you say you deserve in your confession. So this is a way in which, the way in which the church governs us. And notice if you want, it's voluntary.

He, the priest, gets you to punish yourself in the belief that he tells you what God wants for you. So God is the way in which he governs you. And he pretends that his government is really God's government. He is the executor.

He just is passing on what God says. And anything that he says has the authority of this, of this by a much higher figure. So if you can get people to believe that they are governing themselves in this way, this will be much more a sexual government than if you just impose your will on them. So you're getting them to invite you in, right?

And they will listen to you and adopt your authority if you can get them to do it. So this is a kind of self-government, which I would call indirect government, instead of directly imposing saying, that you get people to think that they are imposing on themselves. And so I connect this with a later figure, Thomas Hobbs, who invented the idea of representative government. The government works best when it can claim to represent you, the people.

That's the true meaning of self-government. Self-government is always the most effective government. So if you can secularize this procedure of the priest in confession and substitute for the authority of God, the authority of the people, or you could say the voice of the people is the voice of God, in other words, somehow identify the people with God, then you can get people to follow you. And to even do great sacrifices on your behalf, without the complaint, indeed with enthusiasm.

So this is, I think, a fundamental political trick that goes on. And the woman purges her desires by confessing them. That's a great feature of politics and morality in Machiavelli. That people, we can't really control our desires, but we can purge them.

And that's very contrary to say Aristotle's picture of moral virtue, and you use your reason to control your passions. You let your passions out, you give them an outlet, you express them. Self-expression is better than self-control, or is a form of the best form of self-control. And that's what the, this woman is sort of full of sexual desire.

And that's what she gets out of this little episode. As for saving her soul, she seems to have her little concern for that. And she flips from one acquaintance to another. She's just left somebody and she goes to somebody else.

She doesn't have no serious interest. She does seem to be concerned with the soul of her husband, though, no? Or is that just like she wants him to come back? I mean, she's there saying how, getting the brother to say, how Mary's for him, et cetera.

Yeah, well, in memory of his good effects or good efforts. I suppose I could go on for even longer on this. Very short, but I think they're quite revealing. Right.

Seeing them in the story. I have a quick question. Since you brought up desires, it recalled the opening song with which the play begins. What are, so for listeners at home who may not be familiar with them in drag, like, Machiavelli sprinkles these songs in there.

What's the purpose of, was just this kind of standard for the plays of the day? Well, yes. He's a poet as well as a prose writer that he could do that. He wanted to show it how universally competitive he was.

But yeah, he, these songs even get them used to have them in Okachios de Camarone, which is, I think, quite an important source for Machiavelli's thinking. Or Boccaccio in general, but especially the Camarone also has songs that are sung to illustrate the theme that's going to come. So in the first song, you have to, in the prologue, it's about morality and versus eros versus sexual desire for sexiness. The way in which morality is violated by love.

You love that you can't stop. Once you start, you can't stop. That comes up later to, in when Kelly Mokos starts his plot, to take possession of Lucrezia. His first idea is to take her away from her home and meet her and see her.

Let himself be seen at the baths, where people are disrobed. And they can sort of look, sort of, it's like a scene on the beach today. But that is pointed out that the trouble with that is that she might see him, but she might also see someone else, whom she might prefer. So, and that's how we see that.

This is another way in which morality is kept. Morality needs to be domesticated. If you try to define morality by saying the pursuit of good, or the pursuit of beauty, or the pursuit of intelligence, or the pursuit of anything, you're always going to be looking beyond what you have to what is better than what you have. This, I think, might say a particular character, male sexuality.

It doesn't matter how beautiful the woman is that you're with. You're always looking over her shoulder to see if possibly it's even better. Better ones that, in the background there, to whom you should address your attention. So, any time you take as a principal, something that has degrees of good, or degrees within, you're always going to be led toward the best.

And that will keep you from being faithful to what you have. So, in this way, love is a great enemy of morality. And we all know it's easy to fall in love with women. You should.

It was not appropriate or simple for you. And this leaves to a lot of human difficulty. So, might you believe that it goes along, therefore, with this domesticated and pious limitation on nature. Nature is misleading.

Nature wants us to go for the best for him. Nature wants us to imagine what is the best. And we have to learn to control that or to replace it by coming back to the point before resort to human necessity. So, what religion does is to create necessity, because it tells you you can't have sex, or you can't have real fun nasty sex like this woman.

But it also gives you a release from the pressure that's created by this denial, when you can confess your sin and then get absolution from it. And so, you're forgiven. So, instead of being constantly or steadily good, you're allowed to sin and then recover from that sin by purging yourself with a confession, and for which you then receive forgiveness. So, Christianity understands human nature.

You can say better than Plato and Aristotle this way. They don't necessarily understand human nature at its best. But Christianity has our essence. It's better at what is useful in us.

Yeah, I think we now know that David was lying about you being descended from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. Yeah, that's kind of true. Maybe since you're now getting, I think, into the more conspiratorial side of Christianity and the subterranean side, maybe we can turn to the next theme, which was conspiracies, right? No, no, you're skipping Messer Nietzsche's stupidity.

Ah, okay. So, let me just back up a little bit. Let me just do that together. Well, good.

Let's lay out a couple of things here. First, I went over to play splots sort of quickly, and a superficial kind of play is the drama is a young man is trying to figure out how to bed the wife of a married woman. Yes, bed the wife of a married man, excuse me. And so that's the play's structure, but you have written an article, or I guess a book chapter called The Cuckold in Machiavelli's Mandragal.

David can tell the folks at home what a cuckold is. And I guess this is a big, Sullivan's book, The Comedy and Tragedy of Machiavelli, but I understand you're returning to it. And so for the folks at home, I'll just confess that I taught them in dragal one of the first time I ever taught. And only afterwards, and I could sort of tell someone fishy, but I didn't make any progress.

But then I turned to your article on it, and I was like, oh my God, I all those poor kids, I just completely misled because I didn't see this. Because you have a really novel, interesting thesis about what's actually going on in this play. So the thing we want to talk about next was this main character, the not elderly man, but the guy who's probably in his fifties, the man whose wife sleeps with this handsome young man, a man who is a cuckold at the play. Would you explain your argument about the play and about Mr.

Nietzsche in his role? So you write my hypothesis. Right, right, right, right. Which I have swallowed hook, line and sinker, by the way.

No, no, no, no, anyway, there. But the cuckold is somebody who's so, unknowingly allows his wife to sleep with another man. And as a Nietzsche seems to be, the stupidest character in play, and everybody makes the most fun of him. But it doesn't seem that his being stupid is necessary for the plot to succeed.

All that is necessary is that he pretended he's stupid, then that he pretends to be stupid, he doesn't understand what's happening. And he, as he, as cuckold, he's saying, and so he pretests, he's like, make my wife a whore, it is the plot of that requires him to consent to his wife being penetrated by a stud who is going to be, it was younger and more potent than he is. So he has to, all he has to do is really to pretend to be stupid. And the example is already given in the play of the King of France, who for political reasons, if he couldn't produce an heir to his throne, he would allow his wife to be embedded by someone else or who could produce it.

And the King of France is to use this, King of the Lords of France, but use this as a symbol of succession. They know what Nietzsche wants is, is succession wants some of his own. And know what does one's own mean? Does it mean that it's a son or a child that you've actually produced, or is it one that you say you produced, or you give out as having been as being yours?

And so maybe if it's necessary to do this, that you can give out that this is your son, but the same reason that the King of France state that you want to continue your family and you're willing to take this means of doing so. So in the discourse, as Machiavelli speaks, of technique, of firing the pots, of pretending to be doing the crazy, or pretending to be the way that this is what Brutus did, the Brutus, the two, the founder of the Roman Republic, would need to be pretended to be stupid. And this enabled him to succeed in his plot. So if you look at carefully at some of the details of the play, you can see that Messer Nietzsche says things or does things, which a very intelligent person might say, even a philosopher.

I'll mention that this, the thing that really made up my mind and that is simply just to reverse Machiavelli's initials, N.M. and you've got M.M. Messer Nietzsche. That's this is kind of thing that make Strauss seems like myself a ridiculous, but it's also the sort of thing which Strauss seems to find the most convincing.

Once you see that there's a certain deceit and hiddenness to Machiavelli's thinking, well, then this fits in perfectly, it isn't the only point that I would rely on for this, for this hypothesis that the stupidest man in the play is actually the most intelligent and that everything that happens to him is what he found necessary. And if you say, you know, if you want to look then to go on to the subject of conspiracy, Machiavelli himself is a philosopher, let's suppose, and that he, as his principle of politics, his principle of indirect government, which he wants to introduce to the world that's the subject of the, which turns out, he's, I think, really the fundamental principles of eternity, both political and non-political, but suppose that were the case. Then what he needs is to take an original step in this direction, but in his lifetime, he knows that he can't accomplish this. So he's going to need help later on after he dies.

And so he himself has a kind of succession problem similar to Messer Nietzsche's, of just wanting to have a son or a family that would, so Machiavelli wants to have a kind of family, yes, that will continue his project of modernity. And we'll do things differently. So in the same general spirit, then the general spirit could be identified as, in these two words, e-factual truths, which I mentioned. And by the way, that phrase, e-factual truth, is used only this once in all of Machiavelli's writings, and which are considerable, and I'm including in that all the emissatorial reports and everything that he wrote.

And to say something further, this is the only time and whole Italian Renaissance that that phrase occurs, the effectual truth. I wanted to ask you about that, Harvey, I apologize. Yeah, go ahead. Really quick, I heard you made this point in one of your conversations with Bill Crystal.

Who next, or do you know who next uses that phrase in history? No, I'll get to you. I'll get to you. I'll get to the in the bloodstream very quickly, right?

I'll get to you, that's true. It actually appears in the King James version of the Bible. Yeah. That's not the effectual word, effectual.

Written by Bacon, right? Yeah. Effectual. Effectual means it has the potential to have an effect, but effectual means it's actually having or has had that effect.

So it's interesting to see it's about effects. And then there's one go further in, and which I try to do to make a connection between the use of the word fact and the effectual truth. Because people don't realize that fact is something that had to be discovered. That's a modern term.

And it comes out of the past participle of factoring, which includes effect. Effect, you could call it, it uses the phrase factual truth, when you could say effectual truth. Fact is something that just exists. It's stubbornly exists.

And it's regardless of what cause did. So anyway, this is the way in which Machibelica, the understood the beginner of something of modern and the author of a grand conspiracy to make this come about. He is a philosopher and a philosopher within agenda. He wants to improve things.

There's a, I recommend to readers who are interested in this point about facts. You have a really gillion essay, Machibelian the discovery of facts in that master your nature of life, which I've talked before. I think it's just a short excellent introduction to how Machibelian is a kind of scientific thinker. Now, about your thesis about Mr.

Nietzsche, one question I had is, OK, if he is really the master, right? One of the stupidest things he does that I think needs to be explained in terms of intelligence is in order to avoid catching syphilis from Calimaco, he physically inspects his nether regions for boils, effectively hoping that he won't touch a boil. But where he did touch a boil, that would be, it would seem like a very quick way to get the disease. So I've been very hung up on this.

And I've been trying to, racking my brains. Why does he give him such a thorough physical inspection? Yes, I don't know. That's been interpreted as evidence of homosexuality.

That's in each. And maybe there's something in that. Harvey, I don't know if you know this. We just had a Tarkov on with Chris for a little bit a few weeks ago.

And Tarkov sort of joked about this delegation of homosexuality with respect to Machibelian's self. Apparently, he dismissed it early on, but apparently found that in fact there's evidence that Machibelian was bisexual. So if it is the M&M business, I mean, just know. It's an Italian thing, Greg.

You don't understand. I'm not telling you like you, Dale. That's true. That's true.

That's the better. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to have a quick comment. Can I ask a follow up question?

So Mr. Nietzsche's children, if he is the mastermind, I think you're right, won't really be his own in a manner of speaking. So I mean, they will be partly conventionally. They'll be his if he raises them, et cetera.

And so if Machiavelli is also looking for his own progeny, so to speak, they'll also not be entirely his own. Is that right? And is the fact that Klimiko is not fully Italian? Is this an indication on Machiavelli's part that he's aware that this would be transnational, that there might be philosophers from the countries who will sort of pick this up?

Yes. For sure. For sure. Yeah.

He is a great Italian patriot, but he also tells you in chapter three of the Prince, how do they do it? He's a great Florentine patriot. By the way, those two aren't the same Italian, Italy and Florence. He advises him in 26th chapter of the Prince.

He advises him in a prince, how do you unify Italy, which would mean the end of the Florentine Republic, which is actually what happened. So yes, he shows that in other words, that his allegiance is not ultimately to Italy. He often uses the word Italy, Italian, really to meet the world. So I think that's what he does in that last chapter of the Prince.

So he'd be happy with looking at, say, I don't know, Hobbes, Benoza, Locke. These guys, if Machiavelli could have come back from the grave, he'd be like, yes, these guys are doing exactly what I'd known. And so he wouldn't be jealous that they come from England or France or Spain. And he wouldn't be jealous either that, say, a Locke gets the accolades for having founded a country.

And Machiavelli's name is sort of ridiculed or associated with evil, just like Nietzsche has thought of as stupid or foolish or something. No, it's his smarter than he knew that. Machiavelli was never to work as the shock. It won't shock people unless they're not expecting it.

So that means that he's going to get a bad reputation for attacking morality. For making people think, and most people, their first thought will be, this is terrible. And then something which must be rejected. So he's willing to take that for the team.

He's saying this evil reputation. And he doesn't, as an advisor to Prince, to Prince's, i.e. to future philosophers, he knows that he can appear to be as an advisor, or he can appear to be ruling them with his advice. Can I connect this to the Prince and his account of the Unarmed Prophets?

Is it, I can't remember if this is in your article, if I'm connecting dots that I saw in your article. As far as he takes on this reputation of evil, and is sort of, he's a martyr for our well-being. Wouldn't it seem as though he's imitating others who have taken on, and chapter six doesn't seem like that there's success of Jesus. Yeah, sorry.

In that way, my friend, Maurice over here, is right to say that Machiavelli's a kind of a dimer. He's wrong to think that he's in the spirit of Christ. It's actually the spirit of any Christ. Yeah, he's imitating Christ to be able to do anti- Taking over the idea for dimer, right?

In his way. Repurposing it. And replacing it in a way, the spiritual power of the church with a kind of scientific power. Yeah.

And also relying on the province, so you can rely on your own wits, and that will deliver just as your results in this life as well. Right, yes. So, Providence has secularized as fortune, fortune, no. The Christianity is right that people want to know what's going to happen to them.

And so, that's, Machiavelli, that's the essence of religion. You want to know what's going to happen to you. And then, so it's God is, the power of God, that's more important than the goodness of God. So, people believe in the power of God, and that's something which can be taken over and used to answer and to fulfill human necessity.

So, one point in your conspiracy, and your account of Messonique, that's important is the role of respectability, right? This is why it has to be a conspiracy, because you have to attempt as best you can to grow up appearances. And one of the reasons I think that's a really helpful emphasis is because, first and foremost, the most respectable man is the one who's not cuckled, and has his own children. Less respectable is the man who's not cuckolded, but doesn't have children.

Less respectable than that is the man who is compelled to be cuckolded in order to have children. And then, still less respectable, and this is your thesis. I feel like I'm being personally attacked here, just to the right. I have no idea of your personal life, Greg, but thanks for your information.

But the least respected would be the man who is voluntarily willingly orchestrates a conspiracy to have himself be cuckolded, so as to have children. And that might be a bridge too far that Messonique, Machiavelli cannot sort of be overt about that. And so, he contrives a conspiracy to make himself look less voluntary in the activity, to save some respectability, but also to also give the general ear that he's the most respectable sort of man. Oh, I was not cuckled, and these are my children, right?

At that last point, I was assuming I meant to say earlier, what is it? What is your son or what are your children? You're the children of your body, but also the children of your mind. And Machiavelli notes this by speaking of natural sons in the Florentine histories.

But anyway, well, a natural son of a son of a son of a, who follows your thinking, and not necessarily someone who's come out of your body and saw that, that is a language. You're not being cuckled, because your real son is the person who thinks as you do. Well, yeah, I said, if you're a professor, you'd have something of the same. It's a strange.

My students are my children to some sort. Is there a strange agreement with Plato then, on an aerosol, by the way? Yeah. Yeah, right.

Well, respectability, yes. So you can see that in the desire of criminals and crooks, that after they're very successful in their criminal activity, they sort of want to retire in them. And from having been on the wrong side of the law, seek to live on the right side of the law, get themselves in a nice manner in a good neighborhood in San Fernando. You saw this in the TV series, The Wire, where these wonderful grand criminals they're on.

At the end, what they would really like is to be respected. And so that requires that they change their behavior and even think of their criminality as a way toward respectability. In The Wire, by the way, while the criminals become respectable, it turns out that the respectable people, the police, in order to catch criminals, have to become criminals, that the rules for gathering evidence, that's what The Wire is about, are very constraining to catching criminals. So you might have to violate the law in order to uphold the law.

So there's a kind of alternation or substitutability of respectability and criminality. And that's in Machiavelli, too. The whole effect of Machiavellism depends on people's finding it, finding it not respectable. They have to be shocked by it.

Surprised by it. I'm surprised that you watched The Wire, by the way, which is one of my favorite TV shows, such a great show. And Stringer Bell really was trying to be respectable. He had wealth of nations and had a nice life, went to college.

Yeah. For all that is, all that is true. There's a crime writer called Bill James, who's real name is David Craig, who features this, this substitutability of the criminals becoming respectable and respectable becoming criminal. Interesting.

So, so respectability doesn't stand on its own, but neither does criminality. The, and that in a way is kind of a power of good, as people say that things think about the democracies is the, is the, is the, the payment or that vice pays diversion. And the payment isn't quite right, whatever it is. So, so the hypocrisy is the need to seem to be good or to be, or to be respectable.

And that suggests that just being bad doesn't give you enough power. You know, it has to be represented somehow as good. So that's why deceit is so important to politics. And that's why conspiracy is this, the accompaniment or the instrument of just the, you know, you, you, the conspiracy means doing something that's, that's not feasible and that publicly visible.

You can all of, all, Machiavelli's political sciences are kind of overturning of the principle of Plato and Aristotle that the most formal and visible power is the power of the law, the power of the public. Machiavelli says, no, what's the most important is what goes on behind the scenes. So behind the scenes means conspiracy. And so conspiracy is a necessary feature of, of government, especially of modern government.

A lot of a kind of executive power, which is based on this aspect of Machiavelli's thinking. The executive power is the things that you have to do to execute the law. And those are different from just announcing it. In order to execute the law, you need police, but in high force.

And that's, that points him in the direction of illegality, which you might, you need, that you need force and sometimes if people aren't watching, illegal force in order, in order precisely to uphold the law. So executive power, executive session, I'd like to point out in a congressional committee, executive session means in secret. So secrecy is a, is a, is a, is a prime feature of, of government, that's because government has to do things that you don't like in order to do things that you do like, but that's the tax you, it has to, enlist you in the military in order to defend your, your country, put your life in order, in danger, send you in harm's way and take money from it in order to do good for you. So how is it going to do that?

It has to somehow deceive you, deceive you into thinking that this comes from you. And so, but, you know, it has to be deceived, the same you can't be perfectly open about everything that you do, because if you are, then you won't be able to do it. If you can't be perfectly open, then you're admitting the necessity for respectability or keeping things respectable, hiding things that we do that we're somewhat ashamed of. That's very good.

And I encourage everybody, I was actually just reading your, opening chapter from your book on executive power, the ambivalence of executive power, which is a great 20 to 30 page account of how the presidency might operate with respect to the legislature. And so it's a very fascinating, it really opened my eyes to. A lot of presidents that thought were, you know, fools like Messer and Nietzsche, but might have been actually a little bit smarter than I suppose. Yeah.

So at this point, I think we're wrapping up and we're going to the lightning run. I think David wanted to start it off. Sure. But before we do that, Harvey, you have a forthcoming book of essays.

Did you want to talk about the title and where people can buy it? Or is it still? I can probably say, it's a publisher. Still needs a publisher.

So, yeah, so, yeah, there's some time before you'll be able to buy. Okay, okay. And one small point, you're also, you said you were reworking this piece on the Medraggle, is that right? It would be a part of this.

Oh, okay. No, but it's going to be called Machiavelli C-Factral Truth. Very nice. That book has a lot of multiscuity, and a name who hasn't mentioned it yet.

But multiscuityism is the philosopher, a follower of Machiavelli, who took it upon himself to put an end to Machiavellism. And he said, in a very famous phrase, we begin to be cured of Machiavellism as if he had found some way in which you could be respectable and get the effects of Machiavellism without the criminality and the deceit of it. And the one word solution that he finds is commerce. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's what this coming book will be about. That episode you did with Bill Montescou, the recent one was wonderful. I have a question with you about before the lightning round about as a teacher, something I've been dying to ask you, since you've talked for such a long time, do you notice, depending on just over the years, let's say starting in 65, when you were first starting out, maybe with undergraduates, and have some of the years correct.

Students responding differently to different of the great books. Did you feel that in the 70s or 80s, they gravitated more to Locke, and then Plato re-emerged as a grip on their souls later on? Or do you notice that they have been flow of attraction to certain books or certain authors? I've been taking it Harvard since 1962, the correct day.

I think you do. Right. And I must say, during that time, I found a certain continuity in the audience. And in the taste that they have, even though this time-gerated includes their coeducation, coming of coeducation to Harvard and influx of black students, and more recently of Asian American students.

So I don't find any range difference over those years in what they appreciate. It's probably my system. I try to become an advocate for each. This is the main course I taught is the history of political philosophy, ancient and modern in the fall, and then ancient and medieval in the fall in the modern in the spring.

And I try to be an advocate for each person I'm teaching. Foolish objections from people who don't believe this obvious truth. Right. And so in that way, I sort of fend off the trends of popularity.

I mean, obviously, there was a time when I was, especially during the 60s, when Marx had a lot more favor than he does now. Right. Are you just coming back, though? Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm going to see. These things aren't perfect. Yeah.

I imagine one long trend that's common among all your students from the 60s to now is that they're all great lovers of prestige and think very well of themselves. Right. Right. Is that the lightning round?

Yeah. The first lightning round, and this is really correct. If you'll permit me, Greg. Go ahead.

You surf away as I don't wait for an episode on the mandragalo. Thank you. So Harvey, you've won the title Best Stress Strousing for 40 years in a row. And listeners want to know, import your suits from Salvador or from Italy?

I, this started when I spent a year in London, right after graduating from Harvard. I was so impressed with the way English men dressed. Not so much women but the men. And so I bought a suit when I was there.

And I thought, well, I bought a mountain tailor and not from Salvador, even belief. I discovered there's a wonderful shop in Cambridge called The Andover Shop, which does make suits made to measure. That in order to be well dressed, you have to have your suits made for you. And by the way, if you want to read a good book on this, there's one called The Suit, which is written by Michael Aintan, the great Trumpie stuff.

Yeah, my colleague. Yeah, yeah. It's good. Very good.

Take it away, Greg. OK. He's not. I think he would be a rival to this reputation, which I've never heard of until last time.

Fair enough. OK, Harvey, I have a series of silly questions lightning rounds. The idea here is you can ask them as quickly as you like or take as much time as you like. We are forgoing our usual intellectual biography since folks can learn all about you in a variety of places.

Although if you have anything to add to that, Harvey, feel free. Otherwise, I got a series of short questions. First question. What is your favorite work of literature?

Most any book by PG Woodhouse. Oh, OK. Very nice. Oh, what do we do?

What's your favorite place you've ever visited? Paris. Paris. Very normal.

Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. What was your first car?

An MG. Wow. There's a sports car. English sports car.

This was bought in, let me see, 1954. Holy smokes. Wow. And what do you actually know the answer to this?

I think at least apart. What do you drive now? I think also a sports car. Well, I had a Porsche, which I sold.

Oh, OK. Roadster. But we've now got a Porsche SUV. OK.

That is fantastic. Who is your favorite philosopher? I think we know the answer. Maristol.

Hmm. All right. What is your favorite work of political philosophy? The Republic, the Republic Republic.

Wow. Go ahead, Alex. Go ahead and two of you are you serving mine. I feel like Mr.

Nietzsche. Who's the most Machiavellian pope? Pope? I don't know.

I don't know the pope's love enough really to compare them according to this exacting standard. Yeah. Fair enough. Who is the best politician in your lifetime?

Churchill. Churchill. You saw Churchill give a speech? Yes.

When I was in England. Holy smokes. I heard him give a speech on song. Wow.

In 1951. 19 or rather 1954 again. Wow. What was a great year for you?

And what? Sports cars and Churchill. I was driving the MG. I was going to Margate in English resort.

See resort. And to hear Churchill address the conservative party conference. Wow. That's something else.

Yeah. What was your first job, Marty? Job. Raking leaves.

Raking leaves. That's around the house. Yeah. I got paid maybe a nickel an hour.

What do you think you would be if you had not become a professor? What would I? I'm sorry. No, sure.

Sorry. What do you think you would have chosen for a career had you not become a professor? Let's see. How about last one?

Have you ever had any pets? No, but my children have. OK. Everything on and on are thinking over very carefully the possibility of having getting our cat.

A cat? Right. Just keep your nice suits in mind. Right.

Wow. It's a sedate mess. I got one more Harvey. Yeah.

Have you ever had any nicknames? Yeah, right. When I was ready? I was called ready because I had red hair.

How about that? I feel like the lightning round was worth it. Larry, right there. Ladies and gentlemen.

Oh, longer. Yeah. Well, David Alex, join me. In thanking our various deemed guests.