Welcome back to New Think Green Mine, I'm David Barr. Before we start the show tonight, we'd all like to give a one thank you to Jake Pecan and Gannon, whose video for his audio production skills allows us to keep the show going and he does it free, so we all want to say thanks. How are you doing, Greg? I'm doing great, David.
So nice to see you as always. Yeah, as always. And you Alex, how are you? I'm doing well.
Good to see you both. Good. So what are we talking about tonight? Greg, I'll use your picture.
Sure, I just put a cracker on the back. We are talking about... No, I like it. It's fine.
I don't know what kind of cracker you are, Greg. I don't know. Honest to goodness, it's a true story. I'm not making this up.
Someone left a bag of crackers outside my office door. Unmarked? I'm getting them. It's a completely true story.
I'm fantastic. I'm so awful. Do you have one here? No, I'm sorry.
There's a little bit of that. I'm leaving cat litter, I guess. Different. True.
This is a completely true story. My boss called me. I have a second job. I worked for the Ashbrook Center in addition to being a professor at University.
And this is completely true. He called me out today. Very worried. What's going on?
Wait, you're going to get a big fat check? Yeah, apparently. I think the government's going to try to take half of it. I'm so financially illiterate that I haven't been getting.
Not an insignificant amount of money. Wow, Alex said it out. It goes to show. It's all Greg is doing.
Well, man can only eat so much cheese. I don't know if you've noticed the property prices out there, but they're not. Super cheesy. It's a little bit here.
World headquarters of Nice People. In any event, we're doing... It's a great experience. Tonight we're doing...
I decided we talked about it and we're going to do an episode devoted entirely to a single chapter of Machiavelli's Prince again. Chapter 6, where he talks about his most excellent princes. The men who are most impressive, those who conquered altogether new principalities on their own, their own arms and their own virtue. That's the plan.
I don't know. It's four pages, Greg. Why would anybody, how could there possibly be an hour's worth of discussion packed into those four pages? Revenge yourself.
Well, first I was going to tell the landlord not going to pay to work and then there's some other cheese in your voice. Right? And then how do you like to assault the Keebler elves? Of course.
That's your second favorite cracker. Yeah. So a more serious answer is I think that we did an episode on Chapter 15. I think Alex and I talked about maybe following up an episode here with Chapter 7.
And I really do think when I teach this text, I easily spend an entire class session on just this chapter. I think we could spend probably an hour and a half. I think we're going to try for 45 minutes to an hour tonight. But I think there's a lot here.
It's really short. It's compact. There's a lot one can pull out of it. Just very simply, I think the first 11 chapters of the Prince form a kind of coherent whole where Machiavelli talks about different types of principalities.
That one of these chapters is in the middle. It's in the middle. Yeah. So six is the central chapter and I think the most impressive type of Prince, the Prince that acquires new principalities by his own arms and virtue.
So then the hereditary Prince discussed in Chapter 2, he's more impressive than the guy who inherits his principalities. I think the conference is a little new territory. He's way more impressive than the guy who just locks into it. The discussion of Chapter 7.
Chapter 11 might be an interesting exception here. The ecclesiastical principalities might be more impressive in its own way. But as far as being an assingually impressive human being, this chapter apparently contains Machiavelli's thoughts regarding the greatest princes ever. I think there's a lot of education.
Yeah. I don't really have my run show up. What am I supposed to be talking about right now? Well, we said the first one is always why we do this in the first subject.
Oh, I did. How about that? Yeah. Why don't I read the beginning and the title?
Your voice is so much better. Yeah. You sound much more lucky. I'm like, oh, we should talk about Reed Princess.
You know, that's not. I can read it as Machiavelli using Gave its famous impersonation. How about the little disabilities? He's a better quiet.
I'm not a dog. I'm doing it in my room. I'm doing it in my room. So anyway, okay.
So I was going to read that first line. Yeah. No one should marvel. If it's speaking as I will do a Prince of Howies that are altogether new both in Prince and in state.
I don't have the greatest examples. For instance, men almost always walk on paths beaten by others and proceed in their actions by imitation, unable either to stay on the paths of others altogether or to attain the virtue of those who you imitate, put a man should always enter upon the paths beaten by great men and imitate those who have been most excellent. So that if his own virtue does not reach that far, it is at least in the odor of it. It's a good place to stop.
I think that's a great place to stop. That's usually where I stop when I do this. I think imitations are a really good thing. I mean, whenever I see this, I think of the imitation would be a connection between a present prince, a text of the past, or I think more specifically, Machiavelli's presentation or interpretation or appropriation of a text of the past.
The imitation ends up being a core tool by which Machiavelli hopes to educate his audience. That's really good. I'm also drawn to what I take to be, and I'm sure Machiavelli is aware of this. I don't think this is accidental.
Just to compliment what you said, this chapter is ostensibly about altogether new princes, men who were sort of entirely new. So new that maybe they don't even have parents. And on the other hand, prudent men imitate others. And so there's this, I think there's this going back and forth that I like to give you a little bit between completely new and imitating.
And so there's this, should the excellent prince imitate others or should he sort of be entirely his own human being? I guess. Yeah. I mean, another thing I'll say is, he says imitate them, but the sort of articulation of what great fallagers do is exceedingly abstract.
It doesn't give you a lot. Also, it's really hard. I mean, where are you going to go find a disbursement slave to people? It turns out by the end of the book, you'll say that he'll suggest Italy is one such place that you can do this with.
Yeah. That's a good point. So altogether new and yet in imitation, what you suggest therefore that there's some way or there's a way to be a new prince that wouldn't follow the model that Machiavelli is presenting here? Why even if he's encouraging us to follow those models, then we would be imitating, and therefore not altogether new.
Right? Because it's not just that you're an altogether new prince and an altogether new state. So I mean, the lesson here seems to be to be altogether new, you should emulate these guys in which case you wouldn't really be able to be able to be copying someone else who did it before. And in the later chapters, he talks about some other excellent princes who copied other excellent princes like Alexander with Achilles and so on.
And maybe we could add to that. The point I was just saying before about how we're imitating not just the text, but Machiavelli's interpretation of the text. Because he's definitely skewing the accounts of these texts. That's actually, yeah.
Or bringing things out. But in any sense, if I read, he talks about Moses, if I go and read Exodus, I'm not necessarily going to look at it the same way after reading. Right? What he said.
So maybe this is getting ahead of ourselves, but he's about to talk about unarmed prophets who establish early modes in order. And here, if you're right, if by imitating, we're not new, but we're imitating Machiavelli's novel interpretation or appropriation of it, maybe he would be suggesting that he's the really the new prince. And that he's in a way, right? This unarmed prophet.
That's, I mean, that's where we have to explain all these terms, but maybe I sort of, the way out of this difficulty or the implication. In that case, maybe Machiavelli is also an imitator. I mean, he's extremely novel. And I think you're right that he can tell you to go back to the text that he mentions and either realize he's done something really strange and perhaps he's distorted the text or perhaps he's shown you that there's a Machiavelli reading of these texts that might actually even be true or to the meaning of the original text.
But the question of whether or not Machiavelli himself is new or an imitator is also, I think, that's one of the key themes here in my view in this chapter. And just to connect this, I mean, we've got to lace him steps out and we've got to find some terms, as you mentioned. But I think at the beginning, he says he's going to bring up the greatest examples. And yet I think as I think Strauss points out, some of those greatest, there are greater examples potentially than the ones that he gives here.
And so the question would be, why does he omit lesser examples? Why does he omit greater examples in some cases? And why does he give us the four that he gives us? So if you were to ask any typical person on the street, any undergraduate student, anybody who were the greatest rulers of all time, these aren't necessarily the four I think that they would give.
And now maybe they're, I think they would say Alexander the Great or Caesar. Now, of course, I think by Machiavelli's standards, those guys are not as impressive as the ones he mentions because they weren't altogether new founders. Alexander inherited from his father and Caesar was already there in the Roman Republic. But I mean, you get something similar in some of these cases with Moses, Ron, and the Cyrus and theses.
I mean, Cyrus was descended from a king. And so he wasn't altogether new in the way that it seems he might have been. So I'm just, I think he's always being playful. I think there's always these weird double meanings.
And I think what he tells you is, give me the greatest examples. You want to ask if there are greater ones and so on. Yeah, I mean, I mean, to take a while Moses is a pretty good example, though. But there's God.
Well, there's also Abraham. This is something I don't quite understand. Why, why, what happens to Abraham? The example of Moses, right?
So he's not altogether new. There were, there was a kind of proto founder before him or something. Yeah, and there are some covenants before him. Yeah.
Yeah. I think, well, there's certain things maybe we're getting ourselves with the strength of and transposis that are pretty incredible. Yeah, I mean, to go into subject to Alexander, I mean, he's talked about Alexander in chapter four and he really downplays it. And he refers to him as Alexander in the time, I was into the great, right?
And so there's an implicit, like, you know, moving down, right, in his status against which he raises the other people. So with DCS, you want to say, well, I thought the really the founder of Athens is more so long. He's that sort of law giver or for Rome, you have ronulus. But what about new set of religion?
So yeah, and then Moses, well, what about God? Is it God, the one who's really up to it? So I mean, we're left with, I guess, Cyrus, right? We already mentioned this.
I may we should read this passage. So at the beginning of the second paragraph, he says, I say then that an altogether different is where there is a new prince. One encounters more or less difficulty in maintaining them, according to whether the one who acquires them is more or less virtuous and skip down just a little bit. We've been talking about Moses Cyrus, Romans, and DCS.
So we should just read the passage. But to come to those who have become princes by their own virtue and not by fortune, I say that the most excellent are Moses, Cyrus, Ramyas, and the likes of this list is not exhaustive. So that's why we've been talking about these four because Machiavelli lists these four as the most impressive kinds of princes. And why are they impressive?
What I do when I teach this is I just write the names on the board and I try to get people to think about what do we know about these guys? Where do we know about them from? And how are they similar and how are they different? Those are the kinds of questions that I ask.
So a simple one, right? The first two are Eastern, the second two are Western, or Middle Eastern and Western, right? Moses, from the Jews, Cyrus, Persia, and then Romulus, DCS, Rome, Greece. That's just a small one, right?
You think about the other things you think about. Romulus and theses happen to be paired in Plutarch's lives. And I know that David's a big fan of Plutarch, so he's grinning in a Machiavellian impish way if he has something to say there. So then you just think about where do we know about Moses from?
You already mentioned it from Exodus. Where do we know about Cyrus from? Well, from my favorite authors, Denifen, but also Herodotus, also the Bible. So which one of those sources is Machiavelli using?
Is it all of them? Is it a blend of them? Is he sort of mixing it up? I know about from, as I mentioned Plutarch, where else are Livy?
Where else do we know about Romulus from? And where else do we know about DCS from? Right? These are the questions.
So I just try to walk through these questions with students. It's taken up right now. Yeah. Are you sure you're not taking a nap?
I don't know anymore. So you walk through, you walk through, you have those brainbusters with your students. That's right. And what does that list of Greg?
Where does that get us with this? Just to play it out here. Okay. I mean, I can do it myself.
So here's what I would say. What do they want? On my snide sh** aside, to be critical, 100% with who he put in. What Greg is advising our listeners to do is exactly what you need to be doing.
So the one thing that starts cracking the COVID students is when you start asking about the birth origin of these characters. And they all have really strange birth stories. So Romulus, they're all exposed at birth, right? Actually, I'll check on these.
So Moses was exposed at birth according to Exodus. Cyrus was exposed to the greatest Herodis, not by Zenon. Romulus exposed with his brother. So then you just walk through this with students.
And I think what you can sort of walking through it, you see why Machiavelli parodies examples. So he's sort of smearing, I would say, Romulus, Cyrus, and Theseus, and then the dirt kind of gets on Moses by proxy. So he's trying to get you to think through the problem of Moses, but he's doing so indirectly. So students have no problem.
You know, like, okay, what's the story about Romulus? Well, Romulus was exposed in the woods and raised by a she-wolf, nursed by a she-wolf. And I just sort of always play class. My students, well, you know, what do you think a wolf would actually do if it found a baby in the woods?
The answer is obviously the wolf would eat the baby, right? This is very simple. It's not that hard. And I think that's a fantastic story regarding his birth.
So, I know for this smear campaign against she-wolves, sticking to you, you know, your self-grag. One of the funny things, I don't want to go too far field. In Livy, I think the word for she-wolf in bitch is bitch or prostitute. The word for bitch in prostitute might be the same in Lettens.
Someone can correct me. And so I think Livy notes that there's some play that Romulus might have been raised by a wolf, but he might have simply been raised by a prostitute or something like this. Eric Adler will be hit to this. Yeah, he's got to be so wrong.
I think he's got to be a street-cho. It does, actually. And so with Romulus, the students really recognize that this is sort of silly. Like he's the son.
He's born from kings, but then exposed in the wits. The same thing happens to Cyrus. Cyrus' father, who's the king of Persia, is told that he will have a son who will kill him. So he's, you know, being a good dad, he doesn't kill his own son.
He has one of his underlings to do it, like any good father would do. And then the other guy, the underling, like, I can't kill a kid. So he gives it to a shepherd. The shepherd raises Cyrus' zone, but at some point when Cyrus is growing up, he realizes I'm not merely a shepherd's way.
I'm actually the son of a king. The most of the story is in verse. Moses isn't, so let me try this. I'll do this with Cyrus' verse.
So what's the likely account of what's happening with Cyrus? He's trying to realize that Cyrus probably was just the son of a shepherd boy who killed his way at the top and went to the top and invented this narrative about his birth to solidify his legitimacy as having been descended from royalty. That's, I think, what Machiavelli is saying. So then you realize, you know, if you go back through the prince and you look at chapter two where he talks about hereditary principalities, and it seems to not be very interesting because you can't really invent your parents and stuff like this and you can't do anything about it.
Here in chapter six, I think Machiavelli is showing you actually that the prince at the highest level actually can just create his own birth narrative and his own backstory. Like, even, you can't actually claim how hereditary right to the throne, even if you don't have it. So Cyrus, Rameus, and these are all about as... So Moses, the Moses story flips on its end.
I think what Machiavelli is trying to say about Moses is that Moses, and Moses story, Moses is descended from kings, thought to be descended from kings, but in fact, he's actually born a Jew. And so it's like the inversion of the royalty narrative. And so he still, in other words, he has a hereditary legitimacy of Judaism. I'll also point out, and I think that, you know, people probably know the Moses birth narrative is that they're going to kill all the firstborn in the city.
And so Moses, his mom puts him in a basket, puts him in an aisle and sends him down amidst all the crocodiles. And if you can get the students to see that the Romulus story is ridiculous on that actually a wolf would probably eat a baby. Then they start to make the connection that Machiavelli is trying to get the readers to connect. Obviously Moses, his birth origin is equally just as fantastic as these other guys.
And what's happening is that Moses, after the fact, is inventing a story regarding his own lineage. He's not actually Jewish. He's inventing his backstories being Jewish, so he has a greater legitimacy to rule. I thought I was going to go slightly different direction.
Sure. If the pretense of hereditary legitimacy is why they know these backstories, legitimacy of Moses is founding. It's not so much that he's like the son of a king. I mean, they were all slaves.
It's that he spoke with God. And that's what Machiavelli draws our attention to, right? So would that be the sort of... Also, when you think about it...
Well, all of them also had this divine right? Monoliths is thought to be descended from Mars, Cyrus from ultimately from Zeus. But if we ask your question of Moses, right, where do we read about him, right? Exodus.
And then we ask us, we might with Cyrus, which story, who wrote this? Who's the author of five books? According to tradition, Moses. So Moses literally invented his own backstories.
Yeah, so he literally wrote the book about himself and which he dies. Right? Yeah. So maybe it's the word of God, maybe it's Moses's story.
I mean, one thing I just sort of draws back to an earlier point. He says the most excellent, I think this is such a puzzling sentence, the most excellent or Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Thesis and the like. We can say maybe there's greater examples, but excepting these are four excellent examples. Sure.
The like. I think he has to go that. Oh, my, sorry. I didn't say that.
Well, this is a different line. And there are others I could name, but for space. You know, I'll just nobody saying the most excellent are the like he uses a generic term that lumps them all together, makes them all generic, right? Yeah, I think that would go to your point about imitation, right?
They're not actually that impressive. Or your impressiveness is in so far as they embody the generic teaching of Machiavelli science, right? So if you reduce rule to a science, all and you show that Cyrus, Romulus, Thesis, even Moses and God, right, are all doing the same thing. You boil it down, you make your new prints generic and imitator of examples.
That sort of, in a way, he robs the founder or these political founders by virtue of his sort of scientific or quasi-scientific seeming arguments and presentation, right? To move on to the white. No, I was. I know way more superficial, way more secure.
I'm even ashamed to bring up because Alex's was good. Yeah, I thought he just threw the other examples of the like in because there are no modern examples that providing from Italy. So, I mean, the princess inscribes to a modern day ruler, right? Yeah.
He doesn't hold any of them up as mirrors of princes in this chapter. In chapters 1 through 11, I think I'll say this, although I'd want to double check it. I think all of the ancient examples are positive. In chapters 12 through 14, it starts to get a little murkier that some of the ancient's may have messed up as well.
But you're right here, in chapters 1 through 11, there are no, I mean, he holds up Chasarade Borges as a positive example and a gathicly is another guy. But by and large, the good examples are all ancients and the bad examples are all modern. And I think the question you're raising here is really good. Could there be a modern day Moses Cyrus Rongles-Rochesius?
I'm sure we'll circle back to this question because Alex has already indicated that Machiavelli might see himself as such a human being. It would take a different form. Yeah. It would have to take somewhat of a different form.
Just before we move on, a few other points, maybe a smaller point. I think about, there are only two regime types, according to Machiavelli, principality in republic. And so I think about Moses Cyrus Rongles-Rochesius. And the question in my mind is, what kind of regime did each of them found?
And I don't know if I could defend this in the last analysis, but I would say in the case of Moses, it's a republic. Cyrus, principality, Rongles, and theses are republic. And so, obviously, we could argue about that. But like Moses founds the Jews who have a law, right?
Laws are typical of, are worse. It's a sign of republic. Rongles, the Roman republic, theses, theses, theses. So Cyrus alone of them founds what I would say as a principality.
I don't know what you want to do. In other words, they all establish municipalities, but then the subsequent thing is a republic. The lesson I draw from that is one of the things that Machiavelli is saying is like the best kinds of princes who garner the most fame for themselves and greatest reputation are those who after them set up something that's not the thing they put in place for themselves. In other words, the succession of princes is not as impressive as a prince who then sets up a republic or something like that.
That may be putting a little too much in the text. One thing I'll say is just by pushing back a little bit on Moses, I think the law as a sort of rule of law is a kind of republican principle. But when the laws come from God, then you can't change them. And you're just kind of applying them and figuring out how they apply.
That would make you think it's maybe a principality of a different kind. Maybe, but I mean think about it, but then we can say the distinction between a principality and republical absolute analysis. But I mean, because he's Sparta, right? I mean, like, R You were thinking about that?
Would you be a bottle? If everybody else was, yeah, I probably wouldn't do it. Yeah. I'm kind of a go with the crowd kind of guy.
Not really much. I think we worship bass. If I, you know, if everyone else is doing it, I feel the same way. All right.
But we come down and see Alex. Well, Alex wants to melt all the gold and burn our throats. And that's just the kind of guy. I'd have been a guy right up there and like just draw on.
It's a naked day power. It'd be horrible. So let's get into what makes them great. Okay.
Sure. Well, before we go on, I just want to say that we've been talking about Moses in the same breath as Cyrus Rames and D.C. And Machiavelli at least ostensibly says, no, no, no, we can't talk about Moses because that's a special case because he spoke with God. But then he does say, well, actually, nevertheless, they actually were all the same.
So he does play this game where he tries to sort of set Moses apart, but then he says, there's no different. There are no different all. I'm like David asked how we can spend a fourth of our Mr. Now on it.
We haven't even touched on the allusion to Aristotle in the first paragraph. There's another one here at the end of the second paragraph. And I take, I take one of the things Machiavelli is doing here is taking issue with an Aristotelian conception of what the founders should look like. Yeah.
So, yeah. And I think just to the point about Moses, he initially demures, right? And then he just goes and says it the same. This would be in, this is a pretty big claim because it would be implying that there's a realm of necessity to which even God is beholden, right?
And that you can understand on its own, right? Even God had to blame that a little bit. Was it? Well, it would imply that certain conditions need to be the case, right?
Now, God could perhaps find these conditions or what have you. Oh, I see. But it would be implying, if not even the further blasphemous indication that no, Moses was just a human founder who put his words in God's mouth, right? Right.
And that would be, that would be saying, and the way you know that is through the fact that he had to go through the next five, all these situations. So let me look at what he says. He says about what makes him great. Says, as one examines their actions and lives, when does not see that they had anything else from fortune in the opportunity?
Or does the opportunity, the opportunity gave them the matter, enabling them to introduce any form they please. Without the opportunity, their virtue spirit would have been eliminated. Without that virtue, the opportunity would have come in vain. And so I think, now, we said, the matter enabled them to introduce any form.
This raw material is an enslaved population that has yet to be determined by any kind of orders, right? It's a dispersed population, a bunch of people just sort of living, sort of non-aggregated or not formed, right? But just sort of living a simple life. Machiavelli is saying is that these men are excellent because they have this opportunity in the virtue to introduce any form.
And you can see the distinction from Aristotle because he's not saying at any point here that they introduced a good form, right? One of the good regimes or the best regime, that's not an issue. That's not something Machiavelli cares about or is especially concerned about. They simply were able to institute a long standing during order, right?
Wouldn't you say also from Aristotle, is this fair to say that Aristotle wouldn't say you can impose any form on any matter? So he doesn't think any people can have any form of government imposed on them. Whereas Machiavelli here says they can. They can impose any form they please.
So I guess I'm just noticing, it seems to me that we already see here a hand that Machiavelli thinks there's greater plasticity or flexibility and the form of government that founders can impose on people. Yeah, and at the very least that imposing a form that doesn't fit Aristotle's schema of good and bad regimes is not undermined their excellence. Because the thing that seems to matter is having an enduring sound. You're having one of those days.
I think there's a lot we could say about here. I really want to focus on this idea of imposing form on matter, right? Because this notion I think has a lot of echoes, specifically in Bacon and Descartes and the way we think of Montersais. Like look, I have engineering students and one of the classes they have is materials.
They learn what the matter can do and what it can't do, heat wise, et cetera. And then from there they think of applications and they engineer around that. That's a core part of the idea. And in natural science, specifically when you're thinking technologically, when you have different materials, right?
You try to think of their applications and how you can form it. And you go back to Descartes and you think of Descartes' wax, right? Wax is his model for all matter. And he says wax has no necessary form, no necessary smell color, all the five senses.
But the key one is form that he focuses in on. And he uses this as a model for all things. All things are mirror extension, mirror physical extension. Anything else I understand mathematically and therefore I can manipulate it very precisely.
To go even further back a little bit, just to Bacon. Bacon starts book two of the New Organats saying they are the natures given to us from experience. But it's also the natures you can impose on things. And if you can understand what he calls the latent processes or structures, the stuff happening beneath the surface, you can then impose on those new natures.
You literally, he's using nature as a function of human will. And the Machivelli's quick passing comment here has, if Bacon didn't have this passage in mind, though he did for sure, he read it and he remarks on it. If he didn't have this passage in mind, at the very least, there is a sort of really echo of this sort of modern marriage of power and knowledge. And specifically to manipulate not just material nature, but here in Machivelli political entities.
You have any idea, and so this is an honor show. We can just skip it if you don't have an answer. Do you have any thoughts as to why all, you know, I try to teach these glasses. I try to make the case that so many of these thinkers were deeply indebted to Machivelli.
And despite the fact that I can provide scant evidence, that's the case. Bacon seems to be the sole exception of the guy that admits to having been influenced by Machivelli. Do you have any idea? I mean, I understand why one wouldn't acknowledge one's debt to Machivelli.
What I have trouble saying is why one would do it. He does it in the voice of one of his... Yeah, but I mean, that's my point is that everyone does it sort of obliquely. And I think that, by the way, most people would not agree with you.
I agree with you, David, but most people would say Shakespeare is not a Machivelli at all. Like it's meant to show, Richard III, for example, is meant to show you that Shakespeare disagrees with Machivelli and thinks that Machivelli is lonely to your ruin. And yet you look at how, who seems to have been extremely Machivelli. In other words, Richard III seems to have not learned that you need to learn how to be good and use it and not use it according to necessity.
Like he was just bad. That's not Machivelli. Yeah, they're not actually Machivelli. The true Machivelli realizes you have to be good sometimes.
I mean, the Bacon connection is interesting because most of the explicit references in writing are from the advancement of learning, right? And he credits him with certain things like going back to the beginning. He's referring, going back to the beginning, understanding how to maintain something in its form. Not getting it down about the higher the low and trying to understand something, so kind of value neutrality or something like that.
There's a number of aspects that he derives from him, but he gives them a wholly natural science bent, which is then put into this whole, given this veneer of Christian charity, right? Which so it's somewhat, somewhat sterilized as he goes through it. So you have this strong connection and then, you know, who's Bacon's secretary but Hobbes, right? And who's reading Bacon's work?
They carved, who acknowledges meeting Machivelli in some letters, right? And then you just kind of go down the line and you can see there's a bit of an echo here, whether it's direct or indirect in some cases, maybe we can debate, but certainly the Machivelli in spirit gets really deep in a majority by Bacon's influence. Yeah. Can we move to the matter that Moses Cyrus Ramas and the CCS found and upon which they imposed their form?
You mentioned that it's necessary for this prince to find a people enslaved. And I agree with that, except I keep coming up against one problem with that. And this chapter is ostensibly about altogether new princes. But every time I read it, I'm like, are they really all together new?
And then they didn't do, they had, it was all virtue, not fortune, but he concedes that actually there was some fortune involved. And with respect to the finding them enslaved, like it was necessary for Moses to find the Jews enslaved. Cyrus needed to find the Persians' mountains. So that's not quite necessity.
And in malcontent isn't quite enslaved. These could not have demonstrated his virtue had not even found the Athenians dispersed. So Moses finds enslaved people, it's necessary to do so. Cyrus needed to find the Persians' mountains.
These could not have without this disburse people. The only one that strikes me is in fact, altogether new is Romulus. And I think that, in other words, there were Persians, there were Jews, there were Athenians, they were just dispersed. The only guy that's actually altogether new in this list, to me it seems, is Romulus.
And even that's problematic, right? There's some ways in which Romulus is. But all of these guys are trying to strive to pretend to be the guy that is altogether new and founds us in Thailand. But Rome, like don't they just say, hey, there's that hill that's go found a city over there?
That one really is altogether new. David, you were trying to jump in? I thought that Rome was just, I thought it was just derivative of Greece though. Yeah, I mean, isn't it all derivative?
The thought you mean and the gods? Yeah. Oh, yeah, sure, even in that point. Yeah, that's a good point.
No, that's a really good point. So he founds the city in the middle of nowhere. That's the part I'm saying all new. But what he does, you're right, he just sort of co-ops entirely, you know, a pantheon.
Yeah, very good. Let me throw out a, I see what you're saying that he's maybe overstating it and so ennobling that and making them. I think to a certain extent that's right, but he's saying they're all together new in Prince and in state, right? Yeah.
So the princes certainly, right. And there was no Jewish prince prior to Moses. Yeah, and there also wasn't the law, right? But there was a Persian, but there was a Persian prince or because they were under the empire that means the Persian king wasn't really.
I'm just, just a gee. Okay. Sorry. Because I think you're right.
I think you're right. I want to clarify. Yeah. Okay.
Go for it. Sorry. Moses is there are covenants, right? They have tribes, right?
There are preexisting and they continue to exist after the fact, but it does seem like you gotta say on some level, there is a new people or new state after the facts, right? We might even want to say the word state here is being used almost in a half, very likely half natural level. It's a half naturalistic, right? Like, it's a state and we think of like, you know, a country or something or that with government.
We might want to say that their state or their status is fundamentally new. And in these four examples, what I try as a student is this isn't just founding a state. Like these are founding peoples, right? Like Cyrus is thought of as the founder of the Persians, not just like the government, but the people and Romulus with Rome, right?
And all these. And the student class, they're like, well, you know, I guess how impressive is it? Like no one considers himself Roman anymore or Persian. Well, actually the Persians do.
But the more interesting example, one that I find really impressive is how Moses's principalities still exist despite being dispersed. And in some strange way, I think Machiavelli might be insinuating that one of its strengths actually is that it's dispersed. Because it doesn't sort of occupy a specific geographic location that can be conquered by others. Like Judaism persists, it's for millennia now, right?
That's really, I mean, it's outlived all of these other empires. Yeah, David, sorry. Why is it Jesus on that listening? So I think I don't know what you want to go ahead, but I think that Jesus is, I mentioned at the beginning that Machiavelli says is going to bring up the greatest examples, but I don't think that he does.
And I think Jesus is lurking in the background of chapter six all the way through, but it's most obvious at the end when Machiavelli turns to discussion of armed and unarmed prophets. And his example of an unarmed prophet is this guy, Brother Gerelimo, who's an, I mean, if you know, if you know, if you know, if you know, if you know, Renaissance history, you know, but like most people don't know who's seven or all is. And so therefore he's not in any stress imagination, the greatest example of an unarmed prophet. And so I think that Machiavelli is compelling you to think about the greatest unarmed prophet ever, Jesus.
And I think he's pointing in fact simultaneously to the, you know, in one lens, the failures of Jesus. And on the other hand, the enormous success of Jesus and Christianity. And I think part of its success is that it's sort of transnational. It's not simply limited to a specific to your application.
I'll belabor this point to the letter I'll jump in, but the beginning of Machiavelli says he wants to imitate someone. I suspect that the person Machiavelli is indicating these imitating in chapter six is in fact Jesus. So he's trying to have a kind of principality that's going to sort of insinuate itself across and through various principalities. Because Machiavelli, like Savon Rola and like Jesus, is unarmed if we think of arms in the very literal sense.
And so if it's the case that Machiavelli is trying to have some political success, it's clear that he's going to have to imitate someone who had success without arms. And I think if you look on page 23 of the Man's Film Translation, when Machiavelli says nothing is more doubtful of success or more dangerous management to put oneself ahead of introducing new orders, and if you put this together with a passage that Machiavelli says at the beginning of the team, it becomes clear that Machiavelli is trying to introduce a new order, which means Machiavelli is trying to put himself in the same category as Moses, Cyrus, Ron, and Cynthia's. But those men all had arms and he doesn't. Then you realize that he's imitating someone else on armed friends.
Now I do think that arms is spoken of equivocally and I think that on one hand it means quite literally do you have weapons. Guns. But on the other hand I think it means your own ideas. And so Machiavelli is trying to figure out how to propagate his ideas throughout the world without the luxury of having arms.
So that was a little too quick and dirty, but. Let me add a little to that. I like when reading the thing about 7 or Rolle to just put Jesus' name there, right? If that's who we think of, then you get something kind of interesting result of it.
He says Moses, Cyrus, the Eastern Rhineless would not have been able to make their peoples observe their constitutions for long if they had been unarmed. It's happened in our times to Jesus. Jesus was ruined in his new orders as soon as the multitude began not to believe in them. And he had no mood for holding firm.
Those who had believed nor for making unbelievers believe. Now if we're right that up through now this praise of Moses at all has been really a subtle appropriation by Machiavelli. That Machiavelli is in the background of this and this is inspiring and perhaps exaggerated but creates a new vision. One that usurps God with Moses.
Then we might say that he's making a 7 or roll out of Jesus. He's going to displace him. That there will be nothing within Christianity that can withstand Machiavelli's new orders. There will be no means for belief.
He might have been right. If you fast forward 500 years you do see greater trust in an idea of an executive ruling by some kind of expertise or formed expertise. And a general kind of an idea of politics as a science rather than relying on prophecy or something like that. Well in just another simple example I draw with students.
How many times a day is mass? Five? He doesn't even know. I don't think it's a three.
Bell rings five times. Okay so I thought mass was five times a day. So then you ask students who go to church regularly and they all raise their hands because they're good Christians. How many times a week you go to church once and some of the really pious ones will very proudly point out that they go twice.
And I'm like, all right well Machiavelli's time you're going five times a day. So five times a day versus twice a week. I mean that's clearly put it into the amount of time and therefore the authority of the church. One other small point that I'm a little bit reluctant to draw out but if Machiavelli's putting Jesus in the same category as Moses, Cyrus, Ronius and B.C.
He's therefore showing that the fantastic accounts of his origins were similarly invented by the authors of the books about him. So I love how you just subtly came to me and thank you. Michael Thalussism. I should ask you some religious questions Greg.
I'm not Catholic. There will no no but you're you profess to be something. I do. And that calls it yours.
I mean F3. I don't mean the Protestant trade. Well you're not a good guy. So I wonder Greg this is just a true thought that's currently now but to what extent do you think then this?
Because when he talks about Moses, it's strange right. She was an executor of the things that had been ordered for him by God. He said and then it turns out he spoke with God. I guess suppose that's how he got the orders.
Yeah. Then we find out that the things he did were no different than Cyrus. So this is odd relationship between God and his earthly instantiation or. We should point out that for what it's worth the Bible actually does speak of having its God's hand on Cyrus.
So that is a funny example. In other words, the Bible does say that Cyrus executed things because God made him do it too. That's just an interesting sorry. There's just that I need to derail the conversation.
But I wonder if Moses is writing a book in which he claims he spoke with God. Is that not in a way similar to a man who claims to be the son of God or has his direct connection? So I wonder if there's a more convenient example to discuss. Absolutely.
No, that's exactly right. I think that that's exactly what he's saying. Let me try the following. What's the more reasonable count of Moses that he was the son of Jews and thrown into a river and rescued by the princess?
Or that he actually was the children of royalty in Egypt. It just seems a lot more likely. What's more likely that Ron is the son of a prostitute? Or that he was raised by a prostitute?
He was raised by a wolf friend. What's the more reasonable count of the key figure in Christianity? I think I think my revelation is quite clear. Watch your step.
Watch your step. We need to shut this down, Greg. That's truffle. I'm not saying...
I love that the ox way, Greg, just raises the heaviest sh**. More likely you can switch to a magician or those stories are just all made up. Go ahead, Greg. I don't want to be on this slide.
Let's see how far you push it. What's more likely, Greg gets up at 5 a.m. to work out in the freezing cold with a Christian group. Or that's the only time he can get away from his wife to go have a knockabout in the park.
Why aren't those both true? That's more likely Greg blacks up at 4 p.m. or he's translating to Hellenica. So that's what's going on there in Chapter 6.
I think this sets up... There is more. We didn't talk about the armed, unearned profit stuff. I think we've done enough for the purpose of the episode.
I think there's an interesting connection between... I know you want to say something about Chapter 7, but he immediately goes on in Chapter 7. That's where he discusses spiritual authority versus temporal authority. Right?
Right. And power. And there's a kind of... There's already an intimation of this here.
Right? God, Jesus, but also Machiavelli is science, politics. That makes what they do, you know, more like the same. Yeah.
I do want to hold on to that armed, unarmed distinction for a moment. Because Machialli says the armed profits succeed, the unarmed profit wins, don't succeed. So if Machialli is truly unarmed, how are we going to be successful? That's a puzzle.
But then also the implications that Romulus, Cyrus, Moses and pieces were all armed. We all know the famous passage from Exodus that we've already alluded to. What Moses does with the Jews when he finds out that they've been worshiping the gold calf. So we know that Moses did employ arms.
So that's there too, I would say. So then when you think about the context of Christianity, how was Christianity successful given that Jesus was unarmed? Well, you know, maybe he was armed with ideas, but not very helpful. Or maybe he was helpful, but not thinking about this.
One could argue that Christianity was successful despite the fact that Jesus was unarmed, but that then only seems to me begs the question, what was it that made it successful if it was unarmed? Now it's also possible that one could argue that Christianity was only successful once actually it became united with arms, under sort of Constantine and the Empire or something like that. But still that sort of begs the question of what is it about Christianity that made it attractive to an emperor, such that he would incorporate it into the regime. Anyway, there's just all this interesting part about what do you do with weapons?
What can you do with weapons? I'll also point out, by the way, our own arms in virtue, I think I've discovered that that line Machiavelli lifts out of his enemies and out of his by the way. So just a small point passes. It's interesting.
Yeah. Well, it's going to be an example of a meditation. I think the interesting thing about Jesus is well, he's unarmed, but where is his principality? He says it's in heaven.
Yeah. And it plays on very important desires that are especially active under the Roman Empire, a lot of fear. Yeah, sure. A desire for some sort of redemption from your veil of tears.
And so there's a way in which he doesn't need to be armed because he's not actually trying to isolate a piece of land. He doesn't need land for his thing. It's all in the passions and in your hopes. But he does want a temple.
Yeah. And that seems to be the act in the gospels that initiates what we're all from, the trialing execution of Jesus. Right. And that seems to be the thing that really sets the Jewish authorities in motion.
Right. That's interesting. Yeah. And he does, by the way, in one of the gospels, Jesus is armed actually when he tries to take over the temple with a whip.
So not heavily armed as it were. I don't know what you want to do with that. I had on the agenda when we talked about Chapter 7, but I don't know. We just hold off on that for when we do Chapter 7, the Messer of Mira to work out example, which I find really interesting.
And when we talk about it, I'll try to connect it to this discussion of the former Saxon Princess meaning. So let's ask our fans, which we need to call it with an even for our fans. I suggest the the, uh, a Roman, I think that would be good. Nope.
Nope. The love is. Thank tankers. The buggered.
I'm thinking about the clouds, right? We just lost all our fans. So you, uh, you little buggers out there. Why don't you tell us?
Did you like this episode? Would you like to do us to do Chapter 7? Let us know. She was an email.
Tweet. Look how much with the better name. I don't want something like ditto heads, but, you know, something we need a name for our fans. You know, come up with a name.
I get tweets from people all the time. Like, I'm an Alex. Oh, you're such a David. I get that.
People are naming themselves. You know, like Sex and City, which is not coming back. Jeez. Thank goodness.
That's shameful. Don't be. Engagement is on our profits. I'll take you guys.
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