Welcome back to the new Thinkery. My name is David Barr as usual with me is Alex Priyu. How's it going David? Going well and Greg McBrayer.
Hey how's it going? Good. I wanted to start with a little story so I'm with over at my in-laws in North Carolina. We're hanging out in the backyard of kids inflatable pool and it's hot and it's just unpleasant coming in as a father to just sit there.
I'm looking around I see this hawk way up in the tree it's like 20 feet away though and it's just hanging out and it's a magnificent bird if you've ever been close to a hawk. And all of a sudden it kind of like creams toward the ground that clutches up a baby rabbit and my mother-in-law had earlier told the story to my children that there was this family of rabbits outside and to keep your eyes peeled because they might see the baby rabbit my daughters two and a half so baby rabbit baby rabbit and there ain't no more baby rabbit but it's like a great segue to Machiavelli it's a lesson these kids need to learn a little early in life right that's kind of the world yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and I was gonna invent like my own augary around it oh that's you had to and join them to go otherwise they'll end up taken away by a big bird but anyway are you writing them children's my book about how to raise children David no oh no you should why have to wait till they're older oh I see make sure they turn out okay first yeah yeah yeah I think I think you'd be good to write a sock for dummies that's what this sounds like a sock was an ancient fabulous I thought the a sock for dummies was a French version of Fontaine I guess you know a Fontaine for dummies yeah yeah so today we're talking about Machiavelli's the Prince books published in 1532 it doesn't need much of an introduction I think most of our listeners are well acquainted with the book they know who Machiavelli is or at least heard of Machiavelli in some capacity but I think you know brief refresh is probably useful so Greg I know you taught both you announced actually on this book recently you kind of describe what kind of text it is I mean it's fairly short there are 26 chapters but what is it I mean is it a treatise it's sometimes taught it's sometimes described as a philosophic book it's other times described as a book of political science so to its weird kind of seemingly hybrid text but what's Machiavelli doing what's the structure of the book what's at play here just what's it gives a general introduction yeah sure so this book would have been what had been written early 1500s I guess it was published until after Machiavelli's death but it was circulated before his death among friends but I think even more broadly actually more widely you might know it David actually Shakespeare quotes Machiavelli not much later so there's some idea that this is actually percolating out there and doing out for what kind of a book is it gosh it's in a way it seems softly conventional or customary there was a kind of a book called mirrors and princes and this book would seem to fall into that category it's shorts and seems to offer advice to princes on how to rule I think is an egalitarian way out very neatly for us a little bit later that that appearance is somewhat deceiving it's not actually simply a mirror princess is actually something much more novel something much more radically it's short as I mentioned a mere 26 chapters plus an epistledictory one could read it in the evening if one wanted to what kind of a book is it I think it's fun I enjoy reading it I think it's actually quite funny I think they're jokes and but you have to be maybe a certain type to find these jokes maybe not a nice person but a nasty person Machialli has this one going in the book I mean is it's popular everywhere I mean from the lowest rungs of society to well academics are already on the lower rung but yeah it's too much reputation to talk as an album album album see I should be a new number yeah yeah yeah no I own it and so so he's a favorite among rappers yeah and this is also where Joaquin Valley kind of cements his reputation as a teacher evil which we can talk about later I hope we do talk about that for sure I think that the reputation for evil or nastiness is is definitely warranted at least warrants an initial kind of investigation I mean he seems to be trying to corrupt us and to make us sort of morally bad but using humor on other things as the tools I do what we return to that the book as I see it 26 chapters or so but it falls into four main parts the first part of the book fairly straightforward fairly straightforward seemingly straightforwardly tries to sort of lay out the various kinds of principalities or different types of regimes or rule by princes he's not gonna talk about other kinds of government he's not gonna talk about republics the only other kind he says so he goes through in the first eleven chapters outlining various kinds of ways the principalities can be run run he talks about things all kinds of distinctions like between hereditary principalities versus acquired principalities there's chapter on ecclesiastical principalities seemingly run by the church this just attacks on me it seems to be simply a taxonomy of types of principalities the next part is sort of famous where Machialli lays out it's only three chapters it's so much short he lays out sort of four policy for prints how prints ought to behave or treat enemies this is big this contains the famous discussion of one's own arms different kinds of arms one's own arms mercenary arms of the other arms the next set of chapters chapters 15 to 23 seems to be an investigation of the qualities that prints off to have what should Prince be like how should he treat his subjects and friends so there's you see a distinction there the previous chapters were on how a friendship paid for enemies then you have a sort of set of chapters about how Princess should behave towards friends and the qualities that a good prince ought to have there's obviously a lot being mixed up in there and we'll get to that in just a moment the final set of chapters as I understand it seemed to do with prudence and chance or if I were to speak more generally Machialli's view of the world and how human beings ought to operate in the world given their this particular understanding of the world now if I were to say you know if you were to compel me to say okay what if one or two or three or four things that one should talk about about this book I think I've already sort of indicated some of the book maybe first would be Machialli's account of nature and fortune so how human beings ought to act in the world with respect to fortune that seems to be extremely important second another topic I just mentioned we should talk about Machialli's account of virtue and relying on your own arms so there's something about being an excellent human being has to do with being sort of used to lose terminology self-sufficient being able to depend upon yourself not depending upon others thirdly Machialli seems to sort of disregard previous political philosophy previous thought for being overly fantastic imaginative and he seems to be saying look let's look at the way the world really is and let's be realistic about things so Machialli has a turn to realism and then lastly I mean you mentioned it's what he's sort of famous if not infamous for this reputation for evil I only mention of course that I mean this guy Machialli has a word there's an English word derived from his name Machialli and that this anonymous but being nasty or evil or underhanded Plato by contrast right has an adjective for his platonic and I believe it's what girls would say to you David in high school in college when you would ask them out they say no they want to just be platonic so Plato friendly Machialli NASA well that's when I had to turn Machialli and actually writes romance novels about how the congru you know something else well he would get me too faster than he was you know it's not the exact but really quick before we we dive in just one or two sentences on what the project is in the prints I know that's very difficult you have a paper that's coming out sure on on one of maybe he has a few different projects but yeah just say very briefly sure I get to say things that sound like I'm exaggerating or being hyperbolic I suppose I so Machialli is writing the 1500s the world the West the world is corrupt as he sees it I think he has grand divisions for himself I think he sees himself in the same plane as Socrates or a Jesus I think he sees himself as someone who's going to try and change the world for the better and principally what that means I think he's going to try and improve politics such that the lives of all human beings but I guess especially those in the West I will be improved and the chief I am hesitant to say this but I think the chief obstacle to human happiness as Machialli sees it in the 1500s is the current religion in which the world has found itself so I see Machialli is tackling directly head on the Catholic Church but if I'm being honest even more generally I think Christianity he thinks that it has left people sort of to the pro he's left human beings this is really counter to it but it's left us to be prey to princes who would rule us completely to their own benefit so I think he's actually trying to usher in something like the modern world that we all have it so if I were to you know why should one study this book my pitch to students is always we without even knowing it or Machiavellians we live in the world that he began to set in motion there's so many ways that one could trace this and his influence is on modern science which I hope Alex will speak about and his influence on politics is just on the bible he influenced the later thinkers like Hobbes the nose a lock who would then in turn influence for example say the federal papers in Madison so in many ways the United States of America is a regime that by hooker by Crookan Directly is ultimately Machialli's responsible I think yeah and certainly the the notion of you know ambition counteracting ambition has you know Machiavellian psychology behind it about the point about Christianity I think it's important to recognize the particular version of Christianity that had risen up in his time I think especially focusing on Julius the second and the way in which he used Christianity as a political tool definitely you know I think when you look at that and he's I think he's in a way Machiavellian's ideal of a prince much more than Joseph Orgia for example but in any case I do think that there's a there's a there was a kind of Christianity in a certain use of Christianity politically as a sort of using the spiritual power to increase in power as he would as he would put it that no from Machiavelli was threatened to be very insidious to politics I'm not sure that the Machiavellian project would have worked a few hundred years before not that's the second yeah I think the political turmoil being what it was in addition to the aspirations of the church that set the stage for a much as it did with big and a decarthest you know the status of Christianity when you're engaging these sort of sectarian wars you have all this disenfranchised Christian sentiment I think that creates the necessity for some some alternative or some outlet or some revival of what you know is set aside by this Machiavelli being a kind of Roman or like virtue no no question I'll just say also I mean this will undercut my contention that Machiavelli's a nasty guy but I think I think he was actually somewhat impressed by and sought to imitate I think it was sympathetic to the goals of Christianity to improve the lives of human beings and maybe we'll get to this later on I think he actually was also somewhat impressed by the modes or the ways in which Christianity had sort of tried to achieve its goals and therefore imitated it yeah sorry did you want to say something else no go ahead I think this is something that we've discussed off the air before but one way I can some listeners maybe I think rightly incredulous when they hear us describe Machiavelli is having ushered in this world historical change but in one way to evaluate what we're saying is simply by looking at and this is where I think Alex and Greg you know better than I what philosophers that immediately followed him in thought and in time said about Machiavelli and also what they didn't say about him directly because I think we forget now to call somebody a Machiavellian I mean there are books written with Machiavellian in the title and it's like MBAs for the Machiavellian are like you know what I'm saying it's like their business advice books yeah and it's all kind of a joke I think they may have missed one of the fundamental points but yes yes right we're right and so but that was a very sturdy accusation no I know I'm saying he's a very very serious so I mean so just a backtrack some of the philosophers like bacon and I think Alex can illuminate this well that I took up his project and we're making this claim that he had a project the eggshells of Machiavelli the aroma of Machiavelli are about bacon but it's it's a lot of these guys are saying his name directly yeah I would add on that right so just to go back to something Greg said about you know Machiavelli maybe sharing some Christian sentiment certainly you know the way he sets up the prince as a gift there's a kind of generosity right if we discount the simple-minded view that that Machiavelli is actually looking for a job just you know obviously a bit ridiculous considering never published the work and there's no evidence he gave it to Lorenzo and we have to ask what is this conceit about why this idea of a gift of knowledge to those in power you know bacon does a similar thing in the great institution where he presents the work as you know to James the first King James first of England likewise to endicard there's this great virtue of generosity in those ways I think you do see a continued Christian impulse a kind of charity we could even call it that runs through these modern thinkers what to the point about the connection with Machiavelli to bacon at one point in the advancement of learning bacon cites the first chapter of book three of the discourses on living and when he cites it he said he's basically saying something through the fact that I'm going to expand upon what Machiavelli has disclosed here about government and that's his other nature right off yeah yeah as much longer but this was on the first ten books of Titus living for the listeners I'll just read the first sentence it is a very true thing that all worldly things have a limit to their life a kind of natural that we could say but generally those go to the whole course that is ordered for them by heaven so I think this is nature's chances seems like that do not disorder their body but keep it ordered to this keep it ordered to their own hands so that either it's does not alter or if it alters is for safety and not to it's a harm so there's an attempt to undercut that part of nature that's dictated by chance or by fortune Machiavelli says that that bacon wants to to expand to a kind of natural science that would be one I think important parallel that bacon is explicitly saying I got this from Machiavelli can I just jump in here and say there are thinkers bacon mentions she mentions Machiavelli a few times but you're right David that because of this reputation that Machiavelli has for nastiness there's a disinclination to point out your connection to him and so the project that I'm saying and you know listeners probably you know if they're not already persuaded by us and not just our friends and family you know they're gonna like a sounds a little preposterous and to be honest I think that that's their right to be suspicious they were just making this all up but I mean I think I think that you put your finger on the reason why we can't point to this direct influence on thinkers like Hobbes and Locke because they don't mention him by name there are some passages that believe me to think that it seems clear that they were indebted to Machiavelli so Hobbes account of human nature right sounds nasty and it sounds just like the account of human nature that Machiavelli gives in the Prince chapter 17 right the matter of people and I'm grateful and pretenders and evaders of danger and they're scared right this sort of similar dark view of human nature left to itself and to what extent even as the entire state of nature conceit sort of based on a Machiavelli an idea or Machiavelli distinction between foundings and perpetuations right or foundings and maintaining I think that that inclination the seat of that is there in the state of nature Locke for example we'll talk about human acquisitiveness and how that's a very natural thing that comes straight out of Machiavelli as well Machiavelli thinks that human nature is by nature acquisitive and so I think you see the seeds I have a little I have another example I'd be happy to give that's a little more sometimes when I read Machiavelli my students they roll their eyes because I get sometimes deep into this the numbers business but so Machiavelli in the first chapter lists 13 types of principalities there's some indication other places that we can put this later if we need to but 13 is important number for Machiavelli the chapter where Hobbes lays out the state of nature is the 13th chapter of his famous Leviathan so that's that is only circumstantial evidence I realize that if you're already skeptical much you're not gonna be persuaded by that but there are these little nuggets I think that you start to see the influence being fleshed out but I think I think we can even just take a there's right so bacon clearly is influenced by Machiavelli there's also some amazing parallels between Descartes work and Bacons so the point that I was reading an interesting article by French Cardamac de Velli? No by Andre Lalonde you're saying you're saying between Descartes and Bacon did you mean? Descartes and Bacon yes and you can see him almost plagiarizing certain passages of bacon but in addition then you see in Hobbes you know something important parallels with Descartes right the cognitive for example right sure the cognitive is a manifestation in Descartes of the will to have something firm and established firm and lasting in the sciences so that's a better master nature right but you know a biconian concept clearly derived from from Machiavelli that Hobbes to share so it's not that parallel so even if it isn't a direct influence I think very strong cases can be made for the ideas changing form and still finding their way into later things to say nothing of I think in some of Locke's private communications he indicates his strong affinity and his deep reading of Machiavelli.
Yeah that's right let's get into some of kind of the nuts and bolts Greg you delineated kind of four themes in the text that you usually guide students toward I mean you'll do a straight you'll do reading straight through but yeah we could potentially just take one of these themes and trace it up through I mean with the clairian mind the claim that Machiavelli is the founder of modernity that probably needs to be explained but we can trace his kind of understanding of nature is re reimagining of nature or philosophy that's another good topic and see how kind of philosophers after Machiavelli took that idea and changed the course of the world with it. Yeah I mean we should definitely talk about let's take up first this question of nature and fortune I mean the last three chapters of the Prince deal with this directly if I could sort of lay out the problem and I think I'll let Alice jump in here and clarify. Before you do let me just say I'm obviously the undergraduate in this stupid podcast. I am.
Whoa whoa whoa I'm just kidding I'm just this podcast isn't stupid. No no it's my education. I should be so thankful to both of you. I listen we didn't the entrance to figure out nature why the hell do I need a reinterpretation from Machiavelli right isn't Plato Aristotle sufficient.
I think that's an excellent question yeah so as we as you look at the 25th chapter I'll go back and forth here jump around just a little bit but this worries speaks about it most clearly but I think you'll see two general things that I would point out here with respect to how Machiavelli is nature different from the ancient and then Alex jump as well. I think the the ancient they took nature as their guide so yeah they clearly I think they had an understanding of nature maybe we can debate a little bit how similar it was to Machiavelli's but in general aerosol for example right nature provides us with we'll do a podcast on aerosol we can show this is problematic but I'll give a kind of overview of aerosol nature gives us the guide nature gives us the the telos the end and insofar as it does that we then can pursue it so we should live our life in accordance with nature yes nature all to exaggerate is good I mean as far as it provides us with these standards for Machiavelli nature is nasty nature is not hospitable to human flourishing it throws up roadblocks all over the place and if you want to succeed in life you have to conquer nature you have to he he deifies nature into the in for into fortune this ancient pagan goddess and so he flips back and forth between speak about nature and fortune in these last few chapters and when he's talking about fortune I mean really the idea here is you have to conquer it so the first major distinction I would say between the ancients and Machiavelli is his just his stance toward nature it's something to be conquered it's something to be surpassed it's not it's not something that provides a goal it's something that you know by nature should human beings fly no but but we can conquer that right I give a run small example of this and I'll move on right when a city floods we moderns being influenced by Machiavelli think well we need to build better levies or we need to do so we need to work a straight or city in some better way the ancients would have said the fact that your city flooded is a sign that you're he gristically building cities where you should be building them the gods don't want you to do so there that's the first thing the second thing I'm sorry to dominate this but so the first thing is the stance right the posture toward nature the second thing is focus on only a part of nature for air cell there were different facets of nature that one had to sort of try to understand one understand the thing the material cause the formal cause the final cause the efficient boss for Machiavelli the efficient cause is what he really wants to focus on we just we need to figure out how to make things work I don't care if we understand some deeper truth or he definitely doesn't care about metaphysical truth or anything like this but he may in fact personally but at least outwardly that's not what's important what's important is efficiency how can we be effective in the world you should jump in here Alex is important I know you want to tell you yeah I think one thing I'd add to that is that according to the rest of the tea and then I use that term loosely I think you've been using it to yeah it's not just nature but experience right ordinary experience is reliable therefore also ordinary language when we speak about the world according to the way it seems to us it generally reflects the way things are right yeah the dog I see is is going to have that persisting form over time right subject to generation of parishion of course but it has a kind of persistence in its in its natural kind or its natural form that's then reflected in my experience and therefore in my speech this is not the case with with the these early moderns right for Machiavelli right especially when it comes to political things and this is much more the case with bacon and Descartes the form is something imposed upon matter something that's imposed by a human will on matter and this reorientation right yeah yeah this so for for Aristotle matter matter takes on a certain form according to the sort of reproduction of a natural kind let's say right but according to Descartes and and bacon especially Descartes when he uses the example of the wax I don't think people realize often how powerful this is you're imposing a kind of form on to matter you're looking at all of matter as though it is wax it's only can be molded to whatever you want right and that reflects a very I think modern view that's that's foreign to aerosol another distinction I would draw on the political level as opposed to the level of natural kinds or objects in the world is that for aerosol right man is a rational animal therefore political you know we are at home in the political world that's where our perfection is to be found as moral political beings again this is a risk to tell you this is a sort of rush-out version according to Machiavelli or actually let's just look at Hobbes because it's a bit clearer there man is not going to inclined to politics except because the state of nature is so ugly because life there is so nasty British and short so our desire to go into a political arrangement or political community is a self-serving idea it's for the sake of our self-preservation not for the perfection of our nature it's kind of brute animal impulse as opposed to a kind of higher human purpose and so man's relationship to politics fundamentally changes as well where we're going there in there for self-interested as in as opposed to sort of more generally moral or political purposes would be the Aristotelian position right and since the importance of the founder right the founder is one who's bringing order to the political out of disordered right I mean this is why these excellent princes they talked about chapter six are so important these are the guys who are I mean like you said right there they're imposing order on the world they're bringing it into being and that's why he's much more interested in the effective cause the efficient cause the matter is less important than the efficient guy who's giving form to the matter yeah that's excellent so Machiavelli sorry question Machiavelli sees himself making a distinct is it fair to say that he understands his project we make an explicit break with the ancients while at the same time he seems to rely heavily especially in the discourses on on the ancients themselves and Greg you earlier use this phrase mirror of princes we can explain that but these these paragons of of states and formachialli they're all ancient examples for the most part no question and so to your question of is there a rejection of the ancients by Aristotel and that's or something that's about as explicit as it can be in the prince without being explicit means yes he's rejecting Aristotle he's rejecting Plato and he's rejecting the thinkers he's rejecting the Greek philosophers I think I think I heard Mansfield say one time that he suspects that Machiavelli could read Greek but that he's oppressed that in his writing and so didn't you know didn't want people to know that he read this sort of pansy sort of soft Greek philosophy stuff so you're right in the discourses there is a kind of return to ancient things but it's it's a return to the ancient Roman virtues so it's a return to the action so he admires the ancient actors Alexander Caesar right but he doesn't give any indication whatsoever that he admires the ancient philosophers yeah I would add to that that when he tells their stories it's Machiavelli's version right which is not to say he's being dishonest but saying that the lessons he draws from it the way that he casts it they fit his narrative right how he understands their actions so I think this is nowhere clearer than with Moses right where Moses fits into you know the narrative of Exodus and that narrative has Moses you know being aided by God and Machiavelli acknowledges this but sets it aside and says yeah but you can understand it wholly in terms of my science of politics and when you do that you've you've in a way created a new theory to fit old facts right just as you can have a you know a geocentric and heliocentric view of the solar system or the planetary system I guess we call it you can have two different theories to fit the facts everything looks the same is recognizable yet the lessons gleaned from it are distinctively Machiavelli so the ancient examples are often fit into this narrative of necessity of fortune of virtue etc etc of of a enslaved and dispersed people as he puts it in that chapter chapter six of the Prince as a sort of indeterminate form ready to take on indeterminate matter rather ready to take on whatever form you want that's a very Machiavelli way of reading these stories and so while you know it seems like a nod to you know the biblical author or xenophon or etc the new author is Machiavelli and I would venture to say that that's often the case if not always the case in the way he tells these stories this is why I think it's so important to look at his sources and how he differs from the sources because I think they're in show you see the sort of radical shift of his projects what he's leading out of what he's changing so I guess this is a this is a stumbling block for some people but we're talking about Machiavelli like he's a philosopher three of us contend he's a philosopher but he doesn't if you were to pick up the prince or the discourses they don't read like your characteristic books of philosophy they're not programmatic they're not systemic like Kant I mean this is you don't systematic attention too much to the news lately yeah well anyway those people philosophy yeah so I'm not gonna touch that Alex but so so he doesn't he doesn't read like a philosopher with any kind of system yet we're talking about him as if a Machiavellian lens can be applied a lens of analysis can be applied to events how does that work I'll take it even when you read him right and you were just talking about the footnotes right Alex I think the disjunction between what Machiavelli seems to be saying to the casual reader versus the reader that chases down the footnotes and discovers that he's in fact mangling them the primary sources yeah yeah I think just to that point quickly I mean I think what Machiavelli would say is he reads these texts judiciously this is how he speaks about the Bible for example but so in general I think that the Alex's point is spot on he's he's using I think a contemporary language is appropriating these these texts for his purposes to your question of his Machiavelli a philosopher not I have a couple points one is you're absolutely right Machiavelli this gets to what I was saying just a moment ago about his if it's true that he read Greek I have no idea about it if it's true and I think the reason that Mansfield will say something like this is that if this is true it would seem to have lied at Machiavelli if he was a philosopher was trying to suppress that fact he didn't want to widely know that he was a philosopher now why would he would not want that known that's a whole another can't or else but let me just sidestep that and address the question whether I was a philosopher there's there are a few giveaways there few there sprinkled here and there I'll just give a few in chapter 14 of the Prince he's when he's talking about what a Prince should know he really I mean he says some things that really sort of change I think the tone a little bit is a little out of step with what came before it's also how Prince is also the nature of things he repeats this phrase over and over so there's a small but if we understand a philosophy some just trying to understand nature that's there we've already mentioned that real quick before you go out to this chapter 14 I think so he says there that almost a whole of the the Princess knowledge is art of work right yeah and I think what you're referring to is this is it a Philip Boyman right and he's he's out on campaign and he whether in peace or in war he's thinking about war and one of the ways he does that is even when he's just out hunting or he's out with or you know they're moving forward and they have yet to meet the enemy he's talking about the lay of the land talking about where the enemy could surprise them and how maybe you would approach a hill right in case there's somebody behind it to make sure that you're secure against it right these sorts of conditions are questions of practical wisdom right and the sort of inquiry the speculative inquiry there is is a sort of contemplative version of that kind of investigation of practice in the most far-reaching sense this is very similar what you see in bacon I think but I think it is important to recognize that that when we when we start thinking about how science is incorporated into society now and we're trying to investigate all the different possible things that could go wrong right you know when the Pentagon is coming up with all sorts of contingency plans should you know x y or z you know improbable situation arrived that's a kind of version of that that speculative investigation of the role of chance in human life which is a kind of investigation of nature maybe not akin to the ancient investigation of nature but I think it's enough to say that he's a he's a modern philosopher in that sense but sorry just no no that's great I just want to add that in that same chapter he seems to divide the things it's weird because he's actually writing about war military things right but the first part really talks about how the prince should know nature he goes through these kinds of examples that Alex just mentioned but then the second thing the prince also know I would say would be the human things and so there's this convention this sort of accepted philosophic scene between understanding nature and then understanding humans is somehow different from or part of nature but understood differently so I'm right so the end of chapter 14 he talks about the books that a prince author he and it's I would say those are books that sort of try to lay out on understanding human nature mostly those books are not full books by philosophers but there is one notable exception Xenophon who was a student of Socrates and so he does tip his hand a little bit I think there and say actually I am interested in these and that's and the only book by the way in the entire book the prince that Machiavelli recommends to us to read is a book by Xenophon so there is this strange way that he's tacitly pointing to the fact that Xenophon might have helped him to understand the way the world is so interestingly enough Xenophon until you know recently thanks to your single-handed Herculean effort Greg thank you very much given the credit as I mean benefit loss I think you're kind of downplaying it a touch but yeah fun I think another place point to bring up I think maybe you're working towards this Greg was the one time philosophy or philosopher is used in the Prince's oh this was you and I were talking about this recently and this is something I don't think I paid suspicion attention to this that's great you're talking about the chapter 19 yeah yeah and the problem just to lay out the kind of political issue that he's that he's considering there is that in Rome right to appease the military you had to be too cool to appease the people and to appease the people you had to be too merciful to appease the army and so every prince was in a way sort of doomed right from the beginning and he kind of breaks them into two categories those were too cool those are too merciful and the only exception to this really is is Marcus Aurelius right right and he's he's called a philosopher it's called the philosopher I think and he and he says the only reason he was able to rule well I think if I remember right is because he was born into the situation which I think a very revealing clue about the nature of Machiavelli's philosophy and I think this helps us understand how he is a philosopher we just follow the steps right Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher who by chance happened to have power right Machiavelli does not have power Lorenzo to meditate whom the prince is dedicated he has the power and Machiavelli is writing him with his knowledge one of them being this lesson about Marcus Aurelius so it seems like Marcus Aurelius had by fortune what Machiavelli does not have Machiavelli notes he is you know a horrible fortune that he's got and so he's in a way by appealing to Lorenzo and maybe we could touch on the rhetorical aspect of the prince because I think this gets at the nub of relationship of philosophy of politics that's distinctive of his understanding of philosophy but in addressing him to Lorenzo I think he's trying to achieve that unification of knowledge and political power that the ancient never would have ventured that bacon certainly right is most famous Dixon which isn't really the bacon but the idea that knowledge is power that sort of unity of knowledge of power that Marcus Aurelius had Machiavelli's trying to achieve and I think that's one last point to David's point I think that that I lost my train I thought go ahead I was just you keep going because I just had one small point to make here was that I think that precisely to try and bring about what never would have happened except by chance this union of political power and philosophy I think that's partly key you tell me if I'm wrong Alice to why he's maybe not broadcasting that he's a philosopher in other words philosophy has a certain invitation philosophers are thought to be these unrealistic head in the clouds types and so to the extent that he wants to bring about this union he has to radically revise either the image of philosophy or it has to recast himself as something other than a philosopher I don't know if that helps but yeah I didn't mean to be able to track you wrong let me add to that but first to go back to the prior point I remember those to say perhaps a disorderly manner in which his thought is presented or the less than systematic or to use David's term systemic whatever the work perhaps that's owed to the fact that he's appealing not to fellow philosophers or to a prince but I would also say on that point when Machiavelli talks about conquering fortune we have to ask to what extent is that possible what aspect of fortune can we conquer I think we all know and there's countless articles and books written on aspects of this that Machiavelli's rules have exceptions in fact he often contradicts his rules right there's exceptions or something offered within the same chapter as when he's laying out these rules you find exceptions to them and we realize I think after a while that well by objecting Tim we're already playing his game and anybody who's interested in political power who reads Machiavelli objects to him has already bought into the Machiavelli project if not these specific rules these Machiavellian rules and perhaps is that relationship that people begin to take science more seriously or what the investigation of history of the human things can lend political practice that's the part of fortune he's trying to conquer right to give philosophy a former place in the city that the ancients were pretty clear it's just not gonna happen does that make sense at all right that there's a specific part of fortune that he seems especially interested in conquering and that concerns the fortune of philosophy or the philosopher how is he securing philosophy he's placed in a way that Plato didn't well so I would you know first of all Plato you know doesn't address princess specific right right and when he does promise you know in the Republic it seems like he promises that his education will make you politically efficacious and it involves a lot of math and with the exception of Lincoln I don't think many states have like math right a lot of metaphysical investigations it takes a long time of investigating abstract topics that you know seem completely devoid from politics so it has a kind of tempering effect or a kind of an effect of rejecting you know the the person who might go there to see practical political wisdom I don't think you get the same with Machiavelli right I've heard I've heard it said this might be you know made up that what's his name the Italian dictator Mussolini Mussolini had a copy of the Prince right by his no cheese by his bed I don't think anybody would say that at the Republic right when Mussolini have the Republic apparently that I had told a reference to Plato's law is worth really yeah but so I think that the the Plato's political project such as it was the political efficacy was trying to make philosophy respectful within the city making it tolerated I think that Machiavelli was trying to make philosophy useful to the city make it sort of like hey I'm gonna we're gonna come in and we're gonna advise you and I guess and we're gonna do it politics we're also gonna do a natural science you're gonna have this bacon guy who's gonna come along and say we're gonna listen we're gonna call him philosophers anymore right we call them scientists I mean I don't know how much hopefully this will get published during the what we're going through right now maybe I'll come to an end hopefully before but right with the coronavirus I guess I said that wrong anyway the coronavirus I mean look at how often we're just like if someone's a scientist we just and I'm not saying this is bad I'm just saying like we just listen to them all right I think that that's a new thing in the world in the last 500 years where we just this there's this new class of people and by virtue of having scientists attached to the name they have some authority and I think that we don't call them philosophers but that they're people who inquire into the nature of at least the natural world yeah and I was just just a your first player I'm making philosophy useful I'd say he makes philosophy tolerable by making it yeah appear useful to yeah the city well how much of that is how much of that what I don't get is how much of that is dependent on a careful or esoteric reading of Machiavelli and how much of that is just on the search a question I would say I would say almost not at all I mean when you read the Prince even at a first glance right when in chapter two you know just take a basic lessons the natural Prince right the hereditary Prince but he calls it natural there they're pretty secure maybe by some chance event you'll you'll lose it but you know more or less it's guaranteed that you'll get it back chapter three that's out the window right Machiavelli shows how his lessons drawn from history can allow you to overcome the strength of the insurance and it just grows from there till he shows that through you know these the proper study of these things or at least listening to him you can really become a founder and that's just explicitly the lesson he's trying or the view he's trying to impart to Lorenzo in chapter 26 at the end of the book so I think the most superficial reading that doesn't investigate any of his examples which kind of follows them for for what he claims that they teach you that alone creates a kind of of desire for his knowledge at least that's the way that the work is rhetorically structured right I think that's right but I also think his influence on others and I think Machiavelli was conscious that some of his bigger effects would be indirect that others would have to sort of take up the task that came after him hops for no's sake you know it's interesting you think about that it's all it takes is lightning to strike like all it took was two or three people getting it that's right and in the world shifts in a different direction intellectually and that's that's amazing right so all these f***ing idiots reading his book right right wherever you like I was gonna say what was the Shakespeare line every time dick and hair thousand people reading this book and they don't pick up on any of it and then bacon comes along the car comes along walk it's amazing they seem to get it and they seem to carry on this conversation with one another but some people reject that I don't know yeah and I think it's important to know that that though we have we can have moral outrage and people that have moral outrage of Machiavelli's teaching you know you mentioned these books right like how to be a Machiavellian baker or whatever there's also an aspect of it that's that's quite you know intriguing you know it's transgressive and you know the reader is inclined to find something interesting about and I think for the right person Machiavelli understood that precisely what makes him you know still condemned or damned also makes him quite interesting right the fact that it's compelling I mean we've all met people who try to be conniving or you know try to be you know tricky and you know they're kind of dumb right and she just kind of write them off the fact that he's so smart and he surprises you page after page keeps you reading like a good detective novel or something like that I'm always amazed by decent students who are delighted by reading Machiavelli it's a strange phenomenon I mean they sort of a there's this sort of vicarious delight that they take in sort of bad things happening I think and maybe we should talk at some point about I mean this is something we've been talking about the whole time just about I mean his reputation for being morally bad which I think was a part of his project I think he was trying to reorient how people thought about more but morely good morely bad so Greg you have to yeah yeah we're really quick out to maybe making the same point you need to this is a very interesting claim you made early on in the conversation that he has to be bad in order to be good or something like this could you say more something just add one thing that I think Greg has this really interesting comparison of Machiavelli to Jesus right on this point precisely right which I think is related to what you were asking yeah that's right I mean I I'll so what's that song got to be cruel to be kind was that too old for you guys I'm gonna do that a refrain of your weekend with it yeah so yeah I don't know how to say this I mean there's a way in which he's a great admirer Jesus in trying to accomplish the same things but I think his critique of Christianity is creak of his critique of Jesus as morals such as it is is that he doesn't think you can accomplish Jesus's goals by Jesus's means that is he I think he thinks that if you want to affect if you actually want to benefit the world you want it you've got to do some nasty stuff you have to be cruel to be calm you got to do nasty things first and this I think you know we learned this from both Christianity at least and we learned this from Greek philosophy at least superficially that you know you ought to live a morally decent life and let the consequences come as they may right Socrates is put to death Jesus is executed and you should do the right thing no matter what in Machiavelli saying no if we really want to benefit the world we need to learn to be nasty because if we don't do it only the evil people will be nasty and so I think he really is trying to reorient our thinking profoundly to sort of recalculate our sort of moral calculations right so I'll just give you a few examples in chapter 15 which I think is the central chapter maybe the most radical chapter although that might be 19 chapter 15 might be the most radical chapter insofar as he's basically saying throw out Christianity throw out Greek philosophy they're both bad guides for a lot of your life if you really want to live in this world and live well and secure your place in this world and to be able to do well for others you have to be willing to adapt and you have to be willing to do some nasty stuff from time to time so he goes through a list of 10 or 11 qualities that Prince has reputed to have that Prince ought to have and he sort of goes through and walks through and says look should you be kind or should you be harsh should you be you know offended or should you be sort of manly and he says look the answer honestly is it really depends upon the situation and the only quality that I can tell and I'd be anxious to hear Alex correcting on this there's only one quality that Machiavelli seems to think the Prince ought always to have period and that's prudence and the Prince ought prudently to make use of those qualities that will help him to secure his kingdom even if they're bad Prince he says has to learn not to be good and I mean his the book abounds with examples of Prince's executing people fratricides right parasites we didn't go into this too much but his account of how you ought to behave your posture toward fortune or nature is extremely blasphemous or sacrilegious right you have to act as though you can conquer God himself if you want to help rule the world so obviously that's departed a long way from the initial question of how this is Christian but if you think the Christianity if you think that Jesus was trying to come and to improve lives of all human beings not just the Jews right as Paul will say in the politicalist that you really think that Jesus is really trying to improve lives of others Machiavelli is doing the same and he says this by the way explicitly in his letter dedicated to the other book that Alex has already mentioned discourses on the first ten of Titus Livy there he says explicitly I'm trying well I'm doing what I'm doing for the universal benefit of mankind that's at least what he's trying to do yeah I think this in a way loops us back around to his critique of Christianity right he's he's arguing that human being are such right that this is how you have to deal with them right so when he advocates for cruelty he actually argues that excessive emergency is cool why yeah because if you're too merciful people will start taking advantage of it right this is a kind of deterrent notion of law enforcement but if you if you're too merciful people are gonna take advantage of murders come around and then people get upset right there's a lack of stability likewise if you're too cool they're gonna say what's the point of this I'd rather just risk getting rid of this person to get somebody else in power so the name of the game is striking such a balance between cruelty and mercy that that stability or political order is achieved and so I think what's you know he's essentially saying is well look the church gets involved in temporal affairs it gets involved in politics and it brings to bear on politics its spiritual authority or with a sort of spiritual legences that that it has and that's all fine and well until you know people start you know behaving such that they can't protect themselves but there's a kind of simplified or or foolish form of Christianity that's too reliant on the church and therefore lose a sense of the scope of of world-ear temporal affairs once you reorient to that you realize that no political stability is a great good right the idea of preserving a prince in his power is a is a great good provided that these these the self-preservation is taken for the sake of making people content with the status quo and in a way I think this relies almost on a kind of view of human nature of human being as in a kind of fallen state right this is just the ugly nature of temporal affairs and you'd be a fool to reject it as some Christians are fools to reject it because the very very livelihood of the well-being of people in this world relies on these ugly means that's what it means to be fallen you can say I just want to add to that and amplify that right so your emphasis on temporal affairs Alex one of the things Alex that I think Machiael is saying is that one of the problems with Christianity is that for the promise of heaven which he calls an imaginary principality Christians are willing to suffer the worst injustices in this world and temporal affairs in the only world that is in this world and so what he really wants to do is to attack our attachment to the other world and to try and remind us that this is the world this is the world and if you want to live with the promise of heaven you're gonna come to ruin in this life and so I think that this emphasis on realism this is the only world this is really central to chapter 15 as well and the idea here that a lot of these folks who are guided strictly by moral things are living under a kind of delusion that things will somehow be reconciled in something like an afterlife you see this in Christianity of course but he sees it also and played to a lesser extent errors I'm saying sorry sorry going so I just add one more point to that just because you know we've talked a little bit about Machiael's influence when we talk about this world and the other world and Machiael's reorientation to this world I think it's also important emphasize that Nietzsche who was a great admire of Machiael uses justice terminology and when he calls the true world whether it's the world of platonic idealism the world of the Christian afterlife he calls it a fiction a fable he calls it a kind of moral optical illusion and when you see these kind of aesthetic terms right these terms of art that's exactly what he's talking about when he's when Machiael is talking about what he talks about imaginary republic so I think this is a very far-reaching critique you know Nietzsche obviously had Machiael in mind because he refers to him so many times but that's a deep and lasting influence over many many centuries right nearly half a millennium that Machiael is thought is having its effect of this critique of Christianity and this refocusing of the human will towards this world he would desire so we have just a few more minutes for the end of our episode and really quick let me just remind listeners if you've enjoyed this please do rate us well wherever you download and listen to your podcasts and subscribe and enjoying your friends to subscribe yes the last question I'm going to take us out on is how would you how do we suspect Machiael would have rated the success of his project and Christianity is that a nader in the West the Christian impulse do you think that he would say his project to go somewhere along the line went off the rails and if that's the case is the antidote to what ails us can that still be found in Machiael writing itself yeah what a that's a great question and on David I guess you know I'll give the the great professor answers in other words a weasel answer he would have been I think he would have been very impressed and I think he would have been very sad and so I'll just begin with the impressed part I think if you get at the end of the Prince Machiael is leaving you with the indication that there's no limits to what human beings can do if they if they adopt his stance toward nature we don't know the limits and so we can we can we can do whatever we want to set our mind to so we don't know the limits as press it so we've been to the moon that would be very impressive I think he would be blown away by the scientific progress that human beings have made and I think he would he would take some pride in it I think he was self-consciously trying to cultivate that in the political world I think Machiael would look at the 20th century made the end of the 20th century and say this is what he wanted and he wanted republics right I mean he was the world in 1500 was governed almost exclusively by princes or tyrants like we didn't get too much of this but I think Machiael events is a clear preference for republics I think that he would have been very pleased with that I think he would probably be somewhat displeased with the at least in my interest in my sort of my sense of the world is that for publics we don't have the faith or confidence we had in republics 10 to 20 years ago so I think he would be disappointed by that of course there's some other things he'd been disappointed about but I think by and large he would have been impressed for by the science and I think he would impress by the politics and especially let me say I do think he would have impressed by the United States of America we didn't get too much into this in the chapter unfortunately talks about look nature he likens it to a river he says human beings ought to dike and build dams and dikes to sort of make that river to harness its power to make it work for human purposes I think he would have the United States of America say that we built institutions we separated branches we did things we sufficiently diked and damned political affairs such that it has led to an enormously successful imperial republic I apologize if that's a phrase in America's don't hear but I think Machiavelli wanted an imperial republic and I think he would have been proud with a republic that spanned an entire continent Alex do you want to add anything there I don't know how proud he would have been about like Justin Bieber or something like this but but in general you know much nothing but impressed well I mean doesn't have that comment on festivals and things like that yeah the people have to have their festivals maybe would have been so I mean for a bit from him to make much of I was actually I don't know if you know this I'm supposed to be I was supposed to be in Florence right now but thanks to the virus I'm still here in flyover country as Alex called it the other day in the text yeah I'm here in Central Ohio I could instead be sipping nice wine well if I think Italy had to choose between coronavirus and Greg McBrayer I think they got the less than two evils so they go with their own up lucky I'm not going to enjoy this you know yeah my heart goes out to the Italians yeah I think all of our Italian was to all of our Italian listeners were deeply sorry yeah I do think that I mean you mentioned being proud of America I think in many respects that you one thing I would say and you should be called an Imperial Republic I could see something I think about that I do think there is a kind of vestigial isolationism that maybe is reading a kind of Christianity there's a lack of self-assertion and self-confidence a lack of glory for the world word nowadays especially in the West that is a would trouble Machiavellous right and now I think I think part of that is owed I'm not sure to what extent Machiavelli would have predicted a mathematical physics in the sense of a kind of natural size there is that passage in chapter 14 of course but even there it seems more like responding to chance than it does inventing sort of technology of you know the sort that we have today and I want you to what extent that technology and the sort of social place of modern science has exacerbated these two Machiavellian passions a quizziveness and fear to such an extent that the fear and the desire to insulate yourself through technology through medical science through right even with social media right we kind of restrict ourselves to certain groups and we tend to go into an echo chamber how that fear of death that fear of confrontation that fear of of of you know acquiring too much and the general tendency to point to a quizziveness is a kind of evil that I think might let Machiavelli down maybe he let down without later thinkers maybe with himself for not doing X Y or C but I do think there it is a kind of mixed legacy for Machiavelli I do think there is there's a serious lack of the kind of virtue that he was trying to get towards so you saying Alex that a that a Machiavelli is it is there a potential that where technology the role of technology in politics and society has rendered a Machiavellian politics unworkable let me clarify the point by recalling something from earlier I know we've gone over but I'll just make this point quickly Machiavelli says that a people that dispersed or enslaved is like kind of raw material then you can form however you want that concept I think somehow I don't know exactly how it makes its way to take heart in the notion of all matter as near extension as moldable in the way that waxes right he would also all natural kinds to this that is an application you can say about Machiavelli inside about the formidable character of all peoples to natural science the difficulty is that when it comes to natural science it becomes less about political glory by forming a people then thereby being able to you know conquer beyond etc. becoming a great founder it becomes more about making the world so that it satisfies you as an individual it's obviously a group project in Descartes but it's a very quick step from the world is wax I can form to be as I wish to you know living your life in an echo chamber only meaning things that either upset you or please you and nothing that's sort of reason dense over right and that that that application of the formability of nature Machiavelli it's a kind of political or human nature the applicability to that to natural objects etc. I think isolates people in a way that is so Alex so Alex what you're saying is that the proper antidote to the consumerist view of technology and this relationship view is people need to listen to the new thinkery regularly I thought you were gonna get a joke about me saying workers of the world unite but yeah listen listen to us that's exactly you're a professor you don't work they should listen us that's a good that's a good note to end on thank you guys thank you