Machiavelli's The Prince, Chapter 7

Welcome back to the new thinker if you're hearing my voice. That means that David Barr is not with us today. I think he's eating something. I don't know what he's thinking Greg.

Wasn't an international hot dog eating day or something like that? I mean, doesn't that what he sent us the text message about? You know how much he likes international hot dogs if you catch my drink? International hot dogs.

International hot dogs. Especially one from Thailand. I didn't know they had a specialty. I didn't know they had a specialty.

It's already off the reels. Well, since he's not here, we can be kind of organized and disciplined. Right. Yeah.

He never is. He rails things constantly. He's a derailer. We're doing another one of our deep dives into Machiavelli's prints.

There are 26 chapters. Deep dive. That will be a nice sound effect. Deep dive.

We're doing chapter seven today. We've done two other chapters and then a general overview, right? We've done chapter six and 15. We've done a lot of Machiavelli for the reason, obviously.

We haven't done the discourses. I'm planning on reading it over the spring. So maybe we can get a couple of good chapters there. I have a safe feeling you just expressed.

We've got to do it. Yeah. It's hard. It's so hard.

No, it's good idea. I was just thinking as I was walking over your record that we should do chapter 19 at some point at some point. I was thinking about the chapter, which is the chapter I don't understand or the chapter I understand the least. I was just thinking what a burden that is for you and me.

I thought we should invite Chris Lynch or Nathan Tarkov on to do chapter 19 with us. I think a lot of folks. I mean, both great. Both of them.

Yeah. We'll just tell David that it's an international chili dog day. That way we can keep it kind of small. Yeah.

Where are we in the prints then? This is chapter seven. This is six chapters in. Yeah.

So should I situate it within the prints as a whole? Yeah. Go ahead. I read the prints dramatically in the sense that there's a lot of layers to do.

I think one very important layer is how Machiavelli's appealing to the rents. I think we've mentioned this before. You can actually give this to Lorenzo as far as we can tell. There's no evidence.

He didn't publish it until after his death. Or I mean, well, then he didn't publish it. But it wasn't published until after his death. But I do think it's nevertheless the case that there's a kind of literary conceit of a philosopher advising this prints or this sort of prints and Lorenzo's situation.

And the book kind of moves into increasingly sort of unconventional waters. Chapter two, he kind of justifies the veterinary princesses. Oh, well, you know, require, you know, a really extraordinary situation to actually be deprived. And then you'll typically, well, get it.

But then he shows how his own sort of reasoning or argues that his own reasoning about how to acquire principalities, right, as sort of adding an auntie or how to become imperial as a prince can actually overcome the hereditary prince's stability, right? And so slowly, I think decisively, but slowly you start to reveal that in a way, this new science is a kind of new grounding in the course of things. And so he kind of, I think, scares Lorenzo or this sort of audience sort of literary conceit Lorenzo into maybe taking more seriously that something's going on in this book and something might be changing in the world of politics, the Machiavelli himself is heralding. And this research is an apparent peak in chapter six, this kind of development where he gives an account of founders.

But in a way, I think chapter seven, though it is not the greatest example, right, as you get in chapter six, it is a kind of, it's an interesting example because it's primarily about chazria worship. It's about somebody who gets their principality or their power through fortune rather than through their own virtue. And so then it's about how, okay, what do you do now when you don't have really the conditions for a founding, how do you create those conditions? And Borgia seems to be the best of recent examples to study in this regard.

The one thing I'm sure we'll talk about is whether or not Borgia is meant as a positive or negative example, or it's probably a mixture of both, but to what degree and in what ways each. But basically it's about, and it's about how Borgia's father, Pope Alexander the six, got him sort of his own army, his sort of start and allowed him to sort of grow and how Borgia, how he was able Alexander, primarily I think, but Borgia as well, to create conditions in which he could grow and go and go into power. Ultimately, and there's some interesting, there's an interesting moment about remire de Orca, which we'll talk about. But then finally, why did it work out in the end, the causes of that, what he could have done differently and sort of leaving us with that.

It's a, again, I think of conspiracy and I mean one of the things that Machia does in the Course of the Prince, and I think chapter seven is the kind of turning point in this, is he'll tell you stories and you only get a snippet of it and then a little later you find out, oh, this, what was going on here was actually the machinations of say, Pope Alexander six, so the story of France invading Italy, for example, Spain, Spain's interventions in Italy, we find out those are due to Alexander six machinations to create disorders that his son Cheserie can rise to power. And that goes even further over, Alexander the six had, as you get into like chapter 11 and further on. So anyways, that's my attempt at a son, Ramon Shara adequate that. That's really good.

I was just going to press you on who Alexander was because it's Alexander the six, which is the father of Chase, right? Borgia, who seems to be who chapter six is mostly about, but Michael Palmer, if you know that name, he sort of thinks that Alginor six is actually the hero and scare quotes of chapter seven, excuse me, I said chapter six, chapter seven, but I'll just say, can I just situate a little more, I think the folks at home, not to disagree with anything you said, just add to it. There are 26 chapters in the prints. I understand the first 11 chapters to be devoted to laying out the various types of principalities and how they're acquired, maintained.

And so you get various types of principalities and how the various types are maintained in the first 11 chapters. And as you mentioned, six seems to be the peak of the first 11 chapters, literally will be in the middle, it'll be the sixth chapter. And that is, we talked about this in the episode, the four greatest founders, foremost excellent men who've been princes, he gives four examples and says that others like them, Moses, Cyrus, Rameen, and some of these, he's the big names. So as we move to chapter seven, we're moving down, we're now talking about not those who acquired with our own arms and virtue, but those who acquired new principalities with the arms of others and fortune.

So the mockup only seen between your own arms and virtue and the other arms of others and fortune. So it is as clear as descent. And that descent was already signaled at the end of chapter six when Machia Dilett and talking about hero after he's talked about the four most excellent principal time. We need to worry about parts two, three, and four of the prints.

I think it's efficient to say that the first 11 chapters are really devoted to laying out various principalities. One other small point, and I'm not sure how this fits into the scheme of things actually, I find it somewhat strange, is that four is also occurs in chapter seven. You mentioned four is at the beginning of chapter seven, just lost my page. What translation are you using Greg?

I am using the Harvey C. Mansell translation with the University of Chicago Press, second edition, mine's falling apart and it's literally taped together. How's the Leo Paul Dalvres translation? I have that one.

Excellent. You got four. But for wavelength. I don't know.

And there's a third one, I really like. Is it Yale? There's three that are okay. The other two are also very good.

But Sforza, I just want to mention. So chapter seven, we're off the ones who acquired by their own University. But in chapter seven, he says, I'm going to give you a couple of modern examples. This is the second paragraph.

I'm going to give you two examples that occurred in days within our memory. These are Francesco Sforza and Shazare Borgia. Francesco became Duke of Milan from private individual by proper means and with a great virtue of his own. So he seems to leave open the possibility that even in a majority one can conquer or acquire principalities with one's own virtue because the pre-it chapter would seem to imply that there's this stark ancient modern distinction that the true acquirers are only possible in the ancient world.

And now in majority, we're left with these second-rate princes like Shazare Borgia. But I realize a lot of scholars think that Shazare Borgia is Machiavelli's model of the modern prince. I think that based on this and also his life of Kestrichio, Kastricani, it seems that Machiavelli is praised for these, this, for Kestrichio might actually be somewhat ironic, not as impressive as you might be led to the beginning. So, I mean, he could be the most, I think the views are in some degree compatible.

He could be the most compelling, modern example. He would still fall short of Machiavelli's ideal. I mean, one of the things, not to jump too far ahead, but one of the things that Nathan Tarkov points up, I think is really sharp, is that he thinks he folds, Machiavelli that it's false, Shazare. Yeah, yeah.

For believing, let me find exactly, he says that the very end, whoever believes that among great personages, new benefits will make old injuries be forgotten, deceives himself. So, and Tarkov argues that this seems to be an inadvertently Christian belief in forgiveness, operating in Shazare that he didn't realize just how ferocious Julius II the Pope who would replace his father actually was. So, he's a high example, but he's not without his sort of impediments, that Machiavelli, you know, is bringing out. In fact, he calls him a fresh example at the end, right, which is not to say the best example, just a recent one.

But early on, he says, if one considers all the steps of the Duke, well, we'll see that he laid for himself great foundations for future power, which I do not judge superfluous to discuss. For I do not know what better teaching I could give to a new prince than the example of his actions, right? But again, I mean, so it sounds very positive. And I think scholars now, it used to be more emphatically in favor, but I think now they recognize there's a bit more mixed than you would initially believe.

But to say those examples are a good example, but they are teaching is to say that, you know, you can learn something from this, but you know, might not be everything you know, it might not be following it or imitating it whole way. Not very good. Well, where we go next, just laying out what the chapter is about, and laying out the summary over again, we can't done that, right? There's this sort of introduction about those who arrive by the arms of others in fortune.

We have a discussion, a brief discussion of Cesare, but also Francesco Suarez, as I mentioned, and then we get a paragraph on Alexander the sixth. Yeah, so I had to make it sound great. And then we get a digression, what's explicitly called a digression, the story of Cesare Borgia's newfound virtue with Mr. O'Miro de Orca, whose name, by the way, he butchers if memory serves.

And then you return, we return, and he talks more about Sores, excuse me, more about Borgia again, the Duke, as he calls him, Duke Valentino, as he's called by the Volcker. And then there's this long account of what he's the mistake that he seems to have made. So introduction, brief account of one or both of these new princes, account of Alexander sixth, and he turns to Borgia, digression, and then talks about Borgia's mistake. That seems to be what's one.

Let's go to Alexander the sixth, and I'll hear something out there. So from the perspective of chapter six, it seems like, from chapter six, when you become somebody like Moses, like a great founder, is opportunity, which is to find a people dispersed, enslaved, right, and needing some kind of foundation, right? And that's where you found something by virtue. When you get it by fortune, it means that an already existing regime or power structure would have you provide you with the arms in with the principality, which is to say, you haven't found people dispersed.

And so there it seems like fortune does not give you the opportunity. But then he describes how you can actually overcome that. So this is why I think chapter seven is an away deeper because it seems like by six, you have to get something from fortune, right, which is the dispersed people here. It turns out that fortune actually gives you an organization and you can create the conditions for the sounding, right?

So in a way, manufacturer, you can say this is the more scientific version of chapter six. Interesting. So what you get here is following up, this is on the demand to translation of the bottom of 27. It's that it was thus necessary to upset those orders and to bring this order to their states, he's talking here about the orceany of the Colona, right?

So as to be able to make himself Lord securely a part of them. This was easier for him because he found the Venetians, moved by other causes were engaged in getting the French to come back in Italy, which he not only did not oppose, but made easier by the dissolution of the former marriage of King Louis. I should be clear that this is Pope Alexander. Right.

So what does he do? He recognizes that if you're going to get, if you're going to create the conditions where your son could be Lord of at least a part of it, create rampant disorder, right? Get some invasions going dispersing right, upset the political order. And then when the dust settles, there's chess, right?

And so there's a kind of model here and he does this in different forms over and over again. So I don't think we should go into all the details per se, but I think there's something to be said here that when he talks about much later in chapter 25, virtue overcoming fortune, this might be a kind of version of what he's talking about. Create disorder, make it run about. And then you're the one who cleans up the mess and everybody looks up to you, right?

In a way, it's kind of with the reveal. Yeah. I was going to say who cleans up the mess here? Cesare Borgia or hammocks himself?

I mean, it's a combination, right? Because he gives them the arms, right? But it allows Borgia to become the Duke, right? Of this, right?

Of the smaller area. We'll talk about this in just a moment, but the most compelling, most gripping part, the most vivid part of this chapter is the Messer and Ehrd Orko story. And it's, you know, Cesare Borgia has a guy that does all his dirty deeds for him. But I think that it sort of obscures the fact that Cesare Borgia seems himself to be the guy who's doing the dirty deeds for Alexander VI.

And so you get these layers upon layers of guys who have a right hand man who's doing their dirty work, it seems. Yeah, this becomes much more explicit in chapter 11, where he talks about other ecclesiastical principalies and he returns to this position, to this story. In chapter 46, he says, this brought the temporal forces of the pope to be held in low esteem in Italy, then Alexander VI, the roots. And of all the pontiffs there have ever been, he showed how far a pope could prevail with money and forces with Duke Valentino that is Cesare as his instrument.

And with the invasion of the French as the opportunity, he did all the things I discussed above in the actions of the people. So I mean, he's here. Duke doesn't do it. Yeah.

He did it. I mean, right? Well, yeah, just to emphasize what Duke Valentino was an instrument, he did all the things I discussed above in the actions of the Duke. He did.

But then he immediately undermines it because he says that, and there was intent might not have been to make the church great, but rather the Duke, nonetheless what he did were downed to the greatness of the church, right? So of course, then one must ask is Alexander VI, the instrument of the church. Yeah. And I would go even further.

The church is not a thing. It's not an agent, right? Right. What is it exactly that we're talking about?

I mean, to put it just most bluntly, it's a book. It's a book is in control, right? And I think in a way, the Bible and the institution built around it is Machiavelli's model, right? He's writing a book.

He himself is dead, right? One of the things that Borgia says he messed up is that he never thought that when his father died, he would be sick. That's not a problem for Machiavelli. He's dead, right?

There's a way in which writing and specifically winning over the souls or the hearts of human beings, right? Or in Machiavelli's case, the minds, right? The intellects of them and making them think they really ought to study it and think in Machiavelli in a way is a kind of not foolproof, but it's more resilient to fortunate than say trying to rely on needing your own health or life, right? Machiavelli can die, he lived his life and then his book has this massive, echronic effect for a century similar to the Bible.

Well, you've heard me try out my theory before that Machiavelli is not only imitating Christianity in terms of trying to actually propagate or use propaganda, but that I think the prince itself is actually modeled structurally, stylistically on the New Testament as well. But you're right. I mean, this points right back into that same theme, the success of books, the success of intellectual arms or something like this as opposed to physical arms. Yeah, very good.

On a fundamental level, if you're going to study or try to learn about human nature, right? You can do it through experience like being out in the world or through reading, right? And even nowadays, I mean, through experience needs, you have to watch TV and we also have to read the newspaper and things like that, right? So in, I think in almost every case, and especially Machiavelli's time where you don't have video and things like that, you're highly dependent on authors of one time or another.

People who tell you stories or people who write them down. And so I think he recognizes that the real power is the compelling argument, the compelling example that he could set up. And maybe this is a question for you then, Alex. Who's Machiavelli's dirty right hand man then?

We've talked about this before, right? You've talked about bacon, obviously, the most obvious example, the lock hobs. I mean, all these guys who were so even, I mean, all these guys who seem to have seen your, I think himself to a degree actually. He lets himself be the guy that does all the time.

He's doing a lot of the dirty work here, right? The prince itself is laying out a lot of dirty work, right? And he's got this nasty reputation. I mean, he's the guy, I mean, he's using himself, like it's sort of like he, the author, is using him, the author, as the guy that's, you know, getting all these nasty things done.

Harvey Mance. I was reading his chapter Machiavelli's political science in his book, Machiavelli's where too. And he, I mean, he's, I mean, one should read like an essay on Machiavelli by Harvey Mance and he'll like once every couple months just other than, right, because it's, it's, they're all phenomenal. But this is one of the better ones that he's written.

One of the things that's really sharp that he points out is that one of the, Machiavelli has to have a poor reputation, right? He has to be blind and pushed into the shadows. And that's in a way part of Machiavelli's strategy because he's trying to give princess glory, right? So he needs to be, you know, have a poor reputation so that somebody can study him and go on and found it.

That's, that's absolutely essential. If all the glory goes to Machiavelli, princess won't be motivated, right? Undercuts. But also some of the glory goes to the other later thinkers you mentioned, Bacon, Hobbes, Lock, these guys, Spinoza.

So the, the, these two groups of folks are going to get a lot of the glory for what Machiavelli has put in the motion. Yeah. And Glumontis, you as well, right? You obviously studied him and learned from him and was, was he a course developer, you know, constitutional theories.

Right. Let's go to Remira. I love this passage. My favorite, it's my favorite passage in the whole book.

It's so much fun. Yeah. And students love it. I love, in the way that the man's soul translation sort of just happens to, maybe not just happens to, but the way that it sort of page one is laying things out and then like you turn the top of the next page and sort of hits you with a fun thing.

So you want to just recount the sort of folks at home? Yeah. Maybe we should just read it. I think we should read it.

We should. Okay. So me and comment. You started the beginning of Boniface 29, the first full paragraph.

Sure. Yeah. And because this point is deserving of notice and of being imitated by others, I do not want to leave it out. So the point is that's deserving of notice is that, excuse me, that Borgia is growing in virtue.

He's learning virtue. And the previous paragraph, one of the things he's now learning how to do is to dissimulate. So he's lying. So this is particularly an example of Borgia's newfound virtue.

Yeah. And also, I think it's worthy of being imitated because I think in this moment more than any other than he relates, any of the other actions here, Borgia succeeds in establishing himself, as opposed to the church. Okay. So once the duke had taken over the Ramanyan, he founded and been commanded by infinite lords, like David Barr, who had been ready to despoil their subjects, to correct them.

And given their subjects matter for disunion, not for union. Since that province was quite full of robbery, squirrels, and every other kind of insolence, he judged it necessary to give it good government. If he wanted to reduce it to peace and obedience to a kindly arm. So I'll just note here that the end here is good government.

Peace. I usually glide over that until I try to suppress that until the end. Yeah. Yeah.

Because it doesn't seem good. No, no, no, no. And of course, now you've triggered it. I mean, people should be asking themselves, what's good about this?

I think the answer is there. We'll see how it goes. So we put there, Mr. Ramirez to Orko, a cruel and ready man to whom he gave the fullest power.

Pause. His name, I think, I think Machia really changes his name so that Orko is the Italian word for ogre. Just a point. I wonder whether that's like a nickname he had gotten remira, though.

That's the point. That's entirely possible. I don't know. It was just because he calls him Duke Valentino, which is what he was known by the vulgar.

So anyways, in a short time, Ramirez reduced it to peace and unity with the very greatest reputation for himself. Then the Duke judged that such excessive authority was not necessary because they feared that it might become hateful and he set up a civil court in the middle of the province with the most excellent president where each city had its advocate. And because he knew that past rigors had generated some hatred for remira to purchase spirits of that people and to gain them entirely to himself, he wished to show that if any cruelty had been committed, does it not come from him but from the harsh nature of his minister? And having seized this opportunity, he had a place to one morning in the Piazza at Susina in two pieces with a piece of wood and a bloody knife beside him.

And for us, he had to go left the people at once satisfied and stupefied. Right. So he hires a guy, he hires a guy, puts him in charge, gets these guys in control, the guy does a good job coming back, says, boss, I did, he says, thank you very much, cut some and half puts in the town swear. Rock and roll.

One step I would add to that is that he establishes courts, right? Well, not just courts. Yes, not just courts. An executive and something like a legislative.

Right, right. So there's a pre-brachist of government. Yeah, there's a kind of Republican. Yeah.

Yeah, it's a good government. Yeah. And it's interesting though, is that's- I mean, students usually miss this, by the way. When I teach this, students will focus on the spectacle and the violence and the murder.

What they miss, what I think, I missed the first two or three times I read it, is that this nastiness is done for the sake of establishing a court, something like a representative body and a president and executive. So like, I mean, this is where people get the notion of the end justifies the means, although that's not quite what my people say. But like, you do something nasty and you put a good government in place. Right.

But the means here are strictly speaking for establishing justice, right? You need somebody to come clean house like there's all these criminals running around, right, un-prosecuted. Right. It looks pretty violent.

It does give authority to Romero, right, which is ultimately going to make him hateful, which we'll just bring about, right, he'll be removed in some ways. Right. He'll just create further disorder, right? So to have a kind of enduring peace, you need to get rid of this guy through a kind of just process, right?

So why is the process just? There's a court. It gets rid of him? Oh, I don't know if that's right.

I'm sorry. You think he's- no, no, he's not put on trial. Romero isn't. Yeah, he put- he set up a civil court in the middle of the province with the most excellent president where each city had his advocate.

And because he knew that pass-riggers had generated some hatred for Romero to purchase spirits of that people and to gain them entirely to himself, he wished to show that of any cool debate. I took it- I take it that he's taking complaints about Romero. No, oh, fine complaints, but still not the courts. I don't think I'm sorry.

I took this to be an extra legal maneuver. I mean, he has him seized and cut into pieces. That doesn't seem very courtly to me. I guess precisely why they're satisfied and superfied.

The extra legal force supervises them. So he's setting up the courts and saying, hey, we've got this more representative or popular form of government, but also guess what I'm going to murder anybody who pisses you off. No, just this one guy. Yeah.

But he does this to show that any of the cruelty that had been committed had come not from him, but from the harsh nature of his minister. But that's not true. It came from him. Yeah.

And if you read from chapter 11 in place, you realize that this guy is the instrument of that guy. So whatever Mr. Miradorko does is perfectly in the service of what Cesare Gorge is telling to do. So it's not true.

I would say strictly speaking. So I take this to be Cesare Gorge's cleaning house. So you put Romero in charge to clean house and then I clean house with a clean house that he's done. So now I start a court and get rid of him.

Those seem like the two acts that he's doing. I don't take him to be- I'd be- I'd be- I'd be shown wrong. I don't take him to be saying I said the court and put Romero on trial. Yeah.

I mean, I think I'm misreading this because you're right. It doesn't say specifically that he's taking it. I'd always assumed that the civil court is in part or initial sort of cleaning house is to get sort of people saying, hey, Romero did this and I'm like he didn't. And so he's hearing them out and then suddenly he's dead.

Sorry, but it could be either way. Yeah. In any case, I think the important feature here is when you got to get rid of this guy, but too. You need to set up a sort of just process by which people can.

Right. You know, let their complaints here. You heard it. That's right.

And but the interesting thing is there's excessive authority has gone to Romero, right? And then it seems like authority is going into the courts, right? But in fact, what this ends up doing is that he gains them entirely to himself. Yeah.

So it's, it's, it's, it's, I'm making the point that I think here that to found a kind of just order, right? Or against past injustices and sort of harsh law and order of, of Romero, right? Where you're just sort of going around and, and, you know, cleaning house, as you said, right? The way to satisfy both people is to set up a court.

You become the justice minister and everybody loves you. Right. Well, also fears you a little bit, right? Because you're ferocious when you need to be.

Um, but also the people feel like they're in control. So there's a kind of balance here. Um, so there's, I think, I mean, he says this earlier on, he says in chapter four, where he says that, look, if you're going to get rid of a place that's used to living and freedom under its own laws, you got to disperse them, destroy everything because otherwise the memory is always there. If you want to be remembered and you want the greatest glory, you've got to set up courts like this, or you have to, this kind of more just process.

And in a way, Machiavelli's political sciences jumped to the now to like sort of the metal thing, right? You know, his political science is in trying to satisfy both humors, right? The great and the, and the people at once by showing that you can do this through a kind of set of good laws is trying to, um, in a way, create the conditions, uh, the moral conditions of the political conditions, right? Or you should say the intellectual conditions for morality and politics that allows for this mutual satisfaction, precisely by just being more aware of it.

Like, look, they don't want it. They want to have freedom, but they need somebody to set it up and that'll get you glory. Everybody can be happy in this situation. That's in a way that just of his politics, right?

No, I think that's absolutely right. And since we're at the larger political level, I think I would, I would sort of pull out of this example, a more general teaching about how you actually get good governance as a general rule on Machiavelli grounds. And the answer is, you know, if you would like an omelet, you have to break eggs. If you would like good government, you have to do nasty things.

And I would press, you know, when I read this and think, try to think this out for myself, I try to ask myself, where have there been good governments? And is it the case that any of them rest on, is it the case that any of them do not rest on something quite criminal at its founding? And I would have to say no. I mean, the most obvious way in which all families are criminal is if there was something, if there was a political community prior that existed, there was some form of treason.

That's the most obvious example. But I mean, you get the same thing with the rape of Lucretia, right? Rome was founded on crimes. All of these, all of these foundings seem to have rested upon crimes.

And so what you get here in Machiavelli is not necessarily a phrase or a blame of crime per se, but more like what is the crime done in the name of? Or what do we get after the fact? So it's not, I mean, it can seem, and I think one reason this example is so compelling is because it sort of just seems like it's celebrating violence for violence sake. And you can miss that, no, no, this particular violence for the sake of setting up good government.

And so this isn't a phrase of sort of some tyrant who's simply going to just butcher people and that's sort of, that's just where we are now. It's like we're actually going to set up the government. And you know, you think about our own country and I love our country very much, but would it be what it is without some of the nastier things we did early on? Or maybe even at certain inflection points in our history.

I think the answer is no, it probably wouldn't be, but it, and I think what Machiavelli, if he would praise us would say the praise is for what you did after you did the nasty things. Like doing the nasty things are not for its own sake, it's for the sake of trying to establish the government. And this is where the ends justify the means, you know, there's obviously a basis in the text or something like that, but we have to be clear that Machiavelli's arguing that in this case, right, there would have been no good government saved but through such means. Right.

The alternatives are continued crime or after remarrials pissed everybody off, it returns to crime. And so the whole effort is wasted, right? And in a way, that's true of worship too. He doesn't go far enough, right?

And doesn't set things up. So what ends up happening is the church gets more powerful and this ends up subverting in Machiavelli's mind good politics, right? So there's something more fundamental, right? Less sort of political, I think, at least immediately political has to be done.

And that means the counteracts, the power the church has over the minds of it. That's why I think Tarkov's observation that Borgia was expecting some kind of forgiveness is really, really, I think insightful, right? That he doesn't realize that on a kind of basic level, what's required is not just cleaning house in the room, right? Yeah.

But even in your own intellect and in the soul. And so Machiavelli's shocking political theorizing, which is in some ways more shocking than Tpico could go into it, is meant to sort of shock you. So there's a very interesting article by Vicki Sullivan and John Scott on this chapter, which argues that what Machiavelli really wants is for Borgia to destroy the church itself, of course, the pope. And the way they rest is on this point on page 33, what could only accuse him in the creation of Julius as pontiff in which he made a bad choice where as was said, that he could not make a pope to suit himself, he could have kept anyone from being pope.

Right. And there's two ways to read that, right? He could have kept any single person from a coming pope. Or he could have kept anyone.

Yeah, nobody who wrote a poem because ultimately the church at this time is quite weak, right? That's what the point he makes in chapter 11. And all he has to do is in a way, you could disband the College of Cardinals, right? Or kill a bunch of people.

And there's a lot of stories in this book about somebody taking a group of senators or a group of great people, having a very important meaning, and then just killing everybody, right? There's a way to just sort of cut and run and establish a new head. Right. But he doesn't do it, right?

He's got a colonel who has the college of cardinals there. He could have done what the others did in some of the circumstances. Yeah, possibly. Yeah.

But I think to cut the head off this beast, I think Machiavelli's ultimate point would be to cut the head off this beast of the church, right? That's ruining its high politics. It's not enough to be a prince. You have to be a philosopher.

You have to write a book. I think because so much of the authority comes from sort of the top down. And you can see that difference now, you know, 500 years later, you know, when you think about politics and you think about any kind of policy, we don't go to the church, right? We don't rely on the book.

We rely on social scientists, right? Right. Yeah, I don't go there. I pray, I pray all my faults away.

But yeah, I mean, so you go to the social scientists, you go to quote-unquote experts who have figured out the most advantageous way to go about it. That's I think a sort of after-effective Machiavelli's revolution, right? We should say, you want security? Look at what the church does.

He uses money and fortune, right? That's what you need to do. And so he takes this doctrine that's kind of sort of vouché operating in the church. As they use the spiritual power, he makes it more overt and thereby undermines the spiritual power of the church, showing it to be a Machiavellian figure, more so than one would think.

Yeah, no, I'll just press it a little farther. When Cesare has a Romero killed, he had him seized, placed one warning in the piazza siciano in two pieces with a piece of wood and a bloody knife beside him. The ferocity of this spectacle left the people at once satisfied and stupefied. So I tried it in my head.

I tried to imagine or visualize the spectacle. So the first thing that's obvious is that Romero is cut in two pieces. So the most obvious question is what two pieces, right? Because hand off, because other hand off, and it's head off.

The first image that comes to my mind most naturally is horizontally. That's the first, but I can just cut the dude in the stomach and the hoof. That's not where I went first. That's where I ended up.

Yeah, the first thought was just cutting right in half and his top fell off. But then secondly, I went, yeah, like top down or bottom up actually probably more likely, right? Because that's a ferocious spectacle. Some dudes cut in half.

What's the nice way to say this? Tank to top. What's the best way to say that? And then he's lying there next to the knife.

And it doesn't say my way to use the knife to do it. But the idea that the knife is there, it implies that the knife was what was used to do it. So then if you're going to cut me in half, please ever don't do this. But if you're going to do it, you'll do something really big and sharp and make it quick.

Please don't use a knife to cut me in half, especially if you're going vertically and not horizontally. And so I think that adds to the spectacle of imagining this poor guy being like some guy hacking, like gradually just sawing him from bottom from his up to his head. So that's part of the frosty, I think. I'm sorry.

Like a shogi. Yeah. That journalist you got. Oh, right.

Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right.

Left. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Left. Right. Right.

And he does it really and you see the results. No, I'll tell you what I think it is. Sure, let's hear it. It's a cross.

It's to sanctify this extra legal killing. It shows that he's, it's, it's. What is it? Sure, you think like that.

Yeah, no, the wood is a cross. I think it's, I think it's a cross. I've heard the suggestion elsewhere certainly have much, I mean, of course, it's just speculation who knows, right? But the point would be that Temacubelli across is just a piece of wood.

But this would show it's a pious cruelty or whatever the language is immaculately. He's elsewhere. I mean, he does. I mean, he wrote your faults, the three for seeding so much power to the church for the sake of a divorce and a hat.

He says the hat of whoever. Which always means the cardinal seed, but he refers to just a mere hat. Like you did this for a hat. What do you do?

So this is just a piece of wood for him. Yeah. But if I'm right that it's the cross and it's a piece of wood, I can't help but think of it. Of course, Romero is sort of the right-hand man doing the nasty deed for Borgia, who must be sacrificed after he's done the nasty deed.

Keeping in mind, of course, that Borgia himself is the right-hand man of Pelus and the sixth of Pope. I can't help but think of Machiavelli being sort of at the height of his empire. He's here trying to elude to a relationship between God and Jesus, under the Christian understanding of things. And just like in chapter six, where you get these foremost excellent princes who are very similar Moses, Cyrus, Ron, and Cetius, where they all have these sort of strange upbringings, these curious births, where they seem to be born of four people, but they're actually hereditary kings, except in the case of Moses, where it gets kind of inverted in relationship.

Like he's actually, he's born a king, but actually is a humble Jew. It seems like here again, Christianity somehow turns this right-hand man on its head. I mean, Alexander has a guy who does his dirty work for him, so that he doesn't have the bad reputation attached to him. And here, I mean, I'm quite fully shocked.

That God has Jesus sacrificed his life in a very bloody ferocious spectacle way that leaves the people satisfied and stupefied. But somehow God comes out of it without the least that of bad reputation for him, sacricurricularing his son. I mean, that's not the way we put it, hopefully he's what I mean. No, I think that makes sense.

And so you could, so then abortion becomes the Jesus figure. Right. And Alexander is God figure. But Alexander, as he says in chapter 11, shows how far a pope can prevail with money and forces, then Machiavelli becomes the trying to find a way to put this.

I mean, it goes off a bit of libel in a way. Yeah, that's right. I mean, he's not one of the four, but he's, because as you pointed out, Greg alluded to this earlier, you have an essay where you write it. How many of the same number of...

Same number of parts. And there's 26 chapters in the prints plus the Episte of the Decoraries 27, but there's 27 books that you're testing them. So it seems to me, Machiavelli is himself and very intentionally bashing himself as kind of a Christ replacement. Yeah, or...

The Antichrist, if you will. Obviously, I mean, he'd be an author. I mean, he'd be an author of a new Providence, but the Providence or, yeah, the power comes not for... He's not talking about the God, but he's talking about a sort of God-like science, political science that he's sort of establishing.

And that these would be his narrative, right? That he's taking these old stories and putting it into his narrative. And of course, the interesting other example here is that Borgia sacrifices his right-hand man to put a sake of good governments, whereas I think Machiavelli's understanding Christianity sacrifices Christ not for the sake of good government, but for the sake of bad government, and Machiavelli's understanding, right? Christianity has rendered men weak and effeminate, liable to be ruled by bad men.

So the inversion leads to inversion politics as well. I think... So one thing I picked up this time, I brought this up before, but we've got a few minutes, but we will wrap it up soon. But one thing I picked up this time was...

It goes a lot faster when we don't have David's sounds and having to wake him up from bed and all this stuff. That's right, yeah. This is what... But if at the death of Alexander the Duke had been healthy, everything would have been easy for him.

And he told me, this is Machiavelli saying what... which was like Borgia told him, on the day that Julius II was created, that he had thought about what might happen whether his father was dying, and had found a remedy for everything, except that he never thought that at his death, he himself might also be on a point of time. And people have suggested, I think there's some evidence for this that maybe they were poisoned, I have to do with them, but on a basic level, this is something that never occurred to me, Machiavelli doesn't need to worry about being poisoned. No.

Machiavelli doesn't need to worry about getting sick. Machiavelli is dead, right? Just as John, Mark, they don't have to worry about being sick because the book has a compelling power of its own, right? And that suffices and their copies, they're disseminated, they're read and they're persuasive, right?

And they have an effect well beyond the death of their authors. And I think the remedy for what happens to Borgia is just right. No, I think the interesting thing, and maybe I've said this on a previous episode, but I think Machiavelli is imitating Jesus in so far as he recognizes that for the book to be successful, he has to make a sacrifice. But his sacrifice is not so great as Jesus' his sacrifice is his reputation.

So he goes down in history as he gets no credit, although we give him credit, but for this great thing that he supposedly founded. And instead of sacrificing his life, he sacrifices, he goes down and throughout history as this guy whose name is synonymous with evil. When in fact he buys only count, I don't think he thinks he was evil. No.

No. Well, where's the tough place? Got to get how you goin' on? You want to get ahead?

That's right. Nice guy's smash last. That's true. I think we covered everything.

Yeah, that was great. That was I think rapid fire. Okay. Let us know if you prefer when David's not here.

We can always give him the boot. I think he'd be happy. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't think he likes the show. Now, I think he's a trouble man. I think he's sad because he eats and he eats because he's sad. Yeah, I think that's probably right.

That's a quote from Fat Baster, from all the dollars. I recognize it. I was thinking if the people wanted gone, we could just put him out of the town swear in the piece of wood and a hot dog. Just leave him there for the people who'd be satisfied and stupefied.

Yeah, we're going to eat a much bigger night. I guess. All right, man. Don't forget.

Good seeing everybody. Thanks for downloading, like, subscribe, follow us on Twitter. Tell your mom, tell your uncle, tell your aunt. Tell your dog sitter, your mailman, your...

You don't want your friends to be stupid, do you? Turn them on to the spot, guys. Exactly. Yeah.

Take care, Greg. Peace.