[Music]
machiavelli's the prince is one of the
most important turning points in the
history of western political philosophy
it was written
while machiavelli himself was in
retirement from active political life
1532
and prior to that he had worked for the
medici family in florence
and he was one of the great dark
characters
in the history of western thought in
some respects he's kind of like the
darth vader of philosophy he represents
all that is evil and unholy
in some respect the spiritual antipode
of someone like marcus aurelius
machiavelli is a very secular this
worldly sort of thinker
he's the kind of person that plato
warned us about
the kind of man who self-consciously
seeks only the gratification
of his desire for political power
a man who
turns ruthlessness and treachery into
matters of principle
and that's what makes him so good at
them it doesn't it's not that he's
treacherous or lying or faithless or
ruthless once in a while he's that way
all the time
he's turned it into a system
in that respect
the writings of machiavelli which are
not limited to the prince he also wrote
a number of historical works a work
called the discourse on livy he studied
roman history a great deal
machiavelli's works our kind of handbook
on how to be bad particularly
how to be politically treacherous
how to gain power
for machiavelli the ultimate good for
human beings is the attainment of
political power and he is not choosy
about the means whatever works works he
is
among the most practical of men
his idea of an of an excellent
politician is someone like caesar borgia
caesar boys mentioned many times in the
prince and if you know what caesar
voyager was like he has quite an
interesting career
his father is pope alexander vi
we won't discuss how that could be the
case of course but he's the illegitimate
son of alexander vi
his sister is lucrezia borgia a most
unpleasant woman who spends a good bit
of her time poisoning their friends and
political rivals
and uh caesar borgia
was the sort of guy who wouldn't let
mere family ties get in the way of
political power his older brother was
the one who was destined or
chosen by the father alexander vi to get
most political performance and
seize a boy who didn't like that so he
killed his older brother conspired
against him and killed him machiavelli
thinks that's wonderful machiavelli says
that warms his heart makes him feel
that's finally somebody sees through
the lies and the illusions and the
pretensions of conventional morality for
machiavelli we live in the jungle we
live in a totally amoral universe
independent of scripture independent of
revealed religion independent of the
will of god there's only the will of man
in that respect machiavelli is a
path-breaking political philosophy no
matter how evil or pernicious his
teachings
we ignore him at our peril
and
like it or not there is a dark and
sparkling brilliance to this like black
diamonds
you look at it and you realize that
however horrifying his conclusions
there's a certain grim truth in what he
says
and we may not accept the entirety of it
but like it or not the world of politics
isn't ugly
profane immoral place at least to a
great extent
and those of us who wish to be practical
politicians will find it very hard to
keep our hands completely clean
machiavelli wishes to liberate us
from
what he views as being childish insipid
guilt feelings
about
political morality there are no rules in
politics in the same way and for the
same reason there are no rules in nature
with machiavelli we have one of the
great restatements
of a political theme introduced in
western political thought in the first
book of the republic
if you stretch your memory back to
professor rakuti's lectures last
time when he talked about the republic
in the first book of the republic
socrates primary antagonist is a man
named thrasymachus
he's a sophist anthrosimicus holds the
view that justice is the advantage of
the stronger in other words whoever it
is that has the most force the most
military power makes the rules and
justice is whatever they tell you to do
so when the nazis win whatever they tell
you to do is just if the stalinists win
whatever they tell you is just if
machiavelli wins or the borgias win
doesn't matter as long as they have the
power to coerce you whatever they tell
you is just
so simica's view then
is that
justice is a simple matter of coercion
and there is no moral order to the world
now this view is
thoroughly criticized
and at least apparently refuted in the
first book of the republic
but
like all profound ideas resonance of it
is always at least implicitly in the
western political tradition
and machiavelli regains
the nerve to say there is no moral order
to the world
he's the first man to reassert what
thracemica said in the first book of the
republic that we live peculiarly and
exclusively here in the realm of nature
that there is no metaphysical realm by
which to judge the good and evil of
human actions there's only power force
brutality
you adjust to it or you succumb to it
those are your choices
machiavelli wants to teach us how to
become tyrannical men and if you stop
and think about the first book of the
republic i believe you will recognize
that thrasymachus has the tyrannical
soul the soul is driven entirely by
passion that thinks reason is something
is an afterthought for the feeble who
want to make up stories about why we
ought to be good rather than evil
machiavelli and thrasymachus both wish
to liberate us from metaphysics and
morality
both of them say
in this world of
darkness flux
double crossing and backstabbing
the only way to get ahead the only way
to achieve human felicity human
happiness human
goodness is to get them before they get
you
donald trump
recently wrote a book called the art of
the deal
you could say that machiavelli's book is
the art of the double cross
he not only
explains how to be treacherous he gives
you examples
he calls them from history he calls them
from
contemporary politics as well but in
every case
he shows that crime not only pays but
that goodness is a waste of time and
goodness will ultimately be your
downfall
in some respects machiavelli's project
is like that of friedrich nietzsche
it'll be a re-evaluation of all values
he's going to stand the christian and
the platonic view of righteousness
of political morality on its head
all the things that we previously
thought to be good turn out to be evil
all the things that we previously
thought to be evil turn out to be good
or if not good pleasurable practical
useful
handy
machiavelli
has written a number of works the prince
which is his most famous work is a
remarkably brief piece of work usually
when a great philosopher has some
important message to
give
he can't control his pain and if you
look at say aquinas's theologica it goes
on and on and on it's interminable
machiavelli has not written that sort of
a book it's a 90-page book in and out
it's meant to be a practical handbook
for the tyrant
machiavelli's book
the prince was joseph stalin's favorite
work he kept it on his night table
and it's not hard to see why it shows
you how to be a good tyrant a good in
the sense of effective good in the sense
of practical not good in the sense of
morally good because that's only for old
ladies and kids
nobody seriously believes that stuff
now this may sound like a very cynical
set of ideas in fact it is
but although it is very cynical there is
an element of it which is practical
which is true like it or not
if you are completely good completely
virtuous i am not certain that you will
be a completely effective and efficient
politician i don't know that i want the
president to be as kind and as
thoughtful and as philosophical as
marcus aurelius maybe we would be harmed
as much as benefited by that
i am sure on the other hand that i don't
want the president to be like
machiavelli's prince because it's a sure
thing we will be harmed rather than
benefited by that
prior to going into seclusion and
writing this book
machiavelli had
worked for the medici family in florence
who were influential figures in
florentine and thus in italian politics
and
although he had been serving them and
helping them out and advising them on
political matters the medici had been
thrown out of florence had been chased
out and with them goes machiavelli he
goes into retirement
now there's a definite sense here that
here's a man who's very intelligent very
bright but awfully frustrated he gives
you that sense when you read the book of
being a monday morning quarterback god
how he wants to go back into there in
practical politics he hates being among
the musty books in the library it's not
interesting to him what he primarily
wants is to run people's lives what he
primarily wants is political power and
after he gets political power what he
wants then is more political power
because you can never have enough
as socrates pointed out about the
tyrannical man this is a thirst that can
never be slaked no matter how much
satisfaction you get for these desires
nothing is ever enough you're like
someone that can't get enough to eat or
can't get enough to drink no matter how
much you eat a drink it's never
satisfactory so here's one of the great
dissatisfied individuals and he's even
more dissatisfied because he's forced to
be an armchair quarterback and no one is
more practical than nicola machiavelli
he dedicates his book
to one of the medici family and it's one
of the most flowery and flattering and
adoring introductions one could possibly
imagine
and of course it's no less cynical than
the rest of the book
the book itself tells the wise prince
the monarch the he who would be tyrant
that he must be very careful to avoid
flatterers because flatterers are
dangerous men
your noble highness
a clever fellow like the medici for whom
machiavelli is writing the book
is going to see through
the introduction but then wonder do i
want this guy on my side or do i want
him on someone else's side this is a
very difficult thing to consider a
difficult concern for a real prince look
at the examples that we get in the in
machiavelli's the prince
he gives examples of how to take over
countries that you are born to for
example if your father is the king and
your f and your your father dies how you
take succession there very easy the
people will accept it you won't have any
problem with them and when you are
trying to establish your rule as a new
ruler in this legitimate government the
best thing to do
is to establish fear because you can
count on fear
machiavelli says it would be very nice
if you could be loved
having being loved by your people by
your subjects is a very handy thing for
ruler and machiavelli says it's not that
love is intrinsically good but rather
love is handy and practical and if you
people love you they're less likely to
give you a problem so you should
cultivate love
now
love is is a nice thing to have but
fear fear is the kind of thing
machiavelli really understands he likes
fear because fear is one of those things
you can count on and if as machiavelli
points out you are forced to choose
between having the people love you and
having them fear you make sure you have
them fear you
because you can count on fear people's
love you'll never be sure enough about
that but fear you can count on so it's
important to be
feared the next best thing is to be
loved the only thing the prince must
avoid according to machiavelli the
prince cannot afford to be hated when
the people hate you they will come and
get you one way or another they will
depose you and the whole name of this
game is to take power and to control
power and to make it your own and then
to absorb more power
there's a part in which he says well
it's nice if you can inherit a kingdom
from your father if your father has to
be the king but very few of us are lucky
enough to have that circumstance now you
must think back to your head that in
your head that machiavelli's father
was the pope which is very handy
circumstances just the problem is you
you can't get to the papacy by
hereditary succession so we have kind of
a difficulty there yeah they've been
careful about that
well
machiavelli says if you don't have to be
born to the throne if you don't get the
royal purple by matter of birth there's
always usurpation which is a great
favorite activity for him he really
likes usurpation so the idea of getting
close to the throne of gradually
weaseling your way into the court
and telling of course the king or the
prince or the legitimate ruler how much
you admire him and how well you think of
him and how important it is to
constantly be pursuing machiavellian
political policies
the more you'll become important
indispensable the more you could stab
him in the back and take control of the
government yourself
machiavelli's
moral universe
is the moral universe of the wolf of the
predatory animal
machiavelli
and his political philosophy
has
a horrifying brilliance through it on
account of the fact that it's consistent
with much of what we see in political
life on an everyday basis
the drawback of this conception of
political philosophy and the contempt
and conception of an amoral universe is
that it makes people
no longer social animals
stop and think about what the
machiavellian wants us to do he wants us
to constantly betray others
both above us in the political structure
and below us in the political structure
in order to satisfy our own lust for
power a lust which is never satisfied
which only grows bigger and bigger as
its objects become bigger and bigger
that's one of the reasons incidentally
where machiavelli likes roman history so
much roman history is full of creatures
like this machiavelli thinks they're
wonderful he thinks that the italy of
the 1500s 16th century italy is feeble
prostrate broken up into fragmented
warring little cliques
that prevent real political glory from
coming into being the reason why he
likes a horrifying figure like caesar
borgia is that caesar borgia
is the man of virtue virtu virtue is
exactly the opposite of platonic virtue
it is much more like thrasamakian virtue
it is the virtue of the man that tells
lies that stabs people in the back that
does whatever it takes to satisfy his
unquenchable desire for power
so what we need is a man of year two and
this book is designed to create veer two
the problem is that this viewer ii is
the virtue of the predatory animal not
of the rational human being or it's the
rational human being insofar as that
rationality is completely
subjugated or subordinate to one's
irrational desires and if you stop and
look back at what the soul of the
tyrannical man was supposed to look like
in the republic you realize that the
desiring part is really running the
rational part the rational part of the
soul is just an instrument in the hands
of his desire for power or sex or money
or what have you machiavelli takes that
same conception of the soul desire comes
first my desire for power
determines all my other activities and
my rationality is subordinate to that so
machiavelli wants us to have that kind
of veer too the virtue of the leopard
the
the guiltless killing of the hawk
the hawk doesn't feel bad about killing
sparrows that's the way hawks are the
way of nature is the way of cruelty we
must learn to live with that or die with
that if you get if you get your way
through machiavelli
excuse me
now
let's come back to the problem of italy
italy is fragmented italy is broken up
italy is in a historically horrible set
of circumstances and machiavelli is
sounding a clarion call to break through
from old ecclesiastical borrowings old
scriptural conceptions of virtue old
greco-roman conceptions of morality what
machiavelli wants is a good practical
politician that will scheme and lie his
way to the top and once he gets to the
top of a particular italian city-state
he will attack one city-state after
another and unify italy and create
something like a new roman empire there
can be new glory a new this worldly
satisfaction of the potential for human
greatness remember that machiavelli is
completely opposed to all metaphysical
interpretations of the world machiavelli
does not believe in heaven and hell
machiavelli does not believe in god
machiavelli does not believe in the
realm of the forms all machiavelli
believes in is here and now
the main chance how are we going to get
what we want right now and machiavelli's
conception of virtue of the blessed
human condition of the well-organized
human soul and of the practically run
political society all come together in
this figure of the ruthless tyrannical
prince
now this tyrannical prince
will be
as machiavelli says like a lion and a
fox when he's faced with military
dangers or threats that are direct and
obvious he's a lion he can withstand
anyone else's direct coercive force
because he's a military man machiavelli
likes blood and gore he's a very
military kind of fellow he really likes
military solutions but in addition to
that
being a being a lion is not enough in
addition to that it's also necessary to
be a fox what we mean by being a fox is
that one must be clever
sly cunning deceitful and when you're
powerful and at the same time deceitful
when you can confuse them when you can
confuse your opponents and defeat them
in a practical coercive sense then you
are the man of realver2 this is the kind
of guy that's going to go straight to
the top he's going to climb a pile of
corpses on his way there but then again
he has no moral compunctions about it
there is no god to judge him there is no
metaphysical standard by which to judge
this he either succeeds or he doesn't
it's a sort of nihilistic approach to
politics in which the gratification of
the individual ego is raised the status
of a principle
in some respects this is why the
renaissance and particularly the the
human-centered political science that's
characteristic of the renaissance which
is a big change from that of the middle
ages is such a turning of the corner in
the western political tradition we're
moving away from god-centered politics
toward man-centered politics and
man-centered politics is ugly
man-centered politics is bloody and
man-centered politics serves no ends
but human ends and human desires there
is no
ultimate
summum bonum
no ultimate good that politics gestures
at
machiavelli gives a very fine example of
a of an action which he considers to
have great political wisdom in it i
think you'll like this
there was a ruler
who
attacked and conquered another
city-state
but there's still a great deal of
banditry a good bit of outlawy uh
political chaos in the countryside
so this ruler and machiavelli thinks
this rule is a very wise fellow
he sends his second in command his
lieutenant to that city and he says i
give you complete power of life and
death over all the citizens of that city
because now they're mine
and i want you to go down there and lay
down the law i want you to ruthlessly
exterminate all of my enemies i want you
to to make the decrees i think
appropriate and whatever degrees you
think are appropriate make them all and
lean on these people
go in and coerce them intimidate them
frighten them
until they
concede that
i am the legitimate ruler here and that
you rule in my name and i give you
complete power if any of them complain
about you tell them i've given delegated
my authority to you and if they give you
any more problems beyond that kill them
now that's only half of the story
there's more to it
after doing that the prince lets this
guy do it for a couple of months three
four five months and this very cruel
very bloodthirsty very ruthless second
in command
dominates the people lots of mass
executions
cruel tortures
horrible bloody spectacles which
frighten the people there out of their
wits
now here's a problem this is part of
machiavellianism fear is a good thing
you can count on people's fear and this
guy's made him plenty afraid but we have
a problem here the potential for hatred
certainly if you've killed someone's
father mother son daughter husband wife
it's going to be payback time
machiavelli has no conception of
forgiveness no idea that charity ought
to be extended to us sinners he thinks
that's for children and old ladies no
machiavelli says the right way to handle
this is the way the prince in this case
handled it he went to that second city
and he asked the people in that city
what do you think of my new ruler here
is he a nice fellow a real charmer isn't
he and it turns out
that
the people were
horrified by the terrible cruelties the
tortures and the murders the public
executions that he had imposed on them
so secretly that night
the prince was sitting back there
thinking about this and he orders his
secret police or his private guardsmen
the ones he can really trust whoever
they are
it tells them i want you secretly to go
to the room of my second in command the
man i gave this bloody authority to
and i want you to take him out to the
center of the square of this town and i
want you to cut him in half and leave
him there
next morning the people of the town get
up
and what do they see but a man who is
the object of intense hatred to them
pieces of him all over the center of the
square
and then our prince sets out a decree
that he had heard
through some source which he isn't going
to name that this man had been very
severe and very violent and we can't
have any of that in a well-run state he
had heard that this man had usurped
power that the prince had never given
him and because the second command had
been so bloody-minded and such an evil
cruel fellow the prince's justice the
prince's mercy and the person's prince's
honesty required that he'd be cut in
half
the art of the double cross you send a
guy out to do the dirty work you cut his
throat you throw them to the wolves you
give them to the people that are left
over and then you clean up the gravy at
the end of it this is machiavelli's
conception of good politics he specifies
that particular example as an example of
a man who really knows his way around
political stuff first you'll first you
conquer people that you have no right to
and then you send somebody out there to
do extremely evil and unpleasant and
violent things to them
and you lie to him and say that
you do it with my blessing
and then you go to the people and you
act like you're blameless so they won't
hate you
and then you kill this guy throw him to
the wolves and the people lap it up and
say what a nice failure i'm glad we got
a prince like you
much better than the guy we had here we
thought he was acting with your
authority but of course now we see that
he wasn't
that's what the word machiavellian means
two three four levels of meaning
all devoted to the same task
to the organization and acquire
acquisition of political power
by any means necessary
this man is not careful about the means
that he uses to achieve his ends
so machiavelli writes his prince
90 pages in order that a practical
politician can have this around for
inspiration and isn't it inspirational
reading those of you who have looked at
it before will find that like it or not
it is in some respects inspirational
reading simply because of the
single-mindedness the ruthless pursuit
of practical political power as a
handbook for doing that
i think it has never been excelled
the difficulty of course with this is as
i said a little earlier it prevents
human beings from being social animals
stop and think about it for a minute
suppose you're a member of the medici
family
and suppose this guy machiavelli writes
the prince and dedicates it to you and
tells you to beware of flatterers and
beware of people that are trying to get
in good with you because you can never
trust them they may stab you in the back
suppose you were a political ruler and
he wrote it to you would you hire him to
work for you
what would happen if you had him on your
staff where's where your staff is going
to start disappearing
right unforeseen accidents they're all
going to start as he moves up the ladder
of command
bad things happen to good people all
kinds of stuff could happen here and
then it may well be
that some horrible misfortune may occur
while you're out riding while you happen
to be asleep well you happen to have
your back turned in other words
he is here so he can usurp your position
why oh why if you had any brains at all
would you choose to have him on your
staff there is no man who is less
appropriate to the staff of a politician
than machiavelli and yet in some
respects
there is a lure he does show you a
horrible worldly wisdom
which maybe you want on your own side
rather than on your other rather than on
your opponent's side but if he's on your
side
well i guess he really can't be on your
side i guess he's always on his own side
which is part of the problem machiavelli
is not a team player
if you were a ruler you would never in
your right mind have to keep work for
you
turn it around suppose
a ruler is foolish enough to bring a
machiavellian in the machiavellian kills
him makes it look like someone else did
it he takes over the throne
a person would have to be crazy to work
for machiavelli as opposed to have him
in
in addition to having him work for you
in other words suppose he were to become
the prince of the king what's he going
to do with you when you become his
number two or number three or number
four man you are expendable everyone is
expendable to the machiavellian you have
no intrinsic value except as a vehicle
by which he can satisfy his desires by
which he can gratify his lust for power
so the machiavellian soul is the
tyrannical soul in some respects when
you go back and look at plato's republic
almost all the great themes in western
political philosophy are to be found
there machiavelli is nothing really new
machiavelli is a codification
not quite a systematization but a
handbook for the would-be tyrant he's a
handbook of it's a handbook of sophistry
right because he says one thing it means
another and in fact the meaning of his
statements doesn't matter so long as it
gets the practical result of achieving
political power and it's an entirely
this worldly orientation
if we had to look at the ancient
political tradition
both platonism and christianity
organized the political theory with
reference to the will of some
giant metaphysical law giver in the case
of plato it's the form of the good in
the case of christianity it's god's
omnipotence
but in either case the key issue is
making our behavior and our souls and
our lives consistent with the
obligations imposed by this thing in the
metaphysical realm
once we abolish the metaphysical realm
there is no law or ultimate standard by
which to judge our actions and by which
to judge our good and evil and that
means there's only the satisfaction of
desires down here and this leads
straight to the softest political
position that political power is an end
in itself that the satisfaction of
people's desires has an end in
themselves and the real true state of
human felicity is having profound
vehement extraordinarily
forceful emotions passions and then
satisfying them and the continuous
satisfaction of vehement passions is
what machiavelli and the sophists and
all of this cynical political tradition
cynical not in the literal sense but in
the broad general sense this cynical
political tradition
enjoins us too
so all of you who are would-be rulers
this is the book for you the difficulty
is is that it tells us all
or perhaps not all of us but all of us
who have the nerve
not to succumb to metaphysics
who are willing to break free of the
mold of mere morality it tells us how to
become
chiefs and no longer indians and of
course if we were all to follow that
there'd be all chiefs and no indians but
machiavelli is under no illusions
about everybody having the capacity to
do this it's only the extraordinary
individual like himself or like caesar
borgia or like a handful of the other
great tyrants in history that have
really shown us what human beings are
capable of
in some respect
machiavelli is similar to plato in that
both plato and machiavelli are trying to
show us something buried deep in the
marrow of the human soul at the very
center of it
plato thinks there's an eternal goodness
a final
spark of the divine soul which allows us
to get some access to the mind of god
and to the understanding of ultimate
truth and wisdom
machiavelli believes that at the core of
the human soul
in the marrow of the psyche
there is a beast
an untamed animal which wants only the
satisfaction of its desires
in some respects this is a very
prescient theory because it anticipates
many of the views that will later be
held by sigmund freud
underneath our superego underneath this
veil of civility
this
veneer of righteousness in fact we are
animals exclusively concerned with the
satisfaction of our physical desires
we are beasts
with a very very thin shell of rational
morality
machiavelli suggests that we should
become on the outside what we are on the
inside except in such cases when it's
inconvenient if it's convenient to look
pious gentle kind and good well that's
just fine the important thing is not to
be gentle kind and good the important
thing is to be ruthless and rapacious
and treacherous
if you are familiar with the play king
lear
the edmond and edgar characters
particularly the uh the bastard son i
think it's edmund
gives a wonderful speech in which he
talks about legitimacy in which he talks
about the order of political right and
the circumstances of inheritance and
social status
and
when he says in the beginning of that
soliloquy thou nature art my goddess and
to thy law my services are bound
that prayer was about the only prayer
that machiavelli could say with a
straight face nature red and fang and
claw is
the goddess to whom his services are
bound
nature which is
the fundamental reality we are human
physical things that's remember where
that's where the word nature comes from
from the greek word phusis
right so we are physical beings we are
not spirits in a material world we are
rapacious bits of meat that do whatever
we can to take advantage of each other
except when we're deluding ourselves
with things like morals religion
kindness gentleness milk of human virtue
that sort of thing but apart from
delusions like that and silly poetry
appropriate for the feeble the weak the
christians
in life there's only
blood
gore
power
the intoxication of not only surviving
but conquering
we might say that machiavelli's
conception of virtue harks back not to
the socratic conception of virtue but to
the conception of virtue characteristic
of homer in the iliad in the odyssey
it's the lying treacherous virtue of
odysseus
it's the powerful lion-like virtues of
achilles
if you are a good warrior able to coerce
other people able to impose your will
on
a universe that is both indifferent to
you and indifferent to
any moral structure you might create
then and only then are you a man worth
taking seriously he enjoins us to create
to go back to the earlier pre-socratic
pre-christian virtues we hear the drums
of a primitive heroism in this book it
is a blast from the past and at the same
time it is one of the most modern of
political works
if we take for granted and i think it a
fair assumption that at this point in
time we live in a secular age we live in
an age which is contemptuous of
metaphysics which is contemptuous of
references to abstract morality then in
some respects we live in a machiavellian
universe
even if we have some sort of ativistic
connection back to an earlier morality
that meant something more than personal
self-gratification
in that respect machiavelli is a very
modern political thinker he is the first
political thinker to break from that
metaphysical tradition towards a
completely physical tradition to move
from a sacred politics to a profane
politics
or you might say that he undoes the
distinction between the sacred and
profane by abolishing the sacred so the
world around us is neither sacred nor
profane it just is what it is
and you are what you are and what you
are in fact
is a wolf guarding the sheep if you
remember the analogy that thrasymachus
makes in the first book of the republic
that the ruler relates to the citizens
that he that are his subjects the way a
shepherd relates to a sheep or to a
flock of sheep he keeps them there not
because he likes the sheep not because
he has any moral obligation to the sheep
but because he likes pork he likes lamb
chops he likes to turn these things into
his sustenance well other people the
subjects in the machiavellian state will
exist only in order to satisfy the
physical carnal carnals are well chosen
where they're carnal desires of the
machiavellian prince achilles might have
liked machiavelli if he had understood
what was being said
odysseus i think certainly would have
liked machiavelli because he brings
together both the lion and the fox i
would say not so much achilles because
achilles is a little on the dumb side
but odysseus as the perfect
machiavellian hero brings together the
willingness to lie the willingness to
violate oaths the willingness to break
whatever social conventions are around
you in order to achieve your ends
the centered focused fierce desire to
satisfy your innermost longings in some
respects machiavelli is what people
would be like in the freudian sense if
you took away the superego altogether or
if you only kept the superego the
conception of righteousness of moral
virtue as a veneer to protect you from
other people's
condemnation
but what we are down deep
is a mass of desires that we neither
choose nor control
and human felicity simply exists in the
satisfaction of these desires
oxen are happy when you give them straw
machiavelli is happy when you give them
a government fundamentally there is no
difference
each animal gravitates towards its own
appropriate object
machiavelli
in that respect is the is an ancient
political theorist at the same same time
a modern political theorist
he represents nothing new in politics
but rather an ever-present temptation
it is always tempting
for human beings to take the easy way
out and decide that they're going to be
meat that they're going to give up
the attempt
to kindle the divine spark which is what
marcus aurelius called the soul
called the disposition to moral virtue
machiavelli doesn't want to climb
what plato called the ladder of
beauty in the symposium
because he finds the world ugly
violent
and evil
and he likes it
so in other words not only does he know
that he's in the cave but he thinks that
any attempt to move out of the
cave is a kind of letting down of nature
it's an attempt to move away from nature
towards
some sort of shemerical poetic i know
not what and machiavelli is the saint is
a patron saint of all politicians who
would be exclusively and immorally
practical
one of the great
difficulties in evaluating machiavelli
is to give him his due in other words to
be intellectually fair fair to him
because he is a great genius there's no
way that we can honestly take that away
from him
but it's also a mistake to say that
while he's a great genius
we can in practice use this as a guide
to life
if people were to take this seriously
and although god help us some of us do
it would be a disaster for the social
structure and it would be disaster for
politics
the difficulty is is that we seem to
vacillate between one and the other when
the better angels of our natures take
over we can see how marcus aurelius is a
fine politician and how plato offers us
something real solid substantial in
organizing our emotions organizing our
lives organizing our standards of
judgment the problem is that we tend to
vacillate back and forth every once in a
while when we think nobody's looking we
have a sneaking suspicion that
machiavelli may be right
let him who is out who is without sin
cast the first stone i think every one
of us has done stuff that we knew was
wrong at one time or another machiavelli
is saying i wish to liberate you from
the guilt of thinking that that is a
mistake your mistake is in not doing
that all the time
do not succumb to the temptation
to be an angel you have no chance of
doing that you are meat
you are meet with a rational soul but
your rational soul is nothing that glows
in the dark it's nothing metaphysical
it's just the rational part of you that
allows you to decide
how to best satisfy your irrationally
developed desires
so machiavelli is a kind of standing
temptation
he is a great political genius and we
must give the devil his due almost
literally speaking
but at the same time we have to
understand the limitations of this
limitation number one is it prevents us
from being what we really are which is
social animals
a machiavellian would be unfit and
subordinate and would be unfit as a
superior nobody in his right mind would
work for machiavelli or have machiavelli
work form
number two
it is a denigration in some respects of
human nature
it is a cynical analysis of what people
have done in worst case circumstances
it is almost an entirely hopeless
philosophy
by rejecting the christian virtues of
faith hope and charity well
i suppose we might get by without
charity i suppose in this case we might
get by without faith but the problem
with this philosophy that i think even
bothers those who
acknowledge its brilliance is that it is
entirely hopeless philosophy what can we
expect from the next government the same
thing we can expect from this government
which is that it will be rapacious that
it will be treacherous that it will be
evil and that it will be
powerful and that it will dominate us
the only way out of that merry-go-round
is to dominate everyone else
nature red in fang and claw enjoins us
to make a meal of our own
and joins us to become the wolf among
the sheep
and if we have
both the inclination and the
unwillingness to philosophize in the
platonic
sense then it seems to me that the only
logical conclusion is the one that
machiavelli draws
so if you wish to go for the strictly
physical strictly anti-metaphysical
politics we're going to have a hard time
connecting politics and ethics
one of the great achievements of plato's
republic is that politics turns out to
be ethics writ large that what is good
for the soul of the individual man the
organization of the reasoning the
spirited and the desiring parts it also
turns out to be isomorphically good for
the society because we will organize the
rulers the rational folks at the top of
society who will have the guardians
their auxiliaries the spirited part and
we'll have the bronze people at the
bottom getting as many of their desires
satisfied as possible for plato there's
a one-to-one connection between politics
and ethics
that will be true of all the
metaphysical thinkers also be true of
the christians
on the other hand
if one wishes to adopt the single world
entirely physicalistic interpretation of
human life and of ontology and of
politics of necessity there will be a
disjunction between politics and ethics
we will hear this again when we deal
with david hume's theory of justice
so if you wish
politics to be moral
if you complain that politicians take
too many bribes and cut too many corners
and are unwilling to do what they ought
to do and meet their moral obligations
you are implicitly making an argument
which is founded on some sort of
metaphysical conception no matter how in
koat
you might as well fess up to it now
you're all metaphysical believers
if you don't wish to be a metaphysical
believer that's another possibility be
careful you don't move down the slippery
slope to machiavellianism because we
move from the state of society to the
state of nature and the nature that
machiavelli has destined for us will be
worse than any hell because it will be
immediate and tangible and there's no
way around it it's a necessary element
in the human condition
machiavelli offers us
a secular substitute for salvation
machiavelli offers us a chance
for this worldly gratification
and since there's no other world for us
to go to no final judgment of god no
ultimate moral order this is the best
that the human species can attain
the homeric virtues the military virtues
the treacherous political virtues
those elements of
roman history which are the most
disgraceful
and the most appalling machiavelli
wishes to raises those to the status of
universal human
felicity
and unusual well perhaps not an unusual
unnecessary but lamentable temptation
and insofar as we wish to avoid that
we must go back and think about the idea
of
politics and ethics
the implications that it holds for
ontology because it implies metaphysics
the implications that metaphysics have
for our conception of the rest of
philosophy and the way in which
knowledge holds ethics virtue
and
human
experience together the way it connects
our conception of the individual soul
and political
order
and the way
in which our own lives would be
influenced by a decision to either
succumb to the lure of this world
or to take the chance
that another better one awaits us
it is not a decidable proposition
machiavelli wishes to offer us one
possible solution to the set of
intellectual difficulties
you