Pod Insights Modern Wisdom The Story Behind Machiavelli's Philosophy - Dr Alexander Lee | Modern Wisdom Podcast 321 About this episode Alexander Lee is a renaissance historian at the University of Warwick and an author.
Niccolo Machiavelli is one of the most famous political philosophers of all time. His work is often considered ruthless, brutal and manipulative, but who was the man behind the words?
Alexander has just written one of the most insightful and comprehensive biographies of Machiavelli ever, so let's return to 15th century Florence and find out what Niccolo was really like, how he continually failed in his own political career, why he threw up on an old woman after having sex with her, the truth underpinning his views on human nature and much more...
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 A central theme running through all of Machiavelli's writings is fortune and the vicissitudes of fortune. Fortune, he says, is what rules the world around us. But she, he always imagines her as a woman. She is very unpredictable and very capricious. You never know when she's going to rise you up to the highest heights and when she's going to knock you down on your knees.
0:26 Chris Williamson? Why is an Italian man from the 15th century worth writing about?
0:32 Speaker 00 I think there are at least two good reasons for that.
0:38 Speaker 00 On the one hand, Machiavelli has exerted an influence over the development of Western political thought like very few others.
0:50 Speaker 00 There are not many discussions about realpolitik, the nature of rulership, the role of virtue or the lack thereof in public life, which do not at some point come back to Machiavelli in his writings. The second reason is closely connected with that. When we think of Machiavelli, it's quite natural for us to think of the adjective machiavellian. That's to say, someone who is shrewd, cunning, a little bit amoral, willing to do things that they probably shouldn't do in other areas of life. And that association, which I'm sure we'll discuss in further detail later on in the show, has often coloured the way we perceive the man.
1:32 Speaker 00 His life, however, is quite different or gives us a quite different idea of, or gives us quite different perception. Although he often did things which were questionable. He was far from being this infallible political genius that we may think of. In actual fact, he was a very human person, a flawed personality, who was often getting things wrong, who was often finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing with the wrong people and getting found out. So I think, yeah, on the one hand, we should look at Machiavelli from the point of view of his enduring relevance,
2:14 Speaker 00 I'm not looking at the idea of relevance as a criterion of his historical study, if it's relevant to political discourse, and on the other hand, because of the extent to which his life. Does that sort of jars with that a little bit?
2:26 Chris Williamson? It seems like some of the established thought was that he was kind of born with this immutable characteristics, these amazing political thinker, and yet upon reading about his life, it seems like he kind of blunders and blunders and slowly gets less worse and less worse and less worse, and then eventually ends up at some degree of capability.
2:48 Speaker 00 Um, I, I, it, um, less worse, he is always making blunders. From the beginning of his political career to the last moment, he is always getting things wrong. It doesn't, that's not to say he doesn't get a lot of things right, but he is always making miscalculations. He's better, I think, on paper than he is in his own political career. But it is certainly true that because of Machiavelli's enduring resonance within the field of political thought, or his political thought, many people even today have been
3:27 Speaker 00 inclined to believe that he was born, you know, like Athena from the head of the philosophy gods with this great insight. And it is, I mean, I'm not saying it's completely wrong, because one can detect the genesis of his ideas in his thinking from a comparative early date, but it is, I think, mistaken to believe that he was a man without flaws, without personal failings, without problems and difficulties. But for me, as I hope I've shown in the book, that makes him all the more relatable, all the more engaging and personable. I often say that, you know, I, there are very few political thinkers in the world
4:11 Speaker 00 that I'd like to go for a pint with, but Machiavelli is certainly one of them.
4:15 Chris Williamson? Is that why he's still notorious today then? Why, why is it, there's lots of Renaissance figures that could have been still used in common parlance. I mean, Machiavellianism, his surname has become an entire topic within its own right. Why is he so notorious?
4:32 Speaker 00 Well, Machiavelli is...
4:35 Speaker 00 Significance, as a political thinker, and his unfortunate reputation, stems from the fact that he broke quite significantly, in many respects, with early traditions of political thought, particularly with early ideas of worship.
4:54 Speaker 00 Prior to Machiavelli's birth, it was quite common to believe that princes who wished to rule properly and to remain in power should do so by acting virtuously. And virtue was understood in a mixture of kind of stoic and Christian terms. That's to say, it was believed that a ruler should evince those virtues which we should all manifest in our lives. We should be honest, they should be decent, they should be prudent, they should be wise, continent, etc., etc. They should act always with justice.
5:34 Speaker 00 Machiavelli, for very pragmatic reasons, thinks that, while this might be a very good approach to adopt as a private citizen, he thinks that experiences showed that in practice, it's not such a good idea. In fact, in times of turbulence, such as those in which he was living, it can actually be disadvantage to act honestly, or with generosity, or with mercy, or compassion, etc. So in The Prince, his most famous work, I should say notorious work, he suggests that it is a prince who wishes to stay in power should, as well as having an independent military force of citizens,
6:17 Speaker 00 he should be parsimonious, rather generous, he should be cruel, rather than compassionate.
6:28 Speaker 00 Machiavelli does say that if he can make himself loved with people, that's a lovely thing, but love is a less reliable sentiment as a basis for political power than... Fear, better to be ready to be dishonest than honest, et cetera, et cetera.
6:50 Speaker 00 So Machiavelli is breaking with this early tradition in saying that a prince needs to act in a way that is not always in conformity with traditional ideas of virtue or of ethical goodness. He wasn't, I should stress, the absolute first to make these points. When, very early on in his career, in fourteen ninety-nine, Florence sacks and arrests one of its leading military commanders, a guy called Paolo Vitelli. And Paolo Vitelli is responsible for leading a campaign to recapture Pisa, which had rebelled against Florence a little bit before. For whatever reason, Vitelli throws away a golden opportunity
7:34 Speaker 00 to capture Pisa. And the Florentines are typical of this, either to incompetence or to treachery. And so they arrest him and they bring him for trial to Florence. And there's a big debate about whether he should just be executed straight off, even though there are doubts about his guilt, or whether you should give him the benefit of the doubt. And there are very good or powerful arguments made in the councils, that while an individual, private individual, should act with compassion and understanding of justice, things are different for a state. A state should act in such a way that it preserves its own interests.
8:17 Speaker 00 And so they decide to execute Vitelli, encourager les autres. And we can see in this idea, this idea of reason of state, later becomes known, that the state should follow a different set of moral precepts to private individuals. It's an early foretaste of ideas that Machiavelli is going to develop more fully. And in The Prince, he really works out all the implications of this. Unfortunately, well, I should say, he's writing against, as I said earlier, a very, very, very specific set of political circumstances.
8:51 Speaker 00 When he's writing, he's lost his job. Florence has changed hands from being a republic. It's now gone back into the hands of the Medici. It's beset by factional divides. And the whole of Italy is in the grip of a very complex series of wars. It's evident that Machiavelli needs a job and that to get a job, he needs to persuade the Medici that he's a good advisor. And to do that, he needs to show them how to stay in power within these circumstances. And that's why he suggests being, you know, cruel, dishonest, et cetera, et cetera. When necessary, I should stress.
9:33 Speaker 00 But the work is written in a deliberately discreet and subtle way. I really knew very well that he couldn't simply say to the Medici, hi, I'd like a job. Here's what I think about your situation. So he dresses it up in a very abstract way, as if he's writing a very disinterested piece of political philosophy. And that has made it very easy for people from soon after it was written to read it
10:00 Speaker 00 in, out of its context, if I can put it that way. To see it as a repository of universal ideas rather than an attempt to address very precise concerns. And the problem, I mean, that's a legitimate way of reading anything. I'm not going to cast aspersions on my colleagues in political science, no matter what I might feel. But as soon as you take that step of reading it out of its context, then there's a tendency or a temptation, I should say, to project your ahistorical reading of the prince back onto Machiavelli. And that does lead us to misrepresent his ideas, his background, his intentions.
10:45 Chris Williamson? What was his personality like? It seems like someone who would have, who would write this sort of stuff would be very game playing, you know, high on the dark triad score, narcissistic, no empathy. What sort of a man can write this sort of a work?
11:04 Speaker 00 Well, the short term is a clever one. But.
11:10 Speaker 00 A pleasant one.
11:13 Speaker 00 If I were to describe Machiavelli in a word, I would say that he was a bit of a lad.
11:20 Chris Williamson? That's so good, that that three, that three letter words that every university student rugby player desires to be called, that's, that's Niccolo Machiavelli.
11:30 Speaker 00 Well, I, I, I say it a little bit in jest, of course, but it is meant seriously. Because, I mean, let's go back to the circumstances in which it was written, the prince was written, because it's a good insight into the type, into the type of guy he was. A little bit before, he is, loses his job. He loses his job as a senior bureaucrat within the flante government. Because he has aligned himself with, as he says, a republican, a republican system of government. And afterwards foolishly allowed himself to get caught up in, or implicated in a conspiracy against France's new will is the Medici.
12:13 Speaker 00 So he gets arrested, after that, and thrown into prison and tortured.
12:18 Speaker 00 That shows straight off that he's in the wrong place at the right time, at the wrong time. Other bureaucrats who worked in the same offices as him, such as his boss, Mac or the Vergili Adriani, did not lose their jobs, let alone get thrown into jail. So he's doing the wrong thing. While he's in jail, he writes a series of poems, two poems, to his old friend Giuliano de Medici, who he knew as a kid. And these are very, very, very funny verses for somebody who's been tortured, lying in a stinking prison cell. They're very amusing. They poke fun at himself, he poke fun at himself, he contrasts himself, he adopts the form of heroic poetry at certain moments
13:00 Speaker 00 to mock himself, because he's not being heroic. He's being cowardly. Eventually he gets let out, and because he doesn't have much cash and he's very miserable, he goes to stay on his farm in the countryside. In the countryside, he writes a letter to.
13:16 Speaker 00 To a friend of his a little bit later, which he described a difficult day. What does he do in the countryside? Well, he gets up in the morning, he goes and catches birds in the countryside, by the side of a river and in the fields. He reads some poetry, all very nice. Then comes lunch, he goes home, has a bite to eat. And in the afternoon, he goes to the pub in the local village. There he gambles and drinks with all the good for nothings, his words. And they, you know, they get drunk and they have fights or whatever. He's not quiet about this, he's quite open. What he doesn't mention in that letter is that a little bit later, he also, he has several children at this point, he's married.
13:58 Speaker 00 He also has an affair with a localish girl, one of many affairs he had. And then later in the evening, when everything's kind of settled down, he goes into his study and he puts on the clothes of court. And he starts to read and write. So in that moment, we can see all the rich, very human contradictions and failings of this man. He is certainly very clever. But he also, you know, he likes a drink, he has affairs, he's a bit of a lad. What can I say?
14:31 Chris Williamson? He has affairs with both men and women, right? He's got tons of kids, he's got a wife that loves him and it seems like he loves two. But he's also spraying it around, for want of a better word.
14:43 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's absolutely right. He certainly has a lot of affairs with other women. He, some of them are very, very intense affairs. So towards the end of his life, he has a long, long affair with a woman, twenty odd years, I think twenty odd years his junior, called Barbara Salutati. And he writes again a lot of poems to her that are very self mocking, very acutely aware of his own failings. Indeed, in one poem, he even seems to allude to the fact that he may have been suffering some maybe at the time, dysfunction at the time.
15:16 Speaker 00 We think he also had some relations with guys too. There's a little bit of uncertainty here. But I think there's probably enough evidence that we can be pretty sure about it. Was this unusual? At the time, well, officially homosexuality and all homosexual relations are illegal. Although there is a certain ambiguity in the legislation. But nonetheless, it is quite common. Under the radar effectively, so he's certainly not, not strange, not, not out of the ordinary in that regard.
15:50 Chris Williamson? What are some of the other big catastrophes that he goes through? I want to get onto his philosophy and his successes in a bit, but it seems like he has a nice litany of things that go wrong, he's in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he seems to have a knack for being able to do that.
16:03 Speaker 00 Sure, well, one of the important parts of Machiavelli's job as a bureaucrat, as the second chancellor of the Florentian Republic, was going on embassies. He was usual, I mean, I think on one occasion towards the end of his life, he was actually an ambassador, but on all the other occasions, he was simply an emissary. So in other words, he couldn't agree things on his own, on the strength of his own name. He had to keep working on the instructions of people back home. And to start with, he's pretty bad at this actually. We can't blame him too much because, you know, his, his early missions, he's still in his
16:48 Speaker 00 late twenties, late twenties, very early thirties, so he's never done that kind of thing before, but still he is pretty naive. One of his first missions is to a woman called Caterina Sforza, and then there's the Tigress of Forlì, and she is a formidable woman. She's been holding, protecting, defending the independence of her little tiny state in the midst of near constant threats from all sides. Anyway, Machiavelli goes long, she has to, he has to secure a deal whereby she'll let her son, who's a mercenary, fight for Florence on similar terms, and he has to try to avoid giving away too much on Florence's behalf.
17:29 Speaker 00 And Caterina, who's a wily old woman, not that, she's not old, a wily woman, very well educated, keeps sort of dropping hints. She, she has to drop hints because there are other people present at these meetings who can't be allowed to hear everything. So she keeps dropping hints, and Machiavelli just... Doesn't notice, just doesn't pick up on them. So she keeps having to send her secretaries to, you know, have a word with them and say, you know, what we're really trying to say is this, pay attention. Anyway, he gets a bit better in time, but he, he's in later missions, he's still kind of misjudges the tone. So later he goes on a mission to, several missions to the King of France.
18:11 Speaker 00 And the basic point of these missions is to get the King of France, who is often mounting expeditions to Italy in pursuit of his claims to the Kingdom of Naples and to the Duchy of Milan, to defend France against its enemies. Anyway, on one of these missions, he has to gain the favour of the King's Chief Minister, Georges Dombois. And he catches Georges at one point outside and he says, you know, let me explain Italian politics to you. What the King really has to understand is this, you know, this is a guy in his mid thirties who has, you know, he's, he's not a fool, but he's lecturing one of Europe's
18:55 Speaker 00 foremost political figures. And Georges Dombois listens and he says, yeah, thanks. I don't need any lessons from you, chum, jumps on his horse and rides on. Anyway, and he goes on like this. Perhaps the most famous mission is where he meets Cesare Borja for the first time. This is in mid, I think it's mid fifteen oh two. Cesare Borja, the son of Alexander VI, the Pope at the time, is trying to carve out a state for himself in central Italy. He's just captured a city called Advena, beautiful, beautiful city on a high, a kind of plateau, the towers above the surrounding countryside. Machiavelli and his companion.
19:41 Speaker 00 Who is a bishop. Arrive late at night, they don't arrive when they're supposed to, they have to creep in through a back gate in the middle of a rainstorm and they're caught by guards and they're dragged before Cesarean soaking wet, covered in mud in the middle of the night, having not even managed to get into the city correctly. And Machiavelli is just in awe, in awe of Cesarean at that moment. And that does colour, he gets over it quite quickly, but that does colour his relations with Cesarean.
20:16 Speaker 00 More broadly speaking, his political errors are more fundamental, and I've already alluded to some of them. So for much of his political career, as a officially objective, apolitical bureaucrat, he just does his job, but in time he aligns himself more and more and more with the defence of a republican system of governance. And he becomes quite vehement in 1509, 1510, 1511. And there's good reason for that, because the republic is under threat from foreign attack. But it was exactly the wrong time to be doing that, the wrong time to be aligning himself with the public,
21:01 Speaker 00 because everything falls apart and the Medici come back and the republic falls. As I've said, he gets sacked and the rest spends a lot of time trying to get a job with the Medici, because he's not a rich man, he needs to work. Unfortunately, he doesn't do very well, the prince is written, as I said earlier, as a job application. But when it comes to present the prince to the person who he dedicated, Lorenzo the Medici, he comes at the wrong time. Lorenzo has just received a gift of two hunting dogs from somebody else, and he doesn't even look at the book. So Machiavelli is really angry and he goes off saying, "Damn these Medici, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
21:41 Speaker 00 Anyway, years later, he eventually earns their trust and is sent on a few, a little bit minor missions, but is involved in their plans to, their campaign to defend Florence from their enemies. And you know, he's just wormed his way back into their circle when lo and behold, they're kicked out of Florence as well. So he's again on the wrong side. By then, however, it's too late and he dies sadly.
22:11 Speaker 00 Rather disappointed.
22:12 Chris Williamson? So what's the highest office that he gets to? It seems like he's constantly selling lows and buying highs and doing an awful lot of work to try and climb back up. Also, if you are listening somewhere beyond the grave, Niccolo, I don't, it sounds like such a turbulent environment that it would have been very difficult to have weathered those storms. That period would have been almost impossible without the foresight of clairvoyance.
22:43 Speaker 00 It wasn't impossible to where people who did manage to weather the constitutional shifts in France without suffering too much hardship. His boss, for example, Marcelo di Vellidiadriani, who is just senior to him, stays in office as France's top bureaucrat through several changes of government, changes of regime at least. But you're right in saying that these were very, very, very turbulent times. It was extremely hard to stay on your feet. It was hard enough for people of some wealth, independent political standing, but it was even harder for somebody like Machiavelli, who came from a fairly modest background.
23:27 Speaker 00 He wasn't poor, but nor was he rich by any stretch of the imagination, who began life under a bit of a shadow because of his father's indebtedness and possible illegitimacy, et cetera. He really had to work to get anything, really. And that was difficult.
23:50 Speaker 00 There were various routes to achieve security and stability from an intelligent guy at the time. It was not unusual for those who had some education and literary ability to seek the patronage of more powerful rulers or more powerful figures.
24:05 Speaker 00 Alternatively, you could seek office as a secretary or a chancellor, as Machiavelli did, but in that case, it was difficult to weather the storms and it was difficult to know when to involve yourself in the political frame, when not to.
24:22 Chris Williamson? What are the most common misconceptions about his philosophical stances?
24:27 Speaker 00 Well, the most common one, we've already touched upon, and that is to say that Machiavelli was a kind of prophet of, if not evil, certainly a morality. This is a reading of the Prince that has been common from very shortly after it appeared in print. It was never published in his lifetime, but it was published very shortly afterwards. He was attacked from both sides of the confessional divide during the Reformation, attacked by Catholics because they saw this as an enemy of the virtuous rulership they were trying to defend in the pre-Territe time period. It was attacked by Protestants who saw this as an emblem of all the kind of awful things that Catholics were doing.
25:10 Speaker 00 So in France, many of your listeners may perhaps be familiar with the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre in France, where on one particular night on the feast of Saint Bartholomew, the Protestants of Paris were butchered. And those who survived often described the King of France's actions as very Machiavelli. That gives you a sense of the way in which, the extent to which, within a few decades of his death, he's already become a kind of shorthand for wickedness and evil.
25:46 Chris Williamson? So was he, he wasn't called immoral during his own lifetime because the work wasn't sufficiently widely passed around for people to work out what he was up to?
25:56 Speaker 00 Well, it was, it did generate a bit of a stir after he began circulating it, but nothing compared to what was, what happened in later decades.
26:08 Chris Williamson? What do you think, what do you think he would have thought of that? What do you think he would have thought of where his work was taken after his death?
26:16 Speaker 00 Well, this is an interesting question because it comes back to the issue of for whom Machiavelli was writing, or who he thought he was writing for.
26:28 Speaker 00 Those who have been inclined to see him as a prophet of immorality have supposed that he was writing for posterity.
26:41 Speaker 00 Leo Strauss and Harvey Mansfield have been particularly keen to advocate this line of thought. Now, it wasn't uncommon for people at the time to write for posterity. One of Machiavelli's favourite authors was a guy called Francesco Petrarca, who we know in English as Petrarch. And he was an incredibly important poet, second only to Dante in importance, in fact. And he wrote during his lifetime in the 14th century, a letter to posterity. He was constantly re-editing his letters to ensure that they were read in exactly the way he wanted them to be read after his death. He spoke frequently about how it was possible to have an existence beyond the grave.
27:25 Speaker 00 And he was always comparing himself to people who had an enduring legacy.
27:31 Speaker 00 But I don't think Machiavelli was like that. I don't think he was writing for posterity at all. He occasionally alludes to people in the future, but it's always very clear that he's writing for a specific moment against a very specific constellation of circumstances. So I think each of his major works was intended to address an immediate objective. The Prince was designed to respond to the challenges facing the Medici after they returned to Paris in France in 1512. The Discorsi, his other major work, was dedicated to some of the friends he made in the ortiottarii, a set of gardens
28:14 Speaker 00 where he met young men who were either a mixture of people who were on the periphery of the Medici Circle or those who were opposed to the Medici. And there is a suggestion that it's intended to cultivate a new set of political sensibilities in their hearts. As a consequence, I think he probably would have been surprised at the fact that he has had such an enduring appeal, that he had a readership lasting five centuries after his death. Do I think he would be surprised that his work was read as...
28:51 Speaker 00 Or misread as praise of immorality or even immorality. I'm not sure about that because he was very conscious of the extent to which he was breaking with tradition in The Prince. He was, you know, very, very well aware of it. He signals it himself. So the answer is, I think, I think he would have been both surprised and unsurprised. Sorry, that was a typical historian's answer.
29:12 Chris Williamson? Very diplomatic, yeah, indeed. Back to the misconceptions.
29:20 Speaker 00 In what sense? I'm sorry.
29:22 Chris Williamson? The most common misconceptions of his philosophy.
29:25 Speaker 00 Well, um, the, as I said, the most common misconception arises from Prince that he is tempting to suggest that rulers who wish to remain in power should be absolutely immoral in all circumstances. That, as I said, if you read it out of its context, then you can make that argument. But I'm not convinced it's completely true because in fairness, if you actually read The Prince in detail, he is very, very careful to qualify these, you know, kind of scare quotes that's often pulled out. He says, yeah, I mean, it's nice
30:07 Speaker 00 for a prince to be loved. I mean, that's obviously that's what we should aim for. But if you can't, then the next best thing is to be feared, weigh doubt against a certainty. However, he also says that if you're going to make yourself feared, be careful not to push that too far. Because if you make yourself into a monster, then you're going to arouse a whole bunch of animosity amongst your subjects. And they're going to, at some point, decide that it's better to take the risk of ousting you, even though that is extremely uncertain, he says elsewhere, than to remain under your yoke. He doesn't, of course, again, say that
30:49 Speaker 00 it is necessary always to reject the precept of immorality. He merely says...
30:55 Speaker 00 Reject the precepts of conventional morality. He merely says that a prince should know how to act contrary to the dictates of conventional morality when necessary. And how to be virtuous in a new sense, virtuous in the sense of being a man, being manly in his words. So, yeah, the common misconceptions, that's the most common misconception. I, I mean, I, I, I think we can, there are, it's perhaps worth noting that even those who, who do present Machiavelli as a, as an advocate of a morality or a prophet of evil,
31:37 Speaker 00 if you like, have difficulties in reconciling the prince with some of his other works, which offer a somewhat different view of political action, like the Discorsi, for example. The Discorsi is nominally a, an explanation of how one should read the first 10 books of Livia's History of Rome, although they can be thin. But in actual fact, is an analysis of how states of all kinds, not just principalities, become great and stay great. And that ends up, the answer to that is that they have to stay free, in his words, because you can't be great unless you're free. So the question is, how do you become free and keep your, your liberty?
32:22 Speaker 00 And the answer is, once again, virtue. Obviously virtue, not in the traditional sense, but virtue in the sense of being willing to do anything for the defence of the republic, a true veer, willing to sacrifice even yourself in defence of the republic, willingness to, as Machiavelli says, kill, rape, steal, whatever is necessary to protect the public. And then he talks about the way in which you can cultivate that virtue, because people tend to be self-interested, the more, in fact, the more prosperous people become, he says, the more likely they are to think only of themselves. So the question is, how to cultivate this virtue in the people more generally? And...
33:01 Speaker 00 As though he does return to some of the ideas he made in the, he raised in The Prince, such as that leaders, charismatic leadership is an important means of cultivating virtue in people, and charismatic leaders should occasionally be quite cruel. He doesn't suggest that it's the be all and end all. In fact, he introduces a whole range of other ideas, like the need to eliminate great disparities of wealth, the need to use law as a form of education, the need to cultivate a vigorous religious belief, et cetera, et cetera.
33:39 Speaker 00 So the challenge of people who have read The Prince as a defence of a more princely rulership have often struggled to explain how The Prince tесselses with this course, which is, seems ostensibly to be more concerned with republics and other forms of governance. And it's challenging, it's challenging for those who see Machiavelli as this prophet
34:18 Speaker 00 of evil, because if you read it out of context, it can appear that he's advancing to completely contradictory viewpoints, whereas the reality is, A, he's writing in response to different circumstances, slightly different circumstances for slightly different audiences, and also in the context, the problems which he's addressing are essentially identical. In the 16th century, there is less of a sense of a radical difference between princely and republican forms of government, much less pronounced than we think today. So in actual fact, all he's trying to do is answer the question of how does a state
35:00 Speaker 00 of any kind, ruled in whatever way, maintain some kind of stability in this mad and changing world, where fortune can, you know, do whatever she likes.
35:16 Chris Williamson? It seems interesting to me that he is being held up by many people as a philosophical, political philosophical prophet in one way, and yet, in his own deployment of these strategies, appears to fail quite consistently. I mean, he does okay, but he doesn't seem to have the foresight that he's professing others should take on.
35:41 Speaker 00 He doesn't have foresight, but what he does have is an extraordinary sense of self-honesty. He is not a sort of person who is unwilling to recognize where he's gone wrong, or so, you know, arrogant that he cannot see fault in his closest allies and dearest friends. So, in the discorsi, for example, he takes issue with his former boss, the head of the
36:18 Speaker 00 Republic with which he served so loyally for 13 years, 13 years, a man called Piero Sodriani, is castigated quite severely in the discorsi, admittedly not for the worst thing in the world, but for being too kind and being too nice and being unwilling to act ruthlessly towards his opponents. But nonetheless, this is evidence of somebody who's willing to question his previous experiences. And indeed, he makes this very clear, both in The Prince
37:00 Speaker 00 and in the discorsi. He says, you know, "I've been around a bit, I've seen things, and here's what I've learned." And indeed, this is really the things he's... This is something that comes time and time again in his other works. At around the same time he's writing these books, he also writes a note to somebody who's about to go away on his first diplomatic mission, and Machiavelli says, "These are the stuff I've learnt. Take heed." He doesn't say he's always got it right. Indeed, he's aware that he's often learnt from his own errors. But there it is.
37:35 Chris Williamson? What are some of the main lessons that we should take away?
37:42 Speaker 00 It's very difficult to answer that because it kind of invites an answer which commits the kind of ahistorical scene that I have criticised already. But let's play the game anyway. I think
38:06 Speaker 00 I think two serious ones and one less serious one.
38:13 Speaker 00 A central theme running through all of Machiavelli's writings is fortune and the vicissitudes of fortune.
38:21 Speaker 00 Fortune, he says, is what rules the world around us. But she, he always imagines her as a woman. She is very unpredictable and very capricious. You never know when she's going to rise you up to the highest heights and when she's going to knock you down on your knees. She can't be won over, he says. She's not going to be placated with imprecation. She's not going to be placated with, you know, virtue, anything like that. You are not going to be able to affect her decisions. So the only thing you can do is be ready to adapt, to be changeable, to be flexible.
39:02 Speaker 00 And when the moment comes, not to be timid, to act decisively when necessary. And that, I think, is one of the very... He first voices that in relation to a Pope Julius II who he admires for a time for his decisive action. But it is one of the very few points that you can abstract as a kind of universal principle. And I think is one which we can all apply to a certain extent in our lives, particularly at a moment of instability such as now. The second one perhaps is a little bit historical but not too ahistorical. In many of Machiavelli's works, he displays an acute awareness of a...
39:50 Speaker 00 The Florentine state, indeed all polities, are weakened by great disparities of wealth. In Florence, since very early times, society has been divided between two groups: the popolo and the grassi, the people and the fat cats, if you like. This is a rather simplistic way of looking at Florentine society, but it's not invalid. It's pretty okay as a model for looking at it. And he says this is problematic because each of these two groups has totally opposed objectives. The fat cats, the origarchs, they want to dominate.
40:35 Speaker 00 And the popolo want not to be dominated. Now, obviously, we're not all living in 15th, 16th century Florence. And the circumstances enjoyed by experience by each of these groups is not duplicated today. But it is true that in today's political environment, we do see great disparities of wealth creating a series of political problems.
41:02 Speaker 00 Governments which are obliged to look at almost any area, either the fiscal policy or social policy, are obliged to, particularly at a point in time, such as now when we are recovering from the terrible economic shock, of how to balance the interests of these two groups. And Machiavelli obviously says, if you can please both of them, that's hunky dory.
41:31 Speaker 00 But he also says that, on balance, it is better to stick with the have-nots for a variety of reasons that I won't go into at the moment. And that, you know, people might disagree with that. But nonetheless, I do think his analysis of... his contention that disparities of wealth constitute a major problem for any polity wishing to establish stability remains true today as it has always done. The left's serious point is this.
42:10 Speaker 00 Machiavelli, as you said, was off getting things wrong. It was always the wrong place at the wrong time. And he often got very depressed. He was quite frank about that in his voluminous correspondence. He often said how there he was and how miserable he was. But he always bounces back. He always keeps a smile on his face. He's always joking and laughing. And that, I think, is reassuring.
42:39 Speaker 00 I think it's reassuring because when we think of somebody like Machiavelli, you know, it's a name that ranks alongside Aristotle, Plato, Marx, Hegel, et cetera, in importance. But knowing that he was a very human chap, who got down, who had a laugh, et cetera, I think it somehow, I don't want to say inspirational, but it
43:03 Speaker 00 it makes it seem as if these Olympian figures aren't so far beyond our reach.
43:10 Chris Williamson? I really like that. I spent my last birthday last year in Athens, walking around the Agora and the Stoa Poikle. And then the year before that, in the Roman Forum, walking around the Colosseum and the Sistine Chapel. So for two birthdays in a row, until Covid came in and spoiled it all. I was adding context to things that I'd learned and read. And I think I had undervalued how much that contributes to a greater, deeper understanding. It's only really when you can feel what it... And I hope to go to Florence. I would have gone this year. That would have probably been my birthday this year, had travel not been restricted. And I want to walk around the streets and I want to think and feel and, you know,
43:53 Chris Williamson? have an audiobook on Kindle with me or whatever. And yeah, I understand what you mean. I think that by humanizing these figures, it makes their achievements feel... Closer, it makes them seem more mortal. It reminds us that they're not performative figures, although the performative nature of the Prince is particularly funny, I suppose, in terms of a mirroring here. But they're not just performative figures, they're not these celebrities, like WWE wrestlers. You know, they kind of feel a little bit like that. Larger than life, they become caricatures of themselves, and we see this with Machiavelli's work.
44:33 Speaker 00 Absolutely.
44:34 Chris Williamson? And to hear that he's just a man who has, sometimes doesn't get it up for his misses, and he goes and gets in fights.
44:41 Speaker 00 Not his misses, not his misses.
44:44 Chris Williamson? Okay, his mistress, sorry, yes. No, you've got to make sure that he performed for the misses, you've got to do that. If you're going to cheat on her, at least perform when you get your hands on it. Yeah, I just thought, I think that's really, that's really right. But that's the thing that, that strikes me as why people are tending to misread his work, especially when they don't view it in the wider context, because they don't understand just how performative it was. That it was written as this thinly veiled, low-key job application with a very specific set of parameters for the person he was trying to write it for. And presumably as well, if you're doing that for essentially one person or one group
45:25 Chris Williamson? of people, you're not intending for it to be still read half a millennium later and published to the entire world to see. So it makes sense why people are misrepresenting that, or at least misunderstanding or misinterpreting it.
45:39 Speaker 00 I would put a rider on that, actually. I, I agree with everything you say, absolutely. But I, I don't want to suggest that there is any one way of reading the Prince at all. The great benefit of placing Machiavelli in his context and humanizing him, and recognizing that his Prince and all his other works have written against a very set of, specific set of circumstances, is important, not because I think that necessarily leads you to a true understanding of it, although I have my own opinion of it, and if I didn't think it was right, I wouldn't have written, written the biography. But I think by humanizing any
46:17 Speaker 00 political philosopher, it becomes easier to engage with their works at a meaningful substantive level, critically.
46:28 Speaker 00 Rather than viewing them as works of some Olympian genius, far beyond our reach, or, you know, our humble experiences, but as scribblings of someone who was troubled or having difficulties or whatever, we can, you know, effectively talk to them. I mean, like Cicero said of his books, you know, you talk to your books, you criticize them, you challenge them, and maybe you produce something outside of your own. And that, I think, is much more valuable and a much more useful way of reading political philosophy, whether it be Machiavelli or somebody else's, than simply looking at it as, reading it as a passive consumer.
47:14 Chris Williamson? What do you disagree with most, talking about criticism and pushback? What do you disagree with most that was in Machiavelli's work, or assumptions that he held about the world or philosophy at large?
47:27 Speaker 00 I haven't made a thought of it. What do I disagree with? One of the reasons I haven't given a great deal of thought to that, I should confess, is because I actually find his lesser works much more exciting. I really like his poems and his plays, and they're very funny.
47:41 Chris Williamson? You can't really disagree with a play, can you?
47:44 Speaker 00 Not really.
47:45 Chris Williamson? You can just say it's shit or good. That's really the spectrum.
47:48 Speaker 00 Yeah, yes, yeah, I think there's some literary critics who might disagree with that. But yes, yes, it's interesting. But there are little problems. I think, what would I disagree with? I think there are some, there are many aspects of his works which do not necessarily interpret his own times in an accurate way. So, for example, his tremendous faith in Citizen Army, which is one of the most important points he makes in The Prince, The Scorsese, and in The Art of War above all.
48:36 Speaker 00 He was very keen on this, partly because he had to re-establish a citizen militia in France.
48:41 Chris Williamson? Can you just explain what a citizen army is?
48:43 Speaker 00 A militia, sorry, of course. At the time, it was common for states like France to not have a standing army of their own. Instead, they employed mercenaries, often dozens of mercenaries, each with a couple of, you know, twenty or so horsemen, knights, soldiers, whatever, under their command, and cobbled together an army in this kind of imperfect way. And these were hugely unreliable.
49:09 Chris Williamson? Are these just pay-to-play guys?
49:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, they were, exactly. You paid these guys to fight on your behalf. They worked for the highest bidder. They were necessary, predominantly because wars were becoming bigger in scale and more professionalised, with more expensive equipment, like cannons, crossbows, rudimentary firearms, et cetera, et cetera. So you needed professionals, and these guys had professionalism in spades. But because they were working for money, you couldn't always guarantee that they weren't going to betray you to...
49:41 Chris Williamson? For a high bidder, yeah.
49:42 Speaker 00 Or just not fight in the end, or whatever. So Machiavelli argues vigorously throughout his life for a citizen militia. And what does that mean? That means your own citizens fight for you. Nowadays, this seems like a badly obvious idea, and indeed, many modern states have made this the absolute cornerstone of their existence. The, um, uh, America, for example, you know, the right to bear arms is absolutely fundamental to American existence. And the idea of fighting for your nation in defence of its liberty is, you know, axiomatic. But for Machiavelli, it was very new, and he gives the impression that any state that does, that has a citizen army
50:24 Speaker 00 is going to be stronger than one with a bunch of mercenaries, except that, at the time, that just wasn't true.
50:33 Speaker 00 Florence develops, under his oversight, a citizen militia. And it may have contributed a bit to some successes, like the recapture of Pisa. But when push comes to shove and it really has to show its mettle, it doesn't live up to expectations at all.
50:55 Speaker 00 When, in 1512, Florence is attacked by an enormous Spanish papal army. And the militia is basically anything that's there, standing between Florence and this crisis. And they're locked in a place called Prater, not far away. And they just don't do anything. They don't do anything. He repeatedly, despite, he repeatedly argues for it in other contexts. He tries to persuade the Pope to set up a militia in the Romagna. But it's not going to happen. It needs an apparatus that's completely different. Why is he wrong? Well, that's a different argument altogether. I think it was basically because it was too small and he wasn't well enough trained.
51:40 Speaker 00 And then we just talk about training.
51:44 Speaker 00 But that, I think, he got wrong. And that was in fact, kind of recognised by many of the early readers of The Art of War. His view of military tactics, his view of mercies, etc. He doesn't enjoy a great deal of popularity by readers of The Art of War. Though it is hugely, hugely popular as a book. Instead, readers are more interested in his view of Verteu or whatever. So what I disagree with, that as a reading of how to fight a war in the 16th century. Nice idea, doesn't work in practice.
52:23 Chris Williamson? I like it. What are some of your favourite stories from him? You've got him turning up to as an emissary, covered in mud, sneaking in through the back door. Are there any other favourite stories you've got of his?
52:37 Speaker 00 There's lots, many of which aren't suitable for a family audience.
52:41 Chris Williamson? This isn't a family audience, don't worry Alex. This is a very mature audience and it's got the explicit rating on iTunes, so you're good to go.
52:48 Speaker 00 I can't help but hear that. Well, there's an absolutely horrible story, actually. When he's late in his career as second Chancellor of France, he is sent to deliver a bunch of cash to the Emperor in northern Italy. And while he's on his way back, he experiences what he calls conjugal famine. Which means he hasn't had sex for a while and he's feeling randy.
53:12 Chris Williamson? Conjugal?
53:15 Speaker 00 Beautiful, so romantic, isn't it? It's really nice.
53:20 Speaker 00 Anyway, and he's walking back home one day. And opposite way staying, there's an old lady who does his shirts for him, who does his laundry for him. And she approaches him and says, "Hi, sir. Can I interest you in anything?" And she says, "I think I have something that might appeal to you in the cellar, down in my place." And so he follows her. And she pulls back a curtain to reveal this prostitute sitting on a bed. And the light's very dim and he doesn't really think she's very attractive and her breath stinks a bit.
54:05 Speaker 00 It's not very appealing, but he's so randy that he thinks, "What the hell?" Anyway, so the inevitable happens. And then when he's done, he thinks, "I think I'd better take a look at this lady." So he pulls the light closer. And the description he gives is just awful, the poor woman, and feels so sorry for her. He says, "Oh, it's just horrible." And anyway, I won't go into it, but it's so disgusting that he is sick all over.
54:38 Chris Williamson? Oh, that's bad.
54:40 Speaker 00 And then he runs out. It's a horrible story, it's a horrible, horrible story. But that is kind of the guy he was. I think it's...
54:52 Speaker 00 I've already mentioned how much I like his poems and plays, but these are the repositories of really lovely stories that may not necessarily have been indebted to his life, but were certainly, or reflect his life, but they're certainly indebted to some of his experiences. So, for example, he writes a play called The Mandragola, where I won't give it too much detail because I know time's getting on, but basically, a student who's just come back from Paris has heard about this really attractive lady, and he wants to see if she's as beautiful as everyone says. And it turns out she's even more gorgeous. Problem is, she's married to an old fuddy duddy of a lawyer who's a bit dim.
55:36 Speaker 00 Anyway, he decides that he's got to seduce her. And so he enlists the support of a good-for-nothing. And they consider all kinds of different plans of how to, how he can get into bed with her. And he eventually hits upon an idea, which is to say that this couple have long-wanted child but have never been able to conceive. And so, our hero dresses himself up as a doctor and offers them a solution, which is a potion made from a mandrake root. Make whatever you like. And he says, "Drink this. As soon as you drink this, you will conceive. There'll be no problems." But there's a catch. There's a catch. The first person to sleep with you, lady wife,
56:22 Speaker 00 after you drink this, will die. So obviously, it can't be your husband. So, his accomplice suggests a way around this threat, which is to say that they will kidnap somebody who will draw out the poison and save the husband from the danger. And inevitably, it's the same guy, it's the student. And he allows him to be kidnapped, he sleeps with this woman, and she's, you know, eventually he reveals himself, and she's so happy with it, they carry on their affair. And the husband thinks this is, you know, thinks that he's been saved, and so he's hugely grateful, and blah, blah, blah. So, you know, another awful sexual story, I suppose.
57:07 Speaker 00 But it's, that kind of bored humor is very emphatic of Macaulay's way of looking at the world and his life.
57:19 Speaker 00 It's interesting that in that story, we would expect him to project himself onto the student. But actually, it isn't the case. The husband whom he gulls is called Messa Nikia. And there are lots of reasons why he's called Nikia, but one of them could be that it sounds very similar to Nicola. So in actual fact, he's putting himself in the position of somebody who is direct. And again, that's evidence of his, you know, his willingness to knife himself. So there you go. There are lots of other stories as well, which I won't, won't go into, but if you haven't read them, they're a little bit difficult to find, but, but they're really worth reading. They're all hilarious, the plays and the, and the poems.
58:02 Chris Williamson? It seems like he's got, his, his unique weapon is his metacognizance. It's his ability to think about thinking and to see where he stands within the movement of things. He's obviously able to watch human nature and perceive it, even if he's not able to deploy the skills required to manipulate it himself. He's obviously very perceptive and even perceptive of himself and his own failings.
58:27 Speaker 00 True.
58:28 Chris Williamson? Which, yeah, I mean, when you hear these sort of stories about someone that, you know, is a titan of the Renaissance.
58:36 Chris Williamson? Yeah, it really does, it really does humanize them in, in quite a sort of endearing way.
58:41 Speaker 00 Yeah, exactly. He, he, you're right in saying that his self-awareness and his awareness of his place in his times is extraordinary. His greatest strength, yet in a funny way, also perhaps reflective of his greatest weakness at the same time. And, you know, very, very endearing. I'm not saying that everyone should aspire to be like Machiavelli in his private life. Let's be, let's be clear about that. Cause he was an absolute rotter. He was a fiend, not a fiend in the way that we think of, but he was a, he was,
59:14 Speaker 00 as Alan Clark's wife said, he was an S H one T.
59:20 Speaker 00 And yeah, he, he was, I'm not saying he's a, he's a model, but he's certainly more endearing, more human, more fallible. I think one of the reasons that I, I enjoyed writing this biography more than almost any other book I've written is because.
59:39 Speaker 00 I found it much easier to relate to somebody fallible than to somebody who had taken great care to craft every image, blah, blah, blah. You know, we've all, we've all had setbacks. We've all taken a, a blow or two from fortune. Maybe not of the same kind, but it's much easier to empathize with some of their nature. And that's why I'm doing writing and why I hope people enjoy reading the biography.
1:00:05 Chris Williamson? I think that they will do. Alex, I really enjoyed this. Machiavelli, His Life and Times in brand new paperback edition will be linked in the show notes below. Is there anything else that you want to plug? Any other places people should go to check out your stuff?
1:00:18 Speaker 00 Um, there's another book I wrote a little while ago called The Ugly Renaissance: Sex, Disease, and Excess in an Age of Beauty, which explores some of the, you know, hidden backstories behind the great after renaissance, the seedy underside of, of the Renaissance belly, if I can put it that way. So if you like the, the naughty bits of Machiavelli's life, that's another place that you might like to turn.
1:00:44 Chris Williamson? Perfect. I love it. Alex, thank you very much.
1:00:46 Speaker 00 Thanks so much, Anegris.
1:00:49 Speaker 02 Mr. President, my company formed me of the explosion on our rear on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.
1:00:59 Speaker 03 Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.
1:01:05 Speaker 04 What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're strong, you're freezing, that's what.
1:01:09 Speaker 03 With great power comes great deniability.
1:01:13 Speaker 04 I'm not the first then.
1:01:14 Speaker 03 Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17.9 minutes without parent.
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