The Art of Manliness - #375： The Misunderstood Machiavelli

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:18.240 The ends justify the means. It's better to be feared than loved. Politics have no relation

00:00:24.420 to morals. These are just a few of the maxims and ideas the Italian writer Niccolo Machiavelli

00:00:28.960 is well known for. The cynical and duplicitous advice he offered in his book, The Prince,

00:00:32.680 has made Machiavelli's name synonymous with manipulative self-interest and deceitful

00:00:36.720 plays for power. But what if Machiavelli wrote The Prince not as sincere advice for would-be

00:00:41.180 tyrant leaders, but as a work of irony and satire that's meant to shine a light on the futility of

00:00:46.120 manipulative deception and the need for leaders of virtue. That's the argument my guest makes in

00:00:50.480 her book, Be Like the Fox, Machiavelli and His World. Her name is Erika Benner. She's a professor

00:00:54.720 of political philosophy. And today on the show, Erika and I discuss why Machiavelli is misunderstood

00:00:58.940 and what he actually was trying to accomplish with his writing. Instead of being an advisor

00:01:02.360 for tyrants, Erika argues that Machiavelli was an impassioned supporter of republicanism

00:01:06.480 and spent his life trying to foster republican virtue in Florence. And she argues that if you

00:01:10.600 look at Machiavelli's life and all of his writing, you'll find a man who didn't think politics

00:01:14.500 had no relation to morals, but rather firmly believe that the only way for free republics

00:01:19.140 to last for centuries was to develop citizens and leaders of virtue. You're not going to read

00:01:23.380 The Prince the same way after listening to this episode. After the show's over,

00:01:26.580 check out the show notes at aom.is slash Be Like the Fox. And Erika joins me now by phone.

00:01:42.280 Erika Benner, welcome to the show.

00:01:44.600 Thank you. Thanks for having me.

00:01:46.500 So you published a book called Be Like the Fox, and it's sort of, you're trying to redeem

00:01:52.160 one of the most loathed men in at least political history, Machiavelli. His name's become synonymous

00:01:59.020 with duplicity, amorality, evilness. Before we get into that, you've sort of made a career for

00:02:06.200 yourself writing about Machiavelli. How did you get drawn to him as a subject?

00:02:09.580 Yeah, this is a question that still puzzles me quite a lot. I mean, if anyone had told me about

00:02:15.540 10 or 12 years ago that I'd end up writing three books about Machiavelli in that space of time,

00:02:21.000 I don't know what I would have done. I would have been horrified. I mean, it was kind of an

00:02:25.740 accident. I was working on something completely different, nationalism in the 18th and 19th

00:02:30.560 century. And Machiavelli is somebody who a lot of kind of theorists of nationalism, like Rousseau,

00:02:38.420 you know, and Hegel, would mention a lot in a favorable way. So I thought, well, I'll just kind

00:02:42.700 of have a closer look at Machiavelli and see why he's so interesting. Of course, I've heard his

00:02:47.240 reputation. I'd been teaching, you know, one segment of a course on political history and

00:02:51.840 political theory. Machiavelli had been a character, but I hadn't read him closely. As soon as I started

00:02:57.020 looking more closely at what he wrote, not just in the prints, but in his other works, like the

00:03:02.920 discourses, I just realized he was a lot more confusing and interesting than I ever realized.

00:03:08.620 You know, the main thing was that he contradicted a lot of the things that he's famous for saying

00:03:14.380 over and over in his works. You know, he's famous, as you said, for being a teacher of evil,

00:03:19.480 for saying, you know, better be feared than loved, you know, for seeming to promote princes

00:03:25.540 ahead of republics. But when I read closely, it looked to me like he wasn't always saying that.

00:03:30.420 And basically, I got hooked on trying to crack him, trying to kind of work out what's the bottom

00:03:34.380 line of this confusing, bewildering writer.

00:03:38.100 So how did he get the reputation? I mean, the reputation that he has is, as you said,

00:03:43.340 favors princes or monarchies over republics. He's all about political duplicity. And then he's,

00:03:49.140 you know, sort of been synonymous with, you know, that the prince is a work of Satan and he's evil.

00:03:53.960 Where did that reputation come from?

00:03:56.800 Well, at the time that he wrote, you know, he says a lot of very irreverent things about

00:04:02.260 the Catholic Church and also about monarchs. And at the time that he wrote, both of these

00:04:08.620 things were becoming stronger and stronger. And they didn't like somebody who was going and,

00:04:13.900 you know, audaciously, or in some cases, very subtly, kind of satirizing them. A lot of other,

00:04:20.560 you know, Republican authors at the time, actually, Republican readers, sorry, at the time,

00:04:24.940 thought that Machiavelli was criticizing the Catholic Church and monarchs, and they approved of him for 0.93

00:04:31.260 doing that. But that's the main reason, you know, at the time, why he started being kind of the poster

00:04:36.560 boy for the church and defenders of strong monarchies, of, you know, somebody who's evil,

00:04:43.900 who ought to be, who's teaching things that were subversive and ought to be avoided. But, you know,

00:04:49.000 the reason why he continues to sound like a teacher of evil is that he really does say some pretty

00:04:55.060 shocking things. If you kind of just glance through the prints and, you know, just skim without

00:05:00.040 reading every lie very closely, you do come up with some takeaway quotes that are pretty horrifying.

00:05:05.080 I mean, he says things like, you know, sometimes if you're a ruler, you sometimes have to be prepared

00:05:10.920 to do evil. You have to enter into evil ways in order to protect your state. And that kind of thing,

00:05:18.200 even now, even when we're not sort of immersed in Catholic and monarchical values, still worries us.

00:05:23.820 And so what he was doing, so would it be safe to say that the prints is sort of a work of satire?

00:05:28.620 It's a very subtle argument for republicanism?

00:05:31.780 That's what I think. And that's what, and I'm not claiming to be wholly original. I actually was

00:05:37.160 inspired in that reading by early readers like Rousseau and Benedict Spinoza and others who saw

00:05:44.820 the prints as a kind of work of very subtle irony. And in some cases of outright satire, I mean,

00:05:51.260 the difference is sort of satire is kind of more in your face. I'm making fun of you. And you

00:05:56.660 usually recognize satire when you see it. Irony can be a lot subtler, where, you know,

00:06:01.420 the victim of an ironic remark doesn't always kind of know if you're kind of, are you teasing

00:06:06.200 me or not? And the prints has a lot of both of those things about princes, basically about

00:06:12.820 princes. And subtly, between the lines, says lots of very positive things about republics,

00:06:18.820 while claiming up fun. I mean, Machiavelli says right at the beginning, I'm not going to say that

00:06:22.660 much about republics. But if you keep on reading the prints really carefully, you notice all sorts

00:06:27.220 of things he says. And republics always come out a lot better than princes. They're stronger.

00:06:32.060 They're much better at fighting wars and winning them. They're much better at making the subjects

00:06:37.460 or citizens kind of love their state and, you know, feel committed to it and hold it up through

00:06:43.840 thick and thin. So, yes, there's this kind of subtle message all the way through.

00:06:49.420 I love the argument because whenever I read the prints and I looked at some of the advice

00:06:54.900 he was giving, I would look at it and I would think, if someone followed this advice, this

00:06:58.740 is a recipe for actually diminishing your power, right? Because like, there's only so long that

00:07:04.000 people would be like, are going to take that very authoritarian bully-like or duplicity that

00:07:09.660 he promotes and then revolt. So when I read that, it's like, this is actually kind of sly

00:07:13.720 of Machiavelli. He writes this manual. It's supposedly for princes or cardinals or whatever.

00:07:20.000 And it's like, if they follow this advice, it'll actually lead to the ruin and actually

00:07:24.820 promote republicanism.

00:07:26.160 Yeah. I mean, and this is kind of the odd thing to me about it kind of always kind of puzzled

00:07:31.300 me. Why would someone as intelligent as Machiavelli, and he clearly is, as soon as I started really

00:07:36.520 reading him carefully, I was, I've been so impressed by the analytical sharpness of this guy and the

00:07:41.900 understanding of human nature he had. Why would someone who's that intelligent and subtle think

00:07:48.000 that everyone else is so stupid that they just fall for this kind of trick and that princes could 0.99

00:07:52.440 easily just kind of, you know, step all over, you know, whoever they felt like conquering. 1.00

00:07:57.820 He does often, you know, he often says, yeah, men are easily taken in. People are, you know,

00:08:02.760 one thing about human beings is that we're easily taken in by snares and traps. And that's the kind of

00:08:07.760 weak point that human beings have, unlike foxes. That's, hence the title, Be Like the Fox. Foxes,

00:08:13.260 he says, are really good at seeing through snares. And that makes it, you know, harder to kind of

00:08:17.620 trap them. Human beings are kind of easy to trap because they're kind of gullible and they, you know,

00:08:22.780 thinking about their present interests and not very much about the future. But once you've got them,

00:08:27.060 if you're stupid enough to think that you can hold them easily, then you're going to get, you know, 0.99

00:08:31.800 you're going to have another thing coming. And the prince, that's exactly what he says to princes about 1.00

00:08:36.660 trying to hold republics. You can get them by being sneaky and people are kind of going to let

00:08:41.340 you maybe be taken in by some of your tricks. But once you've got people conquered, if they're

00:08:48.200 used to freedom, they're not going to like it and they're going to fight back and your life will not

00:08:52.240 be fun as a ruler. The life of being the most powerful man in Italy or wherever is not going

00:08:57.760 to be as rosy as you thought it was going to be. So I think to fully understand the context of

00:09:03.160 Machiavelli's work, not just the prince, but his discourses, it's important to have at least

00:09:06.560 a rudimentary understanding of Italian and European politics. And I'll admit, when I was

00:09:10.380 reading the book, you had that like list of cast of characters at the beginning. I found myself

00:09:15.480 having to go back over and over because there's so many different people involved and people would

00:09:20.540 rise to power and then fall to power and then they would rise back to power. So what was the

00:09:25.840 political world like in that Machiavelli grew up in? Yeah, I mean, that's a good, just on that point

00:09:30.840 about, I mean, when I first started getting into Machiavelli about 10 years ago, I had no clue about

00:09:36.040 this history. I was not, I'm a political philosopher. I didn't know much about it. I knew nothing about

00:09:40.480 Italian history, really. And so I completely sympathize with anyone who just says, ah, you

00:09:45.800 know, too hard to get, you know, everybody straight. And when you pick up the prince, you also might have

00:09:51.260 that thought I used to. I'd read the prince and I'd think, oh, I'm not going to really be able to get

00:09:54.820 into this because there are too many names of people that I don't know. But I just say it's really

00:10:00.320 rewarding once you do. About the context, I mean, well, there's a political world in Europe that

00:10:05.940 Machiavelli lived in. The basic fact about it, I think, is that borders were always changing. There

00:10:11.760 was no territorial stability and states were constantly expanding and trying to take bits

00:10:18.600 of other states. So it was very unstable in that sense, constantly in upheaval. The other fact about

00:10:25.420 this is that most of this kind of expansion was happening with big monarchies. So there were, you

00:10:30.060 know, kind of kings and queens who were hereditary, trying to take bits of each other's states.

00:10:37.040 And the easiest way to do that was just to marry somebody from another royal family. And then you could

00:10:42.580 make a claim on a bit of their state. Now, Machiavelli and Republicans like him thought this is a very,

00:10:48.880 you know, this is not a recipe for stability in Europe. If you want to have a more stable kind of

00:10:54.680 set up, wouldn't it be better to have not ruling families running states, but to have peoples running

00:10:59.960 them on a kind of more permanent basis? That was one of the good arguments that they had for

00:11:04.660 republics. The specific context of Florence, well, it was also upheaval because there was a kind of

00:11:10.440 constant struggle and had been going on for about 80 years when Machiavelli was born between

00:11:14.840 like the old republic. Florence had unusually in Europe, very unusually, a republican constitution based

00:11:22.460 on a wide male franchise. But a very powerful family, the Medici, a banking family, had cropped

00:11:30.580 up in the last sort of 60 or 70 years before Machiavelli was born, trying to kind of take

00:11:37.360 control of the state. And they'd come to dominate Florence. Even though Florence remained in name a

00:11:42.380 republic, in fact, it was one like a principality of the Medici family. So Machiavelli came into the scene

00:11:50.280 at this crucial point when there was a life and death struggle for this old, venerable, proud

00:11:56.900 republic, the only one really of its kind in Europe at the time, which had a lot of people by that time

00:12:03.260 sort of saying, wouldn't it be better for Florence if we just went the way of everyone else and became

00:12:07.360 a monarchy? I mean, the big powers were all monarchies, France, Spain, Habsburg Empire, England. Why

00:12:13.740 shouldn't we try to form a monarchy? Wouldn't that make us stronger? And Machiavelli was one of those

00:12:18.720 rare people who said, no, I don't think so. I don't think this is best for Florence, and I don't

00:12:24.600 think it's best for Europe. Well, despite that opposition to monarchy, he still played the

00:12:32.280 political games. Like even when there was sort of a monarchy put in place, effectively, he kind of went

00:12:37.860 along with it and tried to find ways he could change things from within. Yeah, that's right. And that

00:12:42.680 wasn't unusual at the time, because if you think about it, I mean, what happened, of course, is

00:12:47.080 Machiavelli worked as a civil servant in a short period when Florence was in a very strong, well,

00:12:54.200 there was a popular republic set up, and the Medici, the princes, had been kicked out for a while.

00:13:01.600 When they came back, when Machiavelli was in his 40s, he did try to work with them, but it was,

00:13:08.460 you know, a tiny, this is a tiny, tiny city where everyone knows each other. Everyone,

00:13:12.680 you know, of a certain class is friends with each other. And, you know, somebody like Machiavelli

00:13:18.460 couldn't go and be invisible. There was no way he could just go and hide, because the Medici princes

00:13:24.240 had already singled him out as a troublemaker. He was somebody who was known to have supported

00:13:28.920 the republic that they had expelled. And the only way for him to kind of live, to have employment of

00:13:37.540 any kind, was to try to work for them. So he did try. He failed for a long time in getting any

00:13:43.900 notice from them at all. So he had to make a living in other ways. But yeah, he did keep trying to get

00:13:50.400 back into government, because A, that was the only way you could make a living, and B, he wanted to

00:13:55.700 influence politics. He still wanted to try to steer his country back into the form of a republic.

00:14:01.120 But getting into politics was hard for him because of his family background, correct?

00:14:06.080 Yes. I mean, he, well, he and his father and brothers were actually not allowed to be full

00:14:11.440 citizens. They had the status of people who could participate as civil servants in a kind of

00:14:17.120 bureaucratic level of the state, but they couldn't vote. They couldn't stand for public office. 0.72

00:14:23.720 So Machiavelli's posts, when he had them, were not elected posts. They were, and they were not

00:14:28.320 kind of posts that he had as magistrates. They were kind of civil servant appointments of a

00:14:33.820 lower status. So that's all he was allowed to have in his family, because of his family's, well,

00:14:39.420 his father had been taxed at her. He owed money to the state. That's the main reason he and his sons

00:14:44.440 could not be full citizens. But there's also a kind of darker story behind that, that kind of

00:14:49.540 Machiavelli's father's cousins had been involved in a coup attempt against the Medici earlier,

00:14:54.780 before Machiavelli was born. And this put them on the blacklist and made it much harder for the

00:15:00.180 Machiavelli family to be trusted as long as the Medici princes were in power.

00:15:05.820 Yeah. The coups, the, the, like the assassinations, like it was like, I was, as I was reading,

00:15:10.860 like, this is like Godfather stuff, right? I think there was one instance they were at a church.

00:15:15.820 I forgot what it was, but like they were escorting this guy and they just stabbed him with a dagger

00:15:19.820 and he died there in the church. Yeah. Yeah. You know, let me just say that the kind of

00:15:26.040 reputation of the Renaissance, you know, and Italian politics at the time for being so much

00:15:31.440 worse than it is today and being so kind of bloody, I think you can overstate it because,

00:15:35.980 yeah, there was this Pazzi conspiracy and I think that, and that was headed by the Pope.

00:15:40.340 That was, that was somebody sent, and the Fasson sent by the Pope to make trouble for the Medici

00:15:45.880 ruling family. The popes were especially bad at this. And that's one reason why, you know,

00:15:51.000 the church didn't like Machiavelli because he brought this out. He talks about this in his

00:15:55.100 writings, but the everyday politics, especially in Florence, was actually run under the rule of law

00:16:00.520 as much as possible. They really, when the Medici were not in power, there were very strict rules

00:16:07.580 about, you know, who could, what, what happened to whom. Assassination was extremely rare. When people

00:16:14.460 were, you know, indicted for treason, the law said that the law actually gave rather soft penalties.

00:16:20.720 They were going to be sent into exile rather than be, you know, killed. So, yeah, it's a bloody world,

00:16:26.800 but it's also a world where there are a lot of people struggling to hold up the rule of law and

00:16:31.700 to apply very ancient and clear-cut rules to, to kind of deal with political conflicts. And this is

00:16:37.920 also the kind of thing Machiavelli was fighting to uphold, something people don't realize. If you

00:16:42.920 read his writings all the way through, this is a man who cares about political order and

00:16:47.000 order based on clear rules, clear and equal transparent rules more than anything. And that's

00:16:53.500 something that the reputation of Machiavelli doesn't let you in on at all. He's supposed to be all dark

00:16:59.700 and, yeah, sorry. Right, no, I was going to say, but how did he go about doing that, right? Like

00:17:04.140 promoting that end? Was it like, was he like the ends justify the means? Did he use conniving and

00:17:09.820 duplicity in order to promote the rule of law in this sort of weird political world that he existed

00:17:15.320 in? Or was he pretty straightforward, a straight shooter? Well, yeah. And again, this, this depends

00:17:19.600 on when, because there's Machiavelli when he was in the anti-Medici Republic, the Republic that had

00:17:27.660 thrown these Medici princes out. And this lasts for 15 years. And that's the time when Machiavelli was a

00:17:33.920 civil servant and actually politically active. Under that sort of system of government, he was really

00:17:39.460 promoting the rule of law very hard and working with other citizens who did the same. And it was

00:17:45.420 easier for them because the Medici were out of the picture for a while. But then when the Medici had

00:17:50.120 their coup and came back, that's when Machiavelli had to become cunning in a way. And, but his cunning

00:17:56.140 wasn't political cunning in the sense that he was going out and kind of, you know, kind of trying to

00:18:01.500 plot and scheme and stab somebody in the back. His scheming took the form of writing because he was no

00:18:07.760 longer allowed to take part in politics. And Medici banned him from political activity completely.

00:18:14.220 So what does he do? He goes off and just starts writing and writing and writing. And he writes

00:18:18.800 The Prince, first of all, which, as I think, is a kind of subtle critique of Medici power,

00:18:25.660 and also an attempt to kind of warn fellow citizens about how princes actually operate. You know,

00:18:31.220 a lot of the stuff he says there, we take as advice to princes. What if he's actually just saying,

00:18:36.140 look, this is what princes do to get to power? A lot of it isn't very nice. Be careful what you,

00:18:41.800 you know, be careful what you wish for if you're wishing for princes, because this is what you're

00:18:45.840 going to end up getting, you know. But he, and so he's writing in this cunning way because it wasn't

00:18:50.720 actually safe for him to say outright, you know, the princes and the Pope are, you know, lying,

00:18:56.940 cheating, conniving, self-seekers that, you know, free peoples need to be careful about.

00:19:03.400 What was, was Machiavelli ever able to implement some of his reforms that he thought would help

00:19:09.280 bolster republicanism in Florence?

00:19:11.560 Yes. I mean, this is one of his big dreams from the time he entered political office was to create

00:19:19.580 a citizen militia to replace the mercenary system of, you know, military defenses that most Italian

00:19:25.540 states had. And most, most Italian states, you know, they bought foreign soldiers from somewhere

00:19:31.880 else, France, Spain, wherever, to fight their battles for them. And the battles were kind of

00:19:38.020 very anemic affairs. People were not, you know, they wouldn't, the soldiers didn't like to, you

00:19:43.180 know, they didn't want to lose their lives because they're not losing their lives for their own

00:19:46.800 country. They're just out there being paid, you know, hired fighters. So because of that,

00:19:51.300 the wars ended up being kind of really soft step, you know, step, step, step around your enemy,

00:19:56.800 try not to actually hurt them too much, and then hope that there's going to be a stalemate and

00:20:00.720 they'll call it off. And Machiavelli was up for a full-blooded battle by, ideally, by people who

00:20:06.680 really, really cared about the outcome of the battle. And that was going to be for him, citizens

00:20:11.700 whose lives were at stake and whose freedom was at stake in a territorial war. So he thought the best way

00:20:18.360 to defend Florence was to get, you know, armed citizens, ordinary people in the countryside and

00:20:24.820 the city, and get them to fight their own battles. Now, the aristocrats in Florence didn't like this

00:20:29.780 idea at all because they were afraid that if you arm the ordinary people, they might use the arms

00:20:34.060 against us. So Machiavelli just tirelessly fought for this citizen militia idea and worked with a lot

00:20:41.620 of higher political people to get it realized. And it came to pass while he was, you know, while he was

00:20:46.940 holding his civil service posts. And it worked. And they fought a war against a city, Pisa, who had

00:20:52.800 left the Florentine cycle, won Pisa back. And Machiavelli was hailed by a lot of his friends as being

00:21:00.360 the kind of author of this great concept. Unfortunately, a couple of years later, when the Medici came

00:21:05.140 back, it's the first reform that they basically obliterated. They just wiped it off the map. And that was

00:21:13.140 the end of Machiavelli's dream. Yeah, I think that's a perfect example of Machiavelli's actions

00:21:18.020 contradicting, you know, advice he gives in the prince. Because one of the things people always

00:21:21.860 point out in the prince's piece of advice is that a prince, one of the first things they should do is

00:21:26.500 disarm the subjects. But there, you know, in his actions, Machiavelli's like, no, I'm going to arm

00:21:33.340 the subjects. That is how you defend a republic. Absolutely. And this is the key. I mean, that's the one

00:21:38.120 point where I think all Machiavelli scholars agree that this militia was, you know, the heart and soul

00:21:43.820 of Machiavelli's kind of project. And, you know, we disagree about lots of other things, but everyone

00:21:49.000 agrees on that. And like you just said, I don't understand why they realize how ready he was to

00:21:54.620 kind of arm the citizens. And in fact, he also says very clearly in the prince, if you want to arm the

00:22:00.620 citizens, you know, you have to actually give them some political power too. You can't just kind of

00:22:05.180 give them arms and then leave them politically powerless because then, of course, they're not

00:22:09.420 going to like you. And yeah, then the threat is going to be that they might use the arms against

00:22:13.040 you. So if you want to feel safe in arming them, you have to give them more political power. You

00:22:17.180 have to give them employment that, you know, economic employment that gives them some sense of

00:22:21.680 dignity. And he actually uses this militia not just as a way of trying to find better military

00:22:27.300 defenses, but also as a kind of argument for making, you know, Florence into a deeper, more democratic

00:22:32.080 republic where, you know, people actually have more economic equality and more sense of, you know,

00:22:37.480 mutual respect. So that's, that's a, you know, pretty strong argument against the idea that he

00:22:43.120 thinks principalities are the best way to go. And Machiavelli was influenced substantially by,

00:22:49.320 significantly by ancient writers from Greece and Rome. Were there any writers in particular that

00:22:54.160 influenced his ideas about democracy, republic, republics, et cetera?

00:22:58.940 Yeah. I mean, the writer he mentions most often is the historian Livy, Titus Livy. And Livy wrote

00:23:08.060 this massive, massive history of Rome at the end of the Roman Republic, just when the, you know,

00:23:12.840 the republic had collapsed after years of being corrupt and had been replaced with kind of emperors.

00:23:19.060 Livy regretted this. He was very sorrowful. And he writes this big, long history of the republic and

00:23:24.020 how great it had been in the past, tries to diagnose the reasons why the republic fell. And Machiavelli

00:23:30.500 mentions him a lot as a source of lessons on how you can save republics from internal decay and

00:23:38.280 internal corruption that, you know, makes them self-combust. Tacitus is another Roman author he uses

00:23:44.980 a lot. Tacitus was a very sly, subtle, subtle critic of the Roman Empire when he lived under it. He

00:23:53.500 writes very subtle critiques without quite showing his cards. So it's hard to kind of, you know,

00:23:58.340 nobody could really easily persecute him because he didn't, you know, you can't really pin down what

00:24:02.520 he's really saying sometimes. I think Machiavelli was very influenced by his style of writing.

00:24:06.760 And yeah, like you talk about the book, this is when the printing press was first invented at the

00:24:11.240 same time. So he had access, like, how does he make trips just to buy these books for his own

00:24:16.760 personal library? Yeah, that was actually Machiavelli's dad, who was a really interesting guy.

00:24:21.380 And that was Machiavelli's dad who got, he's the one who, he didn't have a full-time job, even though

00:24:26.500 he was a very highly trained and respected lawyer by education. He hardly ever practiced law, probably

00:24:33.460 because he thought the Medici system he was in was too corrupt, or they didn't want him to

00:24:39.340 practice. But what he did do was, you know, spend a lot of time reading. And he offered to kind of

00:24:45.340 copy out a whole kind of index of Livy's many, many works, if he could get the book for free from

00:24:52.000 his friend, the printer. And so this is the book, you know, the great first 10 books of Livy that

00:24:57.740 Machiavelli wrote his discourses about. His book, The Discourses, is actually called The Discourses

00:25:03.120 on Livy. So, and he uses Livy as his main kind of inspiration, talking about how, you know,

00:25:08.440 and the theme there again is the theme that's so topical for us today, too. It's how do great

00:25:13.360 republics decline? What goes wrong? And how can you, you know, he was looking back as Livy

00:25:19.100 was on, you know, a glorious history of republics that nevertheless come to ends, and sometimes

00:25:27.280 by their own hands, by their own mistakes. And so I think Machiavelli's main, you know, point

00:25:34.140 was to try to teach future generations, as well as Florentines, how to kind of see the

00:25:39.360 dangers before they get too big, how to kind of try to protect your freedoms, your good

00:25:46.180 institutions, that we tend to take so much for granted, and to spot the kind of diseases

00:25:52.400 before they become lethal.

00:25:54.120 So another theme in Machiavelli's work, a big one, is this idea of fortune. And I've heard

00:25:59.500 people say that the prince is a sort of a guidebook on how to master fortune. First, what did Machiavelli

00:26:06.960 and his contemporaries mean by fortune? Because I think we use that word differently than people

00:26:11.000 say in the Renaissance did.

00:26:12.560 Yeah. I mean, fortune is basically, it's a word that signifies the unpredictable in human

00:26:18.780 life. What is incalculable, unpredictable, what you cannot entirely control. That's what it

00:26:25.560 means for Machiavelli and for the ancients that he is drawing on. I mean, it's a concept

00:26:29.720 you find in all the ancient Greek and Roman writers, too. Now, the thing about, talking

00:26:34.280 about fortune being something you need to master, the thing about fortune, the way I just defined

00:26:39.560 it, is you can't master it. I mean, by definition, fortune is something that is not masterable.

00:26:45.060 So when modern people say, yeah, Machiavelli's teaching you how to master fortune, uh-uh, no, he's

00:26:50.320 not. He's teaching you, first of all, remember that fortune is not something you can master.

00:26:55.100 There's always going to be some unpredictability in life, in politics, whatever that might be. So

00:27:00.940 get used to it, you know, bite the bullet and understand it. Second point is, if you decide that

00:27:07.840 you're going to try to master fortune and waste a lot of time at that rather pointless end, you're not

00:27:14.160 going to get very far because fortune is unreliable. You might actually manage to get, you know, a good

00:27:20.140 string of luck and to think, okay, now I'm really getting this. I've got, you know, I'm controlling

00:27:25.640 things now. By one way or another, I've got it. You get too confident. You start to rely on luck and

00:27:32.840 that's going to make you work a lot less hard at what you actually need to do to make a stable state or to

00:27:39.700 consolidate your own personal power. Fortune is unreliable and, you know, you'll be surprised if you think that

00:27:46.300 you're doing really, really well and you find a lot of politicians who, to everyone's surprise,

00:27:50.800 seem to be kind of flying really high, getting, you know, massive successes, whether it's Napoleon

00:27:55.500 or Cesare Borgia in Machiavelli's own time or many people we don't have to name in our own time.

00:28:01.180 Why is this happening? This is amazing. Well, Machiavelli says, you know, if they're not doing the

00:28:06.640 things you need to do in order to consolidate your power, to consolidate power takes virtue,

00:28:12.200 virtue. That's how it's translated. And virtue is hard work. That's, you know, one of the main

00:28:17.600 qualities of virtue for Machiavelli is very hard work, looking way ahead, foresight, knowing your

00:28:23.580 own limits, getting firm allies because you can never do everything all by yourself. So you need

00:28:29.020 stable friends, not just fair weather ones. And getting this kind of, you know, building political

00:28:35.280 orders, institutions, and power bases in those ways, it's a much better guarantee than relying on

00:28:42.660 fortune. Yeah. As you said, highlight in the book, he uses Borgia, right? As an example,

00:28:49.040 like it was, it was sort of a subtle dig. It makes it sound like when he wrote it, that he was praising

00:28:54.280 this guy. But if you read between the lines, what Machiavelli was saying, this guy is only in power

00:29:00.140 because he just got lucky. Yeah. I mean, did you get that reading it? Cause it's, it's hard. This

00:29:05.540 is one of the hardest bits of Machiavelli and, and, you know, you'll get really, really excellent

00:29:11.400 lifelong Machiavelli scholars who still don't see that and others who do, but, but nowadays not so

00:29:18.000 many, but there is this kind of, it's a hard thing to do. It is wonderful satire. He, he, he uses all

00:29:25.180 these very good words with Cesar de Borgia. He says, I would, you know, I would always present

00:29:30.300 him as a model to be imitated by anyone who wants to win power through fortune. So here it is, here

00:29:37.700 are these wonderful things he did, but you got it, right? If you say, I would hold him up to, as an

00:29:41.880 example, anyone who wants to get power through fortune, but a few pages earlier, Machiavelli has

00:29:47.080 just told us, he says black and white, if you want to get power and hold it, fortune is not the way to

00:29:52.640 go. Don't rely on fortune, rely on virtue, which is the opposite of fortune because fortune is, you

00:29:58.580 know, fortune is easy. Virtue is hard work. Fortune is quick and fast. Virtue is long and hard. You

00:30:06.560 know, these are old classical themes that Machiavelli is just playing on again, but, you know, he, yeah,

00:30:12.720 he does seem to praise Cesar de Borgia, but between the lines, he tells you what, how did Cesar de

00:30:17.000 get to power? It's not precisely just luck because fortune here, Machiavelli breaks it down. Being a

00:30:23.640 very concrete-minded guy, he says, fortune is money. I've got a lot of money and so I can buy my way to

00:30:30.560 power. It is other people's weaknesses. Oh, good. I'm an opportunist. I see a chance to kind of jump

00:30:36.400 in there and make myself powerful because somebody else is in trouble. And fortune is relying on other

00:30:41.400 people's strengths and resources, not my own talents and hard work. And he shows you in this

00:30:46.840 little chapter about Cesar de exactly how he operates. And he never stops up working with

00:30:52.400 money and depending on fortune, sorry, on money and other people's weaknesses and other people's

00:31:00.300 resources. So that's what fortune is. And, you know, leads it to the reader. Does the reader get it?

00:31:06.580 If you're not going to get it, then, you know, you can read Machiavelli's prints and think,

00:31:10.960 do I get this or not? Well, if you don't get it, then you might try to imitate Cesar de and good

00:31:17.360 luck to you. You're going to end up the same way he did, you know, flying really high, everyone being

00:31:22.800 the terror of central Italy for a long time. And then within a few years, crash, fall, his empire breaks

00:31:28.720 up and he's dead. Right. I mean, that was one of my favorite takeaways from reading your book and

00:31:34.940 the critique that Machiavelli made, because I think that can, even if you're not in a position

00:31:39.860 of power, that being fooled by fortune can lead you to a lot of heartache. Sometimes you think

00:31:47.220 you're doing great and it's all you, you know, but it's really not. And then when something bad

00:31:54.060 happens because of just fortune, you feel terrible. You say, well, this is my fault. Well, no, it's not

00:31:58.160 entirely your fault. There's an element of fortune there. I thought that was a really,

00:32:02.280 really, that's the one thing I've been thinking about since I finished reading your book.

00:32:05.940 Well, you're obviously a much more virtuous character than Cesar de, because Cesar de

00:32:09.860 Borja, contrary to saying, oh, I fell, that must be my own fault. He did the opposite. He said,

00:32:15.880 oh, I fell, that's everybody else's fault but mine. That's what a really fortune dependent

00:32:21.980 character does. They blame everybody but themselves. We won't mention any politicians who do that.

00:32:28.160 We don't know any like that. But that's Cesar de, and obviously you're a good person because you

00:32:33.720 said you blamed yourself. Yeah. So focus on virtue rather than fortune or luck or whatever you want

00:32:41.040 to call it. That is a key to life. And like, I guess the challenge too is sussing out what is

00:32:45.880 fortune and what is based on your own virtue. That's another challenge. Yeah, that is. And that's

00:32:51.220 something that, again, I think Machiavelli, following his classical authors, he doesn't want to give you

00:32:55.980 simple answers. He doesn't want to do like a modern textbook would do and say, here's fortune,

00:33:01.480 here's virtue, go and pass a test telling us what's what. He actually wants, he's kind of mixing these

00:33:07.880 things up in his examples of individuals and invites readers to kind of say for themselves,

00:33:13.880 so where is Cesar de being virtuous here? You know, where is he being too reliant on fortune? Because

00:33:20.500 that's the only way that in practice, you know, ordinary citizens can start to judge their political

00:33:25.560 leaders as well. You know, you've got to, you see it on paper, you see this example of somebody

00:33:29.760 and you judge for yourself what's working and what's not and why. And, you know, then you can go

00:33:36.580 out into the political arena and see how people are operating there and judge for yourself.

00:33:42.220 He wrote his stuff, The Prince, The Discourses on Livy, over 500 years ago. People are still reading it.

00:33:48.040 What do you think it is about Machiavelli that's so timeless?

00:33:51.960 Well, I think the simplest level, you know, you just, it looks so simple and clear. His writing

00:33:58.120 style on the surface looks just so beautifully readable and simple. It isn't once you look more

00:34:05.400 closely, like we've said. And it's got these wonderful maxims that just stick out, but also

00:34:10.680 resonates so strongly. Whether the maxims are the kind of nasty Machiavellian ones about,

00:34:18.040 how, you know, conniving politicians operate, or whether it's his kind of more uplifting

00:34:24.680 points about republics and how to save them from decline. These are problems that are always

00:34:30.540 with us. Politics and human nature, as he says, don't change. As long as human beings are human

00:34:36.180 beings, there's no real progress in, let's say, the way that human beings function in their

00:34:42.940 relationships with each other, which is what politics is. We might get progress in, you know,

00:34:48.080 medical science or knowledge of the border universe. But this is one area where things

00:34:54.120 don't change much. And Machiavelli really, he's truthful. He's intriguing because it's not always

00:35:00.260 clear what he's getting at. It hits the nail on the head.

00:35:03.240 Yeah. I love that portrait, that famous portrait of Machiavelli, right? Sort of got like this sly

00:35:08.960 smile on him. And after kind of reading, like his whole work is just sort of a work of slyness.

00:35:15.500 And I like that picture. It makes me wonder what he was thinking when he had that portrait done of

00:35:20.560 himself.

00:35:21.160 Yeah. But don't you think he looks terribly, he looks like, it's a kinder kind of, a kind

00:35:27.060 sort of slyness. It's slyness not in the interest of, oh, let's just get ahead with what people

00:35:32.360 think. It's more of slyness and, hang on, let's defend ourselves better, all of us.

00:35:36.980 Right.

00:35:37.300 You know, not just me, not just me, me, me, but all of us.

00:35:40.080 That's all of us. So my last question is, how would you, what advice would you give to people

00:35:45.460 who want to revisit the prince? And they want to look at, you know, look at it with fresh eyes.

00:35:51.840 So they see these insights into how he's promoting virtue, how he was promoting freedom and

00:35:58.020 republicanism and getting over that idea that he's just showing you how to be a conniving

00:36:03.600 con artist.

00:36:04.620 Yeah. I mean, first I'd say, first is a rule of thumb. Realize that it's not as easy as

00:36:10.680 it looks. It's not as straightforward as it looks. I think that's pretty important because

00:36:14.620 it can be seductively, you know, deceptively clear Machiavelli's prose. Realize it's harder.

00:36:23.080 And then I would say, although I'm in favor of kind of reading books like The Prince all

00:36:29.360 the way through, maybe counterbalance the reputation that is in all of our heads about

00:36:34.740 Machiavelli. Counterbalance it by doing the opposite of what most people do, reading The

00:36:39.080 Prince. Most people go straight for the kind of standout, jump off the page, you know,

00:36:44.380 Machiavellian quotations and say, okay, that's Machiavelli. The rest, they kind of skim.

00:36:48.700 At least I used to do that when I, before I really got into him. Instead of that, look

00:36:53.600 for the things where he talks about republics, you know, starting with, and when he mentions

00:36:57.240 the word freedom or republics, go for it and really look at what he's saying and feel, feel

00:37:03.760 the passion even. In chapter five of The Prince, which is where he first really talks about

00:37:09.420 republics, they just burst on the scene in this heated way. Everything that's happened

00:37:13.980 before it in the first four chapters is called princes, called, you know, this is how they

00:37:19.240 operate. Suddenly there's republics and what are they doing? They're resisting the prince.

00:37:24.060 They're resisting very hard and they're making life absolute hell for the prince. And I would

00:37:30.020 really go for that and then go to the discourses too and look at a couple of chapters where he

00:37:36.560 does the same thing, where he talks about republics in ways that's very hard to make you,

00:37:42.460 you know, to resist the thought that, hang on. He's so, this is somebody who's, you know,

00:37:47.220 not just saying that republics are sometimes the best form of government, pragmatically speaking.

00:37:51.940 This is someone who believes that as a matter of deep principle for human beings at all times,

00:37:56.680 this is the best way to go and not princes.

00:37:59.120 And the other thing I've done is look, highlight the word fortune. That's some,

00:38:02.660 I've been on the lookout for that.

00:38:04.320 Fortune. But does that really help? Does that help you get to a republican like you really?

00:38:09.480 No, but the idea that virtue is more important, right? Don't just rely on like, sort of like the

00:38:15.640 Borgia guy. Like, don't be like him. He might, when he mentions fortune, it doesn't mean it's 1.00

00:38:20.180 necessarily a good thing.

00:38:21.480 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good point. Yeah. That's, that's highlighting. I mean, my, I could show you

00:38:26.500 some of my Machiavelli texts, like highlight, I've got highlights and highlights of all kinds of

00:38:31.400 words that stick out. I mean, I shouldn't, if you want to get a nice little guide to how I read the

00:38:37.140 prints, I've got a whole book on just Machiavelli's prints, where it's kind of chapter by chapter.

00:38:41.460 And I even set out at the beginning, a list of like keywords and how they're, how he plays with

00:38:46.600 them. So there's that book too, which is just Machiavelli's, it's called Machiavelli's prints

00:38:50.760 in your reading. So not to promote my other books as much, but, but it's, it's, you know,

00:38:58.080 at least it's, it's my way of it. It shows how I try to kind of come to terms with all these

00:39:02.220 difficulties in a very kind of, I think, very just honest way. So that's controversial, but

00:39:08.980 that's, you know, Machiavelli is one of those authors who is always going to be controversial

00:39:13.980 because that's just inherent in the way he writes. He writes in a tricky way. I don't think he wants

00:39:19.680 readers to say, oh, this is like a good lecture where we come away saying Professor Machiavelli tells

00:39:25.180 us to do X and Y. That's the wrong way to read him. The right way is he's testing, he's testing our

00:39:30.760 political intelligence by giving us examples that are confusing or that, you know, you might judge

00:39:36.120 in different ways. And, and I think that's the starting point. If anyone tells you, Machiavelli

00:39:42.040 is so easy and so simple, you know, they haven't really engaged with him.

00:39:47.240 So you have to be like the fox to catch a fox.

00:39:49.840 Yeah. And then you learn to be a fox, but a good kind of fox, not one who's, who's trying to kind

00:39:55.820 of get one over somebody else, but someone who's trying to do what Machiavelli says foxes

00:40:01.260 do in the prints. What he praises them for is seeing through snares. They see through traps.

00:40:07.520 They don't try and try to cheat other people. These very good animals, other animals, non-human

00:40:12.440 animals, generally are not as cunning. We're not, they're not cunning in the same way.

00:40:17.160 Um, a lot more, you know, there's a lot you can learn from them without taking on these

00:40:22.960 human defects that we've projected onto foxes and lions.

00:40:29.040 Yeah. So Erica, this has been a great conversation. Is there some place people can go to learn

00:40:32.080 more about your work?

00:40:33.620 Um, well, since you asked, I've just been struggling with setting up a new personal website,

00:40:39.460 ericabenner.com. It doesn't seem to be really showing yet, but I hope it will be soon.

00:40:44.180 Fantastic. Well, Erica Benner, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:40:47.080 Thank you, Brett.

00:40:48.160 My guest today was Erica Benner. She's the author of the book, Be Like the Fox. It's available

00:40:51.780 on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash

00:40:56.020 Be Like the Fox. We're going to find links to resources. We can delve deeper into this topic.

00:40:59.560 Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and

00:41:15.720 advice, make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you enjoy the

00:41:19.460 podcast, I've gotten something out of it. I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us

00:41:22.400 review on iTunes or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. If you've done that already, thank you. Please share

00:41:26.240 the show with your friends. Word of mouth is how this show grows. As always, thank you for your

00:41:30.520 continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - January 30, 2018

#375： The Misunderstood Machiavelli

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript