Modern Wisdom - #321 - Dr Alexander Lee - The Story Behind Machiavelli's Philosophy

Episode Date: May 15, 2021

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... Sponsors: Get perfect teeth 70% cheaper than other invisible aligners from DW Aligners at http://dwaligners.co.uk/modernwisdom Get 20% discount on all pillows at https://thehybridpillow.com (use code: MW20) Extra Stuff: Buy Machiavelli: His Life and Times - https://amzn.to/3eFlH6f  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Alexander Lee. He's a Renaissance historian at the University of Warwick and an author, and we are talking about the story behind Machiavelli's philosophy. Nicolo 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 Nicola 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. I've mentioned previously that learning about the times and the context and the setting and the history of the environment in which philosophies were created gives you a complete new perspective on what that person was trying to get across. And we learned today, Machiavell is just this flawed human.

You know, he gets drunk with his friends, he turns up late to meetings, he cheats on his wife. And it reminds us that these titans of history, they were flawed humans just the same as we are. It reminds us that we can do great things in life. The fact that we go through the vicissitudes of human days isn't a denier of our capacity to do fantastic things with our time on Earth. Plus, Alex has the perfect historians narrator voice, so yeah, sit back and just enjoy him telling you what 15th century Florence was like. But now, it is time for the wise and wonderful, Alex Andole. Alexander Lee. Why is an Italian man from the 15th century worth writing about. I think there are at least two good reasons for that.

On the one hand, Macchiavelli has exerted an influence over the development of Western political thought, like very few others. There are not many discussions about reality, the nature of rulership, the role of virtue or the lack of the public life, which is not at some point come back to Macc even in his writings. The second reason is closely connected with that. When we think of Macc even he, it's quite natural for us to think of the adjective Machivelian. 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 in the show, has

often coloured the way we perceive the man. His life however, it's quite different or gives us a quite different idea of, it all gives us quite different depression. 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. He was often getting things wrong, he 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 for the point of view of his enduring relevance, so I'd not be, on the one hand, we should look at Machiavelli for the point of view of his enduring relevance, I'm not really keen on the idea of relevance as a criterion of his time of study, for his relevance to to political discourse, and on the other hand, because of the extent to which his life does that, so jars with that to the limit. 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. ability. Um, I, I, less worse, he is always making blunders. From the beginning of his physical career to the last moment, he is always getting things wrong. It doesn't, it'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 he is certainly true that because of Machiavelli's enduring resonance within the field of political thought, many people even today have been inclined to believe that he was born been inclined to believe that he was born, like a thinner from the head of the philosophy gods with this great insight. And I'm not saying it's completely wrong because one can

detect the genesis of his ideas in his thinking from the comparatively 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 personal. I often say that, you know,

there are very few political thinkers in the world that I'd like to go for a pint with, but Maccabilly certainly won them. Is that why he's still notorious today then? Why is it... there's lots of Renaissance figures that could have been still used in common parlance? I mean, Maccabilly is... his surname has become a entire topic within its own right. Why is he so notorious? Well, Machiavelli's significance as a political thinker and his unfortunate reputation stems from the fact

that he broke quite significantly in many respects with early tradition to political thought, particularly with earlier ideas of rulership. Prior to Machiaveri's birth, it was quite common to believe that princes who wish to rule properly and to remain in power should do so by acting virtuously. And virtue was understood in a mixture of kind of steric and Christian terms that is to say it was believed that ruler should event those virtues which we should all manifest in our lives which should be honest, they should be decent, they should be prudent, they should be wise, continent, etc etc. etc. they should act always with justice. Machiavelli for very pragmatic reasons thinks that while this might be a very good

approach to adopters of 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 isically or generosity or with mercy or compassion, etc. So in the prints, he's most famous, or I should say notorious work, he suggests that it is a prints who, which is just a empire, should, as well as having an independent military force of citizens, he should be parsimonious, rather generous. He should be cruel, rather compassionate.

Luckily, does say that if he can make himself in love with people, that's a lovely thing, but love is a less reliable sentiment as a basis for political power than fear. Better, okay, to be ready to be dishonest, than honest, et cetera, et cetera. So Maccabilly 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 was on the I should stress the absolute to make these points when at the very early on in his career in 1499 Florence Sachs and Wests, one of its leading military commanders, a guy called Palo Vitelli. Palo Vitelli is responsible for leading a campaign to recapture piece which is rebelled against plants a little bit before. For whatever reason, Vitelli throws away a gold opportunity to capture peace at, and the Flontines attribute this either to incompetence or to treachery, and to the rest of him, and they bring him for trial to France. 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 know, he should just be executed straight off, even though there are doubts about his guilt, or whether, you know, you should give him

the benefit of the debt. And there are very good, or powerful arguments made in the councils that while an individual, private individual, should act with compassion and understanding and justice, it's things are different for a state. A state should act in such a way that it preserves its own interest. And so they decide to execute Viterli, Uncle Hegele's ultra. And we can see in

this idea, this idea of reason of state-related becomes known that the state should follow a different set of moral precepts to private individuals. So early foretaste of ideas that Machiavelli is going to develop more fully. And in the prints he really works at 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. very, very specific set of political circumstances. When he's writing, he's lost his job. Florence has changed hands from being a public. It's now gone back into the hands of the Medici. It's beset by factional divides. And whole of Italy is in the grip of a very complex series of wars. It's evident that Mac

of a very complex series of wars. I really knew very well that he couldn't simply say to the meditching, um, 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 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 that's an adjutant 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 A historical reading of the prints back onto Machiaveri. And that does lead us to misrepresent his ideas, his background, his intentions. What was his personality like? It seems like someone who would have, we 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? Well, this short time is a clever one. But a pleasant one. If I were to describe Mac Mac to be called that's Nicola Machiavelli. Well, I say it's a bit ingest of course, but it is meant seriously because, I mean, let's

go back to the circumstances in which it was written. The French was written because it's a good insight into the type of guy he was. A little bit before he is, he lives as a job. He lives as his job as a senior bureaucrat within the Flanstein government because he has aligned himself with a Republican system of government and afterwards foolishly allowed himself to get caught up in or implicated in a conspiracy against Francis Newville, who's the Medici. So he gets arrested after that and thrown into prison and tortured. That shows straight off that he's in the wrong place at the wrong time. Other bureaucrats who worked in the same office as him, such as his boss,

Mark or the Virginia Adiriani, did not lose their jobs, they'd alone get thrown into jail. Mark or the Virgilia De Rami did not lose their jobs, they'd loan 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 Juliana 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. The folk funnest himself, the folk he folk find himself, he contrasts himself, he adopts the form of heroic poetry at certain moments to mock himself because he's not being heroic. He's been kawagi, eventually he gets lit out and because he doesn't have much cash and he's very miserable, he goes to stand, he's far from the countryside. In the countryside, he writes a letter to a friend of his, a bit later, which he describes

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 purps, she's all very nice. Then comes lunch, he goes home, has a bite to eat, and 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 get drunk and they have fights or whatever. He's not quite about this, he's quite open. What he doesn't mention that letter is that a little bit later he also, he has several children at this point, he's married.

He also has an affair with a localish girl, one of many of her as 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's very clever, but he also likes a drink, he has a fairs, he's a bit of a land. What can I say? 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 to, but he's also spraying it around for one of a better word. Yeah, that's absolutely right. He certainly has a lot of affairs with other women. Some of them are very, very intense affairs. So towards the end of his life, he has a long, long affair with woman 20 or I think 20 or 10 years is junior called Barbar Barasabhati. And he might, again, not have poems to her that are very self-marking, very acutely aware of his own failings. In dealing with one poem, he even seems to elude to the fact that he may have been suffering some effect on this function at the time. We think he also had some relations with guys too.

There is a little bit of uncertainty here, but I think there is probably enough evidence that we can be pretty sure about it. What is unusual? At the time, well, officially homosexuality and all homosex relations are illegal, but there is a certain ambiguity in the legislation, but nonetheless, it is quite common under the radar effectively. So he certainly not strange, not have the ordinary in that regard. What are some of the other big catastrophes that he goes through? I want to go down to his philosophy and his success isn't 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. Sure. Well, one of the important parts of Macchibele's job as a bureaucrat is the second chance of the Flontum public was going on embassies. He was usually, 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.

In other words, he could degree things on his own, on the strength of his own, namely, yet 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 early missions, he's still in his late 20s, late 20s, very early 30s. So he's never done that kind of thing before, but still he is pretty naive. One of his first missions is to woman called

Katarina Spots, and then there's the Tigress of Fortly, and she is a formidable woman. She's been holding, or protecting the independence of her little tiny state in the midst of near constant threats from all sides. Hey, Macchiola goes along, she 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 from Frances Barthand, Catherine, who's a wily old woman, not a wily woman, very well educated,

keeps sort of dropping hints. 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 might be really just doesn't notice, just doesn't pick up on them. So she keeps having to send her secretaries to 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 in late emissions he's still kind of misjudges the tone, so later he goes on a mission to several missions to the King of France. 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 Maybirds and the Duchy of Manard 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 Dumbois. And he catches Georges at one point outside and he says, let me explain Italian politics to you. What the King has to understand is this. This is a guy in his mid-30s who has, he's not a fool, but he's lecturing one of Europe's foremost political figures. And George Dunnbroid listens and he says, yeah, thanks. I don't even need lessons from you, Chum.

Chumps on his horse and rides off. Anyway, and he goes on like this. Perhaps the most famous mission is where he meets Chesry Borgia for the rides off. Anyway, and it goes on like this. Perhaps the most famous mission is where he meets Chesery Borgia for the first time. This is in mid, I think it's mid-5102, Chesery Borgia, 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, I mean that beautiful, beautiful city on a high, high, high, a kind of plateau of the towers above the surrounding countryside. Macchibellian, his companion, who is a bishop, arrived 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 drowned before Cesare in soaking wet covered in

mud in the middle of the night, having not even managed to get into the city correctly, and Mac And that does cover, he gets a bit quite quickly, but that does kind of cover his relations with Cesare. More broadly speaking, his political errors are more fundamental, and I've already alluded to someone. So for much his political career, as a officially objective, a political bureaucrat, he just kind of 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 firetank, but it's also exactly the wrong time to be doing that, the wrong time to be aligning himself with the Republic, because everything falls apart and the Medici come back and the Republic falls, and so I've said he gets sacked and arrest, 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 he comes to present the Prince to the person who dedicated Lorenzo the Medici, he comes to the wrong plan. 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 meditry blah blah blah blah. Anyway, years later he eventually earns their trust and is sent on a few, relatively minor missions, but is involved in their plans to, the campaign to defend Florence and their enemies. And Joe, you know, you just warmed his way back into their circle when Léon behold their kicktider flarks as well. So he's again on the wrong side by then I've reached too late and he dies sadly, rather disappointed.

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, Nicolo, it 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. It wasn't impossible to wear people who did manage to

weather the constitutional shifts in France without suffering too much hardship. It's possible, for example, Marchul, or L'Iverdiliad de Ranni, who is just seen into 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 and musical independent political standing. But it was even harder for somebody like Macchiabelli who came from a steady modest background.

He wasn't poor, but nor was he rich, vanished, chance, the imagination, who began life under a bit of a shadow because of his father's indebtedness and possible legitimacy, etc. He really had to work to get anything, really. And that was difficult. There were various routes to achieve security and stability for 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. Alternatively, you could seek offices of secretary or a chancellor as an academic very did but in that case it was difficult to whether the strong and it was difficult to know when to

involve yourself in the physical frame when not to What are the most common misconceptions about his philosophical stances? Well, there's 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 a pre-todent time period because of the Protestant who saw this as an

emblem of all the kind of awful things that Catholics were doing. So in in France many of your listeners may perhaps be familiar with the St. Botholomew's day massacre in France where one particular item feast is in Botholomew the presence of Paris were butchered. And those who survived often described the King of France actions as very Machiavelli. So 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 short-term to form a weakness in evil. 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? Well it was, it did generate a

bit of a stir after he began circulating it but nothing compared to what happened in later decades. 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? Well, this is an interesting question because it comes back to the issue of for whom Macchibelli was writing or who he thought he was writing for. Those who have been inclined to see him as a profit of amenity have supposed that he was writing for posterity. The Australian 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.

Now, it wasn't uncommon for people at the time to write to posterity was currently reediting 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 sort of have an existence beyond the grave, and he was always comparing himself to people who had an enduring legacy. But I don't think Machiavelli was like that. I don't think he was writing for posterity at all. It 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 cost, 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 based in the Medici after

the return to France in 1512. The discourse he has had that major work was dedicated to some of the friends he made in the Ortegaard Tvaryas at Garden, where he met young men who were either mixed with people on periphery of the major circle or those who opposed the major. And there is a suggestion that it's intended to cultivate a new set of political sensibilities in their hearts. 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 on his day. Do I think he would be surprised by that his work was read as 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 very, very worried, he signaled it himself. So the answer is I think he would have been both surprised, I'm not surprised. Sorry, that was a typically story in the past. Very diplomatic, yeah indeed. Back to the misconceptions. In what sense, I'm sorry. The most common misconceptions of his philosophy.

Well, the, as I said, the most common misconception arises from Princeton. He is attempting to suggest that will as he wished to remain in part should be absolutely more in all circumstances. 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 prints in detail, he is very, very careful to qualify these kind of scare quotes. This will often prove that. He says, yeah, I mean, it's nice for a print to be loved. I mean, obviously, that's what we should should aim for, but if you can't then the next best thing is to be

feared and you weigh a doubt against the certainty. However, your so 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 rise a whole bunch of animosity amongst your subjects and they're going to, to at some point, decide that it's better to take the risk of asking you, even though that is extremely uncertain, he says it's where, than to remain under your yoke. He doesn't, of course, again, say that he is necessary always to reject the precepts of immorality. He merely says, is reject the precepts of conventional malty, he merely says that a print 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 commanding, being manly in his words. So, yeah, the common misconceptions, that's the most common misconception. I think we can, through our, it's perhaps worth noting that even those who do present Machiavelli as an advocate of immorality or a prophet of Eve, if you like, have difficulties in reconciling the prince with

some of his other works, which offer a somewhat different explanation of how one should read the first ten books of living as history of Rome, ever become even. But an actual fact is an analysis of how states of all kinds, not just principalities, become great and stay great. And the answer to that is that they have to stay free in his words because you can't be great and issue free. So the question is how do you become free and keep your liberty 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 being a true vier, willing to sacrifice even yourself in the defence of the Republic.

Willingness, too, as Mac 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 as though he does return to some of the ideas he made in the, he raised in the prints, such as the leaders, charismatic leadership is an important means of cultiv virtue to people and charismatic leaders should occasionally be quite cruel. He doesn't suggest that it's the beyond end or in fact he introduces a whole range of other ideas like the need to eliminate great disparities of wealth, the need to use it all as a form of education, the need to use it all as a form of education. They need to cultivate a vigorous religious belief,

et cetera, et cetera. So the challenge of people who have read the prints as a defense of a model, princely rulership, have often struggled to explain how the Prince testulates with his course which is seems ostensibly to be more concerned with republics and other forms of governance and it's challenging for those who see Mac he is writing a response to different circumstances, slightly different circumstances, but slightly different audiences, and also in the context. The problem which he is addressing are essentially identical in the 16th century. There is less of a sense of a radical difference between

princely and republican sense, forms of government, much less pronounced than we think today. So in actual fact, all he's trying to do is ask the question of how does a state of any kind rule in whatever way maintain some kind of stability in this mad and changing world, where fortune can do whatever she likes. 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. 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, had a gun that he cannot see fault

in his closest allies and dearest friends. So, in the Scorsi, for example, he takes issue with his former boss, the head of the Republic, with which he served so early for 13 years, 13 to bit years, and I'm called Piero Sodorini, is castigated quite severely in the discourse. For admittedly, not for the worst thing in the world, for being too kind and being too nice and being unwilling to act ruthlessly towards

his opponent. 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 prints and in this course, he says, you know, I've been around a bit, I've seen things, and here's what I've learned. Yeah, yeah. And indeed, this is really the things, this is something that you've come up with time and time again, his other works.

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 Matthew, but he 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. What are some of the main lessons that we should take away? It's very difficult to answer that because it kind of invites an answer which commits the kind of a historical scene that I have criticized already, but let's play the game anyway. I think I think two serious ones and one less serious one. A central theme running through all of Mac

one. A central theme running through all of Mac Iveris writings is fortune and the vicissitudes of fortune. Fortune he says is what rules the world around us. But she it always he always imagined so 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 one over, he says. She's not going to be placated with, in precation,

she's not going to be placated with 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, and when the moment comes not to be timid, but decisively when necessary. And that I think is one of the very first voices that in relation to a Pope Jews the second 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 it 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 a historical one. In many of Maccabilly's works he displays an acute awareness of the The Florentine State and in all policies are weakened by great disparities of wealth. In Florence, since very early times, society has been divided between two groups, the pop-ballop and the grassy, the peep-poor and the fat cats, if you like. This is a rather simplistic way of looking at plant-type society, but it's not in valid. 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 origarks, they want to dominate, and the popolo want not to be dominated. Now, obviously we're not all living in 1516th entry farms, and the circumstances enjoyed by experience of each of these groups is not duplicated today, but it is true that in today's political environment we do see great disparities as well, creating a series of political problems. Governments which are obliged to look at almost any area, either a physical policy or social policy are obliged to particularly at a point in that, such as now, when we are recovering from

the terrible economic shock of how to balance the interests of these two groups. And Macchiwelly obviously says, you know, if you can, please, both of them, that's Anki story. But he also says that on balance it is better to stick with the have not for a variety of reasons that I am going to give at the moment. And that I you know, people might disagree with that, but nonetheless I 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 less serious point is this. I think it is useless off getting things wrong. It's always an old place a bit long time. And he often got very depressed.

He was quite frank about that in his voluminous correspondence. He often said how Larry was and miserably was. But he always bounces back. He always keeps smiling his face. He's always joking and laughing. And that I think is reassuring. I think it's reassuring because when we think of somebody like Maggie of early, it's a name that ranks alongside, and I start a little bit, Marx, Hague, etc. important. But knowing that he was a very human chap who got down, who had a laugh, etc. important. But knowing that he was a very human chap, we got down, he had a

laugh, etc. I think it's somehow, I don't want to say inspirational, but it makes it seem as if these Olympian figures aren't so far beyond our reach. I really like that. I spent my last birthday last year in Athens walking around the Agora and the Storpo Ecle 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. So I would have gone this year. That would have probably

been my birthday this year. I had travel not being restricted. And I want to walk around the streets. And I want to think and feel and, you know, 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 the 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 this with Matthew Velley's work. Absolutely. 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. Not his misses, not his misses. Okay, he's mistress, sorry, yes. No, you've got to make sure that you perform for the misses. You've got to do that. If you're going to cheat on him, or at least perform when you get your hands on him. Yeah, I just thought,

I think that's really, that's really right, but that's the thing 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 who's trying to write it for. And presumably

as well, if you're doing that for essentially one person or one group 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. I would be a rider on that actually. I agree with everything you say, absolutely. But I don't want to suggest that there is any one way of reading the prints at all. The great benefit of placing Macchibelllli in his context and humanizing him and recognizing that he's the Princeton, all his other work with Britain against a 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 a bit and if I didn't think it was right I wouldn't have written the biography. But I think by humanizing any political philosophy it becomes easier to engage with their works at a meaningful substantive level critically rather than viewing them as works of some Olympian genius far beyond our reach or humble experiences, but as the scribblings of someone who was troubled and difficult these or whatever, we can effectively talk to them. I mean, like Cicero said of his book, you talked to your books, you criticised them, you challenge them, and maybe you put something outside of your own. And that I think is much more valuable and a much more useful way of reading a political philosophy, with it being macchewed to somebody

else's, than simply looking at it as reading it as a passive consumer. 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? I've got it. I'm going to disagree with it. One reason I haven't given a great little thought to that, I should confess is because I actually find his lesser works much more exciting, really like his poems and his plays and they're very funny. You can't really disagree with a play, can you? You can just say it's shit or good, that's really the spectrum.

Yes, yes, yes, I think there's some literary critics in my disagree with that. But yes, yes, yes, it, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, works which do not necessarily interpret his own times in an accurate way. So for example, his tremendous faith in a citizen army, which is one of the most important points he makes in the Prince, the Scorsi and in the art of war above all. He was very keen on this because partly because he had we helped we establish a citizen militia in France. Can you just explain what a citizen army is? A militia site, of course. At the time it was common for states like France to not have a standing army their own. Instead, they employed mercenaries, often dozens of mercenaries each with a couple of, you know, 20 or so horsemen, knights, soldiers, whatever, under their command,

and cobbled together an army and this kind of been perfect way. And these were hugely unreliable. And these just pay to play, guys? 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, etc. 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 or just not fight in the end or whatever. So Machiveli argues vigorously throughout his life for a citizen militia. What does that mean? That means your own citizens fight for you nowadays. This seems like a bloody obvious idea. And indeed many modern states have made this the absolute cornerstone, their existence. The America for example, the White to Bear Arms is absolutely fundamental to American existence and the idea of fighting for your nation in the fedithics liberties in a axiomatic. But for Maccubic it was being you. And he gives the impression that any state that has a citizen army

is going to be stronger than one with a bunch of mercenaries, except that at the time that just wasn't true. 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 the shove and it really has to show its metal, it doesn't live up to expectations at all. When in 1512, Florence is attacked by an enormous Spanish people 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. You repeatedly, despite as he repeatedly argues with in other contexts,

he tries to persuade the poet to set up a militia in the Romaniac, 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. It wasn't really enough trained. And then we just talked about training. But that I think he got wrong. And that was in fact quite a recognized

by many of his early readers of the art of war. His view of military tactics, his view of mercenaries, etc. He doesn't enjoy a great deal of popularity by readers of the art of war, although it is hugely, hugely popular as a book. Instead, readers are more interested in his view of, you know, their tool or whatever. So what I would disagree with that as a reading of how to fight a war in the 16th century. Nice idea, doesn't work in practice. 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? Oh, there's lots, many of which aren't suitable for a family audience. 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. Take that, but we'll hear that. Well, it's an actually horrible story, actually, when he's late in his career, a sect, John Sir Front, he sent the deliverer 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 long, he's around it. Conjugal. I think it's difficult to say for the kids, isn't it? It's really nice. Anyway, and he's walking back home one day, and obviously, staying with this old lady who does his shirts, family who does his laundry room. And she approaches him and says, hi, can I interest you in anything? And

she says, I think I have something that might appeal to you in the cellar, or in Danny My place. And so he follows her. And she pulls back a curtain to reveal this Yeah, she pulled back a curtain to reveal this, a, a, a, a, a, a, a prostitute sitting on a bed. And he, the light's very dim and he doesn't really think she's, she's very attractive and breath stinks a bit. It's not very big, but he's so roundy that he thinks what the hell. Anyway, so the inevitable happens. And then when he's done, he thinks, I think I better take a look at this lady.

So he pulls the light closer, and the description he gives is just all sort of poor, and feels so sorry for her. No, it's just horrible. And anyway, I won't get into it, but it's so disgusting that he is sick all over her. Oh, that's bad. 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, I've already mentioned how much I like his poems and plays, but but these are the repositories of really lovely stories that may not necessarily have been indebted to his life, but was certainly reflect his life, but there's only 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'm in time for getting on, but basically a student who 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. The problem is she's married to an old Fadivedi over lawyer who's a bit dim. He decides that he's got to seduce her and so he enlist the support of

good for nothing and they consider all kinds of different plans of how to how he can get into bedbudder and eventually he's 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 for a mandrake root. Make that what you like. And he says drink this. As soon as you drink this, you will conceive.

It will be known for. But there's a catch, there's a catch. The first person to sleep with you, Lady Wife, after you drink this will die so obviously it can't be your husband. So he's a accomplice, suggests when you run 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 as the student. And he allows us 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 is hugely grateful and blah, blah. So, you know, another awful sexual story as opposed, but it's that kind of bored humor is very emberatic of Machiavelli's way of looking at the world and his life.

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 hospital in whom he gulls is called Messernicia, and there are lots of reasons why he's called Nicia, but one of them could be that it sounds very similar to Nicolom. So in actual fact he's putting himself in the position of somebody who is trained. And again, that's evidence of his, you know, his wedding is to laugh at himself. So there you go, there are lots of other stories as well, which I went, weren't going to, but if you haven't read them, they're a little bit difficult to find, but they're really worth reading. They're all hilarious to play and the, the, the, the, the, the

poems. It seems like he's got his unique weapon is his metacognisance. 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, which, yeah, I mean, when you hear these sort of stories about someone that, you know, is a Titan of the Renaissance, yeah, it really does humanize them in quite a sort of endearing way. Exactly. You're right in saying that his self awareness and his awareness of his place in his times is extraordinary, his greatest strength. Yeah, 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 clear about that, because he was an absolute rotter. He was a fiend. Not a fiend in the way that we think of, but he was, he was, as Alan Clark's wife said, he was an SH1T. And, yeah, he was, I'm not saying he's a model, but he's certainly more endearing, more human, more fallible. I think one of the reasons that I enjoyed writing

this biography more than almost any other book I've written is because I found it much easier to relate to somebody fanable than to somebody who would take in great care to craft their image, probably. Now, you know, we've all have not set back, we've all taken a blow or two from fortune. Maybe not the same kind, but it's much easier to empathise with someone with that nature. That's why I'm very ready. And why I hope people enjoy reading the biography.

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? There's another book I wrote a little while ago called the Aguil Renaissance Sex Disease Nexus in an age of beauty which explores some of the hidden back stories behind the great

after Renaissance, the CD underside of the Renaissance belly, if I can put it that way. So if you like the naughty bits of Macie Belly's life, that's another place that you might like to turn. Perfect, I love it. Alex, thank you very much. Thanks so much, Enicus. Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah