modernity. Start with Makaveli, not with Decart. Those people are derivative from Makaveli. Makaveli had two criticisms of Christianity. The first is that it's too cruel and the second is that it's too weak. The prince becomes both conqueror like Caesar and prophet like Christ. Machaveli is the father of modern science. Machaveli had a high opinion of Muhammad and Salam. The Turks, yes, they were stronger than Christians in his time. The woman is almost like the prophet where they conquer you unarmed. And that's also the the power of Christ is that he conquers the world unarmed. You were very good, I must say. Perhaps the most challenging questioner I've had in an interview of this kind. We underestimate just how important Machaveli is. At best, we consider Machaveli to be just a clever political commentator. And at worst, we consider him to be an immoral schemer that can be easily dismissed. My guest, Harvard's Harvey Mansfield, has spent his entire career trying to show that Machaveli is so much more, that he is the very founder of modernity. In fact, responsible for establishing the very world you and I live in. Machaveli, according to Mansfield, is not just the founder of modern ethics and politics, but the true father of modern science itself. In Mansfield's estimation, Machaveli's chief rivals are no less than Plato and Jesus. Machaveli is the antichrist and we are his heirs. Machaveli started a silent revolution, one that was purposefully hidden. In the next 2 hours, then Professor Mansfield will reveal to us all its secrets. I want to spend this interview understanding what it means for Machaveli to be a founder of modernity. But before we talk about what he founded, let's talk about what he was against. Beginning with Christianity. Uh in your books, you called Christianity uh uh Machaveli's chief enemy. Why is that? Christianity tries to make you better than you can be. Christianity tells you that your honor, this is the way Machaveli would say it, lies in the next world, in heaven as opposed to this world. And what Machaveli tried to do was to create what we normally today call the world out of this world. The world has no reference to another world. That's modernity. And I think that's what Maki got it started. If you go to Europe now, you look around, you see many so many churches and so many cathedrals with very few in it. Imagine yourself entering full churches, full cathedrals. That would give you a little sense of the power of the church in Makaveli's time. So it was his chief enemy though perhaps uh the classical classical tradition standing behind Christianity was the predecessor. Yes. And also the the source of the power of the chief enemy. I see. So let me give you a quote from the discourses. Although the world appears to be made effeminate and heaven disarmed, it arises without doubt more from the cowardice of the men who have interpreted our religion according to idleness and not according to virtue. For if they considered how it permits us, the exaltation and defense of the fatherland, they would see that it Christianity wishes us to love and honor it and to prepare ourselves to be such that we can defend it. These educations and false interpretations thus bring it about that not as many republics are seen in the world as we seen in antiquity. Nor as a consequence is as much love of freedom seen in peoples as was then. This quote at least makes it sound like Christianity itself is not the enemy but only the bastardized interpretation of the time. But your reading is that the Christianity itself is is the is the main issue. Yes. Uh the The interpretation that Christianity makes is the interpretation you could say of the classical tradition. It changes it, makes it more effectual, points it in your direction. Uh Plato spoke of the idea of the good. Um Maveli says Christianity changed the idea of the good into the idea of God. God is a personification of good. God is how most ordinary people understand good. If you say something is good, people immediately want to know how do I get it? They don't want to know so much what is it? That's what the philosopher wants to know. But Margilli says uh God is the person who will get it for you. He's the person personification of the good. So that that is a way in which Christianity itself is an interpret interpretation of of of the good and see and in general one can say that Christianity's interpretations come about from uh itself. It interprets itself. Might there not be a more thisworldly, vigorous and even militaristic form of Christianity, whether it's the Christianity of Constantine, the Christianity of the Crusades or the later concistadors that Machaveli could be a fan of. Yes, there is for sure. Machaveli had two criticisms of Christianity. The first is that it's too cruel and the second is that it's too weak. So, so it is uh cruel to human beings because it asks them to do more than they can do, more than they have the natural power to do. Um, but it's too weak because it can't quite put this across to nations. Um, there the the church itself is militant but not military. It can uh get you to believe in the things that you ought to believe according to it, but it can't get you to move in that direction. So, it doesn't have uh soldiers of this world. It has soldiers or priests of the next world. Therefore, it has to depend on armies in this world. and that makes it weak. So it's strong enough to prevent Italy from uniting but not strong enough to unite it itself. Right? So it is the cause of the disunion of Italy. And by the way when Makavelli says Italy he sometimes means the world all of all countries. Italy stands for the world. So if Christianity uh in its core was more like Islam where it's more inherently militaristic, Mchavelli would have it's more it's militant I would say rather rather than militaristic it it because Christ conquered through the word not through arms and the church doesn't carry arms. So that distinguishes um Christianity from Islam. Muhammad was a conqueror as well as a prophet, right? And and he would be more in favor of the uh conqueror plus prophet combination. It sounds like because it's cruel still, but it's no longer weak in the way you describe Christianity to be. That's right. Yeah. So uh the prince needs to be a prophet as well. the the normal non-filosophic prince, somebody like Trump or even Biden is uh not not a not a prophet. He confronts the world as it is and it is as it is because it believes what it believes. So in order really to conquer the world, he has to make it over so that it will obey him. And uh that means that he needs to be a prophet, a rival to uh Christ himself who won through won the world through prophecy. Right. We see one of the issues um that he has with Christianity is that it it makes men effeminate. What is the issue he has with effeminacy? The feminy just means you haven't uh the power to use force to get your way and and um so there's there's something womanly about uh Christianity. I see women however uh are not without power. So they they can attract you and use their beauty and their ws to make you do what they want. So he so so women are um have a certain place in his thinking right in some sense if we go back to what you said about the conqueror versus the prophet the woman is almost like the prophet where they conquer you unarmed so to speak right and so so and that's also the the power of Christ is that he conquers the world unarmed he attracts you right he attracts you with promises I see but uh but part of the attraction is to God who was also So the father and and therefore jealous and and strong in that way. Yeah. He does use the Christian trinity uh reinterpreted to show that uh there's a strong side and an attractive side to um to his prophesy to his prophesizing as well as to Christianities. So, so just to be clear here, Machaveli would be content uh not like the modern project that wants to rid itself of religion completely. You think he would be content if he was able to reform Christianity to become more this worldly? Yes, that's one possibility. I I I don't know which attracted him more. The idea of simple atheism with no religion at all. That might be for people like him. But for most people um most people are too weak for that and the weak need religion. They somehow sense that they are weak and they need the stren strength of some higher power. So they call upon this higher power and get them to do things. when you described his issues with Christianity but also how he thought Christianity conquered Rome that Rome became too big and decadent that there was always this slave morality in essentially uh it reminds me a lot of Nietze and genealogy of morality how do you think these two anti-Christian authors uh how is their relationship with Christianity different good question um nature in nature I think there is uh um a stronger rejection of the weakness of the softness of Christianity. He associates Christianity with democracy with Mchaveli. There's a greater interest in how me uh Christianity won the world. So I I would say he's more impressed with the strength of Christianity, right? The strength of the weak. That's also a theme in nature, you could say. Yes. the aesthetic ideal. Um, strength used to make yourself weak, strength used against itself, against yourself. Um, I don't think Mavel is attracted by that sort of aestheticism. I believe he's more rational that prudence tells you to make use of this Christian weakness. And um you don't need to have your mind conquered by an internal version of religion that is which turns out to be the will to power. So that's I don't know I think you could find the idea of slave morality in in Machaveli as well as in nature. The the two are uh similar in an interesting way. You're right. Right. I see. Um you mentioned how even though Christianity is the chief enemy the prior enemy is the classical tradition. Um it's very interesting then that in the beginning of the discourses Machaveli seems to want to rescue the classical tradition the prior enemy in order to tame the chief enemy. Right. So so there is a deeper admiration of the classical tradition uh from Machavelli. Tell us about that. Yes. Um right at the beginning of the discourses uh Maveli discusses uh what made Rome strong and free and it was uh not the harmony of the Roman Republic but the disharmony the the conflicts between the nobles and the plebs. Um what makes you stronger is having a strong enemy to oppose rather than to have somebody who agrees with you. The strength of the of Rome came from its uh dislike. It's internal dislike and this is what uh this is what impressed um or what he wants you wants to impress you with when he begins. So he wants to make Rome strong and uh only gradually does he begin to introduce the uh idea of Rome's weakness. Rome's weakness was that it was uh it it it it it gave in to Christianity. It wasn't strong enough to defeat the weak. So when Rakaveli looks at things most generally he thinks that the ancients were strong and the moderns were weak. But somehow the strong ancients Rome lost out to the weaker Christians. So you have to see and understand how that happened. And that's what he does. The dis disagreement among the Romans gave rise to um the possibility that uh some figure could appeal to the plebs, to the people as against the nobles or the senate which was the chief motivating force of the Roman Republic. So uh uh a a man who could imitate Caesar uh but defeat Caesar because Caesar couldn't rule the world above the next world um could u spread this word to a universe of plebeians enabling them to um believe their way into power, you might say. I see. And so what he wants to rescue um from the classical tradition, it sounds like, is certainly not the philosophers, right? It's certainly not Plato Aristotle, the idea of the good, the forms, or this other realm. It's more like classical political action, like the actual lives of a of a Caesar um or or the great consoles before him. Is that fair? It's the it's the actions rather than the the ideas that are to be rescued from classical antiquity. Yes. Uh and therefore the idea of the prince as opposed to the republican idea of the many that the the people who are weak could find greater strength in one person than in the few aristocrats or nobles who appeal to their courage. Better to appeal to their sense of their weakness and to make them look for a higher power than human power and to find honor in uh obeying and worshiping that that higher power. Yeah. The so that the the prince becomes both uh conqueror like Caesar and prophet like Christ. The two brought together, right? Which again makes me think that Muhammad is almost like the ideal archetype in some sense, right? Both prophet and conqueror. Yes. Maveli had a high opinion of Muhammad and Yes. and Islam, the Turks. Yeah, they were uh stronger than Christians in his time and posed a threat to the West. I see. What is the issue uh that um Midelli has with the gentlemanly, the aristocratic and the noble class? uh the in in the first place he looks into their real motivation which is their own power. They the few are the ministers of the few. He likes to say they're interested in their power and in their wealth and not at all interested in the well-being of the people. They uh get in the way of the prince. they are rivals to the prince. Um that's in a way a good thing because a republic is based on a rivalry among the few. uh but republic gives the power of a prince especially the Roman public to uh one person for a time and then it opens up the field to uh rivals to supplant that person. So you get a constant supply of fresh energy. That's what a republic does. Whereas um a principality um consists of uh uh a republic where one prince has succeeded in doing doing away with his rivals, his baronss. Um so th those baronss um compete with one another and the prince um wants to overcome that competition. He wants to become uh unos solo one alone as the aim of the prince and aim that you could say the the human goal itself um to be alone and um and to do this he uses the people as his ally and so that malis Political science anticipates the history of say modern politics which u consists in a the growth of a of a monarchy based on uh an alliance with the people against the nobles. Right. So one issue you pointed out of the nobles is that they care for their own interests and not of the rep not of the the the country at large the common good but the prince is also after his own interests in the he's chasing glory and it's only an unintended consequence or maybe intended consequence that he happens to benefit uh the the republic um or or to benefit the country. So I'm not seeing a difference there. Could could you really draw out like what is the issue? Is it is it because the nobles are a stagnant force that don't allow any innovation or or Yeah, tell me about that. They divide the power of uh of the country. They divide the prince's power. They try to make provincial duchies or provinces that is as in France and um prevent uh a unification of a of the whole and uh they attract uh vassels and um and people who depend on them. But isn't that a good thing to to further separate and splinter uh uh a a a country so that there's more rivalry period's view? Uh the the the rivalry is good but uh the result of rivalry which is one alone is even better. So, so the rival rivalry is the way to the prince and both of them show that what human beings want is to be on top and that's I think that's the most general truth. Later on this was called the state of nature later on in modern political science right and Uno's solo role is not only good for the individual being his his deep deepest desire it's also good for the state because he can act as an executive very effectively uh he can do extraordinary actions that that that's the idea whereas if you just have a stalemate between rival houses kind of nothing gets done and you just get weakened yes that um That's that's a stalemate. If if they get together in the Senate, then it can work. But that getting together uh in in the Roman Republic was a coming coming apart and the destruction of the republic or and the rivalries in the parties in the in the late republic. So it's it's um things move according to Mar. Yeah. Politics is not stability. In order to be stable, you have to move ahead. You have to keep on acquiring. Right. I see. And um a country splintered by the aristocracy or oligarchs doesn't have the same kind of ability to move ahead as a uno solo dictator prince at the helm. No. And unless one of the prince one of the dukes becomes the king. I see. But there's there's always the the movement is is toward greater acquisition. I see. Um so we talked about what he was against the classical and um the the Christian tradition and now I want to introduce this idea of necessity uh because both the classical and the Christian tradition are professions of goodness of morality of the good life and Machaveli replaces that with the profession of necessity. So tell us about that idea. Yes. For people who want to be good, you have to profess it because you have to explain it to yourself. If you're good, how are you going to prevent other people who are not good from taking advantage of you? If you're good, well, you come to ruin among so many are not good. So you need to work out some explanation why these people who are not good won't be able to take advantage of you. And that is uh a version or a vision of a good society, a good politics whereby doing good will result in your receiving good. people will be grateful and this requires reference to a higher power. So it leads to the notion of religion or and especially the Christian religion that will um relieve you of your sins and um remind you of the power of God and of God's providence. So that's a profession of good and Mchaveli wants to replace this by a profession or or a reference to uh necessity as the basis of human action. People are good only when they are required to be. So that's an obvious truth that one sees every day. People have their necessities things what they which they require and how are they going to get them only if they can make other people respect their necessity. So if you're a prince, you need to have obedient people in your pe in your country. And you get them by showing them that it's that you are necessary to them. And uh that means that you have to teach them the the power of necessity. Necessity is stronger than goodness or necessity is the same thing as goodness. To be good is to be necessary to yourself. And people have their own personal necessity. Someone who's weak has the necessity to believe in a profession of good. Right. Wishful thinking. Yeah. Yeah. Wishful thinking. and so are and religious thinking. So uh in this way you probably cannot construct an atheist society to get people to to follow you. You need to make them think that um you are so so strong that they are they and they so weak that they have no um alternative at first. It looks to be a simplific simplification of good because who knows what good is and there are many different kinds of good. But necessity seems to be just one thing. Necessity here and now urgent. It's what forces you to move rather than sit. And yet uh you have to think ahead. When you think ahead, you anticipate your necessity. To anticipate a necessity is not quite to feel it in the same way as being moved by it urgently. So there's long run necessities that's you have to think. That's what prudence addresses versus shortrun necessities. That's when you react. Immediate fear. Someone points a gun at you and u that creates s a situation you have to respect. But it isn't enough. Um you can't hold a gun permanently. I want to elaborate on the last point about anticipation because when when I first read necessity, I thought just make sure I can survive today. No one's pointing a gun to my head. But it turns out necessity is all-encompassing. Okay. So let let me read to you uh your bookm's virtue. Aristotle says that to practice the virtues one must have a certain surplus of property so that one's necessities are not always foremost in one's mind but the acquisitions of property must be limited by the requirements of virtue both in manner and amount. Aristotle says this. Mchavelli however allows that tendency of acquisition to go as far as it can. One can never know how much equipment one may need. What primitive men must do to scratch an existence from nature, civilized men must do to keep ahead of their rivals. Necessity means the necessity to acquire. So men cognizant of necessity must devote themselves to acquisition. The temporal scale, right? The fact that there's future necessity and the fact that there's competition means that it's all necessity all the way down. Is that a fair interpretation? That is. I think that um think of billionaires today. Um those people have much more than they need. Billionaires um want to become the highest most powerful billionaire. That's that's the honor they they point toward. So they don't stop acquiring. You would think that there's an that they've well passed the natural limit of acquisition. You all your needs are satisfied. But no, the greatest need you have is uh to acquire more and more which is more and more honor or more and more glory. I see. So so the necessity encompasses not just the survival of the body or or or physical safety per as uh like like Hobbes but also societal standing. Yes. People often use the term survival. Science uses it. Evolutionary Darwinian evolutionary science uses the the word survival as if there were that was a limit. But for most people they have a really an arisetilian or you could say a classical sense of survival. They mean really not just survival plain but survival as they are. So that there is a kind of formal aspect to survival and that's um that's a limited survival as opposed to an unlimited survival based on acquisition. So acquisition does go beyond survival to glory to the point that for Makaveli glory is just part of necessity. There are some people who aren't satisfied with what satisfies most people and those people pursue glory. I see. Um when I hear this um almost recommendation for for infinite acquisition, right? I and I think about the the edge like the the counter examples. I I I tend to think about my grandma who uh was born before the Chinese Civil War and because she was thinking about necessity the whole time. She was one of two children out of a litter of 10 that survived, lived through the cultural revolution, she's still in necessity mode. When we go to McDonald's together, she still collects ketchup packets. Okay. But she she of course has gathered her entire life. She she's quite well off now. Yes. But if you look at that, to me that's a quite a good counterex example to what Mackie Valley is saying. And maybe the billionaire case would arouse uh similar suspicions, which is surely now's the time for you to actually live not just a necessary life, but a good life. What would Matthew say to that? She's looking forward to future need of ketchup. Exactly. Right. Your your grandma. That's a little bit of the spirit of the prince, right? That I think is how he would interpret it. But but that is meant to be a critique, right? I'm I'm pulling that up as No, it's meant it's meant to say that a certain thrift is all you need. And maybe at a certain point in one's life, one looks down on on such small acquisitions as extra packets of ketchup. But, uh, that's that's still a little bit of the princely spirit that Makavelli might appreciate. So um does he have a conception of what a good life is other than just getting as much material resources and glory as as humanly possible? Yeah. I don't think that there is any anything higher than the highest glory and um that there is a conception of the good life. There's the good life is the inquisitive life. carried on as far as it can go to the point where you are uno solo. Uno solo is the good life and yet it's a life of continuing acquisition. That word acquisition by the way is interesting. It's a word which Makaveli uses in the sense of conquer. Aquistar uses this economic term to acquire goods. inquisitive um to mean something political and military. So it's you could say it's a kind of already there in that word an overcoming of the distinction between what you need and what you want to acquire. I see is an an economic term satisfies both politics and military. Um, however, it sounds like there's actually two things that make up necessity. One is bodily necessity, like mere survival, and that's what I thought about necessity. That's what most people think about necessity when they first hear it. But there also seems to be a necessary desire, at least in some people, to get as much glory as humanly possible. And that's the second set of goods that that constitute the good life for. But these two, of course, are in conflict, right? Martyrs for example give up the former and they receive the the latter. Uh university professors compared to billionaires might not have material uh uh wealth but have surplus some of them at least of of glory and recognition. Does Machaveli think about which is primary of these two? Which is primary is the is the glory that he has of being a philosopher. The glor not the material but the That's right. Right. The understanding but the understanding leads him to appreciate the material and to appreciate the need for action as opposed to contemplation. His contemplation tells him that contemplation is insufficient or not not powerful enough in a human mind. You always want to make the result of your thinking or contemplating um more powerful make you more powerful than otherwise. So he's unlike Plato's philosopher doesn't want to rule that's in Plato's republic be dragged down. sometimes. Yeah, that's that's a bother. It's something you don't like. Or Mival's philosopher finds it necessary to rule. But but but hold on. But if of the two goods, right, material good and recognitive good. Yes. If recognition is the superior good as you're describing it is, then you know who has more glory nowadays? Is it Plato or is it Pericles? It's Plato, right? And so in that world suddenly being this you know absentee like like otherworldly philosopher seems like the superior strategy you know. Well that's the same thing in as in Machu Valley that that the glory of the philosopher even though it ends in the glory of the prince is nonetheless higher and more powerful. He's still in charge of us as the creator of the modern world. He's there. He's still the prince. Right? Uh whether we recognize him or not. um is um is less important. In fact, it's necessary to our way of thinking, who are acquiring that we not recognize how powerful Machaveli is over us. Right? So, Mchavelli creates a a kind of um oblivion following him. He makes people less concerned with the power of philosophy because philosophy tells them that power is all they should have. So, and yet the difference between the power of the philosopher and of the non-filosopher remains. There's a great difference between the Makaveli himself and the princes that he advises. He speaks in the prince of the problem of a minister who is more intelligent than the prince he advises and that's he himself he's more intelligent than we are right but he u and so he has greater glory but he allows us to seek glory for ourselves understanding therefore that uh princ ly glory is higher than a mere professor even a professor of necessity like Makavel. So, but but that's the fraudulent part because it's actually the the professorial glory that's higher. But he tricks us into thinking the princely glory that's higher. We can't serve him if it's obvious that we serve him. So he gives you a way of thinking which tells you that philosophy is less powerful than princess. I see. that that people who acquire in political life or today billionaires are stronger, more inquisitive, more glorious than the people who show them that this is necessary to themselves. Right? So, just so I get this straight, uh, his actual view is that at the end of the day, the good life bottoms out to glory. And whether you get that if you're Jesus and you don't own anything, if you're a Plato and you, you know, you're an aristocrat, you don't but you're not in in this acquisition mode, or you're a billionaire, it's just about the glory. Now, given that, uh, the philosopher's glory and and the prophet's glory is clearly extends further in time than the billionaire's glory or or the prince's glory. But he's tricking the billionaires and the princes into thinking that their glory is actually greater. So if one is a true reader of of Machaveli, one can see that material uh material necessity, material acquisition is actually secondary to glory. And therefore the true reader of Machaveli should probably imitate Machaveli and start start a new religion than then follow his guidance and start acquiring material. Is that fair? Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. So, Machaveli is different from Machavelian or M. We use the word Mchavelian as a porative remark. Yeah. That well that's Mchavelian. I think he knew that uh he would be understood in this way, right? that uh people um um retain a notion of the good and distinguish it from what he thinks and calls what he thinks by a name that they mean to convey ill or evil. So uh but it it doesn't bother him because he knows we are weaker. So therefore that's why we need the good. It's our necessity. Right? And this maybe this a good deal of this weakness extends to people who don't think they are weak or not not normally considered weak like uh politicians and statesmen and I see and others. What do you think about this claim that uh glory and being first amongst men, Uno Solo is the end- all beall of good life? That seems like a very childish right right view of I mean one can think of many tyrants who are like Uno Solo who it's obvious to me I wouldn't want to switch lives with him. Um and and um on on the converse there are many people who are not like that who I think live live great lives. And do you think that's a plausible claim? You could say it's refuted by Makaveli himself who in his famous letter Yeah. describes how he reads the ancient authors. I I actually prepared that. May I read it for our audience now? Yeah. Because it's lovely. When evening has come, I return to my house and go into my study. At the door, I take off my clothes of the day. covered with mud and mire and I put on my regal and courtly garments and decently reclothed I enter the ancient courts of ancient men were received by them lovingly I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for there I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions and they in their humanity reply to me and for the space of four hours I feel no boredom I forget every pain I do not fear poverty death does not frighten me so everything acquisition out the door I deliver myself entire entirely to that. Yeah. So that so this is refuted right by by his own life that there is a contemplative life beyond glory and but he also says uh the food that is mine alone and there's the solo again even in contemplation he is unos uh maybe it's sufficient to be alone together with Plato and Aristotle and especially Zenapon Makaveli's favorite classical thinker. So you're right. There is some kind of contradiction there though. Yeah. Yeah. At the end he comes to the good. Yeah. It's good to follow necessity. Doesn't that mean it's good to follow good? Yeah. That that's what I was going to say which is the way he justifies necessity is things like well nec necessity leads to effeminate men. Effeminitement men lead to ruin and chaos. But there he's also giving a new standard of good, right? Namely that ruin and chaos are not good and therefore stability is good. So it seems like he still needs a at the very least a new standard of good to justify why necessity should supplant goodness, right? Yes. And that's but isn't that necessary to necessity? Right. One can play necessary and good back and forth. It's uh like tennis, right? I see all these different issues. I I think and uh no at at the end I don't I'm not a Mchavelian. I see. Um there seems to be another issue potential issue with acquisition. So let me read you a quote from the discourses. This is him teaching us how to build lasting republics to settle it in a strong place of such power that nobody would believe he could crush it at once. On the other hand, it would not be so great as to be formidable to its neighbors, and so it could enjoy its state at length. For war is made on a republic for two causes. One, to become master of it, the other, for fear, lest it sees you. The issue here that this quote uh provides with this acquisition mode we've been talking about is that sometimes acquisition can invite ruin. Um, and to use the billionaire example, you know, maybe if you're starting to be a trillionaire, the SEC is going to start investigating you and the press is going to start start going after you. Now, if you're just a single digit low deca deca billionaire, that's totally fine. So, so acquisition can seems to be seems to go against your own interest even on Machaveli's standard of your own survival. uh that looks forward to, you might say, the degeneration of Machaveli's notion of acquisition into Adam Smith's notion of self-interest. Tell us more that that it's in your interest not to be acquisitive to the point that you acquire enemies. I think Maveli would say that's an illusion. That's or a delusion. Your self-interest will not lead you to be peaceable as later economists or economical people want to think. It implies a kind of small or limited mind that you see your self-interest in satisfaction rather than in honor. self-interest is meant to be a substitute for honor, but it can't. I think uh Maveli has a better understanding of honor than do the liberal philosophers who followed him. those liberal philosophers like Hobbes and Loach and Adam Smith and Hume um were afraid of the of the evildoing that Makaveli endorsed. They thought that would lead to too much violence and war and suffering. So they tried to reintroduce a kind of morality that would limit acquisition, right? But it's still in the Machavelian frame. It's still individualistic, acquisitive material. It is. It is. They are Machavelians. and they thought to correct him and one wonders whether they did so successfully. So how is the how is Machaveli's inquisitive drive different from the bgeoa inquisitive drive? Mchaveli's is political. It's um the acquisition is the acquisition of power over human beings especially other human beings. The bourgeoa wants uh more wealth, right? And the recognition that goes with wealth. So that's that the the desire for wealth is meant to be a limit on the desire for political power. If if you live under capitalism which honors wealth, that will uh induce a number of power-seeking individuals to become wealthy instead of become princely. And u this will calm down the politics of Machavevelianism, right? and um make the turbulent souls u in to use lock's phrase industrious and rational. Right. So the liberal philosophers's hopes is that if we turn acquisition away from politics which is more zero sum yeah and direct it to to economics which can be positive sum Yeah. that would lessen the hostilities among men. That's right. But in a way that Machaveli wouldn't have liked. Right. Because Machaveli wants the hostility to exist for virtue. For virtue. Right. Right. That's right. I see. Yes. So capitalism uh costs Machavel's virtue, right? It's um attraction. Um we talked about how the Machavelian individual is after acquisition of political power material and the material resources that that feed into that ultimately for the service of of glory. Um, does he care about anyone other than outside of himself or are all the seemingly altruistic actions he does actually a consequence of the glory? Maybe glory needs react uh relaxation occasionally. Maybe gravity needs levity. Maybe male human beings need females. So, uh, but it it's it's not so much, uh, an attraction as a recreation. I'm guessing acquisition takes over from aeros. And I think in in Makaveli, you see that in his comedy Mandraala, where Aeros is manipulated and made fun of. made it uh shown to be a source of weakness rather than strength. I wonder if we're finding another contradiction between his ideas and how he actually lived life. So the first contradiction we found was uh regarding how he didn't claim in his theory that there was a contemp contemplative ideals and yet in in these letters he clearly has that kind of disposition. Here he's claiming that altruism is just, you know, at best it's recreation. It's not the key part of human psychology. And yet he opens up the discourses by saying he wants he intends it to benefit mankind. And so maybe he's a bit more public-spirited and altruistic than he himself lets on. Yeah. Altruistic as opposed to erotic. He wants to bring benefit to every individual to each aasuno. That means each person right um as as an individual but which means not as a society or as a group you don't get your pleasure from bonding with other individuals. So this that you could say that's a an important statement of modern modern individualism that each thinks of each uh above all right and therefore is most attracted by a benefit to each. It also tells you that he's not just interested in Florentines or Italians, but in all human beings, right? But the all is an all of individuals and not of association nations or fundamentally but but even just the fact that he said that I want to benefit uh each I mean that must come from a kind of some kind of okay it's not acquisition it it's clearly not glory because he expects as you said to not be recognized so that desire to use his writing to affect effect the change that will benefit each. Is that is that a kind of altruism that he he himself might not even want to admit? A humanity. Yeah. Humanity. A kind of u um the kind of humanity that he said the classical authors had when they answered his questions. The virtue of humanity consists in doing good to human beings. Yeah. Exactly. Right. By showing them that they must live according to necessity. Right. He wants to do us good. Yeah, exactly. But uh that's his understanding of good, which is not good or or a necessity. Let me read you uh one of my favorite quotes from your newest book on the effectual truth. Honor comes not from fools, but from those qualified to bestow it, who are as much impressed with noble losers as winners. Maveli does not write tragedies. The desire for glory is the selfish pursuit of approval from a grateful country rewarding conquest or some other difficult risky accomplishment. It connects evil deeds done for self agrandisement to good results for the people. The vulgar, the people whom the prince must impress, they set the standard of success. In this sense, Machuelli is fundamentally democratic. What I found so striking about your reading there is uh I I studied with Exel Hanath and Fred Newhauser recognition theory and one of the key lessons you learn is you want to desire the recognition of the few of the worthy. Yes. Right. This is Hegel's master slave dialectic. Why does the master not enjoy the recognition of the slave? Because he doesn't have the kind of requisite authority to recognize another master. Mavelli here is suggesting the exact opposite. You don't want to be recognized by the other wise men and philosophers because they would recognize an honorable loser. You want to impress the vulgar because their standards are more this worldly and more about just material success. Is that roughly right? Yes. Um vulgar people are vulgar. So you have to be vulgar in a certain way to impress them. Vulgarity. Here is this um a difference between Machaveli and Plato and Aristotle. Um you could say they both appeal to the senses but to different senses. Machaveli appeals to touch. Plato and Aristotle appeal to see. Um what you touch is more vulgar, more true than uh what you see. what you see can mislead you because you see visions. You uh see what the late American President George HW Bush called the vision thing. Beautiful phrase he had as something which misleads most people, right? But or when you get close and touch then truth comes to you. Truth is palpable not so much visible. The vulgar know because they touch. That's in the prince. I see for Plato and Aristotle, beauty which is visible is a kind of distraction from what is better than visible but and is invisible, the invisible good. That's of course especially in Plato. So we talked about uh necessity and his attempt to turn the the the world from operating on goodness to necessity. Um how does virtue the word virtue change um given that? Well, virtue is no longer virtue of the soul. It's um a kind of extension of the body of the strength of the body and producing energy. And energy is a quality of the soul which comes out of the body. And uh and the same thing comes out of the body. The the need to acquire to satisfy the body's needs, right? And u it makes u what is soulful or spiritual into something more vulgar, more sensational, visible in the sense of sensational, more impressive than uh virtue which by itself can be quiet. Um, also it unites all the 11 Aristotilian moral virtues into one virtue, not intellectual virtue as for Aristotle, but um the virtue of acquisition that goes for goes with acquisition, right? And that's his virtue, right? But glory doesn't seem to be something of the body, but mo more closely to something of the soul. It's the glory of one's soul understood as one's own, an embodied soul, right? Yeah, that's right. and uh an em not not just an embodied soul but a soul which is body which is an extension of the body and which is which is not uh a lifting above the body. I see. So it's not the glory of the martyr or the glory right it's the glory of the glory of understanding the understanding of the whole um here again we approach the similarity of Machaveli to the ancients as opposed to his departure there is an understanding of the whole in Machavelli it's just that the whole is different I see um famously of course in the prince Uh, one point of virtue is to overcome fortune, right? Yeah. And let me give you a quote from your book. Aristotle, this is in the Nikkiian ethics, had been forced to admit against his wish that happiness is in need of good fortune. Virtue is the core of happiness for Aristotle, but not the whole of it. A virtuous man in misery can only keep his dignity, not be happy. Machaveli's virtue seeks a true thisworldly ethics, not in need of a blessing. The blessing always comes from others. So depending on fortune's blessing is depending on others. Um, I always read the prince, especially what he says about Chesire Boura, which is this extremely virtuous person, but undone by things that he couldn't possibly have controlled as a concession by Machaveli similar to Aristotle, namely that virtue can only go so far that it can never fully tame fortune. I is that right? Or or or is it because in this quote you seem to suggest that Machaveli wants to go further than Aristotle to say that no no virtue can completely overcome fortune. Jezri Boura is a nasty type of prince. But if you were to imagine Chzri Boura as spiritual prince then um you would see that he fell short of what was needed because he depended on his father Alexander V 6th. I see one could get into the more secret parts of Makaveli from this particular example. I think that Makaveli uses uh worldly examples sometimes to illustrate uh unworldly examples and that the relation between um Desri Boura and Alexander V 6th could be understood as the relation between Christ and God, God the Father. and that um namely that Christ is dependent of his power on the father or on the other world and uh and that he never thought that his father would die at the same time he was I see um so the claim is that virtue can overpower fortune you just need to be virtuous enough is that fair Uh yes. Yeah. And yet that um virtue needs worldly force as well. It's got virtue is higher than uh worldly force but it needs worldly force. This is what Christ uh couldn't appreciate. He won his principality of Christian believers or what St. Augustine called the city of God through um uh conversion and through suffering. But he couldn't command armies. In order to become powerful, he had to be adopted by Constantine. M that is he had to become official and political but to become political necessarily divided his power from the power of Constantine. I see. So this led to the great Christian division between church and state that so distinguishes the Christian religion from other religions. I see. And then these two sets of princes that need each other but don't appreciate each other and necessarily combat one another. So, um I I think that's what he's uh referring to in this rather uh oult way. When he speaks of uh Chzri Boura, it's important that he says uh uh there's no one I want to imitate more than Chzri Boura that puzzles scholars. Imitatio Christi. Yes. I see. Yeah. I see. I think that's an an illustration of the fact that the antichrist which is Makali needs to imitate Christ. Mali said that unarmed prophet always loses and he refers to Savola as a loser which indeed he was but Sav is a loser to uh the Pope who had him burned to death in front of Marchelli. in Florence. It's it's amazing that he that Makavelli says that almost in the presence of the unarmed prophet who did win, right? Christ. Yeah. Yeah, but in a way to make you make you think I think that um you you could be armed uh with the arms of heaven if you use them or can use them uh as worldly arms. Part of your claim about uh Machaveli being the founder of majority is that he introduces um certain notions in politics that we just take as a given. So party government, the modern executive, indirect government, primacy of foreign affairs. Tell us about the uh political revolution that Machaveli is responsible for. Marchi I think began the notion or the fundamental notion of executive power which is that you can disguise your power uh if you present it as executing the will of someone who is above you and therefore not yours. It's not my doing. You understand it's Congress passed the law right? say God made him made the law, right? Uh the people voted me in. All these references to higher powers which uh in which you appear as a mere executive in the sense of a carrier out. But execute also has this other sense since it sometimes happens that when you pass a law or make a decree, people don't uh obey when you merely say please. You have to enforce your will. And so the executive then um may need to execute people. There's this double sense of in English and in Italian and Makaveli is Italian as well of as to carry out and also to kill because to carry out it may be necessary to kill. So, uh, a sensational execution that everybody sees and is, um, dramatic makes people walk ever so more softly and cautiously afterwards. It's an addition to your strength that you can appear to be weak. And that means that uh government is when it's most effective is not something that's direct which is I order you to do this but it's um indirect in that I am merely passing on somebody else or somebody else's higher authority that uh requires you to do this. uh the b the most uh obvious example of it is uh confession in Christianity that the priest doesn't tell you on his own authority what you should do to repent and give you a penance but God does. He however has special connection with God. He knows what God says and he you're you are required to believe that he represents God. So that that is the model that Makaveli offers to modern constitutional government doesn't come from me. It comes from you because you elected me. I merely represent you. Right? representation that comes out first in Thomas Hobbes but it's uh uh found the idea of it is found in Machavelli's uh indirect government. This is one way in which Makavelli differs from the classics that for the classics the most powerful person is the most visibly powerful person. Uh if you want to find out what characterizes a society, you should say, "Take me to your leader when you arrive. Then you'll find out who's who and what's what." And Makaveli says, "No, what's hidden in government is more powerful than what is visible or obvious." So hidden what works behind the scenes. This leads to the notion of conspiracy. All power is conspiratorial. What is obvious to you is what has been presented to you as obvious. The hidden power is behind and it manipulates or manages. Today we have schools of management. The Yale school of management that's a word for machali manager to manage something is different from ordering something directly. M it's the true power behind the scenes behind the scenes controlling the visible executive right I see the longest chapter in both the prince and the discourses is the chapter on on conspiracy chapter on conspiracy and chapter 19 of the prince and chapter six in book three of the the discourses and uh there you get many examples of conspiracy especially in the discourses I see those are beautiful examples. This is another way in which Maveli is the antichrist imitating Christ that he imitates the structure of the confession in this case or or the structure of Jesus and the father. Yeah. That that he sees the this is what you were talking about uh about him wanting to imitate Christianity. He he sees that it's so powerful um because of these structures and he's trying to transplant this into the kind of political realm. Yeah. Yeah. Um, another thing you you mentioned in your book that was a change from Machaveli was the primacy of foreign uh relationships, foreign policy over domestic policy. And the really interesting point you mentioned is that this is a way to talk about necessity instead of goodness because foreign policy is competitive. If we don't build these nukes, the Soviet Union will. Yes. And so it's a way to inject more um necessity into political decision-making. Is that is that right? Yes, I think that's right. That um domestic policy is really a form of foreign policy because you mustn't understand your compatriots as friends fundamentally but as possible enemies. And your relationship to your own people is a relationship of an alliance, a kind of foreign policy type of relationship rather than domestic as we would understand it. You're fellows and there's fellowship or sociability. So um politics is more foreign than domestic. the rule for foreign of of foreign policy should be the rule of domestic policy rather than uh the reverse. I see. It's a big mistake to treat other nations as if they were your friends. It sounds like it's even a mistake to treat your own nation as your friend. That's right. Right. And but but to do that would be even worse. Yeah. Yeah. The difference between friends and enemies is really a difference of whom you ally with. Yes. All alliances are temporary and it's this is true of domestic relations too and perhaps parties. Right. That the party you all knew this he changed his party when it was convenient. Right? That was Machavevelian and him and the the very existence of the party system is also another Machavelian innovation. Right? Because in the classical world I believe no one considered the party was was was faction. It was Yeah. All party was faction. None of it was respectable. None of it was based on principle as Edmund Burke argued. Right. So uh so therefore a a republic had to be harmonious. It had to live by one principle. Mavelli says that's not so. Princes and peoples have different principles. They're fundamentally different. You have to remember that always. And this means you you can't harmonize them. You can fool them. Fraud is necessary. Fraud goes with conspiracy. The necessity to fraud is the necessity to conspire. You have to um make people believe what isn't. So I see. Um the reason that he advises for party politics uh must be the same reason that he wants competition between states which is that this kind of war or or or vigor uh uh reminds people of necessity and therefore makes them virtuous and and and able to live the good life. Um, how do you think Machaveli would respond to modern times and let's say the existence of of nuclear bombs where war today could be catastrophic and and and life ending? Does necessity today force us to stray away from the preference for war? Uh, it nec it forces us to speak that way. Whether it forces us to behave that way, we have yet to see. Although if you look at the present conflict between Russia and the Ukraine, the Russians uh threaten Ukraine with nuclear nuclear weapons, but they haven't used them, right? And um so maybe the the spread of nuclear weapons or at least the the fact that several nations have them um keeps um them from being used by one, right? And uh how long that can last, how long fortune will smile is a definite question. I see. Now given when you read Machaveli uh how nasty kind of he he or how real I suppose he makes politics seem, one impulse is to withdraw um to withdraw from politics. Uh but here you argue it's impossible. So let me give you another quote from your book. Many live under the delusion of course that it is possible to live privately in society without involvement in politics. But they do not understand the basis of their security is the accomplishment of a prince who must always look out for himself and cannot therefore be trusted to take care of them should a conflict arise between the two goals. Relying on others is the same as relying on a profession of good and it brings ruin. Society is radically politicized, leaving no refuge for those who would rather not be involved. The claim here is if you try to leave society as an Epicuran would, that is a kind of political action and you are dependent on people not interfering in your tranquil little of paradise. Yeah. But surely there are degrees of involvement within politics, right? Like if if politics really as nasty as Machavevelic describes it to be surely I can choose to be less involved less involved in politics is that not a choice? No. Why not? I think he would say no. Uh this is Makavelli's reputation of Epicurionism. You can say Epicurionism says live unnoticed. That is the way to be. Um, and that will keep you out of trouble. A low profile. But Mavelli says, uh, you can't do that. Uh, people will recognize your your power, your intelligence, your value, your worth. It's impossible for you to disguise it. You'll want to express it in some way which will attract attention and suspicion and fear. Even Jane Austin, well, people will suspect her intelligence and um love it or hate it. Then you take a risk when you're noticed, but it's a necessary risk to win glory. You have you open yourself to critiques and maybe there are people who prefer dustfi and and um and don't like uh the quiet of Jane Austin, right? And I think she recognized this, by the way, that she would be noticed and that she had to arrange her life in a certain way, not get married. So in keeping with this uh uh necessity, but that is advice to a rare and talented individual. For the normal person who won't get noticed unless they make themselves notice, surely they can choose to either go into the Trump administration or buy a farm in Nebraska and mind their own business and raise some chickens, right? Sure. Surely that's a degrees of political involvement. Um yes maybe for those who want to give up and submit themselves to fortune have a happy marriage right and not try for anything grander will u fortune smile on you or or not right I see so so really his advice or or His admonition against withdrawal is to the extremely talented and ambitious. If you want to satisfy this, you know, yeah, the extremely talented and ambitious have that love in their nature. It isn't something that they can deny or Oh, the the love of glory, the love to express the love. Yes, I see. Yeah, that's a little more nature that the the will needs to express itself and will if you don't have that then uh you're relying on u your own achievements limited to be successful. Although even there there's different ways to manifest that will and that talent, right? I'm I'm thinking of Machaveli himself who did go into political exile and dialed down his political involvement while finding expression through writing the prince and and any of these other great works or someone like Cicero after he lost the civil war he found expression of his greatness in a less political domain right so so there's still there seems to be a choice of dialing up the politicalness even in his own life yeah but in both cases Cisro and Michael it seems that the intellect ual life was brought more renown and more glory. Another modern example, Churchill, who wrote books, especially when he wasn't in power, but I think he preferred being in power to writing books. I'm not so sure that that was the case with Marvel or even Cicero, right? But I I guess the example was to show that even for extremely talented people, you can choose how your talent manifests and there's less political things to choose, right? Is that fair? Uh the less political things are more political if you understand them correctly. So you had it's you get more political power by writing uh or by being a philosopher than by being a prince. I see. Going back to our previous discussion, right? I see. Um I think we're finally ready to investigate your your central claim that Machaveli is is the founder of modernity. Um can you give us an elaboration of what you mean by that? the effectual truth. That's the title of my book and it's also a phrase from Makaveli's uh chapter 15 of the prince. He says that you mustn't go to the imagination of the thing of a thing but to the effectual truth of it. That's in Italian verita. That one phrase seems to have been invented by Makivali. And he calls attention to his invention by using it strangely, astonishingly just this once in all his writings. There's no source for that phrase. So scholars who love sources have tended to overlook it. Um I wanted to call attention to this particular phrase that a thing is what its effect or outcome or result is. Um the example I like to use is love. If I say I love you um that really means uh I want something from you. My wife says, "I'm tired of that example." But it's reminders like that which make me love her or help make me love her. So, so uh but nonetheless, it's such a beautiful example. Now, how does that apply to a philosopher? because Machaveli's um invents the effectual truth and um what is the effectual truth of the inventor of effectual truth then that would be what people take you to mean when a professor gives a class the effectual truth of is is what the student takes away from it as we say the takeaway what is the takeaway and that's the most essential part not the intent. So the effectual truth of Magali was um um a a world which believes in the effectual truth and that is a world which he took upon himself to begin but he couldn't accomplish. It's a path that he takes a few steps on. He says he's almost finished it. That is a great exaggeration. Machaveli loves to exaggerate. Um but he takes the first step and the first step is to undermine subvert the authority of Christianity, his chief enemy of his time. And he does that by criticizing Christianity openly, which he does in the discourses in three different chapters. M and he doesn't just criticize the church and its corruption which was a common theme but he criticizes the the heart the heart of it which is uh the principle uh that you find honor in salvation in the next world rather than in success in this world. So his being the only philosopher in the Renaissance to criticize Christianity goes with his being the philosopher who invented the phrase effectual truth. M and later, a century later, Francis Bacon refers to this. A a doctor in Italy named Nicholas Maka said almost in plain words that those who um believe in Christianity don't really practice or believe in what they say they believe. And that in other words the he was undermining the authority of the priests. That's what Maki had said that these people who get want you to believe don't believe themselves in heaven and in God. He accused all Christian priests of being atheists in effect. So um a century later Bacon brings in um um the first uh foundation of modern science. Modern science one can see as a form of effectual truth. Modern science um depends on causes that have effects, causes that preede effects. Aristotle had four causes. The efficient cause where the cause precedes the effect and the material cause, the matter of a thing. The formal cause, the form of it, the final cause where it's aiming at or its purpose. So, modern science uses just one of those, the efficient cause. Yeah. the efficient cause uh perhaps together you could say with the material cause those go together just as form formal cause and final cause go together in in a way that comes out of Makaveli's effectual truth and it uh it it's the interpretation of the world maki I think begins the world I mentioned this before that he doesn't speak of um this world but he says the world the world is the world of worldly necessities. So the principle of necessity is the principle that characterizes infuses the world. It's what makes the world worldly. what makes um modern science confine itself to the world. Right. I see. So this is the way he's beginning to create modernity and how a later philosopher Bacon realizes this and recognizes this. I think he saw very well that uh he was following Makaveli's lead even as he himself claimed to be uh the founder and of of the science of the modern world. Right? I see. And one can look at all the further philosophers, the liberal philosophers later on. I didn't do this in my book but still I leave it for somebody else to do to see how they too are Machavelian in all these ways. Yeah. You mentioned some of the ways in which um Machaveli has inspired our politics with the executive and so on uh and management indirect government. So th this is the world which uh uh Maki created. It's a world of what you could also call rational control. Modernity is rational control, right? It's Yes. It's the attempt to um change our way of life from a line reliance on um prejudice, tradition and superstition to a reliance on reason or in Makavei's more usual term, prudence. But he does say it is good to reason about everything. That shows that he's a philosopher. Right? But when you reason about everything according to him, you produce rational control and the ra the modern world following him with the various philosophers who pretend not to interpret him but actually follow him. Um they are his creation. Some of them rebel. Some of them like Jonathan Swift don't follow him. Some of them rebel like Rouso. And you could say also say like Nietze to them rational control is something dubious or even something very bad. But uh that is Makavelli's world rebelling against himself or against itself. Modernity is the rebellion of reason against rational control. I see one could say the effectual truth is not only the key to understanding Maveli as the founder of modernity but also as a philosopher because a lot of people don't conceive of him as a as a philosopher right a political theorist political commentator but he's a philosopher because this is a key epistemic point he's making about the ontology of truth that the validity of truth is not because it you know as as it was for Plato in reference to a higher realm. Yes. But simply its effect and and that's what all of modern science is kind of grounded on. Matthew is greatly underestimated. Very greatly underestimated. Right. Yeah. He's um much more powerful much more of a philosopher than anybody thinks. Mo most anybody thinks I see. So philosophy departments should start with Machaveli not with Deart or or Humea. those people are derivative from Makaveli. To see that is to see what's uh what unifies modern um philosophy, right? Um a key distinction we moderns make is between fact and value. Yes. And you even trace this into Machaveli's distinction between deeds and professions. To tell us about how that works. Yeah. It would be good for someone to write a history of the fact value distinction. Um, it's interesting because what is important at the beginning is the definition of fact and what is important at the end is a definition of value. But fact is something that we take for granted but that comes from Makavelli. He is responsible for the discovery of fact. According to the Greeks, there is no word for fact. They say hot this this this thing which has comes and goes and knowledge is not knowledge of what comes and goes, what is ephemeral. No, knowledge is knowledge of what is permanent or eternal even. That's knowledge. Whereas now we believe that knowledge is knowledge of facts, things that come and go. And this is a consequence of the effectual truth. Fact comes out of fakare just as effect does. The effectual truth can also be called the factual truth. In that sense, um, a fact is something which gets in the way of your will. What, um, impresses you or stops you, makes you reconsider your your desire or your movement. That's the way we use the word in fact. in fact uh is a it's a totally different consideration from what you've said before. You're calling attention to it. Also people speak of stubborn fact and uh later on in modern philosophy matter of fact that's in lock and in Hume. So uh a fact is um is is this something real somethingual truth? Yes. It's it's real palpable stops you makes you reconsider. Right. That's such an interesting distinction that when we think about truth we think about facts. If you think about fact we think about how how tall is this chair? you know things that we can measure things that that is that is the purview of science whereas when when the Greeks thought about truth it was not the sensible world it was emphatically what was above it right but what's fascinating in your book is you mentioned another way in which Machaveli is the father of modern science I'll give you a quote nature must be interrogated or to speak plainly tortured the real facts of science like the real truth known to a prisoner will come out under extreme pressure that removes the subject from its deceitful comfort zone to a laboratory or a torture chamber. When we apply Machaveli's political intuitions around examining the extreme situation around the efficacy of of torture and spectacle Yes. into the natural world. That's how you get use science. Yes. to to to to reveal its the nature secrets. Yes, the word is experiment and that's the word that uh Bacon used that uh philosophy must must become experimental. That is you take a thing out of its comfortable um context and place it where it's itself by itself. The state of nature tells you what a human being is like. A vacuum tells you what gravity is like. Fact as a result leads from ordinary facts, common sense facts to real facts which are experimental and therefore scientific. So science uh comes out of common sense fact but it criticizes it because uh common sense just looks at what is ordinary. In Machelli there's a distinction between ordinary and extraordinary. Extraordinary is what defines ordinary. Um extraordinary is something extreme but it's the extreme situation that defines the normal situation or ordinary people make mistakes because they take normality for granted. This was an issue in our presidential election recently that that Biden would um bring normality back to American politics after the experiment of Trump, right? So just like uh in the political realm, the extraordinary reveals the true essence of the ordinary. Yeah. in science the the the extreme scenarios putting materials under extreme stress looking at the micro scale the macro scale yes tells you a lot more about the world we live in the experiment always looks for the extreme case the extreme case is not uh the outlier it's the definer the essence is the extreme I see uh that happens in free speech too by the way right in the previous part of our conversation you described how um Machaveli's emphasis on the individual on acquisition became inspired the classical liberal tradition rights and the individual self-preservation and also Adam Smith capitalism and the market economy acquisition went from glory to politics to to the material world of wealth in one of the essays um that you wrote about Toqueville and Machaveli's influence on Toqueville. You describe Toqueville as wanting the same thing as Machaveli to inject a kind of great spirit back into modernity, but believe that it was Machaveli's very materialism as it degenerates through liberalism, through capitalism that is the cause of this kind of bgeoa uh self-satisfaction and and petty-mindedness. Yes. If Mattelli were here today, do you think he as the founder of modernity would be proud of the thing that he founded? He might rethink his principles. Well, tell me more. That's fascinating. He might. What talk suggested also can be found in Rouso especially that um what is spiritual is more important than what is material and that means that what is the intentional truth is more important than the effectual truth. What you intend uh what you intend is to some extent what you get. So um America we see in talk's book democracy in America America is a consequence of its its spirituality and and talk there says that uh the spiritual has more power than the material. That's why we remember the philosophers of spirituality among the ancients. Um whereas um the materialist exists only in fragments like democratus and so on. So as if uh what humanity clings to is its ideas and it's it's what what spirited people um want is to spiritualize rather than to materialize. Mhm. Not so much worldly success uh as um intelligent understanding and virtuous promotion. I see. So you think that uh Machuelli as a founder succeeded in a sense by making the effectual truth the dominant form of truth? Yes. but failed in the sense that he thought the effectual truth would add a kind of vitality to modernity that it ultimately did not. Yes. That um that the effectual truth would be the truth. See the effectual truth still has to be standard by an ineffectual truth. So you can see what is success. You mustn't be blinded by success. Is it good to have success? So that's not a question which you can answer with the effectual truths. I see because that's you need a normative this is what we're talking about injecting necessity. You need you need a normative you need an ineffectual normative standard. Is it in fact good to think that necessity is good? Right. I see. Yeah. Um this is how uh widespread you think Machaveli's influence is which is that even progressivism you read as in some sense engendered by Machaveli namely his rejection of the classical cycle um and uh his his solution which is the perpetual republic. What what what is a perpetual republic in Nelli's view? It's a re it's the republic of his principles comparable to the city of god which is not an earth the earth not the earthly city but the city of uh believers right so uh in machi the perpetual republic is the one that lives on in the succession of republics each republic or each principality each state has a limited life and this limited life arises because of competition because of the effect of routine. Um when republics succeed, they get lazy and forget what made them succeed. And this is a natural tendency which can be revived with sensational executions above above all. But um at some point fortune will overturn every political arrangement but it won't overturn the understanding that political attainment requires overturning fortune. Right? So, so the perpetual republic is always Machavel's thought, I would say, right? Meaning that uh the princes or the consoles of this republic are the different republics that end up following some kind of Machavelian political science even even if it's not. You could say, yes, you could say the philosophers of modernity, right? Or who have to deal with modernity. And what makes this cycle or or this uh fall and rise of new republics not a cycle but instead something linear and progressive because they'll all come to see in their abstracted responsible way that Makavelli was right. Right. the philosophers that follow him as philosophers can't obey him as philosophers they have to rethink what he says. So right and that so that he's not an authority to them. They to be philosophers they have to be equal to him. Right? And then and not his slaves, not his vassel. Whereas the classical cycle they are a Plonist, they're an Arisatilian. They are a stoic. And so the classical cycle um people aren't trying to break away, they're trying to adhere. Yeah. Whereas in the modern cycle or or the modern perpetual republic. Yeah. Uh in the beginning of the discourses, he's very proud that he's introducing new modes and orders that he's an innovator. Yeah. And everyone else imitates his innovation. Yes. So they pretend to break away from Machave Valley. That's right. But that is the most machavelian thing to do. That is Yes. And that that is what makes it a perpetual progressive thing that everyone's trying to it's like modern art. Everyone's trying to break away. Is that fair? Yes. To imitate Machaveli is to be Mchavelian and is not to be Makavelian. Right. Because Makavelli was not an imitator. So uh he he uh has to have confidence that he is correct and that philosophers will see this. There's also something about the effectual truth I think that makes it progressive in the sense that for example technology or like military technology is the easiest example like if the truth is divine and uh out there in the realm it is a stable kind of truth. Yeah, but if it's effectual then today it's nanobots and AI, tomorrow it's humanoid robots. That that kind of scientific progress is also what makes it progressive and linear. Right? You could say Makaveli regarded himself as uh having been commissioned by philosophers by Plato and Aristotle. Um he presents himself as if he were Fabius being commissioned by the Roman Senate. the Senate could stand for classical philosophy and its authority. So if the ancients had seen the situation in which he found himself in this strange unknown um land. He they would have approved what he under their commission did to change what their authority was. so that um his um philosophy can be understood as a commission from philosophy itself as first presented by the by the ancients and then he has his commissioners later on too. But they have the power through commission to innovate or to do what he couldn't have done in his situation. So they are his but they have full power. Um uses this phrase plop potestas in the in the prince in quote the pope has as full power to to innovate. Right. And Fabius for our audience is a general who disobeyed the Senate orders because he found himself in a new kind of military uh scenario. Yes. And so the point you're making is what uh Plato was to classical antiquity, what Jesus was to let's say the medieval and the Christian era, Machaveli is to is to our era. Um someone who's carrying a torch who who's commissioned but also commissions. And we are living in the age of Machaveli so to speak. That's the Yeah, that's the age of Antichrist, right? I see. Which is also, you could say, the age of Christ, right? Because he imitates, right? He imitates. Doesn't he imitate Christ after all? Does he really escape what he imitates? I see. This is my final question. Um, you clearly love Machaveli. Um, you've wrote you've written probably more on him than any other thinker in terms of your books and publications. explain to us your your love of Machaveli and and what you find perhaps not satisfying about him. I have to say that my love of Machaveli was inspired by Leo Strauss in his book Thoughts on Machaveli. I couldn't speak for long about Mchaveli without mentioning Strauss's name. uh and uh I I think that is the book for understanding Makaveli and having read that made me decide to take up Makavelli as um as an occupation. Strauss had a kind of generosity. he saw very quickly and very deeply. But he left things to be seen and said by others. And the thing he left to be said mostly about Machaveli was uh the political side, the politics of Makavelli. In his book Thoughts on Machavelli, he discusses mostly morality and religion and not so much politics. So I saw that I could pick up a commission to uh uh explore Makaveli's politics and to show how Makaveli's political science inspires ours today. Perhaps this quote uh is something about why it's relevant for today's age. Today's progressives could learn a home truth from Machaveli. Progress needs a frequent reminder of the harsh necessity that progressives want to leave behind. What is that necessity that progressives need a reminder for? Um that good needs defense. It doesn't come automatically through self-interest but uh through virtue. Makaveli's virtue makes you think of classical virtue. It keeps you in mind of that. Um, Mack Machaveli's virtue challenges our complacency in such a way as to lead us back to the real virtue, the classical virtue that Makavelli rebelled against. You can't understand the one without the other. I see. I see. So ultimately it sounds like you reject Machaveli's virtue in favor of classical virtue, but it was a necessary stepping stone stone to see why classical virtue was necessary. Something like that. That's why I love Maveli and why I spend so much time in him. He's a challenge to our complacency. Right? We are we too easily think we are good or that we know what is good. And uh if you look at classical virtue, you see too that it faces necessity that it knows that it has competition. I see. That uh so it's it's it's a way of the beginning of modernity is the best critique of modernity. I see. In other words, um today we view too much of the side of goodness. And even though uh Machaveli for you veers a bit too much on the necessity side, it's a necessary counterbalance in order for you to go back to classical virtue that has both necessity and goodness in a much better balance than Machaveli himself. Is that fair? So the thing that he Mchaveli rejected or or tries to attack you rescue actually by reading Machaveli. Yes, that's my fond hope. I see. Okay. Okay. Well, professor, thank you so much for the time today. All right. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for watching my interview. If you want to go deeper into these ideas, then go join my email list at jonathanb.com. You'll not only get full length episodes, but also transcripts, booknotes, and invitations to future lectures. Now, if you like this interview, go check out my lecture on the genealogy of morality by NZ, whose critique of Christianity mirrors that of Machaveli. You can find links to that lecture and everything we covered today in the description as well as on my website jonathanb.com. Thank you.