What we get wrong about Machiavelli

My takeaway on Machiavelli's The Prince is that it is a diverse collection of ruling / governing practices he observed and recorded back in the 16th-century upon which he tries to extract lessons and learnings, similar to what we see nowadays with entrepreneurship success / failure stories analysis.

Machiavelli doesn't seem to actively promote wrongful behavior nor engage in morality evaluations, mostly keeping a neutral, objective perspective throughout his writings.

Nevertheless, his objectivism is commonly, and wrongfully, interpreted as malignity.

The author of this piece lacks an understanding of how Machiavelli uses the term `virtu` (admittedly a common mistake). This failure to understand `virtu` is why countless political factions all the way up to the modern US Democratic party have failed their subjects and failed to protect their states -- they were unwilling to sacrifice the appearance of being good, of keeping their hands clean, for the things that really matter -- for example legislation on climate change, and the preservation of the US ability to respond to global pandemics to name only two. One of Machiavelli's key messages is that there are some things that are more important than playing by the spirit of the law. Those in the modern west who reject Machiavelli and this message doom themselves and their constituents to live in states cursed with bad rulers.

If you really want to understand Machiavelli then Ada Palmer's post's are excellent[1]. She studies "heterodoxy, heresy, freethought, censorship and information control, the recovery of classical thought after the Middle Ages, its impact on science, religion and atheism, and the history of the book and printing."

She puts Machiavelli into context, and points out that "the ends justify the means" was really an ethical argument putting for the first time the idea that the consequences of actions matter more than trying to justify actions by religion.

I discovered this via a HN comment and I can't recommend it enough.

Here's a quote:

1508. The Italian territories destabilized by the Borgias are ripe for conquest. Everyone in Europe wants to go to war with everyone else and Italy will be the biggest battlefield. Machaivelli’s job now is to figure out who to ally with, and who to bribe. If he can’t predict the sides there’s no way to know where Florence should commit its precious resources. How will it fall out? Will Tudor claims on the French throne drive England to ally with Spain against France? Or will French and Spanish rival claims to Southern Italy lead France to recruit England against the houses of Aragon and Habsburg? Will the Holy Roman Emperor try to seize Milan from the French? Will the Ottomans ally with France to seize and divide the Spanish holdings in the Mediterranean? Will the Swiss finally wake up and notice that they have all the best armies in Europe and could conquer whatever the heck they wanted if they tried? (Seriously, Machiavelli spends a lot of time worrying about this possibility.) All the ambassadors from the great kingdoms and empires meet, and Machiavelli spends frantic months exchanging letters with colleagues evaluating the psychology of every prince, what each has to gain, to lose, to prove. He comes up with several probable scenarios and begins preparations. At last a courier rushes in with the news. The day has come. The alliance has formed. It is: everyone joins forces to attack Venice.

O_O ????????

Conclusion: must invent Modern Political Science.

I am being only slightly facetious. The War of the League of Cambrai is the least comprehensible war I’ve ever studied. Everyone switches sides at least twice, and what begins with the pope calling on everyone to attack Venice ends with Venice defending the pope against everyone.

[1] https://www.exurbe.com/machiavelli-s-p-q-f/

Unfortunately for M., the adjectival form of his name (Machiavellian) has come to mean something rather different from his actual ideas. His political philosophy would be best described as realpolitik.

Today, we often view the word realpolitik in a somewhat negative sense, because the underlying assumption is that a ruler should be 'good' first and effective second. This is a modern assumption.

What this article doesn't delve into is the idea of virtù itself, and specifically how (someone like Nietzsche) sees this value and the Renaissance in general as a return to pre-Christian, pre-Platonic ideals of excellence, ones that precede modern ideas of good and evil. It is an idea intimately tied up with aesthetic concerns of self-mastery, clarity, and the dispelling of Platonic (subsequently Christian) idealism. Machiavelli himself was quite interested in the ancients, so this is not surprising.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/machiavelli/#PoweVirtFort

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtù

This excerpt from Twilight of the Idols (Nietzsche) is maybe the best brief description of the idea. Sorry for the length, the part about Machiavelli specifically is in the third paragraph.

--

I am not indebted to the Greeks for anything like such strong impressions; and, to speak frankly, they cannot be to us what the Romans are. One cannot learn from the Greeks—their style is too strange, it is also too fluid, to be imperative or to have the effect of a classic. Who would ever have learnt writing from a Greek! Who would ever have learned it without the Romans!... Do not let anyone suggest Plato to me. In regard to Plato I am a thorough sceptic, and have never been able to agree to the admiration of Plato the artist, which is traditional among scholars. And after all, in this matter, the most refined judges of taste in antiquity are on my side. In my opinion Plato bundles all the forms of style pell-mell together, in this respect he is one[Pg 114] of the first decadents of style: he has something similar on his conscience to that which the Cynics had who invented the satura Menippea. For the Platonic dialogue—this revoltingly self-complacent and childish kind of dialectics—to exercise any charm over you, you must never have read any good French authors,—Fontenelle for instance. Plato is boring.

In reality my distrust of Plato is fundamental. I find him so very much astray from all the deepest instincts of the Hellenes, so steeped in moral prejudices, so pre-existently Christian—the concept "good" is already the highest value with him,—that rather than use any other expression I would prefer to designate the whole phenomenon Plato with the hard word "superior bunkum," or, if you would like it better, "idealism." Humanity has had to pay dearly for this Athenian having gone to school among the Egyptians (—or among the Jews in Egypt?...) In the great fatality of Christianity, Plato is that double-faced fascination called the "ideal," which made it possible for the more noble natures of antiquity to misunderstand themselves and to tread the bridge which led to the "cross."

And what an amount of Plato is still to be found in the concept "church," and in the construction, the system and the practice of the church!—My recreation, my predilection, my cure, after all Platonism, has always been Thucydides. Thucydides and perhaps Machiavelli's principe are most closely related to me owing to the absolute determination which they show of refusing to deceive themselves and of seeing reason in reality,—not in "rationality," and still less in "morality." There is no more radical cure than Thucydides for the lamentably rose-coloured idealisation of the Greeks which the "classically-cultured" stripling bears with him into life, as a reward for his public school training. His writings must be carefully studied line by line, and his unuttered thoughts must be read as distinctly as what he actually says. There are few thinkers so rich in unuttered thoughts. In him the culture "of the Sophists"—that is to say, the culture of realism, receives its most perfect expression: this inestimable movement in the midst of the moral and idealistic knavery of the Socratic Schools which was then breaking out in all directions.

Greek philosophy is the decadence of the Greek instinct: Thucydides is the great summing up, the final manifestation of that strong, severe positivism which lay in the instincts of the ancient Hellene. After all, it is courage in the face of reality that distinguishes such natures as Thucydides from Plato: Plato is a coward in the face of reality—consequently he takes refuge in the ideal: Thucydides is master of himself,—consequently he is able to master life.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/52263/52263-h/52263-h.htm#THI...

It just occurred to me that Machiavelli could be grouped with Sun Tzu and Saul Alinsky - each one of them wrote an incredibly insightful and influential book on strategy or leadership.

Are there any other authors/books in this category?

I've recently read "The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom" [1] and I think it's definitely worth a read for anybody interested in Realpolitik and it's intellectual history. The author's own extrapolations are wonky at times, but the foundations are solid and food for thought.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1270379.The_Machiavellia...

I always thought the Prince reflected that the means should befit the prince (IE be apropriate to the governmening power if visible), and in general the more vicious the prince, the more visibly vicious it's possible to be without it be being effectively self-destructive. And that while the reverse is also true, IE a benevolent prince could reinforce itself with visible benevolence, the vicious is far easier and harder to get wrong.

This sequence on Ex Urbe is one of the more interesting exegeses of Machiavelli I have read.

https://www.exurbe.com/machiavelli-s-p-q-f/

For those of you who read "The Prince" and are looking for a little more context, I recommend Machiavelli's "The discourses".

It's been a while since I read it, but I found it to be an interesting romp through roman history through the lense of Machiavelli's sometimes cold, sometimes compassionate analysis.

Everything.

What is this ridiculous trend of judging characters of the past by today's standards? According to the author Machiavelli highly original philosophy should be partially dismissed because he frequented prostitutes (male and female).