#1 Machiavelli claims that it is appropriate sometimes to lie to get what you want. For him, political leaders must be able to be evil in order to survive politically. Do you agree or disagree with this? Why or why not?
#2: In your view, under what circumstances is it appropriate to lie in the professional workplace? Be sure to provide reasons from THE PRINCE to back up your claim.
Answer question one and two above. Your response should demonstrate that the you are reading/viewing the course textbook, and reflecting upon all of these, through relevant responses that are not solely opinions or anecdotes. Your response should draw on
specific information from source material using multiple specific, accurate, and relevant examples. Your response should be organized, with no run-on paragraphs or stream of consciousness writing. Postings use full sentences with proper grammar and almost no spelling or punctuation mistakes. The tone of postings reflects formal writing (e.g., no abbreviations that are better suited to informal text)
REQUIRED SOURCE only – NO COVER PAGE
• Lemert, C. (Ed.). (2013). Social Theory: The Multicultural, Global, and Classic Readings (5th ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview.
• pp. 1-67 (Chapters I-XIII) of The Prince: http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince.pdf
• Machiavelli, High Priest of Power Politics or Tormented Moralist?
Machiavelli (1469-1527) is one of the most infamous political thinkers of all time and is
often regarded as a “teacher of evil” (Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli). Although he
wrote many texts including Discourses, History of Florence, Art of War, etc. the book
Machiavelli is most known for is the Prince. This is the one we are reading in this class.
It is important to note that Machiavelli lived during a time where an enormous amount of
intellectual creativity was unleashed. Machiavelli lived in Florence, Italy during the
Italian Renaissance. The Uffizi museum in Florence houses hundreds of artistic
masterpieces from this era (this building was the administrative headquarters for the
Medici). It is important to note that during this time frame, the two dimensional religious
paintings with explicitly Christian themes were slowly displaced by paintings in three
dimension (human perspective) that glorified the human body, sexuality and wine, other
sensual delights, or depicted battle scenes, the ancient world and other topics outside
typical Christian themes.
Machiavelli also wrote during a time when the Italy was in a state of turmoil, besieged by
foreign powers (Spain and France) and internally at war with itself (civil war). Florence,
the city that Machiavelli said was more important than his soul, was under Medici rule,
and Machiavelli lost his job as a result of his alliance with the previous regime.
Unemployed and interested in having a political position, Machiavelli wrote the Prince
and dedicated it to the Medici ruler with the hopes that this ruler would hire him as an
advisor.
A lot of people, of course, contact political leaders and try to make the case that they are
special, that they should be hired. Machiavelli wrote his book and broke with a tradition
that flattered the ruler. Machiavelli wanted to write something that was useful to the new
prince, something that offered rules for the conduct of leaders in a chaotic political world.
Should the new leader strive to be loved or feared? Should the new leader be generous or
stingy? Who should the new leader ask to be his advisors? What role do the people play
in a political order? Should the leader embrace Christian morality? Should the leader
deceive others, keep his promises, do away with enemies? These are some of the
questions Machiavelli answers in his masterpiece, the Prince. It is important to note in
closing that Lorenzo de Medici never read the Prince. Machiavelli retired to his country
villa after being interrogated and tortured by the Medici regime.
• Machiavelli The Prince
>> Dear Mr. President, I am deeply honored to have been asked for my advice as you assume the awesome burdens of your new office. I can offer several rules of thumb which I believe time and experience have proven sound. Act boldly in the beginning. The public has a short attention span that will make them forget the accomplishments of your predecessor and impress them with your vigor. Make your first priority the protection of your power. Without it you are useless. Appear steadfast but be flexible. Remember, some of God’s greatest gifts are broken campaign promises. [Music]
>> A playful paraphrase of words written in the year 1513 by a cashiered civil servant in Florence, Italy. What he actually wrote became one of the most hotly debated, deeply disturbing and important books of western civilization. To some it was a veritable guide book for tyrants and totalitarians. Mussolini loved it. Marxists recognized a fellow revolutionary. To others, it paved the way for ethnic and religious toleration, individual rights and modern democracies. But fairly or unfairly it has caused his name, Machiavelli, to ring through the centuries as a synonym for evil. [Music]
>> I compare fortunes to one of those violent rivers which, when they are enraged, flood the plains, tear down trees and buildings. Everyone flees before them. Everybody yields to their impetus. There is no possibility of resistance. Yet although such is their nature, one may still take precautions when they are flowing quietly, building dams and dikes to control them and flood time. So it is with fortune.
>> Rivers are not to be trusted. Neither are men. But both can often be controlled given intelligence and power and the willingness to get your hands dirty.
>> DR. KISSINGER: Machiavelli is the first political thinker of the Christian era who systematically analyzed the requirements of power and survival.
>> The Prince is a book about power, political power at a time of city states or principalities, ruled by men called princes. It amounts to 26 short chapters of analysis and opinion that range from the classification of government, to advice on selecting staff. It was written to shock and reeducate its reader, and it still manages to do so, to challenge the political pieties of its day and explain to princes and prince want to be’s how the game is really played. It tells the prince that before anything else, he must know how to fight. He must learn to be ruthless and cruel, to lie, break his word and be ready to violate both morals and religious principles when needed, though it also stresses the need to appear compassionate, moral, and devote. Some say Machiavelli invented modern politics. And when we read The Prince, we can see today’s headlines.
>> MS. GRAY: I think in many ways it is a great book because it is a mirror for Machiavelli’s own time and because it does continue to disturb, provoke and make us think anew and see in what way it does relate to our own time, and we keep asking questions of it.
>> It was Machiavelli who said get real in Italian, of course. [Italian]
>> Many have dreamed up republics and principalities which have never in truth existed. The gap between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that the man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done is on the way to self destruction.
>> Machiavelli’s focus on what is actually done is in tune with his time. Copernicus is studying the heaven, and Leonardo is dissecting cadavers, both trying to learn how God actually did it, to learn not from theory but direct observation.
>> MS. GRAY: Just as Leonardo was interested in anatomizing the world of nature, so Machiavelli in a sense was interested in anatomizing the world of politics and the world of history.
>> But dissections and autopsies are never pretty. One of the uglier discoveries attributed to Machiavelli is the idea that the end justifies the means. Now he didn’t put it quite that way.
>> In the actions of all men and especially of princes where there is no court of appeal, one judges by the result.
>> MR. MASTERS: Machiavelli is very clear that the end is what counts. He says this in a number of places, and it seems to us a very tough argument.
>> DR. KISSINGER: There are some situations in which the more survival is threatened, the narrower the margin of choice becomes unless you say you would rather have a society destroyed than to pursue marginal means.
>> What would you do to prevent this from happening to your people? What would you not do? Would you lie, violate treaties, assassinate people? Just where would you draw the line? Anywhere? On the other hand, if you were winning a war and your enemy is all but finished, how far would you go to minimize your own casualties? Machiavelli was acquainted with the moral ambiguities of power. He was a realist.
>> MR. HART: Machiavelli pursued what some scholars have called amoral realism. First of all, what he was trying to do is create something that didn’t exist up to that point. The nation state. In this case Italy.
>> MR. HARIMAN: But what we need to ask ourselves is whether we really are in desperate straits, whether we really are up against the hard laws of necessity that Machiavelli is describing. I think much of the time we assume we are and are not.
>> Like politicians today, Machiavelli justifies harsh or deceitful means as necessary to the common good, but his focus is on the presence or absence of power. What is it? How do you get it? How do you keep it? Good questions in any age but stark and immediate in Machiavelli’s.
>> When I came to this interview, I left my home in Vermont as an isolated individual, drove a car to Boston, took an airplane to New York, came to this interview without people around me. I was safe.
>> In the middle ages human beings were not able to move from one place to another without having other people around them to protect them. [Music]
>> Florence. Fabulous window in the past. Down these same streets walked the monks, soldiers and merchant princes of Machiavelli’s time, as well as artists whose names and work are today as famous as his. We are now in the age of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Columbus and Copernicus, of England’s Henry VIII, and of Germany, Martin Luther and the plot for reformation. It is a turbulent time of conflict and contradiction. New ideas and new technologies are rocking Europe like a great earthquake. The medieval system is collapsing and the idea that man is master of his fate is just beginning to take root. It is the renaissance, the April of western civilization. And the concept of government as a purely human invention is one of its flowers. But April is a cruel month. Giuliano de Medici, murdered in the great cathedral by a rival family, de Pazzi. It was a plot blessed by the sitting pope to overthrow the de facto rule of the Medici in Florence. Such were the times. Politics was a family matter. Medici retribution was swift and brutal. Several conspirators, including an arch bishop, were slaughtered where they were caught, and their bodies hung from the windows of city hall, the last one sketched as it hung by Leonardo da Vinci. Religion too seemed often a kind of family affair. Princes of the church had concubines. Popes had children. Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia, brother and sister and lovers, also had wealth and power thanks to their sire, Pope Alexander VI, who gives the term godfather a whole other meaning. Italy was an anarchy and city states, popes and other princes in constantly shifting alliances, murders in the cathedral, and orgies in the Vatican where the debris of a crumbing medieval order. This was the world of Machiavelli time. The separation of politics and religion was to become for him a major theme. Getting religion out of politics was an idea with legs. Its mirror image would appear in America whose founding fathers were trying to get politics out of religion. They would write it into their Constitution as the separation of church and state. I have not seen the end of controversies ignited by that idea, and it does have a dark side.
>> That separation, between ethics and politics, the belief that the good prince is not necessarily the good man, that appearance matters more than reality, that deception can be practiced, that it is better to be feared than loved. All those famous conclusions of the prince are ones that have eternally struck people as the most difficult and indeed painful question about politics, and they don’t want to confront it. They don’t want to believe that people thought those things.
>> Was the man who did think those things a Christian? A pagan? An atheist?
>> Machiavelli was a Sunday Christian. He did not dispute the essential dogmas of the Catholic faith. He simply put them to one side when he came to think and talk about politics at all.
>> Machiavelli’s prince seems to have a lot of moral leeway. The price for that is fairly steep. He must love his country more than his soul. He must be prepared to go to hell for it.
>> To kill a man is still to kill a man, and a prince has to be ready to do it. He has to be ready to go to hell. Being in charge, being a ruler, being a prince is intrinsically a tragic job and without redemption and without justification.
>> Machiavelli found it possible to live with contradictory views and therefore not to see himself as he came very quickly to be seen as anti Christian or anything of the kind.
>> Some think I should teach men the way to heaven, but I would rather teach them the way to hell so they will know how to go around it.
>> The Medici were exiled in 1494 when Charles VIII of France rode unopposed into Florence on his way to other conquests. Niccolo Machiavelli was 27. The city, long a republic in name, became again a republic in fact. Its first leader was a fiery puritanical but very popular monk named Savonarola who denounced the corruption of the church and was responsible for two of history’s more notable bonfires. On one, Savonarola burned books and artworks. On the other, the church burned Savonarola. The spot is marked today in front of city hall where a few weeks later Niccolo went to work for the republican government of Piero Soderini.
>> Machiavelli worked for the committee that was in charge of defense and foreign affairs. He took care of the needs of the military, and he went on special missions to foreign courts.
>> And then he was all throughout Italy. He met many rulers, and naturally among them is Cesare Borgia.
>> Borgia is a legend in his own time of ruthlessness and depravity. In one instance Borgia invites his enemies to peace talks and has them all killed.
>> That was the main impression that he got from Borgia, his cold blood and his capacity of using violence, let’s say, well [Italian], for a very lucid political goal. Not just a display of power, but in a very functional way. [Italian]
>> When he returned from these missions, a doting but impatient staff confronts him with a mountain of domestic details and problems, but Niccolo has weightier things on his mind. He is a visionary. An Italian patriot convinced that only a single forceful leader can unify Italy, and he knows that independence will require a citizen army.
>> Machiavelli believed that the mercenary armies that characterized the military system of renaissance Italy, and indeed of much of Europe, were a terrible mistake, that the Romans had used civic militias, that every state should use its own citizens, that only in this way could you get the commitment and efos of civilians to express themselves in the defense of the state and that that would have very good results in terms of the internal laws, institutions and efos of the state as well.
>> Machiavelli sells the idea, and in a war with neighboring Pisa, his citizen soldiers perform moderately well. But in 1512 they meet hardened Spanish troops at a town named Prada. The Spanish mercenaries panicked Machiavelli’s militia and a ghastly slaughter follows. In the wake of this route, the Medici return to end the Soderini republic, and with it Machiavelli’s political career. In Niccolo’s view, the fickle Soderini could have squashed the Medici return had he been sufficiently ruthless. Leadership requires more than plans and policies.
>> In order to maintain his state, a prince is often forced to act in defiance of good faith, of charity, of kindness, of religion. He should not deviate from what is good if that is possible, but he should know how to do evil if that is necessary.
>> The notion that necessity could justify behavior which was not otherwise virtuous or moral was actually accepted by almost all of the ancient thinkers. Lincoln’s critics in his day thought he was a dictator, thought he was a tyrant, thought he was undemocratic, thought in spite of all the folksy backwoods charm, that he was an ego maniac and was operating unconstitutionally much of the time. In the case, for example, the suspension of habeas corpus, he probably was. And this is perhaps a great example of Machiavellian leadership in a democracy.
>> There is a physics of politics, and sooner or later every leader discovers for himself the laws of relativity and uncertainty, also known as the law of unintended consequences.
>> Taking everything into account, he will find that some of the things that appear to be virtuous will, if he practices them, ruin him. And some of the things that appear to be vices will bring him security and prosperity. [Italian]
>> The reinstalled Medici have discovered a plot to overthrow them, and they have a list of people the plotters hope to recruit. The seventh name on the list is Niccolo Machiavelli. The plotters never got to Machiavelli. It doesn’t matter. He’s a suspect and the Medici don’t need much excuse to throw him into prison. [Music]
>> It is a prayer chanted by priests for those about to die. This chanting is for the list maker. Prison here has two functions: Execution and interrogation. Interrogation means torture, quite legal and quite ingenious. [indiscernible] Niccolo, is the strappado, hands tied behind the back, hoisted by the wrists and dropped part way. If the drop is far enough, it will tear the shoulders out of their sockets. Niccolo’s drop is obviously less severe, but it is torture, and he learns well the uses of pain.
>> The bond of love is one that men break when it is to their advantage to do so, but fear is strengthened by a thread of punishment which never abandons you.
>> For Niccolo, the experience of the past few months has not been conducive to a romantic view of life, but it has been instructive. In the spring of 1513 Giovanni de Medici becomes pope leader of the 10th, and Machiavelli is released in a general amnesty but with restrictions. He is restricted to the region around Florence, barred from the city hall, banned from politics. He moves to the family’s property a few miles out of the city. There he is free in his own kind of hell, an addict cut off from his source. Only someone who’s been there can know the pain. Gary Hart was the prince presumptive of the democratic party before fortune and his own indiscretion cut him off.
>> In many ways hell is possessing a talent which one cannot use, and this was Machiavelli’s hell, and a profound one for him because he understood how talented he was and how visionary he was, and I think it must have been desperately hard for him, as it would be for example for a politician today who had both the talent, and here’s the crucial element, a monolithic dependence on the addiction of participation. Speaking only for myself, I tried desperately and with some success not to become so dependent on politics or on the adrenaline of participation that I couldn’t do without it.
>> In a letter to a friend, Niccolo describes the narrow confines of his current life, supervising work on his property and killing time with the locals in the local inn. With these I sink into vulgarity for the whole day, playing cards, and these games bring on a thousand disputes with countless insults, and usually we are fighting over a penny. So involved in these trifles, I keep my brain from growing moldy.
>> The personal Machiavelli seems entirely human. He is compassionate, witty and profane, even sometimes obscene. He is married, but he is attracted to other women and they to him.
>> Machiavelli was a great guy. He was friendly, affable, loyal to his friends. He loved to go out drinking. He loved women. He loved good conversation. Just an ordinary nice guy.
>> Well, ordinary may not be the best word, but certainly Machiavelli seems anything but Machiavellian. He is personable. He is also a very talented guy.
>> He wrote the best, the best comedy of our literature [Italian] in 1518, and okay, there’s a comedy with a bitter and even somber tone, but it’s a lively play. Wonderful.
>> On the coming of evening I return to my house and enter my study, and at the door I take off the day’s clothing covered with mud and dust and put on garments regal and courtly and reclothe appropriately. I enter the ancient courts of ancient men where I’m received by them with affection. I feed on that food which is mine and which I was born for.
>> Niccolo begins to work on what he calls The Discourses on the first ten books of Titus Livy. It is a book of commentaries on the work of that Roman historian and makes a strong case for a republican form of government.
>> Then all of a sudden he decides to try to get back into government himself and writes in furious time, in three months time, The Prince. He interrupts the writing of The Discourse to take off time to write The Prince because he’s anxious to get back into politics and into government life.
>> There are two Machiavellies here, one writing a book on the republican form of government and the other almost simultaneously writing advice for tyrants.
>> I look at Machiavelli’s Prince as a work on statesmanship and The Discourse is a statement of desirable objectives. So I don’t find the two incompatible with each other.
>> Politics was his consuming interest, and if he could have made the world the way he wanted it to be, he would have preferred a republic. But he could live with both republics and with principalities, and his point was that you begin from where you are and that you judge any form of government by its outcome rather than simply by its form.
>> All the states, all the dominions under whose authority men have lived in the past and live now are either republics or principalities.
>> So begins the most famous job application in history. It joins Niccolo’s passion for a united Italy with the fact of Medici rules. It urges the reigning Medici to take on a new role, as nation founder. Niccolo offers a blueprint for a new kind of leader. So who is this ideal prince? What are his qualities? Roughly that combination of strength of character, intelligence, courage, skill, and luck, which astronauts call the right stuff, plus a touch of ruthlessness.
>> Machiavelli stressed two sets of attributes with The Prince. One was very colorful. He used the image of the fox and the lion. Prince must have the ability of the fox to find the snare and the courage of the lion to drive off the wolves.
>> There are certain particular moments which he calls the founding or refounding of a regime. You will need a leader with exceptional intelligence, with the intelligence of a Lincoln, the intelligence of a Washington, with the intelligence of a Bonaparte.
>> Machiavelli’s breakthrough is that he gives us the persona, the personality of the political realist. He gives us the inner discipline of the strategist, and this is a discipline that involves a great deal of self control such that one cannot revel in conquests. One cannot strike out impulsively. One has to be constantly scrutinizing one’s own motives. One must constantly attend to others carefully, even civilly, less you give away your own hand and while you’re trying to discern their own missteps or their own deceptions. And so what we get is someone who’s not quite a Christian knight but is nonetheless often very well behaved.
>> He also gives us the political actor. The Prince may or may not keep his word, may or may not be humane, devout, a man’s man, a family man, depending on the circumstances, but he must appear to be all of those things.
>> Men in general judge by their eyes rather than by their hands because everyone is in a position to watch. Few are in a position to come in close touch with you. Everyone sees what you appear to be. Few experience what you really are.
>> And so there is a larger sense in which The Prince is playing a roll, which is to appear to be the things he knows he must not necessarily be and to appear to act on principle, when what he’s acting on is calculation or what the modern world would refer to as long term strategy because in a certain way Machiavellian invented the very notion of a long term strategy.
>> Stay focused. Talk about things that will matter to people, you know. It’s the economy, stupid, okay?
>> So as we always say, speed kills, and we will die in this debate if we’re not there first with our answer.
>> But perhaps most important, Machiavelli’s prince is a political artist.
>> He sees the prince as somebody who takes matter as though it were marble and imposes a form on it as though that person were a sculptor.
>> Formed out of stone, order out of chaos, civilization from savagery. Michelangelo and Machiavelli’s prince have much in common. Trouble is, raw material for the prince is human flesh and blood. For that, the prince must learn how and when to be cruel, and he must have studied war.
>> The main foundations of every state are good laws and good arms, and because you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow, I shall not discuss laws but give my attention to arms.
>> The sentence is one of the most marvelous puddles in all of Machiavelli. You need good arms. Good arms are the arms of a citizen army. Not a mercenary army. How do you get the citizens to serve in the army? They have to think that the society meets their own private self interest. So you need to have a republic in order to have a citizen army. You need to have good laws to have a republic.
>> You are bound to meet misfortune if you are unarmed because, among other reasons, people despise you, and this is one of the infamies a prince should be on his guard against. There is simply no comparison between a man who is armed and one who is not.
>> Well, he’s right on the money there. Machiavelli, I think, is most useful in my judgment when you’re thinking about international relations rather than the government within a state or a city. International relations are different from internal matters. For one reason because there is no law between nations. In reality you really do have a jungle out there, and that’s different from states where you do have a law which has legitimacy and which monopolizes force in the hands of the government. The world out there isn’t like that, and we in the world today in the west, in the United States, we hate that idea. It makes us very unhappy and very uncomfortable, and we refuse to believe it much of the time. So this is where Machiavelli is most valuable in reminding us of those gross realities which haven’t changed. You have got to have that power.
>> No government should ever imagine that it can always adopt a safe course. This is the way things are. Whenever one tries to escape one danger, one runs into another. Prudence consists of being able to assess the nature of a particular threat and accepting the lesser evil.
>> Making careful judgments, that’s prudence, as Machiavelli says, and that’s what we hire our government for.
>> So in the end Machiavelli also says that you shouldn’t be overcautious. You shouldn’t be too prudent in that sense. You’re going to have to take action.
>> It’s easy to think of a very immediate example as in the case of Bosnia where Bush, whom I think had the best chance of dealing with the problem and settling it. Had from the beginning and willing to look at the reality which is that we are not free to allow that sort of violence, that sort of what’s the word? The breaking of international order, to happen in the middle of Europe, and I think we had a lot more leverage on our NATO allies, Europe, than we were for whatever reason we were willing to exercise, and there was probably a failure of leadership on our part.
>> There’s no law of nature that says the United States has to be involved in every crisis. At the time they made the final decision, we probably had no alternative, but on the road to the final decision we certainly did not apply Machiavelli’s maxims. We never asked ourselves what is our objective here. What is our interest here. What are the means available? What is the best thing that can happen. What is the worst thing that can happen.
>> Has an American president ever applied that kind of analysis before committing the nation to some foreign involvement?
>> I think Roosevelt did it in his own mind before him [indiscernible] Roosevelt. Nixon had a great capacity for that.
>> Henry Kissinger has been called the American Machiavelli by admirers as well as critics. That would make Richard Nixon his prince. Especially talented and foreign policy often brilliant and decision but secretive and suspicious. Richard could have profited from Niccolo’s advice on at least one score.
>> A prince must watch that he does not become afraid of his own shadow. His behavior must be tempered by humanity and prudence so that excessive distrust does not make him unbearable.
>> For more than a century Americans enjoyed the advantage of isolation amid rich, natural resources. They were the exception among nations, immune from Europe’s Machiavellian environment, the politics of survival, with that immunity gone now.
>> We cannot afford the pure American exceptional approach indefinitely. It doesn’t mean that every end justifies every means, but it means that the purity that we have tended to [indiscernible] with some of our academics and some of our leaders have insisted on will be much more difficult.
>> We destabilized government. We tried to assassinate foreign leaders. We did some things, I think, again particularly in singling out the Nixon administration that were a violation of our principles, our ideals. I think we’re suffering for that today.
>> In the first 100 days we will bring to the
>> Machiavelli’s real expertise seems to be foreign policy. Some of his advice on domestic fares also has resonance, at least for modern day conservatives.
>> A man should not be afraid of improving his possessions unless they be taken away from him or another deterred by high taxes from starting a new business. But above all, a prince must avoid taking the property of others because men soon forget the death of their father than the loss of their inheritance.
>> On the other hand, his ideal prince does bear a resemblance to Lenin. Kill the old prince and his family, create new titles and powers, and give them to new men. He should make the poor rich and the rich poor, as David did when he became king. Machiavelli’s advice seems so often to cut two or more ways. It is little wonder there is a score of differing interpretations of the prince. Take for instance the bit about fear and love.
>> It is far better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both, but you must avoid being hated. Fear is useful. Hatred is counterproductive.
>> Most corporate executives would agree with that. Strict adherence to Christian virtue is just out of place.
>> And so the question he raises is part of the distinction that he brings to the modern study of politics. The answer he gives is also particularly distinctive. It’s an answer that ruthlessly discriminates between politics and everything else, that asserts the autonomy of the political in the manner of which all other human values can be reduced to the struggle for power and the provision or maintenance of order.
>> A copy of The Prince is finally presented to de Medici who gave no indication he ever read it. It would never be published in Machiavelli’s lifetime. And when he died, he went to hell.
>> The demonization of Machiavelli began very shortly after Machiavelli’s death, and that came at a time when the crisis of the contesting religions was really kicking into full gear into the 1530s and ’40s, and both sides saw a demon in Machiavelli.
>> Poor Niccolo. Not only is he now a demon, but the Medici plague him even in hell. His ideas are said to have inspired the massacre of 50,000 French protestants in 1572 while Catherine de Medici was queen of Franch, and protestant England makes Niccolo its prime villain.
>> There is the idea that everything that is based in Italian and southern and Catholic is somehow Machiavellian.
>> It is at that time, the time of Marlo and Shakespeare, that this association with evilness becomes apparent. They talk about Yago as being Machiavellian. They talk about Richard III as being Machiavellian.
>> Then there’s the kind of rehabilitation that takes place in the era of classical republicanism including, including some of the classical republicans of England, when people began to look at Machiavelli the republican.
>> The state of Machiavelli’s soul is a good deal less important to us than the nature of his legacy, the uses to which his ideas have been put.
>> The 20th century is seen among the one hand as a precursor of autocratic or even totalitarian views of government, and on the other is a good republican and a fine social scientist who helps us to understand how things work.
>> Washington, Napoleon, Churchill, Lenin, intellectual children of the same father of Machiavelli. Now history can’t tell us where Niccolo’s soul ended up, but we do know that he believed in keeping up appearances and that his mortal remains are put in the cathedral of Santa Croce, among other honored florentine. We also know that his influence is far from dead. Machiavelli and The Prince seem very much in vogue today. For instance, a columnist for U.S. News & World Report used them to critique a president, and that same president quoted them to the Washington Post to support his policies.
>> It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, no more doubt of success, nor dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit from the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in those
>> So Machiavelli freelances now as a White House adviser. There’s more than metaphor here. If Machiavelli invented politics as we know them, politics as we know them have given us back some latter day Machiavellies. Advisers, strategists, political realists, maybe not above a dirty trick or two, but only in the name of good, clean winning. And if Machiavelli seems to work for two very different systems, so can these guys. Niccolo is doing well today. While his former estate turns out a fine canti wine in his name, he has joined in the ranks of big name corporate advisers, and he has interests in a couple of games on the market which more or less use his precepts. One of them gets the history of it wrong, and it has a golden rule that might have come from the prince if Machiavelli had thought of it. Maybe all this is Niccolo’s purgatory. Judgment of his legacy is still in dispute, and even his staunchest defenders will admit he had some, well, flaws. He sometimes got the history wrong too.
>> He raided history, I think, to produce the examples as he understood them to make the points that he wanted rather than seeking to first discover what really happened. He was an let’s put it this way. He was not a producer of history. He was a consumer.
>> I think that his assessment of human nature is one where anyone would agree that human nature is imperfect, but for Machiavelli it is more than imperfect. It is never guided by a good motive, and that I think is in fact less realistic.
>> Like many realists, he thought that reality was self evident, and in fact reality is the hardest thing to assess.
>> Machiavelli lived when new ideas and technologies were changing forever the realities of power and the notions of government. So do we. And his advice to analyze carefully the requirements for success without losing the courage to act seems painfully relevant today.
>> The other thing that it’s left is that he leaves us to understand that once you have to put that analogy into some idea, which he did in the Discourses where he described his idea of republican government, and I think The Prince must be in conjunction with the Discourses because there are two sides of what was to him the same coin, and that was an important insight.
>> There are certain books which are sufficiently complicated that they have a message for different people in different times because somehow they have touched at an aspect of fundamental human experience. Plato’s Republic is one example of that, social contract or lock. Machiavelli’s Prince is a book like that. It deals with an aspect of human life in a very profound way, the central aspect being the role of leaders and why leaders are necessary in any complicated human community.
>> Gary Hart has written a book which he says Machiavelli might have written had he been an idealist. Hart sees important similarities between Niccolo’s time and ours.
>> I believe that we are living on the hinge of history, on the cusp of history, and it happens no more frequently than every 100 years, sometimes every 500 years, and we are so in the middle of this, symbolically new century, new millennium, really new economic age information versus industry or machines, and a new order in the world to replace the old cold war order. And what is important is that this country find a new prince, find a patriot who can help us define what the next era is.
>> Some readers of The Prince smell brimstone in its pages. Others find it more like ammonia, repugnant but profoundly clarifying. In truth much of what Machiavelli wrote merely described how things actually were done in his time.
>> The second sense in which I think Machiavelli is to be disagreed with is in the fundamental conclusion that he reached about the possibility, divorcing, political matters from ethical considerations. I don’t think it can be done in fact. It’s quite apart from whether it ought to be done.
>> But few with any experience today would deny that much of what he wrote seems merely the common sense of politics.
>> There’s another sense in which we say Machiavelli is giving us the common sense of politics, and we ought to be more suspicious of this usage. There all we’re saying is that what he says is common sense because we’re already imitating him.
>> So Mr. President, having describe how things really work in this perilous world, let me close with a few additional words of caution. Choose the most brilliant advisers. Tell them to speak to you candidly and then be wary of their advice. When decision time comes, keep your own counsel and never ever forget that you are in show business, that leadership is nine tenths acting a role. Never step out of it in public. Don’t, for God sake, carry your own bags. Welcome to the top of the heap and lots of luck. Your humble and admiring servant. Niccolo Machiavelli. P.S., don’t look to heaven for your reward.
• Salon 1 Machiavelli
>> Okay.
>> Record meeting. Meeting session being recorded. Okay.
>> So welcome, everyone to Salon 1 For Sociology 450 Social and Political Theory. Today, we are discussing Machiavelli and also a little bit of Socrates. I am Dr. Lata Murti. I’m Assistant Professor of Sociology here at Brandman, and I help to write this course. And with me today are two instructors of the course, Dr. Christopher Davidson
>> Hello.
>> and Professor Duane Wilson. Is it also Dr. Duane Wilson? You can tell me in the chat pane if you’d like. All right. So you’ll see here the questions we will be discussing today in our salon. And these salons are designed to help you understand the material better and also the assignments related to the material, so you can learn it in another format by actually hearing people who know the material discuss it and have a dialogue and debate about it, much like the theorists themselves would have done in their time when they wrote their works. So the first question I have and Dr. Davidson will begin is what is your favorite quote or chapter from Machiavelli’s The Prince? And why?
>> Okay. Well, the quote I’m gonna give you, I first heard when I was in the 11th grade in my European history class. That’s probably when my love affair with social theory started. It’s in Machiavelli’s Prince, page 81.
>> Okay. So give me a minute here, so I can try to pull that up.
>> It’s the bottom of the page. While Professor Murti’s pulling it up, I should tell you it’s it’s gonna be a little shocking and somewhat sexist the first time you hear it. You have to really looked beyond you have to figure it’s written in the metaphors of the time; but the method behind it is very interesting.
>> Am I sharing my screen? Can you see it?
>> Yeah. We can I can see it. M hmm.
>> Great. I can’t see the chat pane right now while sharing this, so you’ll have to let me know if you can see it or not.
>> This is a different edition than the one I have.
>> This is the one that’s linked into the course.
>> Oh, okay. So it’s chapter I’m sorry. It’s chapter 25.
>> M hmm.
>> How human affairs are governed by fortune and fortune can be opposed. It’s right at the end of that chapter. This is an edition from Penguin Classics, so I guess I got it in an earlier point in the course.
>> Yes, that’s consistent with mine, Christopher.
>> It’s a quote about fortune, which, in Machiavelli’s language is a reference not so much to luck or, you know, the luck you would have in a gambling casino; but it’s more like the power of events, the power of history.
>> Okay. Here we go, chapter 25.
>> Yeah, that’s it.
>> Great.
>> And so it’s at the yeah. Well, this, actually, right here you’ve got a good description of fortune. It says, “I compare her to one of those raging rivers which when in flood overflows the planes, sweeping away trees and buildings, burying away the soil from place to place. Everything flies before it, all yield to its violence without being able in any way to withstand it; and yet, though its nature be such, it does not follow, therefore, that man, when the weather becomes fair shall not make precautions wait did I yeah sorry provisions, both with defenses and barriers, in such a manner that rising again, the waters may pass away by canal and their force be neither so unrestrained nor so dangerous.” So that’s a description of fortune what Machiavelli means by fortune, which is basically the fortune of events; and there’s a strong and natural component to it. It seems like it’s savage and wild. Now, there’s my favorite quote is actually what Machiavelli says, princes, leaders should do with events, fortune; and that you will find at the last page of the chapter. That’s it. Okay. “I conclude, therefore, that fortune, being changeful and mankind being stedfast in their ways; so long as the two are in agreement, men are successful but unsuccessful when they fallout. For my part, I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious because fortune is a woman. And if you wish to keep her under, it is necessary to beat and ill use her and if it seem she allow herself to be mastered by the adventurous, rather than by those who go to work more coldly.” Okay. So you hear, this is very kind of old fashioned, you know, actually kind of distinctful vision of women; but if you think more about what he’s saying about fortune, it’s a powerful image. “She allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous, rather than those who go to work more coldly. She is therefore, always womanlike, a lover of young men because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her. So, remember, forces of nature, that’s what that’s what fortune is; it’s this sort of undercurrent of passion and wildness; and when great leaders come to power, they do so often with the help of fortune by taming her, by taking advantage of the great opportunities that fortune brings their way. Of course, I liked it when I heard
>> I think it’s also saying something about age.
>> Yeah.
>> The age of a man but also a prince matters in this case, that the young will be more adventurous than than the older, established man or prince.
>> That could that concept of age could be metaphorical in the sense that if you are new to the scene.
>> M hmm.
>> If you think of for example, some of the new rulers, some of the rulers that come to power by democratic elections are often young in the sense that they’ve been outside, you know, outside of the system in the previous regime like in Turkey or the current prime minister of Turkey is, you know, definitely, he seems like he’s acting adventurously and impetuously; and sometimes it offends a lot of people. And he can be very oppressive, but he was new to the system when he came to power.
>> M hmm.
>> He felt like he had to be, take advantage of every opportunity he could.
>> M hmm.
>> I don’t think it’s a I don’t think it’s a I don’t think Machiavelli’s claiming that the powerful leader is always a virtuous person or always makes the right decisions. He’s talking about a style of leadership more than anything.
>> M hmm.
>> Well, there’s another way.
>> So you know, young
>> I was just going to interject here. There’s another way to look at this. Fortune also means whether the person is going to be successful or not successful. And one of the ways in which one is successful is if fortune is with them; and if they’re not successful, it could be because of fortune. For instance, take it to the modern day. A president that comes in and there’s no real crisis to solve; there’s so war involved in their with while they’re serving doesn’t rate very high in history because they there was nothing for them to conquer to make themselves look like they were very, very valuable to history and to the country, whereas if somebody comes in like Franklin Roosevelt and World War II comes on, he can look like a hero. Come in without a war, it’s harder to create a real positive image. So that’s one way that I kind of approach this in addition to how, to Christopher, how you started it.
>> Yeah. You could say, I was thinking about President Obama. When he came to power, part of the reason he came to power was because there was this devastating financial crisis; and voters were so few furious at the leaders, of the status quo, that they let this unknown young man from you know, who had only been a senator for a few years who was the first non white, non you know, non establishment president in a long time. And he had this surge of support, you know, because he was a new face. And you could say that, his, you know, that the success that he had in the first term of at least passing the new health care law was the result of the sort of the status quo being so wickedy and people so scared to oppose him as this sort of new, sort of cavalier (indiscernible) on a horse; and as Obama’s become more a part of the establishment, people aren’t as scared of him anymore.
>> Well, I think it’s another factor, too, as Machiavelli would say, you need the people on your side; but be weary of the nobles.
>> Yes! True!
>> And this opposition, I think this was where Obama misinterpreted history. He should have read that part of Machiavelli, that his nobles are very powerful. And while you need the people on your side, you have to be weary of the nobles; and he had some entrenched opposition in the Republican party; and they have really made it difficult; and he was never able to overcome their opposition. In other words, he didn’t apparently reach out or engage them in the whole process enough and allowed them to publicize negatives about his policy.
>> You know, um, Machiavelli was also writing about, you know, an absolutist monarchy; and he says at several points, how, you know, new princes can’t be afraid of violence. That, in fact, I’ll give you another quote here. Just a minute. If you look okay, again, this is the edition this is the edition I have. He basically claims that cruelty can be used well. That, you know, sometimes it’s the right thing to be cruel. “It is necessary for the prince to have the friendship of his people, otherwise, he has no remedy in times of adversity.” Yes. But on the other hand, the virtuous come to grief among the non virtuous; and, it’s better to be feared than loved; and sometimes the way to instill fear is by using violence quickly
>> M hmm.
>> And immediately when one comes to power. This was obviously an option that wasn’t available to Obama because he’s a democratically elected ruler. He couldn’t just wipe away his opposition; he had to deal with them. If being an absolutist government and Obama had been a prince, he could have had all the Republicans murdered; and that’s not the regime we live in; and that’s not the country you want it live in; but sometimes the opposition is so attractable, they’re just going to stand in your way, not matter what you do.
>> What chapter was that in?
>> It’s those who come to power by crime. It’s chapter 8. It’s a paragraph that starts in this edition, “one might wonder how it is Agathocles and others like him after countless treacheries and cruelties could live securely in his own country and hold foreign enemies at bay. But, you know
>> Is that where he used the example where he killed the whole opposition party or group or family and then Machiavelli says, well, you start off cruel; but then you have to switch over and show your good side; and then people will accept you; they’ll say well
>> Right.
>> They’ll say, well, he was bad; but he’s now good.
>> M hmm.
>> Well, yeah. Because he ends up being the only game in town, right? If he gets rid of all the enemies, there’s nobody to capture the public eye and come out against him. Of course, I mean, you wouldn’t have to have dictatorship to do that. You could also have a situation where the prince as the nobles I’m sorry. The nobles are high esteem and they could be set aside through forced retirement. And I think that does happen in some democracies where a new parties come to power and the old elite is swept away but in Obama’s case, the Republican’s case were all elected officials and there was no way that he could have silenced them. Maybe he could have reached out to them over and over. He said he used to play golf. He played golf with John Bohner several times but he was never able to get him to support his policies.
>> Look at Lyndon Johnson. He took power, and he had opposition. But he found ways to neuter them, shall we say? And if you but maybe more to the point would be what’s discussed under chapter 9, I believe it is, constitutional principality, as where, I think Machiavelli says the nobles have more foresight and more more astute. They always act in time to safeguard their interests; and they take sides with one whom they expect to win; so it would mean that Obama Obama should have worked harder recognizing that these people have their own interests, his opposition and found ways to neutralize their opposition.
>> But he did do that with the health law. He went instead of trying to put in a single pair system, which many people supported, especially on the left, he made his peace with all the leaders in the health insurance industry and he won their support for passing the laws. There’s different kinds of nobles, I guess. There were so many different interest groups and different sources of power, I guess I don’t see exactly how how could how could President Obama have convinced the Republican party to support him? I don’t see I don’t see what tools he had at his disposal. He couldn’t fire them. He couldn’t kill them.
>> He could go more directly to the public early and he didn’t. There was quite a bit of silence after he passed the health care, the affordable health care and he didn’t defend an the Republicans started attacking and maybe it never have been; but I think he could have at least recognized that earlier and taken some steps to but we probably should move on to another topic then.
>> Wait a minute. I was thinking, I found some quotes from Socrates that might illustrate theoretically what you’re talking about.
>> Maybe we can use this for number 6 later, something related.
>> Okay.
>> With you what I love about this discussion is it’s also addressing question 5 here which is how and why is Machiavelli’s the Prince relevant to us today? To me it’s amazing in illustrating the concepts, really the advice that Machiavelli’s giving, we can draw examples in our contemporary times, examples, almost 500 times after Machiavelli wrote this text, we have many modern political examples for illustrating what he wrote about and for arguing what he wrote about; so that’s we can address that again with number 5 and number 6. Very quickly, I I I wanted to share what struck me; and it was at the very beginning actually because I had just finished what page is it on? On page 8 I’ll pull it up here on page 8 of this selection. I think it’s right there in chapter 3. Let me see. Yes, in chapter 3, page 8.
>> Are you talking about the new principalities?
>> The mixed principalities.
>> A prince is always compelled to injure those who have made them the new ruler. You inevitably betray your base because you have to reach out to the center. That isn’t what you were thinking, they
>> No I was thinking about how he wrote about colonies. I just finished maybe colonialism has taken a few form in our time, out to places, and that form of colonialism didn’t exist in Machiavelli’s time. He’s talking about traditional colonies on page 7, a prince does not spend much on colonies, go physically to those places that he’s just, just conquered or places where he’s setting up colonies. He must physically go there; and I thought there was good advice for many of our leaders, although they often make a show of going to a new territory, a new country that we want to really, in a sense, take over economically or democratically if not otherwise; but Machiavelli’s advice is to actually live in that place.
>> That’s what the Israelis did in the West Bank.
>> Say that again. I’m sorry.
>> That’s what the Israelis did in the West Bank in Gaza; and it only created but they believed if they showed how good the economy was run and how towns should be built they would be welcomed with open arms and that hasn’t their predictions didn’t quite come to pass.
>> Right.
>> The interesting thing about that for me it might be good for the prince to go live among his subjects. But there’s living where there’s living.
>> Yes.
>> And I think Machiavelli also says at one point that you have to respect the laws of the land that you can’t, if you want the support of your new subjects.
>> M hmm.
>> Then um, you have to ah can’t change the laws; you can’t take away their property; you have to basically pretend to be one of them. You can’t be an outsider.
>> Yes.
>> I think your point is a good one, if you’re going to be a successful colonist, you have to show your face; and you have to pretend you are not a colonist, hide your real allegiances.
>> M hmm.
>> Well.
>> The Israelis didn’t.
>> Again, you’re running into an adversary that is rigid and won’t change. I think he says that somewhere along the lines, somewhere about a constitution, you can’t change the constitution of the province you take, own. You you have to work with them, given their value structure because it’s impossible to change all of those things which are embedded in that culture.
>> What if there’s different groups? Sorry. Go on.
>> Millimeter hmm.
>> You’re right. For the Israelites it’s difficult because there’s such a gap between them and the Muslims.
>> M hmm.
>> And Obama had a big gap between him and the Republicans.
>> But I’m glad you brought up that example, Professor Davidson; but that shows how US centric I was in reading this.
[LAUGHTER].
>> Because I was thinking particularly of contemporary US political leaders and then this paragraph at the end, then, after the passage on colonies right here at the top of the screen, he compares colonies to maintaining armed men; but in maintaining armed men there in place of colonies, one spends much more having (indiscernible) so that the acquisition turns into a loss and many more are exasperated because the whole state is injured. I think we could stand to learn a lot from that right now.
>> Iraq is a good example of that.
>> Exactly.
>> If Americans had gone to open businesses in Iraq, it might have been different than sending troops. American companies coming in and opening Coca Cola and hiring Iraqis to work there, you would have had a much different situation than the green zone where regular people were shut up, the security of the troops is above everything else.
>> Our businesses are finding out if you go to China, you can’t have a fast food that tries to sell hamburgers, especially to India.
>> Oh, yeah.
[LAUGHTER].
>> You have to be consistent with the culture.
>> Definitely.
>> That that living in the province might apply to is when there is a disaster, Bush flew over Katrina and was criticized. It is better for the leader to go and at least spend time with the people in the disaster area
>> Exactly.
>> is what Machiavelli’s saying there.
>> Didn’t Machiavelli say that to seem virtuous is better than being virtuous? Bush could have made all the calls he wanted from the White House to help the hurricane victims; but unless he was there actually shovelling the dirt, it wouldn’t have mattered.
>> Getting his hands dirty.
>> M hmm. And for us to finish that paragraph because I found it to be powerful, Machiavelli goes on to say through the shifting of the Garrison up and down, all become acquainted with the hardship and all have became hostile, are all able to do hurt, for every reason therefore, such guards are useless as a colony is useful.
[LAUGHTER].
>> All the troops in the world are going to make you enemies and make you less secure, right:
>> I I believe that. I think he made a great point.
>> That’s certainly the case in the Israeli in the occupied territories of the Israel, no question there, the presence of the troop really what killed any prospect there was of a peaceful coexistence.
>> M hmm. M hmm. But then, of course, he goes on to then of course he goes on to glorify war and I know those are other situations; but the beginning beginning paragraph that I shared really, really struck me. I shouldn’t say glorify war but he sees war as a necessity in certain situations and certain circumstances.
>> Make it quick, quick and brutal, and then withdraw the troops.
>> Right. Right. Quick and dirty; in and out, unless you are going to have and have a colony and respect the people as well. This is helping me as well.
>> Soldiers intermarry, they would conquer entire areas of Europe and soldiers would be encouraged to marry local women, so they wouldn’t be occupying forces anymore; they were also defending their own families and their own lands.
>> M hmm.
>> It might be what you are looking for, soldier colonists, so to speak, interactively mingle with the people they’ve just conquered.
>> That’s really behind the whole mess these culture of Latin American colonies.
>> And they might have children with the local girls, so to speak; but the children are not servants; they’re not their actual equals. It’s a huge mess.
>> It is. I think Machiavelli never, you know, at least with this text.
>> He didn’t have any idea about colonialism. He was talking about Italy and France.
>> You mean from the respect of the colonies themselves?
>> Right. I think it’s different with your neighbor who’s conquering you than a distant culture that preconceived ideas of what’s good and what’s bad.
>> Yes.
>> I think all the Europeans, all the city states knew each other well, who’s going to be in control this week and who’s in control next week.
[LAUGHTER].
>> It does seem to change that quickly from his telling of it, yeah.
>> I mean he was writing before any big colonial empires as far as I know, right.
>> Well, yeah, I didn’t think about that.
>> Except going back to Rome.
>> Right.
>> There was some similarities in those days, the force of arms was critical because it was easy to they were all close together. You had to have a big army to defend yourself from somebody else gobbling up your province. I mean, Florence, as a city state was always under, you know, they were either under control of a dictator; they got to be a republic for a while. That’s when Machiavelli was in the government; and then he lost his job when the dictators took over again.
>> Right, right.
>> M hmm.
>> He had that experience.
>> M hmm.
>> Seeing how important, that’s why he would say that an armed prophet is able to maintain and an unarmed prophet will fail; and so that would tie in with that situation.
>> M hmm. Hmm.
>> There’s a section with the Ecclesiastical states in tongue and cheek all governed by God; and I can’t say, I can’t speak to the divine wisdom here but the popes who were able to control their Ecclesiastical territories were the ones with armies. In a sense you have to be able to back up your authority with incredible threat of force even if you are not using force. It’s better to know the troops are there hidden in the barracks than to actually see them. You don’t get rid of them.
>> The threat of war serves to control almost more than war itself.
>> Right.
>> The threat of war is equally effective, yes.
>> Why else would police officers be able to have any effect on a community?
>> We can put you in jail if we want to. You don’t have to go to jail as long as you follow the laws.
>> We it doesn’t always work. Yeah.
>> You could, though, if you go to more modern times and talk about, well, Marx remark that religion was an opiate of the masses. It’s a way to control the masses; and you can control them if you start them out as children and socialize them to accept your monarchy. As opposed to when you’re conquering a nation that has a different set of values.
>> M hmm. M hmm.
>> The threat of violence works if it’s your parents and relatives who are threatening violence. It doesn’t work if it’s a foreign people, who you have no I always wonder what’s the basis of parental authority, which is similar; has some sort of similarities with the they care for you but on the other hand, they’re the ones that can take away the food.
[LAUGHTER]
>> I know that sounds really awful; but there’s an element to truth to that. It’s like the authority the boss has over their employees.
>> Well, let’s let’s
>> That’s a more clearcut one.
>> Yes, this is.
>> A parent needs love there to discipline work well because.
>> And an employee needs love to get productive workers too.
>> There’s not much. You can motivate them and you can simply to fire them if they don’t do their job. There’s not that kind of emotional relationship with a boss in the office situation.
>> In a futile situation, though maybe, though.
>> Similar. I mean you’re doing some of the same sorts of things; but it’s like we don’t have police, very many police in some of the areas in the groups that are the most peaceful. They’re homogenous communities where everybody shares the same values and the education system works, you don’t really need police as much as you do in the areas and the structure’s broken down; and we have to have more police. Look how many there are in Compton as opposed to the LA Hills or where I come from, Beverly Hills, we had two beats and the bottom land, we had 15 beats, any rate, that has to do with controlling population.
>> I was thinking we could think of the police as the nobles.
>> No. The police are taking their orders from the nobles.
>> Okay.
>> They’re the nobles, kind of troops.
>> Uh huh.
>> Yeah, they’re the troops of the establishment.
>> I was thinking more in terms of power.
>> But the power doesn’t reside with the police in the end.
>> Okay.
>> The power resides with the people who control the police, hire police officers.
>> M hmm.
>> When it’s the actual police that are controlled, you have anarchy.
>> M hmm.
>> They’re a disciplined force. They’re enforcing law; they’re enforcing and you
(Automated message: A minimum number of participants are connected to this meeting. Do you want to confirm? If there is no response, the conference will end.)
>> You have to confirm.
>> Yes.
>> Press 1.
>> Just on the keyboard? Okay.
>> Okay. I think we’re good again. He’s here.
>> Are you there?
>> Yes, I’m here. Do you hear me?
>> We have to move on to the number 6, right?
>> Do you want to start?
>> I can start on that one. What I want them to see is the value of critical thinking of not just taking things on surface value but looking beyond, what are the reasons for the words or the motives behind, well, whoever, whatever the situation is, the person who is putting out the rules or putting out the statements, what’s behind it? Is it ideology? Is it a personal ideology? Is it something for the good of the people? Or is it to get somebody reelected or to maintain your position in power? Survival for the prince, for the leader?
>> I mean it’s
>> Don’t you think that’s most people’s primary motive is self?
>> I thought that it was hold on I saw it more of the law and order theme, not so much this is what you have to do to survive, how some princes were very successful and some lost power quickly. You know, culture, you know, successful trade and business. I mean, you know, he’s saying that for a prince to be an effective ruler, he has to use all methods of his disposal to keep to country going, to keep a principality working well.
>> That goes to keeping the people happy because there’s so many of them.
>> Right.
>> And you you have to make decisions that keep their it’s almost like what you are seeing where people are warning that you don’t want the income gap to be too wide between the rich and the people. Marx would argue that that if you do, you will have revolution if it gets too extreme. Are we still on?
>> Yeah.
>> We are, yeah. Can you hear me?
>> I can hear you.
>> Yeah. It disconnected me for a minute. I don’t know why. Okay.
>> Well, I mean, yeah, the survival of the prince depends on the law and order being maintained on the state.
>> More than just the law and order, remember Pavlov’s hierarchy of needs; they have to fulfill the basic needs of people. Along what happened in Libya; look what happened. Obviously, the masses of the people were not being met.
>> Right. And there’s no not in Libya, no real rulers have emerged to pick up the leadership.
>> That’s right.
>> Whereas in Egypt, I guess you could say the generals have established, reestablished law and order. They’ve managed to maintain the
>> Going back to where this dialogue started, I think what I see in this text successes are not mutually exclusive. That they’re all very much intertwined. A prince cannot survive if he isn’t also effective and successful and vice versa.
>> Yeah. Can I speak a second to the students.
>> Sure.
>> How students respond to this.
>> Sure.
>> See, I find some students love Machiavelli. They feel Machiavelli captures their experience in the military or work place and other people detest him because he’s not moral or moral clarity, so to speak. He seems to advocate, it’s Socrates supporters among my students see Machiavelli as corrupt; he basically seems to be saying, use any methods at your disposal to keep power. And, I guess, for me, the result, because I see that among my students, once I actually understand, two things, first of all, I want to be sure they understand what Machiavelli’s saying because it’s very easy to misinterpret him. So I think, when the question is why these students struggle with the most, it’s in capturing the subtleties of it, not all good or all bad but trying to describe the world as he sees it. That’s one thing that for us to show is that there’s many dimensions to what he’s saying that what seems like an overall generalization isn’t. Based on what he saw and I guess that’s what I see as critical thinking someone else was talking about that it’s, you know, when you read these texts about leaders, there’s ever never a black and white. That’s sloppy thinking. They capture the subtleties. Sometimes it’s appropriate to be cruel; sometimes it’s appropriate to be virtuous. Socrates had no subtlety about him at all and that’s partly because I serve God and I don’t care about the rules of city or nobles and he’s kind of, he was kind of an advocate for moral clarity. And what’s beautiful about Machiavelli is that he was actually trying to understand the world as opposed to pass judgment on it, I guess.
>> I I agree, yeah.
>> Socrates would have questioned Machiavelli and brought out some of the truths of what he really believed behind what he was saying.
>> Right. That’s true.
>> And we could get into a whole discussion about what was the motives of Machiavelli? Was he really believing the stuff he was writing or was he just saying that this is a way a prince can be effective or a ruler can be effective?
>> That’s what he believed. He believed that’s how princes could have expected. He wasn’t passing judgment.
>> Yeah. Was he writing, though, just to this ruler, the current ruler when he was writing, trying to get his job back to show if he was at his motive? If so, he was saying things he didn’t really believe; but he was trying to convince the person he would be valuable to him as an advisor, that may be it.
>> Hmm.
>> What do you mean by belief here exactly, do you mean belief in what’s good or what’s bad? Are you taking about a moral compass or?
>> Well, I don’t see a real moral compass there because he said there are times when you have to be really brutal, but he’s speaking about his time period; and it probably was or needed to be at that time, actually Machiavelli, very well wrote a number of other things other than The Prince, some of them much longer.
>> And much more subtle. He was a democrat in some ways, wasn’t he?
>> Right.
>> Or was it was a republic?
>> He liked when he was it was a republic. He served 14 years. I think he was doing a number of things with it. And it actually makes it more valuable, as a tool to help them understand the process of analyzing to look behind the words to see the meaning and how it applies to today’s and that’s where I have the most success, if I can draw analogies so the student can see things in their lifetime that are impacting them that come from analyzing Machiavelli.
>> M hmm.
>> What I often say is Machiavelli was describing his vision of principality was based on the world he knew, which was one of constant violence and chaos. Clearly, the prince doesn’t have much to say about democracy because he wasn’t describing a successful democratic, really, he was describing a prince. So some of the horror that our students feel at what Machiavelli wrote has to do with more democratic regime than what Machiavelli was writing about, less scarcity, less violence, where it’s possible to rule, where ethics seem to matter more in a sense, when you have, when you live in a basically, peaceful environment, you have the luxury of morals whereas Machiavelli was saying, you know, at the bottom is chaos; and, you know, if you want to have a functioning state, this is what you have to do.
>> I
>> Go ahead.
>> I was going to say my favorite is in chapter 9 because it is more parallel than other parts to current political system, a little easier to relate what he’s saying in chapter 9 to today’s world.
>> What’s the title of chapter 9?
>> Um, let’s see.
>> I’m almost there.
>> Constitutional principality.
>> Concerning a civil principality. Am I still sharing my screen? I don’t think I am.
>> No. We see the outline. We don’t see the text.
>> Okay. Right.
>> Oh, yeah, I don’t see that.
>> Yeah. It’s the constitutional principality, chapter 9.
>> M hmm. It seems like we have different translations as well, I’m thinking, yeah, because my says a civil principality.
>> A man who becomes prince by favor of the people finds himself standing alone; and he has near him neither no one or very few, not prepared to take orders.
>> Hmm.
>> Yeah, yeah, he has to find people who can
>> It’s he says, goes on to say it’s impossible to satisfy the nobles honorably without other’s work. Sounds like he’s describing gridlock.
[LAUGHTER].
>> Well, seriously, he’s talking about redistributing moneys or resources to the masses; you are going to take away from the superrich who have a lot of power.
[LAUGHTER].
>> Remember, right now when there’s discussion of redistribution, that’s a bad word to the Republican party. They get very upset on that.
>> The people are more honest in their intentions the ladder want to impress the people, with where they want not only to be oppressed. Too many of them.
>> Right, yeah.
>> So basically in a democratic principality, you face the he came to power with the support of the people but he was in order to make the people happy, he had to take away from the nobles; but the nobles didn’t want that.
>> Right. And they have lobbyists. And this is the voice, a powerful voice in Congress.
>> And the people don’t.
>> Right.
>> Especially when there’s no more unions.
>> Right. Private employees now, only 6 percent of them are unionized.
>> And there’s no organized voice of the people, really.
>> No, not very effectively, no.
>> The only
>> Only during elections.
>> Are we really, are we really more democratic than the times of Machiavelli and The Prince.
>> Constitutional principality is what we are.
>> I do think we should move on.
>> I’m going to go back and reread that part.
>> The hour?
>> Yes. We started around 12:15, so I do want to move on to number 6; but all I really wanted to add is as far as this text, it it strikes me as a very pragmatic text.
>> Yes.
>> It’s pragmatic, and it’s not idealistic. This is a very pragmatic text; and as you were talking, I was thinking, perhaps if we retitled it for our students, the prince’s handbook, it might be viewed differently because that’s really what he was writing.
>> Yeah. In the end.
>> At least to me.
>> I would agree with that.
>> The debate we’re going to go on to, number 6, resolved around privatism, verses idealism. Which one wins out in the end, which one is useful to us how useful can idealism be? Beautiful, powerful, but useful, I don’t know.
>> M hmm. M hmm.
>> What he talks about, what Socrates was talking about was truth to power.
>> How do did that work?
>> It didn’t work out too well for him in the end, did it? He basically sacrificed himself on all the other areas of his principals. He was a thinker, yes; and he had followers; but in terms of actually making, leaving a physical, you know, physical tangible legend.
>> People like Socrates are valuable because that’s why a democracy is superior to ad dictatorship because a dictatorship doesn’t have to listen to anybody.
>> Right.
>> In a democracy, the leaders do.
>> Right. Socrates, the Socratic method is useful if you have leaders that are not going to kill you the moment you open our mouth.
>> Right.
>> Responsible to the people who elected them, they have to pay attention to some degree.
>> Socrates cannot survive in a dictatorship or authoritarian.
>> No.
>> It wouldn’t have worked well with Hitler’s regime.
>> It may have worked well in the United States.
>> I think it has value.
>> At least our allegiance to the democratic principles in theory if not in practice.
>> Let’s go to number 6 and I actually thought
>> The amendment mean
>> No. Go on. The first amendment. Oh, for Socrates.
>> You couldn’t sentence a person to death for saying something. All right. We can go to number 6. What’s that?
>> I think all of these lead in very well to number 6. I was actually thinking about what Professor Davidson said earlier, what would make an excellent Machiavelli argument is, it is better than to appear virtuous than to be virtuous, sets up a nice contrast with Socrates, I know you have prepared others well. We can go with what I have just said or what you have prepared.
>> Actually, that’s exactly what I have prepared.
>> Wonderful.
>> Great minds think alike.
>> That statement leaves it open to hypocrisy on the part of the leadership, where they focus so much on their appeal they use that to disguise what they are doing behind the scenes; and I would suggest to you that somebody like Lyndon Johnson of being pretty effective this way in overreaching and going to war in the Vietnam War and going to war without first convincing the people that it was necessary.
>> You know, the interesting thing about what Machiavelli says, he says it’s more important to appear virtuous in terms of preserving your power. Sometimes he says being virtuous is self defeating, if you are too virtuous like Lyndon Johnson was of going to war because he believed in it, you can destroy yourself. He does not say to not be virtuous at all. Says to keep your virtue under control and temper it with pragmatism.
>> And so what what would Socrates say in response to that so we can follow the outline on number of?
>> I thought captured perfectly the tragedy of Socrates.
>> While he’s finding that, Professor Wilson, do you want to say what you were going to say? I’m sorry to have cut you off.
>> That’s all right. No problem. Socrates would keep questioning until he exposed that which the person who was trying to appeal virtuous, really wasn’t being.
>> M hmm.
>> And that’s what got him in trouble. He made people uncomfortable because he exposed things that they were doing, which were not a reflection of what image they wanted to project.
>> Exactly. And I think there’s several places in the apology where Socrates says just that. And I mentioned that for the benefit of the students who will actually have to use quotes in their essays to in presenting their arguments and counter arguments.
>> So can I um, oh, go on.
>> That was it.
>> I found my quote.
>> Great.
>> I can’t give you the exact page because it doesn’t, the versions I read doesn’t have pages; but it goes like this, Socrates says, “men of Athens ”
>> Let me stop you just a sec. Is it on the MIT site?
>> I believe so.
>> Translated by Benjamin Gellit (phonetic)? It’s okay. Go on.
>> Okay. I’m sure the translation’s going to say more or less the same thing; but so what he says at least from the version I have, “Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey god rather than you; I do know whether god or man is evil and dishonorable and I would never fear or an individual a possible good rather than a certain evil. If I think that and I have here in the brackets because I think he uses the word he if I think the person with whom I argue has no virtue, I preach him with overvaluing the less and think I should say to everyone whom I meet, especially the citizens and this is the command of God; and I believe in these days, no greater good has happened today, before I do nothing but go about persuading for your persons and properties but firstly and chiefly to virtue come money and every other good of man public as well as private. Now, I it seems to me that’s a perfect counter argument to Machiavelli and I think it’s full of holes. I mean, if we’re going to do.
>> It’s not very practical.
>> Exactly. Exactly.
>> It’s self destructive.
>> It’s not very practical, yeah.
>> I mean, I see it self destructive in the sense, didn’t he boast about not caring for his children and his wife? He basically abandoned them and went to the streets instead. I don’t know if he says that in the apology, but that’s part of the legend of Socrates, right?
>> M hmm.
>> It says he’s a gadfly.
>> Look at what he had to give up to be a gadfly. Give up any sense of responsibility and give up anybody he loved. He cares about nothing but serving God; that serving God is better than doing anything else and in no case is pretending to be virtuous better than being virtuous. Estate it’s as a bed rock of belief that it’s always better to serve God; but what exactly does he mean by that? Abandon your children and your wife and friends in order to protect, you know, the in order to up hold your vision?
>> Well, scene that the weakness that you’re pointing out of a government that’s run on the basis of a belief system.
>> Yeah.
>> Of religion.
>> Well, sold you on that basis, yes, of course, I never for once want to claim that virtue is bad in itself, I’m saying Socrates was an extremist; he was a radical, you know, and extremism is very, very damaging to civilized society. I mean, if you think about it, Socrates never aspired to political power. He thought it would corrupt him.
>> He says it. He says it.
>> If you take him at face value, he’s saying he’s a profit; and that’s what he wants to be. But for him to say if you take Socrates side on this issue, we’ll all be profits and taking care of the people we love, we should all be barefoot and smelly and go around preaching to each other, it’s a very weird way of looking at the world. It serves a purpose, yes.
>> M hmm. M hmm. M hmm.
>> Well, with Socrates, he’s saying don’t look beneath my words many my words are who I am. Yes, that’s true.
>> Yeah.
>> But the thing is, yeah, it’s but I’m sure the rules of Athens, executed him for the reason Machiavelli says execute your ma’ams because nothing was going to stop him, you know?
>> M hmm.
>> He was going to peck and bite and he didn’t care what happened to him, didn’t care if he was killed or executed him or rulers got overthrown. He was, you know
>> (Loss of audio).
>> Yes. Yes.
>> M hmm.
>> (Loss of audio).
>> M hmm.
>> I think of a perfect example of Socrates Socratic method in action and the destruction, the political destruction it can wreak.
>> Go ahead and we will end with that. We will end with that.
>> I I think the tea party is a perfect example, of, you have 25 elected gadflies in the Congress, who I guess I’m revealing my political slant here; but none of them claim to be trying to govern the country. They’re claiming to try, we want to keep the we don’t believe in any of the initiatives to change, to bring health care to the masses or to, you know, or to change, you know
>> (Loss of audio).
>> Yeah.
>> Yes.
>> I mean you could say it’s not just the Tea Party. It exists on the left too.
>> M hmm.
>> What buy and sell what I’m saying is all the Tea Party has to prevent legislation from being passed. Not only have they prevented legislation from being passed but being enforced too.
>> What I’m hearing is that Socrates and others in that idealistic vein, they’re undermining the status quo without presenting something new to replace it.
>> I think that’s their job.
>> M hmm.
>> But the problem is when you have a lot of audience listening to you and you are not providing an alternative, you are creating chaos. You are not creating order or new order.
>> M hmm.
>> How different is the ideology of a tea party. Of international terrorism. I or, you know, in sort of, the Communistic guerillas who are trying to overthrow every government in Europe. I mean, and if you ask them, if you ask the heads of ideological movements, they’ll say we’re serving god. That’s more important. The god of Islam, the god of libertarianism.
>> It becomes cultish. I keep thinking about cults, the cult of Socrates is what you are saying, yeah.
>> I mean, look, I don’t deny that it can be useful to have those voices of, you know, of the gadflies; but there has to be some sort of text on there, some Machiavelli (indiscernible)in place too or you have chaos.
>> (Loss of audio).
>> Yeah, right.
>> (Loss of audio).
>> Right. Right.
>> Any any final thoughts or words before we wrap up the recording?
>> (Loss of audio).
>> M hmm.
>> (Loss of audio.)
>> Wonderful. All right. Thank you both very much.
>> All right.
>> Go ahead. Oh, yes. Last words.
>> We can do this with Marx by the way.
>> Yes. That’s what I want to discuss next but outside of recording.
>> Okay. All right. Good. So –
