Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli as the Founder of Modernity

[Music] hi i'm bill kristol welcome to conversations i'm very glad to be joined again by harvey mansfield the harvard professor the original converser or conversationalist or whatever the whatever term is here uh but it's great to have you back and uh great to be discussing machiavelli which you've worked on for a long time translated several of the major works and pleasure to be here thank you well good to have you and author of an earlier volume from 1996 machiavelli's virtue and now of a forthcoming volume of uh articles machiavelli's effectual truth at least that's what you're intending to call it what's your title for him and um of which there's uh a new introduction which we'll focus on perhaps today which is really terrific and important i think and and then a very long essay which could be a short book on machiavelli and montesquiou which we could also maybe we can touch on that too on that that would be great so uh it's really great to have you back first of all and great to have you here our leading interpreter machiavelli uh one of the two great modern interpreters of black valley well it's okay to put leo strauss in the same with the same kid elevate him to the same category i know that's a great elevation elevation for me okay so let's so talk about uh an undeserved elevation you know all right let me say a word for leo okay and his thoughts on machiavelli his famous game-changing book of 1958 uh he changed his opinion about machiavelli as well i think is well known an earlier book in the 19 late 30s uh on the political philosophy of hobbes uh he said that hobbes was the founder of modernity and in this book he changed his mind and said no it wasn't hobbes it was machiavelli yeah he had not paid sufficient attention to the forces that prevented machiavelli from being as explicit as hobbes was and uh that was the reason that he gave his mistake as he said um and in this hobb's book he claimed he made an argument still powerful and read by most of the scholars on hobbs and and believed by some of them that hobbes is more of a moralist than a scientist and then what is really fundamental about him was the new morality that he brought of equal rights and materialism and that his science was an instrument of that morality rather than the other way around so um that could lead you to machiavelli because uh machiavelli also makes his announcement of his change in chapter 15 of the prince departing from the orders of others he says in regard to morality see what others focused on the good what what is what is the good or how good are you and the trouble with doing that he says is that it's you're you're relying on something that's imaginary and not something that's the effectual truth if you rely on the good you're wishing that other people will be good back to you but if this doesn't happen then you are non-pleased and at a loss and um and you'll come to ruin he actually says that uses that lovely phrase come to ruin so uh he too begins modernity says departing the orders of others that's the orders of the ancients and of the medieval philosophers who who were derivative of the ancients uh in regard to morality that's how modernity begins it's not uh a change in science but strictly urban it's not galileo it's not uh the earth moving instead of sitting still as it seems to so but the uh and the effectual truth we should talk about for a minute that's so you stress that of course you put it yeah than the title but yeah one other question i mean so i take it strauss probably also didn't quite appreciate in the 30s what he came to emphasize that machiavelli was fully a philosopher had thought all these things through he wasn't just a extremely intelligent hard-headed political realist and that must have been key also to stresses yeah because everyone knew hobbs and descartes they're all but he began to see that pretty quickly and once yes i think so and so that um yes it is uh a question of i mean what i'm talking about is machiavelli is the founder of modernity and um that means that uh machiavelli was a philosopher right that's those things together and that a philosopher can be a founder yeah and then and then modernity is something which is uh was founded according to somebody's plan and not uh not just a result of accidental causes that came together as uh as most uh historians i think would say and that's for me what was so exciting about your long introduction which is you've said it before argued it before and strauss of course does but i think you really develop the what it means to have been the founder of modernity and a philosophic founder of fraternity more perhaps than you have before no more yeah yes i go a little bit further than strauss in this in this regard so um and that's that's risky but uh he didn't have direction he yeah no but he were he was so strong had such a powerful mind himself that he didn't feel that he had to say everything and he generously left um many items uh in in his book thoughts on machiavelli to be uh explored and uh elaborated and perhaps got wrong by uh laters later followers of his as i am good so so so that's what i'm doing in this in in what comes now let's look again that um at the effectual truth yeah this is a phrase in um the first paragraph of chapter 15 of of the prince it says the effectual truth instead of the imagination of the of a thing um you look as this this phrase uh effectful truth seems to have uh seems to have no uh no forerunner you can i i haven't been able to find it anywhere in in any philosopher that that particular phrase and the particular word effectual was invented apparently by machiavelli one of the italian scholars who worked on the text of the prince just happens to mention this rather amazing fact that this word which we use quite frequently came into the english language uh soon after machiavelli and actually got into the king james bible if you can believe that active valley would have yeah he would have loved that yeah which came out in 1611 so um maybe 100 years later so so that that's effectual is uh is in it and this is the only use of it in the whole italian renaissance so the phrase in italian is very very tight and then used only by machiavelli only by marky valley and only this once that's really amazing not in a letter no other and not in the rest of the prince he doesn't ever explain it used in this extremely famous yes very important chapter of the french yes it is in a central way yeah you might say right and they never use it again a word to the wise is sufficient it's a good example of that and a single word like that used use justice once calls attention to itself if you're the type of person who doesn't need to be told things twice so he says what is it the solitary use of it is makes it more important not less important yes exactly exactly that's that's what i'm suggesting so no um so what i'm interested in now is is in the philosophical meaning of the effectual truth the the moral meaning is uh is sort of to to deprecate or to downplay or to satirize even the moral attitude as when uh you tell someone i love you what does it really mean the effectual truth is i want something from you so that that's another thing there what what is the result that comes out of uh your high sounding words so the focus is on the result and you can see how this connects to modern science the um it's um abandonment of formal cause and final cause as aristotle had it to the efficient cause the cause that makes or produces and the cause that has an effect so uh and um and other aspects of the of of of modern science it's materialism it's use of the extreme case it's abandonment of normal there isn't any normal what is what we call normal is just what is more frequent than something at some other event and there's no no norm that as in aristotle's ethics you might say so uh aspects like that which i've we talked about earlier earlier conversation i perhaps don't need to go over that but it undermines the morality of intention right because it's inconservations matter you don't get credit for don't get credit for intention much less good will right yeah that's that's pretty foolish to go around spouting or actually believing right in in people's good will right um so then um but why is this so fundamental and why is it the foundation of maternity i guess yeah right so then uh he um uh well let's have a look at um what it means for a philosopher to run a country because this can explain a little bit more the the sense of founding that a philosopher undertakes and that i found just recently in uh in chapter 11 of the praise and i'll read it to you from someone's translation which uh this is the same chapter this is needless to say authoritative definitive surpassed right mansfield translation right chapter 11 is called of of ecclesiastical principalities and he starts off with this very sarcastic description of of ecclesiastical principalities that is countries that are run by the church that is pretty much all countries and in his in his time he said these alone have states and do not defend them they have subjects and do not govern them in the states though undefended are not taken from them the subjects though ungoverned do not care and they neither think of becoming as strained from such princes nor can they say so then when and then it just occurred to me that this is a beautiful description of uh how a philosopher rules a society how america say as ruled by john locke and montesquieu perhaps with some others too but um nobody knows that right nobody would think of complaining or being estranged from john locke and um it's there it's fundamentally there everywhere but it's not understood or appreciated and there we all are say it doesn't feel oppressive you don't feel like you can rebel it your candor should rebel against it no yeah you don't even know it know what it is what is what there is to rebel against right or what you're what you're thinking about so that's what uh he set out to achieve i think and uh and he became very uh that took him to the question of uh succession which is very important for machiavelli's prince in the uh in in the prince he seems to indicate that um the only way really for a prince to have his regime uh be succeeded after he dies is to transform it into a kind of republic because if he's succeeded by another prince then that principle do his best to efface any memory of the preceding prince as a kind of rival or threat to him and the on so the only way is to become a founder of a republic like george washington is our first president so he's uh uh yeah the others can be president but they're not the first so he's still ahead of us all and and at the other end on the other hand uh he's not a tyrant and we can revere him as as the first of his kind and so that's uh that's a suggestion that a philosopher even even if he wants to be by himself because for making valley every prince indeed every human beings if you understand your situation needs to consider himself and to make himself what he calls uno solo one alone in which you do not depend on other people but they depend on you yeah so that's what you try to achieve now machiavellia's philosopher can't quite do that fully because he's going to die and others will come how is he going to control and make possible a continuing conspiracy to change the world so as to cure it from imaginary thinking imaginary moral thinking so that's his uh problem you might say that a succession problem he wrote a play called the mandragola discussed in one chapter of the disgusting forthcoming book yeah it was an article that's right published yeah excellent yeah yeah um and in mandrigala the leading theme is uh a young man kalimako who once falls in love with beautiful woman who's married and who is moral a very um christian woman and so his problem since he wants to conquer her and possess her is how to do this and uh he sets up a conspiracy so it's a play about a conspiracy but that conspiracy is made possible by the fact that the wife's husband the stupidest man in the play is also a kind of doctor of letters refers to a philosopher the only one in the play and um i think is kind of a representation of machiavelli himself who pretends to play debate to be dumber than he is um and he wants uh a son so it's a play which is a conspiracy about getting a son and what they do is use the young man the kalimako as a kind of stud for his wife who commits adultery but has this good result uh they're from but the young man thinks he's young for coming i think but actually actually he's been his ways being facilitated and used by him and he's being used yeah by means yeah so that's the way michael valley gets control of you he think makes you think that you control yourself and then and you're you're imitating him by doing what he does but you're actually a kind of instrument in this grand campaign or conspiracy to change the way human beings everywhere live and what they think so and this is why in conspiracy is such an important feature of his thought the the many scholars uh underestimate conspiracy but but uh they just take a um outward resemblance or fact that in both the prince and the discourses on libya his two main works of the chapter around conspiracy is the longest chapter chapter 19 in the prince and book three chapter six in the in the discourses so look it up and uh and there you see that uh he gives you directions on how to carry one out how to carry out such a conspiracy and so that's what he's attempting with his uh with his succession and how much of this has he learned from christianity or i mean he's of course overturning yes well that's right so he's it's a project uh the italian word he is impresa and which it sounds like the the word project which is kind of for stella and german and english then and uh enterprise is another translation for impressive or campaign campaign in a military sense and enterprise in the sense of sort of free enterprise that we that we use today something you do on your own use your freedom to do which brings you uh satisfaction or even glory honor plus money material gain and and perhaps prestige over or even governance over other human beings so so that that's that's an important word la mia impresa my my enterprise is a phrase he uses about his own about himself yeah that's striking yeah it is yeah right so after him um there's going to be other philosophers and there will be followers and readers so he compares himself to the head of an army but it's an army of spiritual warriors say not of actual dressed up military um and who else did that saying and uh and he speaks of how unarmed prophets always fail so you need to have an army and he gives as an example of a failed prophet savinrolla who sure enough was killed and burned at the stake before machiavelli's eyes in downtown florence in 1498 but he says an unarmed prophet always comes to grief that ain't true yeah when you read machiavelli you have to prepare yourself for the fact see the sad fact that he lies he has a letter in which he says he lies and he's gotten so used to it that he hardly knows when he's telling the truth and when he's lying and he and he adds so that he's an expert he's a doctor in the art of lying so they there is an obvious on our prophet who didn't come to grief but conquered the world in the sense pretty much that monkey valley means for himself and that's jesus christ quite a pretty obvious candidate and and he did it through a church so mike valley is going to sort of co-opt the christian church imitate it but turn it over and instead of putting god at the top put a man a human being at the top he's going to maintain the christian trinity but he refocuses it as an army with three branches which he discusses in the discourses and then i i talked about this in my earlier book on on the discourses called machiavelli's new modes and orders right uh the three branches of uh of the modern army infantry artillery and cavalry yeah what are those of us yeah they represent these uh the infantry represents stubbornness of sinatione obstinacy and uh that's just that's a spirit of uh of um of machiavelli's honor he he gets the orneriness the resistance the intractability of of human beings and um artillery that means you can you can hit somebody from a distance that's like propaganda or or the bringing of of the message to human beings the word to human beings and then cavalry uh is a man on a horse he's he's up there where i'm not i'm just walking so um that's authority somebody who's above you and has looks down upon you and so you've got uh those are the three parts that are said father son rather holy ghost son and father so he's taken the trinity and turned it upside down and said putting the spirit holy ghost said first and the father as authority comes last so that's what he's doing in general to christianity he's turning it upside down and he's going to use this especially them the central one though artillery that is propaganda strauss had sp had spoken a couple of times of christian propaganda as a model for demeki bali and in his book thoughts on machiavelli so um and this is certain services so yeah and and this army also has capitans that comes out in in book three of the discourses the captains said monkey valley these are captains of his but also they are captains over others so those one can imagine are the successor philosophers is it going to be and there were modern philosophers who are machiavellian in their spirit they follow out the notion of effectual truth big cart hobbes same lock bacon bacon spinoza say leibniz there's quite a list and knowingly knowingly carrying out yeah this project you know that that i'm leaving to others bacon seems to be very yeah bacon is pretty obvious because he refers actually to one of the doctors of italy i.e old nick but um so that's that you know that's that's much clearer than the others who stopped mentioning him hobbes never mentioned simlock of course never mentions him but you could probably find uh indications of it and i um leave this urging urgent message to future scholars or present ones yes it's not to work on this to work on this a little bit more yeah not mentioning cuts both ways right i mean you you might not realize quite your indebtedness or you might wish not to advertise your yes the fact that you're following yes of course yeah right yeah oh so machiavelli in attacking morality knew that he wasn't going to succeed in changing morality or getting people to abandon it because moral people work under the same necessity as the rest of us they're weak they have to believe that people are good because otherwise they're in trouble if people are not good they're weak and that's it for them so they have to believe in a god that will protect them or save them or or at least provide consolation in the next world if not in this world so that's their necessity so people are going to be human beings are going to be moral as long as uh human beings exist you know as they as they are capable of being not good there will be people who are want to identify that and oppose it and so um maggie really would not therefore be surprised to hear that his name is used for something bad or used for any dishonorable actors you can call it machiavellian and that's that's his permission yes that's right so that's that's what he's uh he's done for us and he's uh yeah and anyway i think it's he's joking he's laughing to himself that that at the bad name that he's going to get his form of uh glory right yeah because glory is the only uh high and only high good or highest good that human beings can achieve they're uh and the highest glory is the glory that occurs after you die so you get to appreciate that future people future people will will admire your name and um or if not do what you want say but he doesn't care about having people admire most people admire his name all he wants are the people who are very few who understand the other philosophers who will come and who will carry on this impresa to uh to its uh success don't know whether that um um takes us now to montesquieu yeah so just one before just one word before we get to so he expects as it were that uh these subsequent philosophers i mean given that he understands morality is not going away that doesn't seem very important and the new modes that orders don't transform nature yes they accept human nature and the necessities okay now that's where that's one place where hobbs tried to change his view even does try to produce a new morality a morality of rights right and duties which are connected to rights a duty to you know be accommodating and in other words and and and to be honest uh you know in a in a kind of low way so honesty comes back that's in accord with machiavelli's notion that people will want to be more want to think they're being moral and therefore they don't want some form of moral justification if you're right in one instead of a christian one that's you know yeah and and it uh does away with the uh eminence of of morality that was so prominent in the ancients and also in the christians and the nobility of it equal yeah it's the morality of all equal so not very demanding so the hobbs lock modification is in a in in the spirit of in the spirit of machiavelli but it's uh it is it is a change and it shows that the now machiavelli wouldn't be surprised by the need to change and because he himself describes it in a chapter in the discourses 2 book 2 chapter 33 where he speaks of fabius the roman general uh fabius was sent on an expedition with explicit instructions from the senate but when he arrived there he found a a region uh called the cheminian flora forest which was utterly unknown and unexpected and uh not in accord with the instructions that he had received so he changed he abandoned his instructions and sent back his excuse to the senate which agreed that his departure was uh he was acceptable even admirable in the circumstances faced with a new problem so this is michivali claiming that the ancients whom he departs from would have excused him because he faced a new danger that they didn't namely a monotheistic religion or a world of three monotheistic religions that totally changed the political aspects of uh of society made the polis really impossible and in introduced kind of universalism to human life that it hadn't had before so and he and also had the twin defects of christianity namely that it makes people weak and that it makes them cruel weak they don't want to fight they want to just want to turn the other cheek cruel they get so enthusiastic for and zealous for the religion that they try to impose it on others as in the crusades so um he he knows that these future philosophers will possibly face the new germanian forest something like say the problems of modern science right which um machiavelli didn't face or didn't uh or wasn't imminent in any way for him so uh so there therefore he so to speak gives his permission to future philosophers to to change what he's done but see that's that's the question how can he be sure that uh his principles will continue after he dies and we see that in fact it's uh very hard to get rid of modernity once you have it right so once you begin this with this uh elaborating and working spending uh your your life and your energy on the effectual truth and uh the benefits that come there from that military and military there once once a military becomes technological you're uh on a kind of moving belt that never stops the technology gets worse gets more and more complicated and you have to you to keep up you and you have to keep up otherwise uh you'll be defeated and you lose your freedom so and also uh the uh besides uh the military there's um just um a medicine i was thinking about that yeah i mean once that starts yeah and once relief of the relief of men's estate and of the human rights yeah that's true right today everybody's questioning science climates the climate change why is it changing because of science because of technology because of the of the internal combustion engine and yet uh science tells us about this and now scientists produce this vaccine do to remedy and so uh how how can we give up those benefits that we live now to 90 years old so and yeah that's good and the uh and i suppose black valley might have expected that the criticisms though deep and interesting of modern science and modern scientifically would all be ineffectual i mean understand even the critics themselves understand that this is a reflection upon something and the deepening of our understanding of something but who really calls for a genuine that's absolutely there isn't even a name for medicine or progress that's right the only the only the name for it is postmodern see they can't get away from it i guess so yeah you need a new name yeah and and then a new start yeah yeah monkey valley um points out the importance of christianity or the lathe and it's the way in which it rules by uh referring to uh uh dates there are 26 dates in the discourses and so you might when you know that that's twice 13 there are plenty of 13. my 13th seems to be machiavelli's number um and all the dates and the discourses are in machiavelli's lifetime so why how do we count our years now from the birth of christ yeah they've tried to change this a little it's bce instead of bc instead of you know uh before christ yeah or as they it's a and it's the a and they use instead of the a and c e doesn't stand for christian era it stands for common era yeah yeah concessions that's just the cover-up of of the real truth that we count all our years from the birth of christ and and and uh so and my gay valley suggests that possibly you could start from uh from his birthday that's all the dates are in his lifetime yeah all the day sir that hasn't quite happened yeah yeah christmas birthday is may 3rd 1469. but the french revolution tried that in the spirit i mean of course exactly people ridicule it now but there was something right behind that notion right if you're really in a new start for mankind and you're rejecting the path machiavelli maybe thought you couldn't fully reject the past maybe just the french revolution right yeah probably yes the existence somehow the senate i.e them the ancient philosophers remain huh and therefore yeah so but there is there still remains a kind of dilemma for philosophy after machiavelli and that is uh you have to as a philosopher you have to rethink something as machiavelli gives this definition that said it is it is good always to reason about things it's always good because there's nothing you shouldn't reason about so that means you have to reason about machiavelli yeah you have to rethink machiavelli was this uh a good thing should we make it permanent is modernity was or was a modernity just an experiment and we would go back to something else we'd go back to the ancients yeah which was a third thing i suppose or something new something new yeah yeah right yeah so post human right right so so in a way say machiavelli is a kind of tyrant over future philosophers because he forces them to begin from the same thing he begins from and but in a way also he's just a prince over a republic because being philosophers they get to rethink so they're you know in a way rebellious subjects at least potentially not not people who who quietly and follow him hmm plus in rocky valley's world presumably freedom of thought would be maybe more achievable or more accessible or uh less difficult than depreciating the world he faced right so that he's not being hostile to philosophy what might say right in in creating this new world that respects reasons and invites people to reason and does it does so that's burning up to the enlightenment yeah which is what strauss does in his book he says the enlightenment really begins with the magi valley not it's not just an 18th century event that's just when the philosoph uh come out in public and try to claim authority on the basis of their philosophy doesn't think that's possible right people people cannot be made into most people cannot be made into or which means states princes cannot be made into philosophers people can't fundamentally change maybe yeah they can't fundamentally change they can't fundamentally be enlightened either yeah so that's that means they should have read machiavelli more in the enlightenment unless yeah that's right they've just begun with everything or whatever anybody who wants to think today should read occupy much more than they do philosophy departments should start teaching them in there that would be something um fundamental courses i mean he yeah he was a philosopher who yeah he uh sort we have to watch out that's okay not to be too uh repetitious for uh eager listeners yeah but you hadn't really written up multi-screw at that point and you no i haven't even think about new discoveries here and yeah there was a new discovery to be reported that's right and you were already but see motors could perhaps wanted to be the end of the line of monkey valiant philosophers and he tried to change he accepted that fundamental principle of effectual truth and uh i remember i spoke before of uh chapter in book 29 book 29 chapter 19 in the way he treats so disrespectfully all these five philosophers said you know bringing out the passions which inspired them not the reasons so that's very bad but he doesn't like the uno solo conclusion of machiavelli he thinks that's that that's tyranny and it needs to be corrected and can be corrected so and and what he corrects it with is our friend that we live with uh liberal constitutionalism and the separation of powers right yeah power gets separated and also the security of the individual social security that's a phrase it's all a matter of opinion really it's um it's it's not just that you need to be made secure you need to be made to feel you're secure it's your opinion you mustn't frighten people hobbes used government too punitively same you tried to make fear the basis of equality no that's you mustn't do that so you must uh for one thing separate the judiciary which is the most fearful branch because it's what actually punishes people sends you to jail possibly even kills you if if you if it believes in capital punishment so uh and motorskill also had a certain appreciation for the ancients which uh appears only in machiavelli's uh in this in these sort of hidden images of uh communication let's call that esoteric communication so when motorcycle tries to bring the agents out into public the principle of virtue which is is shown in the republic of virtue the ancient republic the first ten books of uh moniscus spirit of the laws are are on the ancient republic and that's really his treatment of plato and aristotle what they do again the virtual truth of their philosophy is in the kind of regimes that they advised and seem to recommend like sparta which is i think a considerable modification not to say uh um degeneration of of of the of those philosophers but still um there's some connection there um and um yeah andy um he too uh seems to indicate that uh philosophy is something that um is always open and so still open he wants to show that he's not simply rejected the ancients uh as happened with most modern philosophers after machiavelli right and before uh motorskill they simply they laughed at them hobbes especially mocked but marked the scholastic philosophers they didn't even talk about actually well aristotle too he criticized aristotle pretty fundamentally but just with just single criticisms he doesn't really meet their arguments so much as you by though he seems to project ultimately ancient virtue as a standard he takes it seriously enough that one could then yeah he praises it very inviting to study it too right which i think is a very different spirit yeah from hobbes or even like or modern science where it's all it is disproved you know yeah out of date or something yeah there is something we've lost a price that we've paid so much tries to you know bring that back a little bit and he does and then that's a certain uh nobility generosity in his justice which um i think is a specialty of his and correct smacky valley according to his lights and also the enlightenment but that also be a criticism and the spirit of his criticism machiavelli right that you can't have this full bore yeah enlightenment's abilitarian enlightenment that's right that's right yeah so he recommends a kind of rational religion or a reasoned religion and um and commerce thing commerce will calm people down and just as we hope to do with communist china you engage them you give us give each all commercial states reasons for not hating or at least not fighting each other that's uh it ruins your trade but also make sure they're not ahead of us technologically and important yeah military ways yeah combine that as you said yeah that's uh perhaps not fully taken care of right yeah so that's so interesting about mozart which i never who is too little studied maybe also and and not taken philosophically enough wouldn't you say yes once again yeah yeah because it's a little bit hidden you have to dig for it and you have to get yourself in the mood and with the equipment to dig and the sprawling book yeah the different books the one thing one thing therefore that you need to do is pay a little bit of attention to numbers and then the way in which philosophers um indicate their attention through numbers so esoteric writing has i think two aspects that the use of numbers to indicate a problem and then the use of images to elaborate a problem figurative images you tell stories you try to make the king of france um well i just use this example might be understood to be thomas aquinas or even the god of scholastic uh theology kind of constitutional god limited with limited powers is that limited by nature and this is the way machiavelli speaks of the king of france and the others i found it in boccaccio too france stands for the sorbonne the french the french of the uh the philosophers of the serb on the scholastic philosophers so that's an example of the figurative use of of esoteric communication and the figurative use is more um more difficult and and uh and people will have different views of whether this makes sense whether it's reasonable to make that kind of it's a guess it really is a guess it's a speculation better to say that than guess it's a i.e a guess which has reason behind it but not reason enough to close the deal and make it and make it certain and that's what i a person does when he gives a hint when you give a hint it's uh it's something that you can deny it's deniable oh i didn't mean then that wink i gave at you was just a blink in my eye i've said something so you it's not any and you're just interpreting that so you're asking and and and are you the kind of person who can take a hint right you say that you have to be that kind of person if you're uh if you insist on complete proof of everything then you'll have a a very restricted life and a very and as a scholar a very restricted mind right well so let me give you an example of the numerical let me ask one thing for some of the hints i mean it's reassuring i assume though to find the same hint as it were or the same image maybe as use of someone metaphorically for someone else ins in more than one thinker right i mean that would sort of reassure one that they saw each other's hints whether you're not making this up out of whole cloth if other people use out you know political disputes to mask or to convey or to suggest philosophic disputes and alexander stands for aristotle or whatever you know and you can't do formulaic about it but that's right yeah in france and you say that other other thinkers seem to have had this assistance yeah that's what they do yeah yeah but the numbers you see are not don't um are not don't have to be interpreted so much i mean that that can tell you for sure that something is up like those 26 states in the discourses like the 142 chapters of the discourses that happen to be this is what strauss points out the same number of books as in in uh libby's history right that's that's not an accident right and yet the meaning of it is not clear so it's a puzzle what's knowable for zoe is that it's not an accident or it seems exactly virtually that's right almost certainly knowable yeah the meaning of so so that's why the numbers help yeah so when they they tell you that there's something there to be understood that you're not perhaps not quite getting so what i saw in montesquieu are the continuation chapters as i call them um my motorcycle spirit of the law says 31 books and those are divided into six parts and then he speaks in the at the beginning of the design of the author and the design of the work two designs so uh he tells you that the design of the work matters so this the official design you can see six parts 31 books and each book has a certain number of chapters one book has just one chapter that's the 27th the 26th book you can imagine guess might be quite a bit about machiavelli but it has only 25 chapters yeah so the 27th book would have been the 26th book or 26th chapter in the 26th book but mostly said well separates themselves yeah separate yeah make it uh make it a little bit more difficult but you could see that's he's sort of playing with this with this errand but then but the number of chapters in that people don't count because there doesn't seem to be any reason to do so you're not required to do so but my friend diana schaub did it and she found 605 chapters and she noticed and it's just adding up the chapters in all the books yeah it's not it's not it's not yeah it's a little bit chapter no it's it's it's slightly laborious but yeah and it's easy to make make mistakes it's a test of uh yeah your accounting skills right arithmetical abilities so yeah but why would you do it um when it comes to 605 and then there are these continuation chapters and this isn't this is an obvious puzzle that monitor has chapters with heaven most of the chapters have subjects and but now and again you come across a chapter which says continuation of the same subject continuously it's not only when the previous chapters are right too long or something like that sometimes they're quite short yes very short chapter can then it doesn't get still has a continuation yeah yeah yeah so hey what's going on what's going on here but there's a number two there's a number of continuation chapters which diana schaub counted as well and that's 55. and then now you then now let's look at that those two numbers 605 and and 55 605 is 5 times 11 times 11. and 55 is 1 11 of 605. so that's 550 but chapters that have a subject and uh 605 chapters in all so the chapters that have a subject are different from the there's a different number from those that uh from all the chapters so you got and that's and that's five times ten 550 is five times ten times eleven right so there's some something going on with 10 and 11 which i would just suggest and people can follow this up has something to do with christianity and five five stands for the senses we have the five senses you touch and then four senses on the face taste hearing smell and sight so this is famously five senses way back then it wasn't way back when you're not inventing this this is not yeah not a news a new discovery or a new designation right we have five senses and then some people people speak of a sixth sense right yeah so everyone knows their five senses but not everyone could list them as i just said that's impressive there you go yeah that was donald trump like in its ability to seriously kind of do that so in other words uh philosophy has to do with christianity and has to do with empirical senses and then this is the beginning and i think uh more generally uh or in addition each of the continuation chapters has something of what the philosopher is commenting on to other philosophers especially so there's special chapters there are special chapters more yes these are special chapters that uh that do comment on the preceding chapter but from a philosopher's point of view or taken out yeah and so two of them are about ostracism the 33rd and the 44th see he likes these sticks with the 11s have to do with ostracism which was a practice in the ancient polis of of exiling or getting rid of anyone who was outstanding in such a way as to pose a danger to the rest of the city so anyway this is and aristotle discusses this at some length so the the justice of it and the injustice it seems unjust to kick out their your best citizen right and as as a threat why not let him take over the government well but that's the risk of tour especially to democracy he might be tyrant and good as he is or because just because he's so good he'll govern and not listen to us so so that's there's a kind of democratic justice in ostracism and also an injustice in uh in in getting rid of not paying attention to the best citizen who might be the philosopher so on so montesquieu says ostracism is actually glory isn't just something you should endure if you're the best citizen it's you should take glory in being ostracized because uh it's a it's a noble sacrifice for the good of the city and in general of mankind not to try to rule as a philosopher and so uh he backs off from he like he really spoke of the glory of governing and monska has the glory of not governing and it isn't quite that that difference isn't quite so clear because machiavelli also claimed to be allowing glory to the princes that he instructs they get to and then in a way they get the political glory which he uh modestly refuses in his own name at least so far as most people understand him so uh so this is speaking of the glory of uh philosophy and then uh last point the 55th continuation chapter is the last chapter in the book so the book ends not with a subject but with a continuation of the subject and that has to do with feudalism because the last two books of the spirit of the laws are about feudal right and the origin of it and the frankish kings in france but i think yeah i think at the end of the book it's uh it motors indicates it's it's very complicated and it's very difficult to understand by the way david hume wrote well just a letter in which he says can you tell me what you were saying in the last chapter of the spirit of the laws because i don't understand it and walter wrote wrote a very very polite letter in reply not answering the question so but i think he understands um the situation of philosophers versus the rest of mankind differently from machiavelli it shouldn't be either an army or a church but it should be uh futile as if philosophers has his own followers and there are plural many uh feudal lords philosophers with their followers and um the duty of a follower is to come to the defense of the lord when he calls upon you but otherwise it's a way of sharing rule yeah and and many philosophers said rather than just one so and in this book um most refers to many many philosophers i mean in the end of the footnotes i didn't count them though i know somebody who has but yeah yeah but uh but uh he he wants to wants to uh induce people's democratic peoples or free republics or monarchies he wants to release them from the from uh the subjection to a single philosopher he doesn't want to take over that task himself there is one thing he did though uh he never mentions john locke in his book that's one philosopher he doesn't mention the one who's closest to him the one who also is the founder of liberal constitutionalism and who also referred to the constitution of england as a as a model regime for for free peoples but it seems that monica who treats the constitution of england twice and the spirit of the laws wanted it to be less formally understood then according to locke's principles you have to look at the passions and the parties that arise in a free country it isn't it isn't enough simply to refer to the three branches of of government you have to look at how they operate and in reality and their rallies so so i think his treatment of the english constitution is is done in such a way as to take over hijack it from luck so we end up with some of both i think maybe in america yeah bill of rights which is lucky and one might say yeah but in the state of the state of nature we have a state of nature that's in luck that's really pretty much nothing yeah yeah he refers to it at the beginning of his book but but he sort of he kicks it out of his of his liberal constitution so that's interesting so he thinks that more to skewey and attitude towards liberal constitutionalism might be a little healthier than a lockheed one or yeah at least has to coexist right i suppose instead of people being afraid in the state of nature or uh or acquisitive they're timid that's what he says security would be they're they're interested in security yeah the state of nature is a state of insecurity so let's let's not talk about that but he does get though he doesn't care as much as machiavelli perhaps to have glory alone he does the justly celebrated montesquieu and the federalists yeah and he was extremely well known at the time at that time as a yeah as a a founder but not the founder perhaps or an expositor of constitutional good government and separation powers and so forth yeah and the security is the security of the individual so it's there's this democratic aspect which we like of course it is the continuation thing so that itself is uh is that in previous works that you wouldn't think so about yeah well yeah that's the question someone just someone watching that up all right and it doesn't occur to me offhand though yeah hobbs or others yeah chapters i don't know whether chapter titles i don't know enough of these words yeah but maybe maybe there's many obvious examples there could be yeah the well so when we discussed this into the last night briefly you explained that explain this and uh i looked at uh it occurred to me and this has occurred to you of course since you know talk well better than i do and it's this excellent translation so he uses once yes somewhat mysterious when you think about it for a second quite bizarrely right at the end of democracy in america chapter seven of part four volume two continuation of the preceding chapters he seems to have been able to give every every chapter before there's a title often punchy and suddenly imagination yeah and then chapter eight the final is the general view of the subject and when you do look at those two which is every stability sets apart you might say they are it feels they're more personal and also somewhat more philosophic i would say then yeah a good deal more philosophical he steps into the office of god and he tries to understand both democracy and aristocracy as god does which most humans don't we all we we lesser beings are either democratic or aristocratic and we don't know how to combine them or to appreciate both so that and of course talk phil was a great student and admirer of of a fellow frenchman right mordecai so they will have to fellow aristocrat yeah yeah they will discuss that particular continuation chapter besides just looking at it briefly and it is full of well as you know it's full of material yeah very high ending with yes but you know one doesn't think he almost doesn't talk about anything like that one can't have the perspective of god it's almost it is to try but then he sort of yeah gives it to you in a way where previously he's separated you know this is aristocracy and this is democracy and you can't look at both at once as it works yeah yeah right maybe we should discuss chapter seven that would be a continuation of conversation yes okay good it's a good note to end on uh yeah we should we will continue this conversation uh harvey thank you very much for this really fascinating discussion of machiavelli but modernity really and and really what it means because so those of us who've vaguely or strong scenes of one kind or another and others too now talk of well so everyone talks about modernity but we talk machiavelli is the founder of eternity but i think you've really in both of what you've written and i think hoping this conversation for people uh helped explain what that means the magnitude the amazingness of it really yeah i mean anyway thank you for taking the time today yeah and thank you for joining us on conversations

Channel: Conversations with Bill Kristol

Views: 10,810

Keywords: Harvey Mansfield, Political Philosophy, Study Guides, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Leo Strauss

Id: ot0yg5u9LHQ

Length: 71min 54sec (4314 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 21 2021