History Department Panel Machiavelli's "The Prince" After 500 Years

good evening ladies and gentlemen welcome to this evening an event to mark the 500th anniversary of the appearance of Machiavelli's The Prince my name is James Johnson I'm a member of the Department of History this is the second of three moments the history department is marking of landmarks in history we have marked the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis and later this year we will mark the Martin Luther King's Speech at the Lincoln Memorial tonight we're talking about the prints we have invited two guests who are eminently suited to do what we want to do which is to look at the past in its own terms and to look at the ways the past is still present now that is Edward Muir who is one of this country's leading preeminent historians of Renaissance Italy and Michael Ignatieff a thinker a writer a public figure directly engaged in global affairs and very familiar with electoral politics the prince is perhaps the starkest anatomy of power ever written it follows its declared intent without fear and without hesitation that is to show rulers how to survive in a world as it is and not in a world as it should be it's only criterion is success goodness justice honesty virtue our valuable only if they help you succeed and if not you should neglect them it is more important to appear good and honest and just then to be so and one should not hesitate to delight to lie to deceive and to do whatever else is necessary to hold power this is a book that focuses famously on the means of power people should either be caressed or crushed if you do them minor damage they will get their revenge but if you them there is nothing they can do if you need to injure do it in a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance this is a book that talks about cruelty that is well used and cruelty that is poorly used this is a book that talks about cultivating an enemy so that you can crush him publicly and therefore intimidate other people Machiavelli writes in order to get a secure hold on a new territory one need merely eliminate the surviving members of the family of the previous rulers this has been called the first modern book on politics that is what underlies human relations is power that the state and its laws are purely human artifacts made for human ends it is relentlessly secular it mentions Moses and the point is possibly barbed he is the example of a leader who came to power through his own authority Machiavelli depending on your point of view is either the consummate realist or a cynic he promises to describe how things are in the real world and as he writes not waste time with the discussion of an imaginary world he writes anyone who ignores everyday reality in order to live up to an ideal will soon discover that he has been taught how to destroy himself and not how to preserve himself the book gives a particular view of human nature Machiavelli writes that humans are ungrateful fickle deceptive avoiders of danger eager to gain he says that it is natural and normal to take things that do not belong to you it sketches a view of how we can and can act cannot control our fate even the best prepared can direct events only half the time chance controls the rest but fortune favors the bold this is a book with silences the biggest silence is its lack of all moral evaluation how do we read it do we read it as a manual for success how do we evaluate its author according to the effectiveness of his strategies or is the author himself implicated morally by writing calmly and without disapproval about the effectiveness of assassination wars of aggression colonization and the necessary atrocities there are other silences in this book whether there are moral laws that transcend the naked pursuit of power or that transcend the laws of any particular States the status of what we now call universal human rights such silences take us from the realm of the city-states of Renaissance Italy to modern global politics a book called the independence of Nations David framkin who was a member of this University's Faculty invokes Dostoyevsky's von Karamazov to describe what he calls the jungle of world politics Karamazov says if God does not exist than anything is permitted Trump can picks it up in these circumstances people ought to act out of self-interest even if it leads them to crime this is a reasonably true definition about States at their worst states are beasts that roam the jungle of world politics killing when they are hungry and obeying no laws but those of their own nature where they are concerned Dostoyevsky's terrible words ring true anything is permitted to read the prints today forces us to think about Machiavelli in a global context about whether rules of ethics apply in the jungle of world politics it may recall to us the means that slobodan milosevic employed in the 1990s in the name of the greater serbia mass murder deportations rape as a strategy of war political assassination it may also make us question the grounds on which we claim that these are crimes against humanity reading the prints may put us in mind of things done in the name of national security the invasion of Iraq waterboarding collateral damage of drone strikes targeting terrorists readers have asked such questions over the past 500 years in ways that make sense to them many knew this author only by his book and they condemned him accordingly his effigy was burned by the Jesuits in 1559 the book was put on the index of prohibited books that same year 1559 it was removed from the index in 1890 the English Cardinal Reginald Pole called the prince a book written by Satan's hand in the 20th century Machiavelli has been called the teacher of evil and associated with the Nazis but to study Machiavelli in his own time is to give a fuller and possibly different sense of the man a man raised by people of humble means who valued books a man who was a voracious reader as a child the man who wrote that whenever he took a walk he had a book by Dante or Ovid or Petric tucked under his arm a man who claimed to have imaginary conversations with the ancients at the end of a long day he was a scholar a poet a playwright he was fiercely loyal to a city of Florence he was a member of its government for 14 years under the Republic he was an eloquent defender of an independent and engaged citizenry Machiavelli signed letter to his friend Francesco Guido Dini this way niccolò machiavelli historian comic author tragic author the particular circumstances of his writing the prince in 1513 may be relevant the Republic had just fallen the Medici were about to be restored to power Machiavelli was suddenly out of a job he wrote this book and in the introduction to Lorenzo de Medici he offered it as a recommendation this is the context that has led many readers to study the silences of the prince to read between the lines to ask if there is a deeper message to the book and some have concluded that it is an attack on tyranny chronicling the crimes of a despot so that careful readers will draw their own right conclusions some have seen this as a defense of the rule of equals of a republic and even as Catholics likened it to this subversive Martin Luther in denouncing it Protestants read it as an attack on the tyranny of Catholicism during the French Revolution people said that this embodied the ideals of the revolution by showing the tyranny it was meant to overthrow it's wrong to say that the prince has been all things to all people but in the last 500 years it has been many more things too many more kinds of people than it's simple tone might suggest today it is one of the most assigned books in the greatest number of university departments including philosophy political science international relations religion and many many others those of us who have taught Machiavelli know that the book can still cause outrage those of us who have read the scholarship on Machiavelli know that it still provides original and surprising readings but perhaps the dominant reading of the prints today is neither outrage nor original insight perhaps the dominant reading today is a kind of breezy acceptance one that skates over any puzzlement or worry perhaps it's an attitude in which we flatter ourselves with our sophistication our worldliness perhaps it's an attitude that says we've seen this before we're not shocked we'll just take it in stride and maybe use a few trips along the way if we can there are some recent books with Machiavelli in the title management in Machiavelli a prescription for success in your business the Princesa Machiavelli for women this is from the dust jacket from the Wars of intimacy to the battles of public life whether confronting bosses competitors or lovers the greatest power belongs to the woman who dares to use the subtle weapons that are hers alone or Machiavelli for moms Maxim's on the effective government of children even in 2013 or maybe especially in 2013 we should not be complacent about this book after 500 years it is still potent it is still possibly dangerous it is still rich in its silences it is still deceptively simple it is still affecting effective in forcing us to consider questions of right and wrong in the exercise of power domestically and globally we are fortunate this evening to have two engaged and thoughtful commentators on this book the first is Professor Edward Muir he is among of handful of early modern historians here in abroad who have redefined the field he is a pioneer in math of cultural history he looks at what the details of everyday life tell us about the structures of power and about the nature of hierarchies and about the reach of institutions professor Miura combines a meticulous and detailed research with a large vision that draws from across the social sciences to look at group behavior human psychology and the meaning of ritual his subjects have included violence urban ceremonies and festivals religious non-conformance theatergoers and learned societies professor Muir is the Vance Teague professor in the arts and sciences at Northwestern University in Chicago he's been recognized for his teaching by the McCormack professorship in teaching excellence he's the author of four books and numerous articles he has co-authored or edited another five books and the recipient of many prizes including the american historical associations prize for the first best book in history that is for his book the civic his book civic ritual and renaissance venice a book that is now a classic in the field and the aah a's prize for the best book in italian history he has received that twice for his book on civic ritual as well as mad blood stirring Vendetta in Renaissance Italy and in 2012 he received the Distinguished Service Award for his lifetime achievement across his career by the Andrew Mellon foundation professor Muir thank you Jim it's a great pleasure to be here and to think and talk about Machiavelli who in fact abbreviated version of his name is Ben my password for years I'm not going to tell you exactly what it is our when asked to present on this occasion about the prince I turned to my bookshelf and I was actually quite surprised I had far more books on Machiavelli than on any other subject and certainly on any other person and I'd never really systematically attempted to collect on Machiavelli it's just that when your college professor people send you books and give them to you and there's an enormous number let me just read a few titles you've heard some already fortune is a river Leonardo da Vinci and niccolo machiavelli is a magnificent dream to change the course of Florentine history this was all about a plan to deviate the Arno River not what the normal thing you hear about fortune is a woman gender and politics in the thought of niccolo machiavelli feminist interpretations of Machiavelli Machiavelli in modern leadership similar to the one of the titles that Jim just mentioned why Machiavelli's iron rules are as timely and important today as 5 centuries ago nicolo's smile Machiavelli's virtue Machiavellian love Machiavellian hell I also found a hundred and thirteen thousand hits on Google Scholar to the word Machiavelli and books and articles and that of course leaves out many things in foreign languages which presents us with such a difficult problem of how do we make sense of a man who wrote a deceptively simple book that has been interpreted in so many different ways is Machiavelli Old Nick as the late 16th century equivalent of the devil had it my grandmother who was full of all kinds of old-fashioned isms used to you know when she was angry with my brother I used to say get the knick out of your pants I had no idea what she was talking about until I became a scholar and realized it was Machiavelli all there he was there all along is he the most sexual or sexist of theorists let me read you one of the most famous passages of in the prints that's gathered in the right place excuse me at the end of chapter 25 for that I am certainly convinced to this that it is better to be impetuous than cautious because fortune is a woman and it is necessary in order to keep her down to beat her and to struggle with her and it is seen that she more often allows herself to be taken over by men who are impetuous than by those who make cold advances and then being a woman she is always the friend of young men for they are less cautious more aggressive and they command her with more audacity so are do we to understand this is a metaphor of rape is the fundamental way to understand politics or is he in fact as I think most of my colleagues who specialized in Italian Renaissance issue would say is in fact a dedicated Republican a dedicated a believer in not what we would call democracy certainly but in the liberty of a citizenry to exercise its own individual and collective will and that's basically what I want to argue tonight and I'll try and prove that in a few few ways here first let me put it in a in a broader context and I'm going to borrow in this context from the late William Basma a historian of of Renaissance thought who understood Renaissance republicanism and in fact the Renaissance itself as a manifestation of one side of a radical dichotomy and I'm quoting from him to put the matter briefly it is that between the 13 and 7 18th centuries Western Europeans and perhaps Italians most directly and vividly were torn between two largely antithetical modes of perceiving reality and of quote both modes employed the word raised public or Republic the commonweal one was the race public at Christiana that universal community of a divinely created hierarchic order embodied in the Roman Catholic Church and headed by the Pope and the other was Civic republicanism that particular manifestation of a political order in a particular time and place which was embodied typically in the statutes and customs of local regimes what we might now call constitutions Basma labeled this first part of the dichotomy medieval and the second renaissance but he doesn't he did not intend these two labels to be historical periods but in fact ideal types as a way of helping us to understand the the nature of this conflicts to ideal types that he sees as having existed in a tension with one another quote the crucial difference between the two positions was an utterly different conception of the general order of or the general nature of order every other difference between them can be related to this it's all about order the medieval position placed every element of human experience within a cosmic order a definitive pattern hierarchically arranged unchanging and ideal which rank things values in persons higher or lower any change violated this universal order and was therefore impious immoral indefensible the Renaissance position in contrast failed to perceive any coherence in the universe rejected hierarchy as a principal and instead of stasis perceived only the incessant flux of things a principle rooted fundamentally in history and the notion of change one system was closed in general the other open and particularly Renaissance republicanism Civic republicanism in contrast to their medieval position did not identify the substance of human nature as the intellect but as the will and this is most clear in Machiavelli of all Renaissance figures a man who celebrated the free exercise of the will under the conditions of political Liberty not only in his famous book about Republic's the discourses but also in an in a very interesting way throughout the prints as Bowser put it turn to page two soon his thousand of pinnate the Renaissance republicanism saw no so absolute structure in the nature of things no clear gradations of you ultimate value no ground for classifying some elements in the universe as higher and others as lower no reason accessible demand for affirming that reality consisted of a system of unchanging forms and that the fluidity of common experience could be dismissed as meaningless it accepted inconsistency contradiction and paradox as insurmountable and it's precisely those three conditions that I think are so evident in Machiavelli's thought inconsistency contradiction and paradox something that did not bother him in fact something that he celebrated now one of the particularly interesting things I think we've discovered in recent years about the prints is that it is really part of just a segment an ongoing dialogue in particular a dialogue that Machiavelli was having with his friend Cheska valori Vettori scuse me Francesco Vettori whose correspondence between Machiavelli and the tour had recently been examined by John and Jamie in an inner brilliant book called between thin friends and it's quite clear through these letters its beginning about 500 years ago this month through the rest of 1513 that Machiavelli was thinking about two boats first the discourses on the ten decades the liberty which was a book he had started to write about republics and then he interrupted that and started to write the prince and then finished the discourses later on so the prince is wedged within the writing of a book about Republic's and liberty and he talks about how how he's thinking evolves in these letters with Vittori and so that in many ways he sees this maybe not as a finished product but as yet one more letter one more open-ended segment in an ongoing dialogue between threat friends not as a tight philosophical treatises as it has often been understood and taught but as a dialogue now who was who was Machiavelli as as as Jim has mentioned he comes from a recently prominent but not most distinguished family in in Florence they weren't aristocrats but they had the Machiavelli's had produced 54 priors up into nicolo's time which meant that they were city councilmen 12 gun Fellini a day which is a neighbor a mayor of a neighborhood and they had strong Republican traditions within the family Geronimo had been jailed tortured and executed by Cosimo de'medici three generations before Nicola one Francesco wrote a treatise against tyranny and for civic freedom this is the world that niccolò machiavelli inherited his own father Bernardo was a rather bookish lawyer ineffectual impoverished really one of the lesser lights in the Machiavelli clan who had in some ways made a little money by writing indexes for other books so clearly he gained to some degree his interest in books from his father his interest in politics from a family that had been long committed to political behavior but at the same time he was no longer really in the mainstream of Florentine life his own family he was married he had seven children although we know that despite the fact that he seemed to be reasonably affectionate with his wife he had numerous affairs he fell madly in love with a courtesan at one time and his letters as I think the passage I just read from the prints indicates displayed a deep ambivalence about women about trusting them and about seeing their influence in the political world throughout the prints for example he's always warning the Prince not to appear to be effeminate let me talk just a bit about his political career and what that might help us to help us understand this what happens in the Prince Machiavelli was born in 1469 and as a young man it was a period of the hegemony of the medici family beginning in 1434 between 1434 and 1494 the medici family first with Cosimo de'medici then his son grandson and great-grandson controls the city of Florence even though they virtually never held a significant public office Florence was a republic to be - to vote in the or to hold office in Florence you had to be a member of a guild the formal country aristocrats had been exiled way back in the twelve 90s there's a list of a hundred and fifty names of families and if you have that last name you can't even walk it through the gates of the city of Florence because of their anti aristocratic tendencies but by the middle of the 15th century rich bankers such as the Nana Chi were able to subvert that Republic and to control everything from behind the scenes so that foreign foreign diplomats came to Florence in the 14 30s and 40s and 50s they would go to the town hall the plat saw della signoria present their credentials and then get out of there as fast as they can walk down the street and go over to the Medici Palace where the real work took place now what this is and I think what this situation historical situation contributed Machiavelli's thought was a radical distinction between authority and power Machiavelli when he contemplates that period can see and it's typical throughout the prints that it doesn't matter what your title is how you were what what authority you have what matters is how you exercise power the Medici had no authority and all of the power 1494 they blew it they failed to protect Florence from invasion of the French are exiled and replaced by a charismatic profit for our ulama Savonarola who becomes a kind of an ecclesiastical dictator also from behind the scenes he's controlling things from the pulpit there's still elections or still it's a still a republic officially but Machiavelli saw him as shifty as a liar as irrational and the experience of Savonarola I think for Machiavelli and his generation was really the formative experience for him it was for his generation much perhaps as the Vietnam War was for the baby boomer generation in this country as perhaps 9/11 is for my own students after Savonarola was arrested burned in 1598 and you can still see the spot and the piazza where it's marked where he was burned within three weeks Machiavelli gets a job he had applied for this job several times during sivanna all his time and always been turned down soon as some honor roll is out of the way he's elected to the position of second Chancellor in the Florentine Republic a job he held for 15 years and a job in which he was clearly known as the the man the the the the servant of the most powerful member of the new Florentine Republic a man named Piero Cellini he became an outsider on the inside of a second-rate power he went on numerous diplomatic missions to France to the Holy Roman Empire to the papacy to Venice and most famously was Florence's representative to Cesare Borgia the Duke Valentino where he directly observes Cesare Borgias attempts to conquer the Romagna he writes back letters virtually every day from these various diplomatic missions to Florence he's never the ambassador he's the guy behind the scenes who does the real nitty-gritty negotiations while the Ambassador goes to the fancy banquets and nicolo's down in the down in the in the in the kitchen with the other representatives of servants of other representatives and really figures out what's going on and he writes extraordinarily frank letters from France back home to Florence he writes the Reis French respect only those who are willing to fight or to pay and since you've shown yourselves incapable of either they consider users as misters zero he had to manipulate he had the cajole dissemble flatter and Tricky's way to find information of value and I must have spent much of my career reading diplomatic reports and when you read Machiavelli's letters they are stunning not only is he the probably the best pro stylist in Italian from this period but he is in letter after letter there's this analytical quality in which she's looking at then at what's at stake and what's what the sources of power are for Florence it's not just gossip or who's gonna fight whom as you find in so many other diplomatic reports its analysis all the time then in 1512 the Medici returned to power the Republic is overthrown this time they don't even bother with a charade of elections they just become in effect dictators of the city of Florence Machiavelli loses his a job he's accused of conspiracy against the the Medici his name is found on a list of potential conspirators he's arrested he's tortured and but eventually released and retires to his farm in an some time that I had in pair cocina where you can go today see the house and see the tavern across the street where he hung out and it is there that his literary career takes off he writes perhaps the two greatest Renaissance comedies of course the prince and the discourses histories of florence numerous other works but he found this prospect especially in the first year the year he's ready in the Prince of 15:13 deeply depressing I feel useless to myself to my relatives to my friends and it is that depressed state that he describes his writing of the prince to his old friend Francesca Vettori it's a probably the most famous letter written in the Renaissance it is a letter and when she talks about his day of collecting wood to sell back to his old friends and Florence and how they cheat him about catching birds to feed his family how he spends the afternoon with a with an innkeeper a butcher a Miller and two bakers gambling and they fight over their bets and over their wagers and then at the end of the evening this famous passage about him returning home when evening comes I returned to my home and I go into my study and on the threshold I take off my everyday clothes which are covered with mud and mire and I put on regal and curial robes I've always assumed these raises old robes of office and dressed in a more appropriate manner I enter into the ancient courts of ancient men and am welcomed by them kindly and there I taste the food that alone is mine and for which I was born and there I am not ashamed to speak to them to ask them their reasons for their actions and they in their humanity answer me and for four hours I feel no boredom no I feeI do not tremble at the thought of death nor I not do I longer fear poverty I become completely part of them this is of course the Renaissance fantasy Petrarch begins in many ways his humanist enterprise by writing letters to Cicero who had been dead for one thousand three hundred and forty two years and Machiavelli is engaged in the same fantasy game of a conversation with the Ancients it's it's reading is what he's doing but he's describes it as a conversation and with them answering back and he's describing this to Vettori his good friend with whom he's also continuing a conversation a dialogue and he goes on and as dante says that knowledge does not exist without the retention of it by memory I have noted down what I have learned from their conversation and I compose a little work they print cheap art to boost the prints where I delve as deeply as I can into thoughts on this subject disc is discussing what a principality is what kinds they are how they are acquired how they are maintained and why they are lost so in some ways it is an open-ended kind of book a book that doesn't have the final answers let me just briefly in kind of concluding here turn to one of the core chapters the most famous parts of the book the ones that are most disturbing perhaps to people are chapters 16 17 and 18 where he asks these binary questions is it better to be generous or to be miserly the answer miserly is it better to be loved or to be feared the answer feared is it better to be cruel or merciful well certainly not merciful but only cruel up to a point is it better to be a fox or a lion answer both and then we come to this famous part perhaps the part that has generated the most controversy in the literature and let me read it to you so everyone's clear about what we're talking about I want you to notice a few things first the repetition of the word necessity or necessary net Jessie Tom that is a guide to how he's thinking therefore it is not necessary for Prince to have all of the above mentioned qualities that these are the virtues but today but it is very necessary for him to appear to have them furthermore I shall be so bold as to assert this that having them and practicing them at all times is harmful and appearing to have them is useful for instance to see and hear the virtues to seem merciful faithful humane forthright religious and to be so but his mind should be disposed in such a way that it should it become necessary not to be so he will be able and know how to change to the contrary in other words a kind of instinctive pragmatism and it is essential to understand this that a prince and especially a new Prince cannot observe all those things by men are considered good for in order to maintain the state he is often obliged here and that Jessie thought back in the Italian to act against his promise against charity against humanity and against religion and therefore it is necessary that he have a mind ready to turn itself according to the way the winds of fortune and these change ability of affairs require him and as I said above as long as it is possible he should not stray from the good but he should know how to enter into evil when necessity again the word necessity commands a prince therefore must be very careful never to let anything slip from his lips which is not full of the five qualities mentioned above he should appear upon seeing and hearing him to be all mercy all faithfulness all integrity all kindness all religion and there is nothing more necessary than to seem to possess this last quality that is religion now here now also so far we've got necessity you got to peer one way but you don't necessarily always have to behave that way now here is why and men in general judge more by their eyes than their hands for every one can see but few can feel in other words we make mini general the people make judgments a based upon appearances everyone sees what you seem to be few perceive what you are and those few who do do not dare to contradict the opinion of the many who have the majesty of the state to defend them and in the actions of all men and here we have coming up on one of the most famous phrases and especially of princes where there is no impartial arbiter one must consider the final result one must consider the final result this is the passage that is often missed Rance in Italian it's Aguada dolphin a literally one looks to the end this is the passage that is often this translated as the end justifies the means which it doesn't say there's nothing about justification here what the whole path what the whole whole para core two paragraphs are about are about necessity letter prints therefore act to cease and to maintain the state his methods will always be judged honorable and this is what the necessity is to maintain the state will always be judged honorable and will be praised by all for ordinary people are always deceived by appearances and by the outcome of things and the war and in the world there is nothing but ordinary people and there is no room for the few while the many have a place to lean on now let me just finally say that this passage which claims claims to see seems to be so condescending to the many to the impoverished masses is in fact a rather strange comparison to what happens throughout the rest of the prints and in the discourses because you have to in the end ask what where does power come from it doesn't actually come from this manipulation of appearances that's just what you do to maintain power power ultimately comes for those very from those very people who are being deceived they are the source of power throughout the prints when he talks about fortresses when he talks about invading foreign territories when he talks about almost every other element of power ultimately derive from he says the people there is a notion of popular sovereignty which permeates this text and it's certainly very clear also in these other writings and I would argue that it's what often we do is we mistake the sources of power with the techniques of maintaining the power and that ultimately the prince must respect the people and they hate him as he Machiavelli says several times in the prints they will get rid of him thank you questions of power and justice are at the center of Michael Ignatieff's work as print and broadcast journalists as scholar as novelist teacher and public official Michael Ignatieff is the author of 12 books translated into 18 languages on subjects ranging from political economy and the penal system to human rights nationalism in the Balkans and the political ethics in an age of war on terrorism as the scholar Michael Ignatieff has provided an eloquent defense of human rights framed in a way that acknowledges their origin in a particular time in a particular place his work is not naive about modern tyrannies that deny rights by violence or by ideology his work is not blind to the coercive and destabilizing elements of Western campaigns of liberation in human rights as politics and idolatry a book from 2001 he writes of what he calls humble humanism that bases universal rights on shared human capacities the capacities of empathy conscience and free will and on things that define the individual with autonomy and choice as a novelist Michael Ignatieff rights with economy and penetrating human insight and gripping immediacy his most recent novel is called Charlie Johnson into the flames it's about a journalist without illusions who swept up in the violence of war he is motivated by a sense of justice that only he can bring and he is destroyed as a public figure Michael Ignatieff has served on the independent international commission on Kosovo 1999 and 2000 he's been a member of parliament of Canada 2006 through 2011 he was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada between 2009 2011 he is a member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada he holds now a joint appointment at the Munk school of global affairs at the University of Toronto and the Kennedy School at Harvard University Michael Ignatieff it's an enormous pleasure to be here in the far off days when I was still an honest man I I got a PhD in history and it was a kind of wonderful to listen to historians again and hear what only historians can do which is to take take a text like The Prince and begin to understand all the human conditions the historical conditions in which it became possible and I will i hope having heard this from both of you such a fine description first of the renaissance context and then the sense of his afterlife the two of you have given me a place to talk about the role of Machiavelli and his relevance if you've ever done politics I thought that would be an interesting thing to do what is it about a book written in 1513 that seems so stinging ly relevant when you actually throw your hat into the political ring what is it about this book more than almost any other book that we teach that seems to give a politician lessons he can't afford not to listen to I'm going to surprise you by not talking about exactly the famous chapters about dissembling about appearing about lying all of all the standard areas in which Machiavelli appears to have such shocking relevance to contemporary politics I'm going to talk about one word in Machiavelli and that's Fortuna because I have to say when I was in politics it was the first time I understood exactly what he meant by Fortuna Fortuna in Machiavelli and professor Muir would do a better job telling you where Fortuna comes from and the language of the Renaissance but for me Fortuna is fortune chance contingency luck fate and until you actually been in electoral politics you don't really know what those words mean and that I think will be my theme which is that one of the things that makes Machiavelli enduringly relevant is his very unique grasp of time as a factor in politics and that's really what I want to talk about one of the places one of the most famous remarks about time and politics was made by British prime minister you probably know this one but it's one of my favorite stories about politics they asked Harold Macmillan who was a British prime minister between 1959 in the early 60s what was the toughest thing about being a prime minister and Harold Macmillan looked at the questioner for a while and said events my boy Aventis this is a deeply wise remark one that Machiavelli would have understood immediately time is the medium in which politicians work and political judgment is a sense of timing the unique and specific genius of a great politician is a sense of and the time is ripe and when the time is not ripe when an idea time has come and when an ideas time has gone and of all the theorists of politics I think Machiavelli is the one who understands that most deeply and this deep understanding of time comes through famously in chapter 25 you took us through 17 18 19 and 20 and I my heart was in my mouth I thought I thought professor Muir was going to do chapter 25 and then I'd have nothing to say but in chapter 25 there's a wonderful long passage about Fortuna which many of you will know and I will read a little bit from it I compare her to one of those torrential rivers that when they get angry break their banks knocked down trees and buildings stripped the soil from one place and deposit it somewhere else everyone flees before them every one gives way in the face of their own rush nobody can resist them at any point but although they are so powerful this does not mean men when the waters recede cannot make repairs and build banks and barriers so you have this famous image of the Arno breaking its banks that fortune breaks is like a violent river an act of nature men plan men dispose men men and women build their habitations and fortune breaks through and breaks apart the the preventive structures the institutions that men create to master time and but notice there are two images at work here first of all Fortuna is like the Arno flood it's recurrent it's unavoidable and it's unpredictable like hurricane sandy but it's not Providence one of the ways to understand his understanding of time is that Fortuna is not Providence there is no guiding destiny here Fortuna is as unpredictable as a natural disaster but it's not guided by a benevolent or beneficent hand one of the reasons that Machiavelli is so shockingly modern is this sense of stuff happens unpredictable violent change occurs that's the world we're in the minute you read Machiavelli you're in our world the world of the unpredictable the unforeseeable the violent the unforeseen and that seems to me a tremendously powerful and modern aspect of Machiavelli but equally at the same time as this quotation shows men are not prisoners of fortune the whole burden of chapter 25 is to say yes stuff happens the unpredictable occurs catastrophes occur the arno overflows but men are not prisoners of this and they need not be resigned to their fate there's a very strong emphasis I think professor Muir made this point about the tremendous importance of will in Machiavelli will against Fortune will against fate will against chance will against contingency these are tremendously strong powerful and resonant themes in in Machiavelli Fortuna does not preach resignation there's not a line of resignation in Machiavelli's writing politicians in other words or people in charge of public affairs and Florence cannot predict the unpredictable they can't be sure when the arno is going to flow but they can put up dikes they can put up dams they can persuade their fellow citizens to take action to do what they can to Gate the impact of fortune the impact of fade they can't prevent the worse but they can channel the flood downstream mitigate harms and seek to control fortune to the degree that they can and the chapter ends with the notorious passage about fortune being a woman it's a violent passage it's an unattractive passage other passages in Machiavelli make it clear he had pretty formidable respect as it happens for women as political actors but the metaphor is there to say we'll human will in this case masculine will can control the unpredictable can react to fate do not have to submit to fate and contingency and chance with pious resignation and so that's a tremendously important element of his vision of what political life is about political life is reacting to chance to contingency to fate he lived it as the as our wonderful evocation of the context makes clear he's in power from what is it 1498 to 1512 and suddenly Tabo he's in jail he's being hung up he's being tortured and he's writing merely a year later after he's had what for any human being is the most shocking experience of contingency and misfortune but he builds it into his sense of politics one minute you're up one minute you're down one minute fortune is shining on you one miniature in a year in a jail cell begging for your life and hoping that your words won't betray others that is his sense of what political life is is like the radical meaningless even encounter with Fortuna but unlike what what what is very I find inspiring in a way about Machiavelli is that he the famous letter dove Vettori it's not a lament at his misfortune really it's not a repine at fate it's not a metaphysical inquiry into the mystery of time he simply says that's life that's how we live that's where we are and and that again it seems to me is a profoundly modern view and I think crucially a non tragic vision of time and a non tragic vision of political action you get a much sharper vision of the tragedy political action and a Max Weber z-- politics is vocation Machiavelli's a-- is a scathing portrait of human folly but equally it's as it's a very very deep portrait of human stubbornness persistence willingness to get back up on your feet after you have been dumped in the mud by the by the fate by the fates and by fortune it's a non tragic vision of time in which men are rarely the equal of their times but some men can be found to be the measure of their times most men are but some men step up that's I think his deep sense of why human life is not tragic some fools will fail but other few other men will be found equal to their moment he says at one point since fortune changes and men stubbornly continued to behave in the same way men flourish when their behavior suits the times and fail when they are out of step this what Professor beer was calling his kind of ruthless pragmatism I think his is a core of his attitude towards politics the sense that success and failure in politics depends on having some mysterious alignment between your will and your intention and the times you live in but you don't get to choose Machiavelli saying you don't get to choose and you must never assume you can shape your times more than you think you can deeply realistic not even pessimistic just this is where you are don't get ideas above your station don't think you can master your times because just when you think you've mastered your times someone will throw you in jail or you'll lose an election or whatever it is so these are elements in which I'm still enough of a historian to say this isn't Machiavelli's modernity he was writing for 1513 but when I read him having been through the experience of politics I see a deep resonance to to an aspects of politics which are infuriating and difficult when you do them you are not the master of fortune and if you think you are you will fail luck being aligned with your times is a crucial element of political success and failure and needless to say every political rascal who ever lived will blame his times and his lack of luck for his own immorality or lack of courage and Machiavelli is deeply aware of that particular ruse and exercise of exculpation and God knows as a politician I've done a bit of that but you can't hide from nicolò that's the great thing about that book you can you cannot hide from this cynical and it is cynical deeply realistic sense of what human beings are like and what political action is like let me move towards a conclusion other things that I pick up from Machiavelli that connect to this sense of Fortuna deep sense throughout the book that politics is local yes it is true he's writing in dialogue with Livy he's in dialogue with the ancients he has a strong desire to produce some propositional meanings about politics that will endure but if you look at the text of the prince it's constantly you know this is what's so torini got right this is what boards you got wrong it's you know it he could be talking about the senator of the united states it's all local it worked in Wyoming it will not work in Oklahoma it worked in Siena it was terrible in Florence that incredibly dense sense of context is an important lesson in itself about how to understand politics Machiavelli is saying don't over theorized here all politics is local the traditions the meanings that drive and move political action are contextual to cities contextual to Mantua can texture to Siena contexture to Luca contextual to Rome another thing that's so powerful in Machiavelli is politics is character outcomes that depend tremendously and what kind of person says our Borgia is what kind of person so dharini was what kind of person serve our honor the the friar was that in deep sense of the driving factor of character is important and politics as I said earlier is timing a sense in Machiavelli that you get everywhere that ideas are interesting yeah but a politician's job has nothing to do with ideas it has to decide whether an idea has come or whether an idea has gone whether the moment is right the sense of the mo the sense of the decisive moment if you if why Machiavelli is so inextinguishable as a source of political inspiration is this emphasis on the contextual the local the moment seizing the moment losing the moment being fortunes friend or being on the wrong side of fortune and finally a final point in our moment of in which it's conventional in American politics and Canadian politics to lament conflict to lament partisanship to lament enmity in politics Machiavelli says come now come boys and girls what what do you think this stuff is this is war by other means stop fooling yourself conflict is integral to political life it is the essence of political life and in relation to Republican virtue one of the most surprising and I think heartening ly important messages that you get from the discourse discourses is that one of the things that keeps republics free is a conflict between the elite and the nobles and the citizens it's that conflict that is the source of our freedom I mean one of the things that comes through so strongly in Machiavelli's you have to fight for your freedom republics can lose it republics can regain it but that conflict at the heart between elites privileged elites and the citizenry is the driver of Republican freedom and the and the minute you lose the desire to fight for your freedom you lose it and that it seems to me that vision in other words that politics is local it's the politics of the city it's the politics of personality the geniuses in politics are the people who have this mysterious gift to knowing where fortune is going and that gift is always that's another key point in in Machiavelli that gift of knowing where fortune is going is temporary you have it and then you lose it there's no such thing as permanence in permanent genius and politics what will work in one situation will not work in another and finally that sense that conflict is integral to political action and normatively is integral to the preservation of freedom these are aspects of Machiavelli's message which seem to me to be of extraordinarily powerful influence certainly on on us all and on our vision of politics thanks so much for listening thank you both very much we have time for some questions and I've been asked to say that you should hold your question until you're holding the microphone so yes question right here hi my question is for our second speaker I really appreciate your emphasis on Fortuna I think this is an integral part of Machiavelli's works both in the prints and the discourses on Livy but I think that the talk that you've given doesn't express the central concern Machiavelli has with Fortune specifically that fortune is a problem not because of the events politically that it causes it seems that through prudence when we are armed with prudence and with arms we can actually stem the tide of those political events the problem seems to be death fortunate in terms of death and illness that we cannot prevent when it is we're going to die given that we can't prevent those things I think perhaps we're a little bit misguided in saying that Machiavelli's picture of politics is one where we might have some hope in fact in both the discourses on Livy and in the prints it seems like given that politics is made up of men and men are subject to the whims of fortune there's no way we can overcome them that those political regimes no matter how well thought-out they are are ultimately going to die as well what do you think we can do with our understanding of Fortune with events and do you think there's something we can do with his picture of death based upon your talk with events that's a very powerful reading and it's very good to put the emphasis on death I mean it's very present in in in Machiavelli but I would I think you should ask yourself why would bother to write the prince and the discourses if he believed what you think he believes that is I think he wrote these books because he believed that prudence armed with certain kinds of knowledge might be able in certain cases to forestall what you rightly described as something he was worried about the inevitable decline in corruption of Republic's I didn't in the course of what I said talked about corruption but a key element of Machiavelli's sense of time is this sense of the inevitable corruption of virtue the corruption of the Republic this is an old theme a way to organize your understanding of time as to is the sense that all Republic's are threatened with corruption but I I come away with a I guess a more optimistic reading of Machiavelli God knows it's difficult to find consolation in his icy pages but a sense that that passage from chapter 25 you can't stop the river overflowing but you condemn the banks and that I think is is crucial to his sense of of being able to resist corruption resist decline the emphasis you use the right word prudence the use of prudence he writes these books because he wants to strengthen the arms of prudence I don't know whether that's right I mean the person who dies is Cesare Borgia that's the classic example you know he does everything right I mean he follows all the rules and he dies so he loses in that sense but I think Michael is exactly right you you don't write a book that has no utility that has no use for you or others and I think he's really thinking about a very a very practical set of things you can do short of that before we die let's see what we can do yes I had a question about one chapter that I don't think we've talked about yet which is the last chapter which has always struck me as the most wildly utopian chapter in the entire book that it's possible to do great deeds that all the people I've been praising in this book Moses Cyrus Theseus Romulus they're just men just like you you can do what they do and the fact that they face really horrible difficult situations well that just lets you display and then the one word we haven't talked about your vr-2 you have you can then perform these virtuoso acts so maybe we could talk a little bit about what vr-2 means for him because it seems like it's absolutely crucial to lots of what's going on the book I'm talking about a month well the the chapter 26 the chapter talking about was probably tacked on later so would have ANDed with fortune as a woman passage it was originally dedicated to Giuliano who dies bad fortune for him has to change the dedication to his to his other Medici Prince Lorenzo I said apparently at that time he adds that chapter and calls on Lorenzo to you drive out the barbarians this is basically it's a clarion call to to arms to liberated leap from foreign domination and it has a kind of yeah optimism about it but the opposite obviously throughout the prince the the force that you you have to deal with fortune is virtue or due to the fortune is a goddess so bite and also gendered Fortuna feminine so she is a woman she's a goddess and the opposite is mask and principle veer to that Machiavelli I think understands as not in the Christian to sense but in the sense of the attributes of a Roman warrior so that and that certainly fits with the passage we've been talking about the end of chapter 25 about the could the right metaphor the audacious young young man so their fear to which again we can understand a variety different ways at your own understanding of your own talents your capacity to act boldly correct courageously and with some degree of foresight so to be which you can is the only thing you've got to deal with this capricious fortune and it permeates the text so that there's really this this Machiavelli is always about twos everything's about twos and these are the two mechanisms of history vr-2 and Fortuna another question I have a question I think for professor Muir I've always been interested mainly because Aristotle gives the same kind of advice to the tyrant what it means when Machiavelli advises a prince to cultivate the appearances of for example mercy and I think this is in keeping with your thesis because it seems to me and this is really a question that when a political figure cultivates appearances they also have a kind of reality it can simply be words I suppose but what would it be to appear to be merciful except in some public way to be merciful at least in some particular acts and I'm not sure if I'm formulating my question quite sharply enough but I was just wondering what you take that notion of the polit the political leader appearing does it also not imply a kind of political reality it's a way of creating a reality I think the the way I would think about it and the way I teach it is to compare the prints on this on this set of passages with the cortege on Oh of the Castilian a the contemporary text which deals with how the courtiers of the Prince should behave in which there is clearly articulated codes of behavior at the core of which is this word as famous word that a caste Leone coins called spirits a Torah and another one dis involve Torah sprezzatura means panache not loss but this involved where is particularly interesting because this is it in order to be an effective person in public you have to behave in a certain way you have to behave it according to the accepted social norms of that community but decent volt Ora volt volt or is your face in volt or I would be looking behind your face so that would be introspective but decent Vil Torah is not being introspective in other words to go back to Machiavelli's passage that I read you most people see with our eyes and few feel with their hands you don't look behind your own mask to the point that that becomes who you are so that you you and in fact we think about social behavior for a few minutes and we all know that from childhood on we're trained not to express our emotions fully and directly all the time otherwise society would be in chaos and in some sense that's what's going on here that you have to maintain a certain kind of demeanor in order to be the prince and I think that's what's going so but by the late 16th century this this phenomenon becomes so widespread that there's treatises after treatises on and again a lovely oxymoron honest dissimulation how can you appear to be honestly appeared to be something that you're not and and that's exactly what's going on here it seems to be very back I um this is the first picker forgive me I don't know your name but you had mentioned his praise for Moses as being a founder and I recall that he just praised Moses for being a founder of his own power and such except I very confused by the fact that Moses of all the founders that he kind of looks up to you quite literally had the wrath of God I aside and if left to his own devices arguably would have been of Shepherd so I don't know if you could expand on right I guess the confusion I hold it's a good question I think I I wondered if the point was barbed which is to say that we would have that reaction when we think about Moses the reaction you described this as a man of God Machiavelli singles him out to be an example of someone who is a self-made man and it could be just a little way of saying this has nothing to do with higher powers this is resolutely secular it's part of this separation of the world of politics and humans from the divine world you had the right response I think that's what he wants us to say I would add that the other thing about Moses Moses is actually quoted in Machiavelli a lot all throughout his text Moses is all over the place and and he's quoted in the context usually most commonly in the context of as a lawgiver so these along with Solon and Lycurgus and it Machiavelli's interested in origins the beginnings of law and that's where he most often appears and the book by Sebastian de Grazia called Machiavellian hell is it about Machiavelli's reading of the Bible and it's quite interesting book he's he's a much more astute student of the Bible than we would think from those passages and the prince what else we have time for another question yes I guess working off of that a passage that's always been really intriguing to me is his discussion of weaponry and he brings up David and Saul's lending of the weapon of his armor to David and David struts around in the armor and it's just not the right fit perhaps it's not the right persona that he should have and so he has to arm himself and that's when he takes his little stones and that's the right one and he uses that as the metaphor for arming your own making sure that your your armies are armed themselves I think so I guess I was just sort of continuing on with to maybe connecting two questions and in the sense that you had talked about professor Mir this idea of creating a persona but not dissing vult aura that's but is there also a sense of self fashioning - I mean creating your own persona but just being subtle about it as well well I mean you know the the first goal is to do it in such a way that it doesn't appear like you're doing it that's what's pretzel Torah means literally it means doing something which is cultivated and unnatural and making it appear natural and that's a spectrum as you're suggesting here it's a spectrum what I'm suggesting is that you really do it well you lose a sense of you're performing for those of us of a certain age will remember the advertisements about Michael Jordan be like Mike and and and of course when Michael Jordan made a jump shot you know you it seemed miraculous it seemed like this was utterly unexplicable of course the man must have spent years shooting those practicing practicing practicing despite the talent that's spretz at aura and that's a point where to do it right like playing the piano really well you can't think about it you can't you you've got to have got it down to the point that there's no thought no recognition that this is a performance it just the body remembers and does it and I think that's what's being talked about is the goal here but you have to be capable of turning it off also that's just a deep when that when the time is necessary you need to flip it off to and now to require some knowledge that you're doing it yes that's right you have to be very very good one last question here toward the front seems a little more I guess relevant modern not the others weren't I suppose but I guess the the point that some power and authority are two separate concepts really intrigued me when you consider how Wall Street has been able to kind of create a power base without any actual political authority and I was wondering what you think Machiavelli's judgment would be of these men who have been able to amass such power despite the fact that in their amassing it seems to subvert the system that is thus giving them the power this just got handed to me I recall something I said at the end of my talk which was that one of the very startling aspects of Machiavelli's political sociology of Republic's is his awareness that inequalities of wealth are a source of corruption and a threat to the survival of republics that rich elites are habitually subversive of Democratic Liberty he has very startlingly disabused or disenchanted view of wealth and magnificence so that in the Machiavellian sociology of wealth there's no authority that comes with wealth by itself it's just another form of power yeah and that's a different view of wealth than you get in in in other sociologies of wealth and power in the same period I think that's what I would say I would not venture into Wall Street but I think that what you can take from Machiavelli is he isn't impressed you know that's important he's not he's not impressed by people who go to work in a helicopter or get eight figures at the end of a salary he sees this very coldly as a form of power power has separated from any kind of authority the authority that this I think was a strong point of what Professor Mir was saying Machiavelli thinks as a normative proposition the power comes from the people that's what he that he thinks that's where a thought excuse me that's where he thinks authority comes from to the degree that there's authority in Machiavelli's word world yeah his vision of the republic the authority is not with the money it's with the people and as I said what's very striking in his vision of politics as being and liberty is being driven by social conflict economic conflict constant conflict and and when the people stop fighting and opposing the power of the merely rich the Republic is threatened and that's that part of what Machiavelli said was a very strong influence on the American Republican tradition right through Madison the Federalists and all this stuff they they know what he's talking about Jefferson knew what he was talking about let me invite you to join us for a reception outside immediately following this and join me in thanking our guests tonight

Channel: Boston University

Views: 12,535

Rating: 4.8333335 out of 5

Keywords: Michael Ignatieff, James Johnson, Edward Muir, History, History Department, Lectures

Id: u-eqXDUO2mU

Length: 85min 45sec (5145 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 11 2013