Unintentional ASMR - Maurizio Viroli (Italian Accent) - Interview Excerpts - Book About Machiavelli

when someone says that the politician is machiavellian what they mean to say is that the person in question has very low moral standards that the person is not reliable that he is cunning like a fox astute that you cannot trust him that that is what they mean when they say that the politician is machiavellian it came from the mid of the 16th century in within the context of the counter-reformation then at that time the jesuits began to use the word machiavellian in the sense that i have described meaning someone unreliable someone who always wears a mask someone who is ready to deceive who is always keen always ready and prepared to put his interest before any other moral consideration niccolo machiavelli was the opposite of a machiavellian precisely the opposite machiavellians are calculators nikola was passionate machiavellians always try to adapt themselves to the circumstances machiavelli fought many battles against the conventional political culture of his time machiavellians normally win nicola was a loser machiavellians always fight for what they think they can get nicola always fought for grand ideas he was precisely the opposite because nicola machiavelli's works have been read over the centuries by scholars who were not tapped to understand did not want to make the effort to understand what nicola was saying either because they were prejudiced or because they were too at it all for one reason and the other he was born in 1469 in florence he died in 1527 you i'm very bad with numbers about 58 i think yeah no yeah 59 i guess but i'm very bad with numbers so it should be 31 plus 27 58 yes even though in one of his last letters he say now that i am 60 it was not true he was only 58. he was also very bad with numbers he was born in florence yes and the family was coming from the southern part of tuscany he was the son of a lawyer his father was a lawyer unsuccessful which is very rare poor which is even more difficult because in florence lawyers then and even today are normally very wealthy so niccolo did not belong to the inner circle of the florentine elite he was called he had the chance to study in new latin rhetoric ancient history modern history grammar he knew how to write and it shows but he had he did not belong to the important families for him was impossible even to be elected or appointed to important positions in the government because according to the statutes of florence in order to be appointed to the highest positions you you had to belong to a family that had already had someone covering high posts in the government that's important because maheli was close to power but never within the circle of power i come from romania he's a bit north of florence romania is the area of ravenna rimini for lee if you have seen the fellini's movie i'm record that's where i come from i i had completed my phd thesis at the european university in florence i was like many other people at the time jobless unemployed i had no chances to get into an italian university 1980 1985 you're talking a friend of mine a friend of mine was here at the institute for advanced study in princeton she said maurizio they are looking for an assistant professor in political theory and i responded to that and do you think that in princeton they need someone from fairly in romania from italy to cover a position in political theaters it costs you nothing to try i applied i sent my vita my dissertation that i composed then in french but was in part translated into english by cambridge university press and they should never forget the fact that they got a position at princeton university without even knowing the names of the people in in the committee one day i must tell the names of these people because they are an example of you should conduct this kind of activities if you want to keep a university great it's a normal application as you know there were about 250 applicants they selected three i was what they call the shortlist then they summoned me i got a phone call late in the night from professor amy gottman who is now the director of the center for human values in princeton she said we would like to interview you and i asked back but i have to fly and she said no problem so i flew over i spent three days i gave my talk i met everyone in the department strange feeling very completely different world then i came back and after two months i got the phone call saying we would like to offer you a position as an assistant professor in politics that's that is as simple as that at princeton since 1987 political theory it's a long it's an old and deep love for nicola mckee i started writing on nicola machiavelli in 1980 in 1989. i have written a number of essays and the book on nicola machiale's political thought then while i was writing the book on nicola machiavelli's political thought i discovered that perhaps niccolo the person his life his passions his ideals was more interesting than the thinker and what was interesting about nicole his wisdom of life the wisdom with which he conducted his life the wisdom with which he tried to make sense of his own experience and of human experience in general meaning how to deal with despair hopelessness defeat in gratitude but also with love friendship the various dimensions of life i have discovered if i'm right that nikola conducted his life he dealt with all the issues that i've mentioned with all the aspects of human experience that i have mentioned with a remarkable depth and intelligence wisdom that wisdom was so to speak summarized by his smile his way of smiling at life at himself and who knows perhaps even smiling at god it's tito santi santi di tito is his correct name he painted the portrait after machiavelli's death so he did not see machiavelli that's how he imagined nicola mchale to be on the basis of existing sketches or statues there is a marble sorry wooden bust of nicola machiavelli in palazzo vecchio where of course i always go to pay my tribute in the pilgrimage palazzo vecchio is the palace in which the great council of the republic of florence used to meet his impiazza del signoria is the center of the republican power of the republic of florence in fact when machiavelli tried to persuade the medici in 1521 to restore republican institutions in florence the manner in which he said that was rio riyaprita lasalla reopened the main hall in palazzovec is the symbol of florence self-government the medici is the medici where the most powerful family in florence they were bankers silk traders they had only machiavelli's lifetime two popes imagine a family that can produce two popes he's much more than producing two presidents of the united states like the bush family they are they were extremely wealthy and thanks to their wealth they were able to offer favors lending money helping people in various ways to set up their business or help them to find the solution for legal problems in this way they beca they became extremely powerful they had a large network of partisans supporters so in fact they were practically the rulers of florence the masters of florence particularly between 1434 and 1464 under the leadership of cosimo de medici then the medici were expelled from florence in 1494. when republican government was instituted they returned in power in 1512 with the help of spanish armies and they were so to speak the enemies of the republic florence lead its own political life in terms of oscillation between republican governments more or less aristocratic and the regime of the medic well you have to consider that you had northern part of italy you had the dukedom of milan that was under it was a dukedom then east you had the republic of florence of venice sorry that a very powerful very wealthy very aristocratic south you had small principalities in bologna urbino you had the republic of genoa and then south you had the republic of florence florence was not just the city republic florence also controlled a large countryside to be republic means to be as the as the jurists used to say to be cb princips which means you are you are your own prince or you are prince unto yourself and you do not recognize superior powers that is the meaning of being a republic means that there are you do not recognize political powers it's difficult to give figures i know for florence at the time of machiavelli florence must have been around 60 000 people yes relatively small population interestingly uh as you have perhaps noticed the correspondence and the friends of machiavelli use that kind of language more than nicola himself let me give you an example he one of the best friends of niccolo machiavelli was francesco vettori they had more or less the same age with the difference that i'm giving you a little background that francesco vettori was powerful and successful nicola machiavelli was powerless and unsuccessful nonetheless they remained friends when vittori was the ambassador of florence in rome in the at the papal court vettori wrote his friendly color who was at the time in florence a letter in which the story says i'm so bored by life here that i must necessarily think about something pleasant and i know nothing that is more pleasant than you know what i mean or the thought of interesting nicola responds back with the letter in which he speaks of the enchanting sweetness of love someone is using a friend who uses that language f and so on nicole responds with a poem on the beauty and sweetness of the passion of love nonetheless nicola himself was famous in florence for the stories he used to tell and i'm sure that he was pretty good at using the same language you asked why because they were florentine in florence there is the air the atmosphere itself is irreverent they are colorful there are various ways of expressing a concept that they always prefer the most colorful and the most colorful is exactly the language that i have described because i think most biographers well they thought that perhaps was a bit damaging to show how they were speaking i think that in fact there is nothing wrong in showing contemporary readers how 16th century florentine were speaking and it's always also funny because i must say that you can use colorful words without being vulgar and you can be vulgar without using colorful words when you use words that like the ones we are alluding to you must be very good because then it takes a special intelligence sensitivity you have to use them with in the right moment in the right context and you can see that there are letters in which if you replace the colorful words with ordinary words the letter or the expression would lose its brightness its intensity remember that nicola machiavelli and many other many friends of him they were belonging to popular classes to the people that's where the way that was the way in which they spoke i think that nicola liked to make fun of himself he liked to exaggerate not his virtues his vices and in this case what he's doing is to respond we are referring to the famous letter in which he narrates the misadventure he had with an old prostitute very old very ugly prostitute in verona that's what your mention well you have to consider that machiavelli in that letter is responding to a letter of a friend of him luigi guichardini luigi wichitini we can guess from nicolas answer must have written him a letter of that song you know nicola last night i met a gorgeous woman so charming and we did this and that and he must have gone forever and he must certainly have ended the letter luigi by saying i can't wait to see her again niccolo what does he do he turns upside down the letter of uh which he says i instead i've met the most ugly woman on earth i had the most horrible sexual experience i ever had and i i'm sure that for a long time i will not see her again and for sure i will not even look for other similar experiences it's the opposite of what luigi guichardini was glorifying himself nikola debases himself to have fun machiavelli was we have only one letter from his wife marietta we have letters of friends that speak of his wife we have two letters from his younger son guido in which guido speaks of the mother what we can derive from this little evidences is that marietta corsini was very fond of nicola she missed him badly if i remember correctly he must have married her soon after the death of the father i guess 1501 15. well um we don't know marietta but nicola at the time must have been around 31 32. they both belonged to families that florentine families of the same social ranking machiavelli could not have married nicola machiavelli could not have married a woman of the nobility and marietta corsini could not have married the prominent aristocrat as you know at the time marriages were a political and economic affair was essential for a rich father to marry their daughters well to someone at least as powerful or as wealthy so it's not surprising that was nicola must have thought about getting married after the death of his father because i'm sure nicole disliked loneliness and solitude and and he wanted to be surrounded by a family they had seven children he was affectionate nicola you can see that because marietta says when you are here we feel safe it's better when you're not with us i'm sad i'm disconcerted and she was angry at him because he was spending so much time abroad for diplomatic missions nicola was also a good father a wonderful father when he say wonderful father i mean a father who was not imposing not authoritarian he was too poor and too powerless to be authoritarian but we have a one we have two letters from nicola machiavelli to his son guido that are really spectacular the best i think of the entire collection of nikolas personal letters you can see that nikola was teaching his son how to be a good person how to try to attain great things by working by studying and the way in which he teaches is tender he's affectionate it doesn't say you must he says if you do that if you believe in yourself you will attain in life probably great things more than i've done and it tells guido he teaches his son with a wonderful story about weak creatures the story of the little mule widow says well we have here in the farm a mule that has become crazy mad and what you normally do with crazy muse is to kill them or to tie them up nicola says to the son don't do that let him free bring him somewhere where he can be free freedom will probably help the little animal to regain his sanity it's a wonderful story wonderful story having said all that i must immediately emphasize machiavelli was not a loyal husband not at all he loved marieta corsini was not the greatest love of his life he was too fascinated by women's beauty and he pursued it with great devotion some success if we judge from the records that we have until he was quite old for his time till he was 54 his last love that we know the most dramatic he fell in love with a younger woman very attractive miss barbara or bartera an opera singer and niccolo sadly remarks that if you fall in love with a woman who is very attractive but much younger than you it's likely that you suffer because as he wrote in a nice poem little poem so much beauty deserves a much younger person with women what i found extraordinary is that the common opinion sustained by important scholars that nikola was a macho is completely absurd completely i've seen i've shown in the book that in important occasions it treats women as equals that's not the behavior of a matter he says that he has found in women more tenderness more gratitude deeper compassion and friendship more lasting friendship than in men he says that women are better than men even in governing kingdoms and what impressed me in reading this side of nicolas life is that he felt for women a kind he felt he was similar to women in one sense that like women in 16th century florentine society he was not part of the privileged circle and all the stories i have i've rediscovered about his law of affairs they show us in machiavelli that who is a poet has a poetic abandonment about love the record speaks we one woman who was waiting for him nearby ponte legrazi certainly one when he was in france jean or john then the best the most lasting story with lucrezia the curly curtis then probably the wife of ilfornacia then for sure barbara and and how many others i asked myself the same question i think that was difficult for her to know but i cannot answer the question that i think is even more difficult namely had she known what was would have been what would have been a reaction oh precisely in a catholic country is the right country where you can have affairs because there is a double morality because there is the pope and remember that popes at time were the most liberty creatures on earth read the letter in which the story speaks describes retori was in rome with the ambassador to the paper court he describes how he spends his evenings and he says around eight o'clock some women come to spend the evening with us only to chat he says because i'm too old too much else they are coming from the court of the pope they've completed their day of service and now they stopped by graciously the friars they were famous for being libertines consider the story that machiavelli puts in the mouth of a character in one of his comments clitzia there is a woman speaking of another woman and she says well she wanted to be pregnant they told her that if she goes for 40 days in a row to take the first mess in the morning in the fryer in the friends in the company the monastery she will certainly get the miracle of getting pregnant and the other woman said it would be a miracle if she did not get pregnant by after going for 40 days to take mass catholic countries are countries in which transgression is much easier much easier certainly nikola had no moral anxieties about his devotion to women's beauty and consider one last aspect that flanas was catholic but also it was this vein of paganism that is to say mentality focused on the pursuit of beauty pleasure transgression it is certainly read it is discussed it is translated there are new translations coming out every year why i think because in that text nicola machiavelli tells us or reveals to us some important truths about political life truths that surpass that go beyond his own time his own the intellectual context of his of course in the prince machiavelli meant to teach something to the political leaders of his own time but certainly he wanted to teach something important about politics to possible future princes interested in becoming great princes is one thing i want to make clear niccolo never taught never intended to teach princess real or possible present or future princess how to gain power he wanted to teach them how to do great things in politics such as redeeming a country liberating the people restoring political life emancipating a republic from corruption kelly was not a teacher of ordinary law mediocre mean miserable politics he was a teacher of grand politics that is i think is the lasting beauty of that text it's a difficult question i know that in my courses i teach of course in political theory i never comment about the united states because i'm a resident alien and i think it is indelicate for me to comment about the life of a country to which i cannot contribute since i'm not an american citizen but i can certainly answer your questions by saying that if uh you mean to know what the meaning of your question is you think there are politicians that are machiavellian the answer is easy there is plenty of politicians who are simulators people whom you cannot trust people who are always prepared to seek their own advantage all the advantage of their faction and to put the interest of their group above the common interest of the republic there are plenty of them but if you ask me have you ever seen in america or do you know off from american history political leaders whom machiavelli would have admired would have said he is a great politician then the answer is yes machiavelli loved founders and redeemers those who have founded new states or those who have redeemed republics from corruption from slavery from oppression you had plenty machiavelli like leaders were capable inspiring of touching people's passions of generating a culture of sustaining hope you had politicians like that you had people like roosevelt you had people like lincoln you had people like martin luther king these were certainly politicians that machiavelli would have enjoyed to meet and i'm sure that they would have enjoyed the company of nicola slim reasonably tall but slim i i it's a guess because we have yes we have a letter of his wife in which his wife describes him the baby that she just she had just had and she say he looks like you so we know that he had dark eyes that he was slim and also because he was slim he survived the torture in when he was tortured in 1513 when he was accused of a conspiracy against the medic he was tortured and the torture was the torture of the rope people were hanged to the ceiling uh tied to their back right and then they let the rope and they were and that was the torture and he survived because he was slim because they found a note the prosecutors of the medici regime they discovered a note in the pocket of one of the conspirators that they captured and there was a list of names 18 names and one of the names was the name on the name of nicola machiavelli so the prosecutors prosecutors were people loyal to the medic he implied that nicola machiavelli was part of the conspiracy so they seized him they put him in jail and they tortured him in order to obtain the confession because the legal system at the time was based on the confession was not a based on evidence from january is easy through march 10. he was 15 13. he was liberated thanks to the amnesty because a member of the medici family became pope with the name of leo tenth so there was great there were great festivities in florence and they and of course the election of the medici pope meant that the regime of the media in florence who felt to be much safer therefore it could afford that's a new that's a question that's uh on which that with tons of ink has been have been used in order to try to answer some scholars maintain that he will had the religiosity of his own not catholic he disliked the roman church he despised christianity the ethos of christianity he writes in the discourses on levy his major work he says that christianity has the great responsibility of having made the world weak because chris christian religion teaches human beings to be humble to suffer that there is dignity and suffering that their sufferings will be rewarded in the afterlife i don't think nikola was religious in as a christian or as a catholic did he entertain a christian or religious hope for salvation my answer is that he didn't in fact if there is one figure one name that is remarkably absent from his works and from his that is jesus can you be a christian without taking jesus the figure of jesus the redeemer the savior seriously i think that um he never became religious not even in his last years and the here i enter in a very difficult terrain because there are scholars who have claimed that nikola in at the end of his life had a moral and religious crisis he became religious i think on the content on the country that certainly until 1521 it is to say six years before his death he showed no sign of religious conversion we have evidences that he was still nicola the irreverent the anti-christian and the evidence is a letter from a man who knew nicola very well the intelligent astute cold powerful guitardini francesco richardini one of the greatest italian political thinkers of the time and guichardini says now that you are in karpi he was involved in a strange mission in a monastery having to do with monks all day which are dean says be careful not to become devout because you are dealing every day with monks because since you have lived all your life as a non-religious person if you now become if you now convert yourself and you become a devout people will say that your conversion is not the result of the fact that you're good is the result of your senility people will think that you have turned denial and what you did in carpi to the monks shows that he was not very keen to become religious in fact he spent most of his time plotting jokes against the monks hilarious jokes pranks then we have the story of nicolas dream friends it's it's a story there are some evidences but not compelling evidences that on his deathbed machiavelli described the dream that he had and in the moral of the dream was that machiavelli openly said to his friends that when he said when i die i don't want to go to paradise i want to go to hell because it's much more interesting a place and in hell i can talk to the great people of antiquity the people he loved my last remark on your question was irreligious is the following i think nicolas did not believe in god though he spoke a lot about god from a political point of view because nicolas did not need god in order to attain a kind of transcendence infinity for him great pages thinking about grand political ideas composing books that would last was his way of attaining glory and glory means that you survive time he didn't need god teaching at princeton has been for me a spectacular experience spectacular experience what students and i teach large courses courses like political theory this year i have about 300 students what do they say about machiavelli some of them say no professor viral you are wrong you know that american students they do not hesitate to question the professor which would be scandal by italian standards some say no professor viroli machiavelli is a teacher of evil he is immoral but others say nikola deserves admiration because he was courageous he said what the other political theorists did not want to say about politics he hasn't covered to us uh the real meaning of political election both the greatness of politics and the horrors of politics in any case machiavelli has showed us the ambivalent the ambivalent greatness of politics in bad terms and good terms so i get as you would say mixed comments from the students nicola machiavelli served as a secretary of the republic of florence from 1498 through november 1512 that is about 15 years then he was dismissed when a new regime replaced the regime controlled by the family of the medici replaced the republic for which machiavelli was working machiali never had direct political power he was an advisor his job was to say go to france or to rome and meet the king of france or meet the pope and report back in writing so when people say machiali was a politician it's not correct he was he could not make a single decision other other leaders other committees were deciding on the basis of his letters but he had no political power whatsoever then from 1512 until very late until 1525 he was in disgrace he had no relevant political positions he was penniless in order to make money while he was leaving out of his possessions he had some land south of florence in santandria in percussina some land so he had wood the products of the head chicken he was he says in the letter in the evening when i sit with my family with the little that we can afford all his letters to his family our letters that end with the recommendation try to spend as little as possible yeah i have i live with a companion in italy no i do not have children on my own i spend a lot of time in italy because i'm involved in some kind of civic activities because i think that the duty of the scholar is not simply a scholar who studies political theory is not simply to write books and to teach but also to be active by being active i mean taking position on political and moral issues my case on political and moral issues in italy speaking up trying to criticize i don't belong to a party i belong to a cultural association that dates back to the old days of the resortment is a secular liberal association small prestigious not powerful what do we do our goal has always been to try to keep alive a civic culture by civic culture i mean a culture or a mode of life based on the idea that to be a citizen does not simply mean to have rights but also to have duties responsibilities doesn't simply to be a citizen does not simply mean that they owe something to you it also means that if you want to remain free if you want to live in a decent society you have to be prepared to give something give your intelligence your time your strength your courage and in order to do that i go to literally i write for a newspaper i'm a columnist la stampa of turin i don't know a columnist and i i too was a member of the communist party he says that's a funny story i think or another time i might reveal it the mayor of ravenna was my great friend pierre paolo de torre he was a few years older than me he died some years ago he was a brilliant historian and at a certain time in his life he decided to become the mayor of his own city ravenna on the adriatic coast and for me pier paolo de torre remains the example of a person who entered in politics in order to do some good to his own city to his own people to build a city that is beautiful because it is just that is pleasant because it's dignified and it is dignified because it's a city that takes care above all of those who are weak pure paolo in my mind my judgment is the best example of what a democratic politician should be thank you

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Keywords: unintentional, asmr, interview, soft, spoken, relaxing, voice, machiavelli, niccolo, cspan, italian, accent, maurizio, viroli, relax, sound, sounds, audio, excerpts, sleep, reel, about, book, smile, biography, softly, speaking, cadence, foreign, italy, european, europe

Id: pEviteC4jaM

Length: 53min 4sec (3184 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 18 2020