Machiavelli

Machiavelli's The Prince is one of the most important turning points in the history of Western political philosophy. It was written while Machiavelli himself was retired from active political life in 1532 and before that he had worked for the Medici family in Florence and was one of the great dark characters in the history of Western thought in some ways he is like Darth Vader of philosophy represents everything that is evil and impious in some respect the spiritual antipode of someone like Marcus Aurelius Machiavelli is a very secular type of this world thinker, he is the type of person that Plato warned us about, the type of man who consciously He only seeks the gratification of his desire for political power, a man who turns cruelty and betrayal into matters of principle and that is what makes him so good at them.

Isn't he treacherous or lying or unfaithful or ruthless from time to time? It's like this all the time. He has turned it into a system. In that sense, Machiavelli's writings, which are not limited to the prince, he also wrote several. historical works a work called the speech on livy studied a lot of roman history the works of

machiavelli

our kind of manual on how to be evil particularly how to be politically treacherous how to gain power for

machiavelli

an the supreme good for human beings is the achievement of political objectives power and he is not particular about means, whatever works, works, he is among the most practical of men.

His idea of ​​an excellent politician is someone like César Borgia. Caesar's boys are mentioned many times in The Prince and if you know what Caesar the traveler was like. He has a pretty interesting career. His father is Pope Alexander Vi. We won't discuss how that could be the case, of course, but he is the illegitimate son of Alexander Vi. His sister is Lucrezia Borgia. A very unpleasant woman who spends a good part of her time poisoning. to his friends and political rivals and uh, César Borgia was the kind of person who didn't let mere family ties get in the way of political power.

His older brother was the one who was destined or chosen by Father Alexander VI to obtain the political majority. acting and apprehending a boy who didn't like that so he killed his older brother conspired against him and killed him Machiavelli thinks it's wonderful Machiavelli says it warms his heart makes him feel like finally someone sees through the lies and the illusions and pretensions of conventional morality for Machiavelli we live in the jungle we live in a totally amoral universe independent of the scriptures independent of revealed religion independent of the will of God there is only the will of man in that sense Machiavelli is an innovative political philosophy No matter how evil or pernicious its teachings are, we ignore it at our own peril and whether we like it or not, there is a dark, brilliant shine to it like black diamonds.

You look at him and realize that, as horrifying as his conclusions are, there is a certain grim truth to what he says and we may not accept it in its entirety, but whether we like it or not, the world of politics is not an ugly, profane and immoral place, at least to a large extent, and those of us who wish to be practical politicians will find it very difficult to keep our hands completely clean. Machiavelli wishes to free us from what he considers childish and insipid feelings of guilt about political morality. There are no rules in politics in the same way and for the same reason there are no rules in nature.

With Machiavelli we have one of the great reformulations of a political theme introduced in Western political thought in the first book of the republic if you remember the lectures of professor rakuti the last time when he spoke about the republic in the first book of the republic socrates the main antagonist is a man called Thrasymachus, he is a sophist Anthrosimicus maintains that justice is the advantage of the strongest, in other words, whoever has the most strength, the greatest military power sets the rules and justice is what they tell you to do, when Nazis win, whatever they tell you to do.

It's only if the Stalinists win, everything they tell you, it's only if Machiavelli wins or the Borgias win, it doesn't matter as long as they have the power to coerce you, everything they tell you, the vision is so simian, then justice is a simple matter of coercion and there is no moral order in the world now this point of view is deeply criticized and at least apparently refuted in the first book of the republic but like all profound ideas its resonance is always, at least implicitly, in the Western political tradition and Machiavelli regains the nerve to say that there is no moral order in the world, he is the first man to reaffirm what Tracemic said in the first book of the Republic that we live peculiarly and exclusively here in the kingdom of nature that there is no metaphysical kingdom for which to judge the good and evil of human actions there is only power force brutality you adapt to it or you succumb to it those are your choices Machiavelli wants to teach us how to become tyrannical men and if you stop and think about the first book of the republic I think you will recognize that Thrasymachus has a tyrannical soul the soul is driven entirely by passion that thinks reason is something it is an afterthought to the weak who want to make up stories about why we should be good instead of bad Machiavelli and Thrasymachus both wish free us from metaphysics and morality, both say that in this world of flow of darkness, betray and stab in the back, the only way to get ahead, the only way to achieve human happiness, human happiness, human goodness It's catching them before they catch you.

Donald Trump recently wrote a book. Called the art of the deal, you could say that Machiavelli's book is the art of betrayal. He not only explains how to be treacherous, he gives you examples, he takes them from history, he takes them from contemporary politics as well, but in each case he shows that crime is not It only pays but that kindness is a waste of time and kindness will ultimately be your undoing in some respects. Machiavelli's project is like that of Frederick Nietzsche. It will be a reevaluation of all the values ​​that the Christian and the Platonic vision will endure. of the rectitude of political morality in reverse all the things that we previously thought were good turn out to be bad all the things that we previously thought were bad turn out to be good or else good pleasant useful useful practices Machiavelli has written several works, the prince, which is his most famous work, it is a remarkably short work, usually when a great philosopher has some important message to give, he cannot control his pain and if you look at, for example, the theology of Aquinas, he goes on and on and on.

It's endless Machiavelli has not written that kind of book It's a 90-page book inside and out It's meant to be a practical manual for the tyrant Machiavelli's book The Prince was Joseph Stalin's favorite work He had it on his nightstand and It's not hard to see why he shows you how to be a good tyrant, a good in the sense of effective good in the practical sense, not a good in the sense of morally good, because that's only for old ladies and children, no one believes seriously into those things now. This may sound like a very cynical set of ideas, in fact it is, but although it is very cynical, there is a practical element that is true, whether you like it or not, if you are completely good, completely virtuous, I'm not sure you will. .

To be a completely effective and efficient politician, I don't know if I want the president to be as kind, thoughtful and philosophical as Marco Aurelio. Maybe this would harm us as much as it would benefit us. On the other hand, I am sure that I don't want the president to be like the prince. of Machiavelli because it is certain that this will harm us instead of benefiting us before we seclude ourselves and write this book. Machiavelli had worked for the Medici family in Florence, who were influential figures in Florentine and therefore, Italian politics and although he had been serving them, aiding and advising them on political matters, the Medici had been expelled from Florence, they had been expelled and with them goes Machiavelli, he retires now there is a clear feeling here that here is a man who is very intelligent, very brilliant but tremendously frustrated, he gives you that feeling when you read the book of being a god field marshal the Monday morning, how he wants to return to practical politics, he hates being among the moldy books in the library, doesn't he.

It is interesting to him that what he mainly wants is to run people's lives, what he mainly wants is political power and after obtaining political power, what he wants is more political power because you can never have enough, as Socrates pointed out about the tyrannical man, this is a Thirst that can never be quenched, no matter how much satisfaction you get from these desires, nothing is ever enough. You are like someone who can't eat enough or can't drink enough, no matter how much you eat. It is never satisfying so here is one of the great dissatisfied individuals and he is even more dissatisfied because he is forced to be an armchair field marshal and no one is more practical than Nicola Machiavelli dedicates his book to a member of the Medici family and is one of the most flowery and flattering and adoring introductions one could imagine and of course no less cynical than the rest of the book, the book itself tells the wise prince, the monarch, the would-be tyrant, that he must have Be very careful to avoid flatterers because flatterers are dangerous men.

His noble highness, a smart guy like the Medici for whom Machiavelli is writing the book, will read the introduction, but then he'll ask himself: Do I want this guy on my side or do I want him on someone else's side? This is something very difficult to achieve. Consider a difficult concern for a royal prince. Look at the examples we have in Machiavelli. The prince gives examples of how to take over the countries in which he is born, for example, if his father is the king and his father is the king. dies, how the succession is taken there very easily, people will accept it, you will not have any problem with them and when you try to establish your government as a new ruler in this legitimate government, the best thing you can do is create fear because you can count on fear Machiavelli says that it would be very good if they could love you.

The fact that your people love you and your subjects is something very useful for the ruler and Machiavelli says that it is not that love is intrinsically good but that love is useful and practical and Yes. You love them, they are less likely to give you a problem, so you should cultivate love now. It's good to have love, but fear is the kind of thing Machiavelli really understands. He likes fear because fear is one of those things. you can count on it and if, as Machiavelli points out, you are forced to choose between people loving you or being feared, make sure they fear you because you can count on the love of people who are afraid, you will never be sure enough that. but you can count on fear, so it is important to be feared, the best option is to be loved, the only thing that the prince must avoid according to Machiavelli, the prince cannot afford to be hated, when people hate you, they will come and They will catch you in a way. or another will dethrone you and the whole name of this game is to seize power and control power and make it yours and then absorb more power.

There is a part where it says well, it is good if you can inherit a kingdom from your father, if your father has to be the king, but very few of us are lucky enough to have that circumstance, now you must remember that in your head the Machiavelli's father was the Pope, which is a very useful circumstance, the only problem is you. You cannot reach the papacy by hereditary succession, so we have a kind of difficulty, yes, they have been careful with that, well, Machiavelli says that if you do not have to be born on the throne if you do not obtain the royal title. purple by birth there is always usurpation, which is one of his favorite activities.

He really likes usurpation, so the idea of ​​getting closer to the throne of slowly entering the court and telling, of course, the king or the prince or the rightful ruler. how much you admire him and how highly you think of him and how important it is to constantly follow Machiavellian policies the more important you become indispensable the more you can stab him in the back and take control of the government yourself Machiavellian morality The universe is the moral universe of the wolf of the predatory animal Machiavelli and his political philosophy has a frightening shine through it due to the fact that it is consistent with much of what we see in political life on a daily basis;

The drawback of this conception of Political Philosophy and Contempt and the conception of an amoral universe is that it makes people stop being social animals and stop to think about what the Machiavellian wants us to do. He wants us to constantly betray others both above us in the political structure and below us in the political structure. political structure to satisfy our own lust for power, a lust that is never satisfied and that only grows larger and larger as its objects become larger and larger, that is one of the reasons why Machiavelli is so fond of Roman history that Roman history is full of creatures like this Machiavelli thinks they are wonderful, he thinks that theItaly of the 16th century, the Italy of the 16th century, is a weak, prostrate Italy, divided into small fragmented and warring cliques that prevent true political glory from emerging.

The reason he likes a horrible figure like Caesar Borgia is that Caesar Borgia is the man of virtue virtu virtue is the exact opposite of Platonic virtue it is much more like virtue Trasamakia is the virtue of the man who tells lies that stabbing agent in the back who does whatever it takes to satisfy his insatiable desire for power then what we need is a man of year two and this book is designed to create twist two the problem is that this spectator ii is the virtue of the predatory animal not of the rational human being or is it the rational human being to the extent that that rationality is completely subjugated or subordinated to one's own irrational desires and if you stop and look back at what the soul of the tyrannical man in the republic must have been like, you will realize Realize that the desiring part is really driving the rational part.

The rational part of the soul is just an instrument in the hands of its desire for power or sex or money or whatever. Machiavelli takes that same conception of the soul. Desire is first my desire. of power determines all my other activities and my rationality is subordinate to that, so Machiavelli wants us to have that kind of twist too, the virtue of the leopard, the innocent killing of the falcon, the falcon doesn't feel bad about killing sparrows, so They are the hawks. the way of nature is the way of cruelty we must learn to live with it or die with it if you get it if you get your way through Machiavelli excuse me now let's go back to the problem of italy italy is fragmented italy is divided italy is in a historically horrible set of circumstances and Machiavelli is sounding a wake-up call to break with the old ecclesiastical borrowings, the old scriptural conceptions of virtue, the old Greco-Roman conceptions of morality, what Machiavelli wants is a good practical politician who conspires and lie his way to it and once he reaches the top of a particular Italian city-state, he will attack one city-state after another and unify Italy and create something like a new Roman empire.

There may be new glory, a new worldly satisfaction of human potential. greatness remember that Machiavelli is completely opposed to all metaphysical interpretations of the world Machiavelli does not believe in heaven and hell Machiavelli does not believe in God Machiavelli does not believe in the kingdom of forms that everyone believes Machiavelli is here and now the main opportunity How are we going to get what we want now? And Machiavelli's conception of the virtue of the blessed human condition of the well-organized human soul and the practically governed political society come together in this figure of the ruthless tyrannical prince.

Now this tyrannical prince will get what we want right now. I know, as Machiavelli says, like a lion and a fox when faced with dangers or military threats that are direct and obvious, a lion can resist the direct coercive force of any other person because he is a military man. Machiavelli likes blood and blood is a very military guy friend, he really likes military solutions but in addition to that being a lion is not enough besides that it is also necessary to be a fox what we mean by being a fox is that you have to be cunning cunning liar and when you are powerful and at the same time deceptive when you can confuse them when you can confuse your opponents and defeat them in a practical coercive sense then you are the realver2 man this is the type of person who will go straight to the top. climb over a pile of corpses on his way there but, again, he has no moral scruples about it there is no god to judge him there is no metaphysical standard by which to judge this, he either succeeds or he doesn't, it's some kind of nihilistic approach to politics in which the gratification of the individual ego is elevated to the status of a principle in some respects, this is why the renaissance and particularly the human-centered political science that is characteristic of the renaissance, which It is a big change from the middle centuries It is a turn of the corner in the Western political tradition that we are moving away from God-centered politics towards man-centered politics and man-centered politics is ugly in man it is bloody and politics centered on man serves no purpose except human ends and desires there is no supreme summum bonum, there is no supreme good that politics makes gestures Machiavelli gives a very good example of an action that he considers himself to have great political wisdom i think you will like this there was a ruler who attacked and conquered another city-state, but there is still a lot of banditry and a bit of outlaw political chaos in the countryside, so this ruler and Machiavelli He thinks this government is a very wise guy and he sends his second in command, his lieutenant, to that. city ​​and he says I give you complete power of life and death over all the citizens of that city because they are mine now and I want you to go there and lay down the law.

I want you to mercilessly exterminate all my enemies. I want you to make the decrees that I think are appropriate and the degrees that you think are appropriate, make them all and lean on these people, go in and coerce them, intimidate them, scare them until they admit that I am the rightful ruler here and that you rule in my name and I give you full power if any of them complain tell them I have delegated my authority to you and if they give you any more trouble beyond that kill them now that is only half the story there is more after making the prince let this one guy does it for a couple of months, three, four, five months and this second in command, very cruel, very bloodthirsty, very ruthless, dominates the people, many mass executions, cruel torture, horrible and bloody spectacles that now scare to the people.

There is a problem here, this is part of Machiavellianism. Fear is a good thing. You can count on people's fear and this guy has scared the hell out of them, but we have a problem here: the potential for hate. Without a doubt, if you have killed someone's father, mother, daughter, husband and wife, it is going to be time for revenge Machiavelli has no idea of ​​forgiveness nor any idea that charity should be extended to us. sinners he thinks that's for children and old women no Machiavelli says that the right way to handle this is the way the prince in this case handled it he went to that second city and asked the people of that city what they think My new ruler here is a good guy, a real charmer, isn't he? and it turns out that the people were horrified by the terrible cruelties the tortures and the murders the public executions that he had so secretly imposed on them that night the prince was sitting there thinking about this and he orders his secret police or his private guards where he can actually trust, whoever they are, tells them I want you secretly to go to the room of my second in command, the man I gave this damn authority to and I want you to take him to the center of this town square and I want you to cut him in half and leave it there the next morning. the townspeople stand up and what do they see but a man who is the object of intense hatred towards them pieces of him all over the center of the square and then our prince exposes a decree that he had heard through some source that will not be mention that this man had been very harsh and very violent and we cannot allow any of that in a well-run state.

He had heard that this man had usurped a power that the prince had never given him and because the second command had been so bloodthirsty and such an evil and cruel guy the justice of the prince the mercy of the prince and the honesty of the prince of the person required that they will cut it in half the art of betrayal you send a guy to do the dirty work you cut his throat, throw them to the wolves, give them to the leftover people and then clean up the sauce at the end this is the conception of good politics he specifies that particular example as an example of a man who really knows his way around political affairs, first wins over people to whom he has no right and then sends someone to do extremely evil, unpleasant and violent things to them and he lies to him and tells him do it with my blessing and then you go to the people and act like you're blameless so they don't hate you and then you kill this guy and throw him to the wolves and the people accept it and say how nice failure.

I'm glad we had a prince like you much better than the guy we had here. We thought he was acting with your authority but of course now we see that he was not. That's what the word Machiavellian means. Two, three, four levels of meaning. dedicated to the same task of organization and acquisition of political power by any means necessary this man is not careful with the means he uses to achieve his ends that is why Machiavelli writes to his prince 90 pages so that a practical politician can have this around him looking for inspiration and isn't it an inspiring read?

Those of you who have seen it before will find that, whether you like it or not, in some respects it is an inspiring read simply because of the determination and ruthless pursuit of practical political power as a manual for in doing so I believe the difficulty has never been overcome, Of course, with this is that, as I said a little before, it prevents human beings from being social animals, stop and think about that for a minute, let's say you're a member of the Medici family and let's say this Machiavelli guy writes to the prince and dedicates it to you and tells you to be careful of sycophants and to be careful of people who are trying to get on your good side because you can never trust them, they can stab you in the back, suppose you were a political ruler . and he wrote it to you, would you hire him to work for you?

What would happen if you had him on your staff? Where is your staff going to start disappearing? Unforeseen accidents, they're all going to start as he moves up the ladder he orders bad things to happen to good people, all sorts of things could happen here and then some horrible misfortune might happen while you're riding while you're asleep, Well, it turns out your back is turned, in other words, he's here so he can usurp her position, why, oh why, if she had any brains, would she choose to have him on her staff? There is no man less suitable for a politician's staff than Machiavelli, and yet in some respects there is. a decoy that shows you horrible worldly wisdom that you might want on your own side instead of on your opponent's side, but if he's on your side, well, I guess he can't really agree.

Your side, I guess it is. he's always on his own side, which is part of the problem. Machiavelli is not a team player. If you were a ruler, you would never in your right mind have to keep your job because you turn it around. Suppose a ruler is foolish enough to bring a Machiavellian into the field. Machiavellian killing him makes it look like someone else did it and he takes the throne, a person would have to be crazy to work for Machiavelli instead of having him work for you in other words, suppose he became the prince of the king, what is he going to do with you when you become his number two, three or four man? you are expendable everyone is expendable to the Machiavellian you have no intrinsic value except as a vehicle by which he can satisfy his desires for power, so the Machiavellian soul is the tyrannical soul in some respects, when we step back and We look at Plato's Republic, almost all the great themes of Western political philosophy are found there.

Machiavelli is nothing really new. Machiavelli is a Codification is not exactly a systematization, but a manual for the would-be tyrant. It is a manual of sophistry. Because he says one thing, he means another, and in fact the meaning of his statements doesn't matter as long as he gets the meaning. practical result of achieving political power and it is a totally worldly orientation if we were to look at the ancient political tradition, both Platonism and Christianity organized political theory with reference to the will of some giant metaphysical legislator, in the case of Plato, that is The form of good in the case of Christianity is the omnipotence of God, but in any case the key issue is to make our behavior, our souls and our lives consistent with the obligations imposed by this in the metaphysical realm once we abolish the metaphysical realm there is no law. or ultimate standard by which to judge our actions and by which to judge our good and our evil and that means that down here there is only the satisfaction of desires and this leads directly to the softer political position that political power is an end in itself and that the satisfaction of People's desires have an end in themselves and the true state of human happiness is to have deep, vehement emotions, extraordinarily powerful passions and then satisfy them, and the continuous satisfaction of vehement passions is what Machiavelli and the sophists and this whole cynical political tradition is not cynical.

In the literal sense, but in the broad general sense, this cynical traditionPolitics also orders it to all of us who are aspiring rulers, this is the book for you, the difficulty is that it tells us all, or maybe not all of us, but yes to all of us. We who have the nerve not to succumb to metaphysics who are willing to free ourselves from the mold of mere morality, it tells us how to become chiefs and stop being Indians and, of course, if we all followed that, there would all be chiefs and not There are Indians, but Machiavelli has no illusions that they all have the ability to do this;

It is only the extraordinary individual like him or Caesar Borgia or a handful of other great tyrants in history who have really shown us what human beings are capable of in a certain respect Machiavelli is similar to Plato in that both Plato and Machiavelli are trying to show us something buried deep in the marrow of the human soul at the very center plato thinks that there is an eternal goodness a final spark of the divine soul that allows us to gain some access to the mind of God and to the understanding of the ultimate truth and Machiavelli's wisdom believes that in the center of the human soul, in the marrow of the psyche, there is a beast, an untamed animal that only wants the satisfaction of its desires, in some aspects this is a very prophetic theory because it anticipates many opinions. which will later be held by Sigmund Freud beneath our superego beneath this veil of civility this veneer of righteousness in fact we are animals concerned exclusively with the satisfaction of our physical desires we are beasts with a very, very thin layer of rational morality Machiavelli suggests that we should to be on the outside what we are on the inside except in those cases when it is inconvenient if it is convenient to appear pious gentle kind and good well that's fine the important thing is not to be gentle kind and good the important thing is to be ruthless and rapacious and treacherous if you are familiar with the play King, learn about the characters of edmond and edgar, particularly the uh, the bastard son, i think it's edmund gives a wonderful speech in which he talks about legitimacy, in which he talks about the order of political law and the circumstances of inheritance and social status and when he says at the beginning of that soliloquy, you, nature, are my goddess and to your law, my services are subject to the prayer was the only prayer Machiavelli could say with a straight face, nature red and the fangs and the claws.

It is the goddess to whom her services are linked, nature, which is the fundamental reality, we are human beings, physical things, that is, remember where the word nature comes from, from the Greek word phusis, so we are physical beings, we are not spirits in a material world. We are rapacious pieces of meat who do everything we can to take advantage of each other, except when we fool ourselves about things like morality, religion, kindness, gentleness, the milk of human virtue, that kind of thing, but apart from delusions like that and silly poetry appropriate for the weak the weak the Christians in life there is only blood blood power the intoxication of not only surviving but conquering we could say that Machiavelli's conception of virtue goes back not to the Socratic conception of virtue but to the conception of Homer's characteristic virtue in the Iliad in the Odyssey it is the lying and treacherous virtue of Odysseus it is the powerful Leonese virtues of Achilles if you are a good warrior capable of coercing other people capable of imposing your will on a universe that is indifferent to you and indifferent to any moral structure you have could create then and only then are you a man worth taking seriously commands us to create to return to the previous pre-Socratic pre-Christian virtues we hear the drums of a primitive heroism in this book It is a blast from the past and at the same time, it is one of the most modern political works if we assume, and I think it is a fair assumption, that at this moment we live in a secular age, we live in an age that despises metaphysics, which is If we disregard references to abstract morality, then in some respects we live in a Machiavellian universe, even if we have some kind of ativist connection to a prior morality that meant something more than personal self-gratification.

In that sense, Machiavelli is a very modern political thinker. He is the first political thinker who breaks with that metaphysical tradition towards a completely physical tradition to move from a sacred politics to a profane politics or one could say that he undoes the distinction between the sacred and the profane by abolishing the sacred so that the world that we see surrounds whether it is neither sacred nor profane it is simply what it is and you are what you are and what you are in reality is a wolf guarding the sheep if you remember the analogy that Thrasymachus makes in the first book of the republic that the ruler relates to the citizens that those who are his subjects in the way a shepherd relates to a sheep or a flock of sheep, he keeps there not because he likes the sheep, not because he has any moral obligation to the sheep, but because he likes the sheep. pig, he likes lamb chops. he likes to turn these things into his livelihood, well, other people, the subjects in the Machiavellian state will exist only to satisfy the physical carnal, the carnal are well chosen where they are the carnal desires of the Machiavellian prince.

Achilles would have liked Machiavelli if he had understood. what was being said to Odysseus I think he certainly would have liked Machiavelli because he brings together both the lion and the fox. I would say not so much to Achilles because Achilles is a bit of a fool, but Odysseus, like the perfect Machiavellian hero, musters the will to lie the will to violate oaths the will to break any social convention around you to achieve your ends the fierce desire focused and focused on satisfying your innermost longings in some respects Machiavelli is what people would be like in the Freudian sense if you removed the superego completely or if you only kept the superego conception of the righteousness of moral virtue as a veneer to protect you from the condemnation of other people, but what we are deep down is a mass of desires that we do not choose or control and human happiness simply exists in the satisfaction of these desires the oxen are happy when you give them straw Machiavelli is happy when you give them a government fundamentally there is no difference each animal gravitates towards its own appropriate object Machiavelli in that sense is at the same time an ancient political theorist Although as a modern political theorist he does not represent anything new in politics but rather an ever-present temptation, he is always tempting to beings humans take the easy way and decide that they are going to be flesh and that they are going to give up the attempt to ignite the divine spark which is what Marcus Aurelius called the soul called the disposition to moral virtue Machiavelli does not want to raise what Plato called the ladder of beauty in the symposium because he finds the world ugly, violent and evil and he likes it.

In other words, not only does he know he is in the cave, but he thinks that any attempt to leave the cave is a kind of abandonment of nature, is an attempt to move away from nature towards some kind of Shemeric poetics, I know. not what and Machiavelli is the saint, he is the patron saint of all politicians who would be exclusively and immorally practical. One of the great difficulties in evaluating Machiavelli is to give him what he deserves, in other words, to be intellectually fair to him because he is a great Genius, There is no way we can honestly take that away from him, but it is also wrong to say that while he is a great genius, in practice we can use this as a guide for life if people would take it seriously and so help us God.

If we were to do so it would be a disaster for the social structure and it would be a disaster for politics. The difficulty is that we seem to vacillate between one and the other. When the better angels of our nature take control, we can see how Marcus Aurelius is a good politician and how Plato offers us something really solid and substantial to organize our emotions, organize our lives, organize our standards of judgment, the problem is that we tend to waver back and forth from time to time, when we think that no one is watching us, we have a sneaking suspicion that Machiavelli may be right, that he who is outside, he who is free of sin, cast the first stone.

I think we've all done things we knew were wrong at one time or another. Machiavelli is saying: I wish to free you from the guilt of thinking that. that is a mistake your mistake is in not doing that all the time do not succumb to the temptation of being an angel you have no possibility of doing that you are flesh you meet a rational soul but your rational soul is nothing that shines the darkness is not nothing metaphysical, it's just the rational part of you that allows you to decide how to best satisfy your irrationally developed desires, so Machiavelli is a kind of permanent temptation, he is a great political genius and we must give the devil his due almost literally speaking. but at the same time we have to understand the limitations of this number one limitation: it prevents us from being what we really are, which are social animals.

A Machiavellian would be incapable and subordinate and would not be suitable as a superior. No one in his right mind would do it. working for Machiavelli or having Machiavelli work from number two is a denigration of some aspects of human nature is a cynical analysis of what people have done in the worst of circumstances is almost a completely hopeless philosophy in rejecting the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity, well, I suppose we could get by without charity, I suppose in this case we could get by without faith, but the problem with this philosophy that I think even bothers those who recognize its brilliance is that it is a completely useless philosophy, What can we expect from the next government?

The same thing we can expect from this government is that it will be rapacious that it will be treacherous that it will be evil and that it will be powerful and that it will dominate us. The only way out of that merry-go-round is to dominate everyone else, the red nature with fangs and claws orders us to make our own food and joins us in becoming the wolf among the sheep and if we have both the inclination and the unwillingness to philosophize in the Platonic sense then it seems to me, the only conclusion Logic is what Machiavelli draws from, so if you want to opt for strictly physical, strictly anti-metaphysical politics, we are going to have difficulties connecting politics and ethics.

One of the great achievements of Plato's republic is that politics turns out to be ethical in general that what is good for the soul of the individual man the organization of the reasoning and desiring parts also turns out to be isomorphically good for society because we will organize the rulers rational people at the top of society who will have the guardians, their auxiliaries, the energetic part and we will have the bronze people at the bottom, satisfying as many desires as possible for Plato, there is a one-to-one connection between politics and ethics. This will be true for all metaphysical thinkers, it will also be true for Christians.

On the other hand, if one wishes to adopt the single world entirely physicalist interpretation of human life, ontology and politics, there will necessarily be a disjunction between politics and ethics. We'll hear this again when we look at David Hume's theory of justice, so if you want politics to be moral, if you complain that politicians take too many bribes and take too many shortcuts and aren't willing to do what they need to do, and fulfill their moral obligations. obligations, you are implicitly presenting an argument that is based on some kind of metaphysical conception, no matter how in koat you might as well confess it now that you are all metaphysical believers, if you don't want to be a metaphysical believer, that is another possibility.

Be careful not to go down the slippery slope of Machiavellianism because we go from the state of society to the state of nature and the nature that Machiavelli has destined for us will be worse than any hell because it will be immediate and tangible and there will be no way to avoid it, it is an element necessary in the human condition Machiavelli offers us a secular substitute for salvation Machiavelli offers us an opportunity for this worldly gratification and since there is no other world to go to, there is no final judgment of God, there is no final moral order, this is the best that the human species can achieve the Homeric virtues the military virtues the treacherous political virtues those elements of Roman history that are the most shameful and appalling Machiavelli's desires to elevate them to the status of universal and unusual human happiness well perhaps not an unusual temptation , unnecessary but regrettable, and to the extent that we want to avoid it we must go back and think about the idea of ​​politics and ethics, the implications it has for ontology because it involves metaphysics, the implications that metaphysics has for our conception of the rest of things. philosophy and the way knowledge holds together ethics, virtue, and human experience; the way it connects our conception of the individual soul and the political order; and the way our own lives would be influenced by the decision to succumb to the lure of this world. or risk that a better one awaits us is not a decidable proposal Machiavelli wants to offer us a possible solution to the set of intellectual difficulties that you