A No-Nonsense Machiavelli | Hacker News Reader

A No-Nonsense Machiavelli

nybooks.com

121 pointspepys19 comments

We often forget The Prince was a job application, from an exiled and impoverished Machiavelli to the court of Medici. Parks seems to forget this inconvenient fact. Parks also forgets to mention that it was Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, a book that disagrees with The Prince with numerological precision, that screams Machiavelli's love of a Republic over a monarchical or despotic rule, and that defines virtue in idealized, classical terms most embrace today.

As Parks implicitly states, the difference between a man's message and his mission depends a great deal on who is reporting it. It is this difference, between The Prince and The Discourses, between marketing and motive, where Park may learn Trump, like Machiavelli, is no fan of Princes but is instead very much a man of the Signora and the Guild to the great benefit of a Republic. Park's piece is straight from the Medici playbook.

> We often forget The Prince was a job application, from an exiled and impoverished Machiavelli to the court of Medici.

To some degree it is a mirror, but rather than an application I think it was more of a middle finger. It's a fairly clearly satirical work, that calls the Medici court hypocrites, brutes, and the little advice it offers includes arming the populace.

It’s often veiled/subtle about its explicit vs. implicit messages, with layers of indirection and lots of wry humor, though the surface meaning of the text is straightforward. Which is why it’s great for the careers of modern political philosophers who can spend years combing through it for clues.

Oh hey, linked at the bottom of the OP: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1971/11/04/a-special-supplem...

> to the great benefit of a Republic

The favorite form of government of the savvy aristocrat.

Sometimes the damn monarchs and tyrants get too cozy with the unwashed masses.

I'm currently listening to the Great Courses course called "Machiavelli in Context" on Audible, and his take was more that Machiavelli viewed monarchical rule as a stepping stone to a republic. In the Discourses on Livy, he gives the example of the people of the Roman Kingdom rising up to dethrone itheir king to establish the Roman Republic.

He goes on to say that, depending on the circumstances, a republic could backslide into monarchical or despotic rule, as the Roman Republic did when it transitioned into the Roman Empire.

The idea of a monarchy or a dictatorship being a stepping stone to a republic isn't something I see expressed online as much.

It's fascinating how easy it is to misinterpret an author, particularly when the work was published a long time ago.

I'm currently reading a modern take on the subject of power - "The Dictator's Handbook" by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. It has the same no-nonsense approach as "The Prince".

This is by far the best explanation I've read of where Machiavelli is metaphysically coming from: http://www.exurbe.com/?p=1429 . He was a true patriot for his people.

Thank you for posting this! Looks like I will need to acquire this translation.

note to future readers, don't try to click anywhere inside the site or you will be greatly frustrated

Two short but life changing books:

"The Prince" -- Machiavelli

"The little Prince" -- Saint Exupery

His "Discourses on Livy" is also a pretty solid book.

Even if Livy isn't. Livy conflates myth with sort of remembered history. So it starts with Aeneas includes Romulus+Remus, Horatius Cocles, ... on through the rape of the Sabine women. Like the Aeneid, it is pretty much Roman state propaganda.

Ahem, permit me to defend poor Livy. The early history of Rome was basically fairy tales, which includes the first 10 books of Livy. Livy's account was not great but it was certainly immensely popular through the Renaissance and far beyond.

The later books are far better. The account of the 2nd Punic war is as good as any history I have every read. The descriptions of the main characters are like great paintings; the story of the invasion and near destruction of the Romans is riveting. I also love the language--there are turns of phrase that are hard to capture in English translations like Hannibal's "more than Punic perfidy" (perfidia plus quam punica) that must have delighted and inspired his Roman readers. Livy did not just write history of the war; he described a clash of civilizations.

Yes, popular. However, one of the lessons I remember from Classics classes at Berkeley was that (outside of Tacitus) you should take anything the Romans say about their opponents with large doses of salt. Victors write the histories and the Romans sure wouldn't take the trouble to tell the other side of the story, especially about the Carthaginians. Cato comes to mind.

Tacitus is the singular exception. He's exalted by Germans for Germania and Agricola has the immortal line,

  To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles,
  they call empire; and where they make a desert,
  they call it peace.

I kind of rank Livy with Herodotus who'd never let facts or especially lack of facts get in the way of a good story. Tacitus I rank with Thucydides.

I don't disagree with your view of Livy, especially the early parts (books 1-10). The 2nd Punic War is more factual but still like the fables of the earlier volumes in the sense it's first and foremost a ripping good story. I first read Livy's account of Hannibal burning and pillaging down the Val di Chiana in Italy while sitting on a hill overlooking his march. It was part of his successful plan to enrage the Roman Consul Flaminius and entice him into an ambush at Lake Trasimene. You could look out over the flat valley and imagine the smoke rising up where the Romans could see it easily. Reading history does not get much better than that.

Incidentally I believe that in Germania Tacitus was holding up a mirror to Rome so the bias goes the other way The praise of the German tribes was a hit on his own citizens. For example, the memorable inference in Section 2 that nobody would leave Italy for the awful weather, formless land, and sorry agriculture of Germany unless they were natives was implicitly a criticism of the effete Romans.

In Livy's defense, he doesn't seem to actually believe in these fairy tales, often packing them in constructs like "it is said" or offering two explanations for things, one the more popular myth and one a more plausible explanation.

Taking into account that Roman historians generally didn't care that much for facts, and that Livy wrote his Ab Urbe Condita because it was commissioned by Octavian (i.e. he was kinda obliged to make the history of Rome look good), he was actually a pretty decent historian.

Doesn't mean I love Livy, though - reading his Latin is an inhumane torture (I hate Latin)

Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), Narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), Psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), Sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others);

They're diseases, not competencies;

The word “Machiavellian” is only loosely related to Machiavelli the real person (as discussed e.g. in the linked post).

Machiavelli the scholar is a clever and perceptive observer/analyst of human nature and political affairs. Anyone interested in any kind of human politics, institutions, or society should read both The Prince and The Discourses on Livy, which are both fantastically insightful.

One sentence in particular from his opening dedication to ... reads as both guidance and encouragement for all future translators:

"I haven’t aimed for a fancy style or padded the book out with long sentences or pompous, pretentious words, or any of the irrelevant flourishes and attractions so many writers use; I didn’t want it to please for anything but the range and seriousness of its subject matter."

For me, this article was the opposite.

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