O Príncipe (Nicolau Maquiavel)

Dear Mr President I am deeply honored to have been asked for my advice as you assume the awesome burdens of your new office I can offer several rules of thumb which I believe time and experience have proven sound act boldly in the beginning the public has a short attention span and it will make them forget the accomplishments of your predecessor and impress them with your Vigor make make your first priority the protection of your power without it you are useless appear steadfast but be flexible remember some of God's greatest gifts are broken campaign promises a

playful paraphrase of words written in the year 1513 by a cashiered civil servant in Florence Italy while he actually wrote became one of the most heartly debated deeply disturbing and important books of Western Civilization to some it was a veritable guide book for tyrants and totalitarians molini loved it marxists recognized a fellow revolutionary to others it paved the way for ethnic and religious toleration individual rights and modern democracies but fairly or unfairly it has caused his name makavelli to ring through the centuries as a synonym for evil [Music] [Music] [Music] I compare Fortune to one

of those violent the rivers which when they are enraged flood the plains tear down threes and buildings everyone flees before them everybody yields to their impetus there is no possibility of resistance yet although such is their nature one may still take precautions when they are flowing quietly building dams and dkes to control them in flood time so it is with Fortune rivers are not to be trusted neither are men but both can often be controlled given intelligence and power and the willingness to get your hands dirty mackelli is the first political thinker of the Christian

era who systematically analyze the requirements of power and survival the prince is a book about power political power at a time of city states or principalities ruled by men called princes it amounts to 26 short chapters of analysis and opinion that range from the classification of government to advice on selecting staff it was written to shock and re-educate its reader and it still manages to do so to challenge the political pieties of its day and explain to princes and Prince wannabes how the game is really played it tells the prince that before anything else he

must know how to fight he must learn to be ruthless and cruel to lie break his word and be ready to violate both morals and religious principles when needed though it also stresses the need to appear compassionate moral and devout some say Maki invented modern politics and when we read the PRS we can see today today's headlines I think in many ways that it's a great book because it is a mirror for mavi's own time and because it does continue to disturb provoke and make us think a new and see in what way it does

relate to our own time and we keep asking questions of it it was marlli who said get real in Italian of course many have dreamed up republics and principalities which have never in truth existed the gap between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done is on the way to [Music] self-destruction makaveli's focus on what is actually done is in tune with his times cernus is studying the heavens and Leonardo is dissecting cadavers both trying to learn how

God actually did it to learn not from Theory but direct observation just as Leonardo was interested in anatomizing the world of nature so makalii in a sense was interested in anatomizing the world of politics and the world of history but dissections and autopsies are are never pretty one of the uglier discoveries attributed to makavelli is the idea that The end justifies the means now he didn't put it quite that way in the actions of all men and especially of princes where there is no court of appeal one judges by the result mavell is very clear

that the end is what counts he says this in a number of places and it seems to us a very tough argument there are some situations in which the more the survival is threatened the narrower the margin of choice becomes unless you say you would rather have your Society destroyed than to pursue uh marginal [Music] means what would you do to prevent this from happening to your people what would you not do would you lie violate treaties assassinate people just where would you draw the line anywhere on the other hand if you are winning a

war and your enemy is all but finished how far would you go to minimize your own casualties makavelli was acquainted with the moral ambiguity of Power City the size of Atlanta Georgia he was a realist melli pursued what some Scholars have called amoral realism first of all what he was trying to do is create something that didn't exist up to that point uh the nation state in this case Italy but what we need to ask ourselves is whether we really are in Desperate Straits whether we really are up against the hard laws of necessity that

melli is describing I think much of the time we assume we are and are not like politicians today makavelli justifies harsh or deceitful means as necessary to the common good but his focus is on the presence or absence of power what is it how do you get it how do you keep it good questions in any age but Stark and immediate in Makia ell's when I came to this interview I Left My Home In Vermont as an isolated individual drove a car to Boston took an airplane to New York came to this interview without people

around me I was safe in the Middle Ages human beings were not able to move from one place to another without having other people around them who could protect them [Music] Florence fabulous window in the past down these same streets walked the monks soldiers and Merchant princes of makaveli's time as well as artists whose names and work are today as famous as [Music] his we are now in the age of Michelangelo Leonardo Columbus and cernus of England's Henry VII and of Germany's Martin Luther and the Protestant [Music] Reformation it is a turbulent time of conflict

and contradiction new ideas and new technologies are rocking Europe like a great earthquake the medieval system is collapsing and the idea that man is master of his fate is just beginning to take root it is the Renaissance the April of Western civilization and the concept of government as a purely human invention is one of its flowers but April is a cruel month Juliano dedich murdered in the great Cathedral by a rival family thei it was a plot blessed by the sitting Pope to overthrow the deao rule of the medich in Florence such were the times

politics was a family matter medich retribution was Swift and brutal several conspirators including an Archbishop were slaughtered where they were caught and their bodies hung from the windows of City Hall the last one sketched as it hung by Leonardo da Vinci religion too seemed often a kind of Family Affair princes of the church had concubines popes had children luri and chesar boria brother and sister and lovers also had wealth and power thanks to their sire Pope Alexander V 6 who gives the term Godfather a whole other meaning Italy was an anarchy of city states popes

and other princes in constantly shifting alliances murders in the cathedral and orgies in the Vatican were the debris of a crumbling medieval order this was the world of Nicolo makavelli the separation of politics and religion was to become for him a major [Music] theme getting religion out of politics was an idea with legs its Mirror Image would appear in America whose founding fathers were trying to get politics out of religion they would write it into their constitution as the separation of church and state we have not seen the end of controversies ignited by that idea

and it does have a dark side that separation between ethics and politics the belief that the good Prince is not necessarily the good man that appearance matters more than reality that deception can be practiced that it is better to be feared than loved all those famous conclusions of the prince are ones that have eternally struck people as the most difficult and and indeed pain ful question about politics and they don't want to confront it they don't want to believe that someone thought those things was the man who did think those things a Christian a pagan

an atheist makavelli was a Sunday Christian he did not dispute the essential dogmas of the Catholic faith he simply put them to one side when he came to think and talk about politics at all and if Mak Val's Prince seems to have a lot of moral leeway the price for that is fairly steep he must love his country more than his soul he must be prepared to go to hell for it to kill a man is still to kill a man and a prince has to has to be has to be ready to do it

he has to be ready to go to hell being in charge being a ruler being being a prince is intrinsically a tragic job and without without Redemption and uh without justification Mak found it possible to live with contradictory views and therefore not to see himself as he came very quickly to be seen as anti-christian or anything of the kind some think I should teach men the way to heaven but I would rather teach them the way to hell so they'll know how to go around it [Music] the medich were exiled in 1494 when Charles VII

of France rode unopposed into Florence on his way to other conquests nomak was 27 the city long a republic in name became again a republic in fact its first leader was a fiery puritanical but very popular monk named s V aola who denounced the corruption of the church and was responsible for two of History's more notable bonfires on one Savona burned books and artworks on the other the church burned savan Rola the spot is marked today in front of City Hall where a few weeks later Nicolo went to work for the Republican government of pio

sarini Maki worked for the committee that was in charge of defense and Foreign Affairs he took care of the needs of the military and he went on special missions to foreign courts and then he he was all throughout uh Italy he met uh many lords and rulers inour bour is a legend in his own time of ruthlessness and depravity in one instance bour invites his enemies to peace talks and has them all killed that was the main uh impression that he got from from uh uh B this cold blood and this capacity of uh using

violence let's say well crud that is for a very lucid political uh goal and not just a display of power but in a very functional uh functional uh way [Music] when he returns from these missions a doting but impatient staff confronts him with a mountain of domestic details and problems but Nicolo has weightier things on his mind he is a Visionary an Italian Patriot convinced that only a single forceful leader can unify Italy and he knows that Independence will require a citizen Army melli believed that the mercenary armies that characterized the military system of Renaissance

Italy and indeed of much of Europe were a terrible mistake that the Romans had used Civic militias that every state should use its own citizens that only in this way could get the commitment and Ethos of civilians to express it themselves in the defense of the state and that that would have very good results in terms of the internal laws institutions and and Ethos of the state as well makavelli sells the idea and in a war with neighboring Pisa his citizen soldiers perform moderately well but in 1512 they meet hardened Spanish troops at a town

named Prada the Spanish mercenaries Panic makaveli's militia and a ghastly Slaughter follows in the wake of this route the medi returned to end the soderini Republic and with it maki's political career in nicolo's view the feckless saini could have squashed the medich return had he been sufficiently ruthless leadership requires more than plans and policies in order to maintain his State a prince is often forced to act in defiance of good faith of Charity of kindness of religion he should not deviate from what is good if that is possible but he should know how to do

evil if that is necessary the notion that necessity could justify Behavior which was not otherwise virtuous or moral was actually accepted by almost all of the ancient thinkers Lincoln's critics in his day uh thought he was a dictator thought he was a tyrant uh thought he was undemocratic uh thought in spite of all the folksy Backwoods charm uh that he he was an egomaniac and was operating unconstitutionally much of the time in the case of for example the suspension of habus Corpus he probably was um and and this is a perhaps a great example of

makavelian leadership in a democracy there is a physics of politics and sooner or later every leader discovers for himself the laws of Relativity and uncertainty also known as the law of unintended consequences taking everything into account he will find that some of the things that appear to be virtues will if he practices them ruin him and some of the things that appear to be vices will bring him security and prosperity the reinstalled Medi have discovered a plot to overthrow them and they have a list of people the plotters hope to recruit the seventh name on

the list is ma the plotters never got to Maki it doesn't matter he's a suspect and the medi don't need much excuse to throw him into [Music] prison it is a prayer chanted by priests For Those About to die this chanting is for the list makers prison here has two functions execution and interrogation interrogation means torture quite legal and quite ingenious what awaits Nicolo is the strappado hands tied behind the back hoisted by the wrists and dropped par way if the drop is far enough it will tear the shoulders out of their sockets nicolo's drop

is obviously less severe but it is torture and he learns well the uses of pain the bond of Love is one that men break when it is to their advantage to do so but fear is strengthened by a dread of punishment which never abandons you for Nicolo the experience of the past few months has not been conducive to a romantic view of life but it has been [Music] instructive in the spring of 1513 Giovani deedi becomes Pope Leo the 10th and makavelli is released in a general amnesty but with restrictions he is restricted to the

region around Florence barred from the city hall banned from politics he moves to the family's property a few miles out of the city there he is free in his own kind of Hell an addict cut off from his Source only someone who's been there can know the pain Gary Hart was the prince presumptive of the democratic party before fortune and his own indiscretion cut him off in many ways hell is being possessing a talent which one cannot use and this was mavi's hell and a profound one for him because he understood how talented he was

and how Visionary he was and I think it must have been desperately hard for him as it would be for example for a politician today who had both the talent and here's the crucial element a mon lithic dependence on the addiction of participation speaking only for myself I tried desperately and with some success not to become so dependent on politics or on the adrenaline of participation that I couldn't do without [Music] it in a letter to a friend Nicolo describes the narrow con finds of his current life supervising work on his property and killing time

with the locals in the local in with these I sink into vulgarity for the whole day playing at cards and these games bring on a thousand disputes with countless insults and usually we are fighting over a penny so involved in these Trifles I keep my brain from growing old the personal makavelli seems entirely human he is compassionate witty and profane even sometimes obscene he is married but he is attracted to other women and they to him melli was a great guy he was friendly affable loyal to his friends he loved to go out drinking he

loved women he loved good conversation uh just an ordinary nice guy well ordinary may not be the best word but certainly mlli seems anything but Mackie aelan he is personable he is also a very talented guy he wrote the best the best comedy of our literature La mandragola in the 1518 and okay there is a comedy with the bitter and even somber uh undertones but it's a lively uh uh play wonderful [Music] on the coming of evening I returned to my house and enter my study and at the door I take off the day's clothing

covered with mud and dust and put on garments Regal and courtly and reclosed appropriately I enter the ancient courts of ancient men where received by them with affection I feed on that food which is mine and which I was Bor born for Nicolo begins to work on what he calls the discourses on the first 10 books of Titus Livy it is a book of commentaries on the work of that Roman historian and makes a strong case for a republican form of government then all of a sudden he decides to try to get back into the

government himself and writes in Furious time in three months time the prince he interrupts the writing of the discourses to take off this time to write the prince because he's anxious to get back into politics into into government life are there two mlles here one writing a book on the Republican form of government and the other almost simultaneously writing advice for tyrants I look at Mak Val's Prince as a work on statesmanship and the dis caes as a statement of desirable objectives and so I don't find the two incompatible with each other politics was his

consuming interest and if he could have made the world the way he wanted it to be he would have preferred a republic but he could live with both republics and with principalities and his point was that you begin from where you are and that you judge any form of government by its outcome rather than simply by its form all the states all the dominions under whose authority men have lived in the past and live now are either republics or principalities principalities are either her so Begins the most famous job application in history it joins nicolo's

passion for a United Italy with the fact of medich rule it urges the reigning mediche to take on a new role as Nation founder Nicolo offers a blueprint for a new kind of leader so who is this ideal Prince what are his qualities roughly that combination of strength of character intelligence courage skill and luck Which astronauts call The Right Stuff Plus a touch of ruthlessness aielli stressed two sets of attributes for the prince one um was very colorful he used the image of the of the fox and the lion Prince must have the ability of

the fox to find the snare and the courage of the lion to drive off the Wolves at certain particular moments which he calls the founding or refounding of a regime you will need a leader with exceptional intelligence with the intelligence of a Lincoln with the intelligence of a Washington with the intelligence of a bonapart makaveli's breakthrough is that he gives us the Persona the personality of the political realist he gives us uh the the inner discipline of the strategist and this is a discipline that involves uh a great deal of self-control such that uh one

cannot revel in Conquest one can uh not strike out impulsively uh one has to be constantly scrutinizing one's own motives one must constantly attend to others carefully even civil uh lest uh you give away your own hand and while you're trying to discern the the their own missteps or their own deceptions and so what we get is someone who's not quite a Christian Knight but is nonetheless often very well behaved he also gives us the political actor the prince may or may not keep his word may or may not be Humane devote a man's man

a family man depending on the circumstances but he must appear to be all of those things men in general judge by their eyes rather than by their hands because everyone is in a position to watch few are in a position to come in close touch with you everyone sees what you appear to be few experience what you really are and so there is a larger sense in which the prince is playing a role which is to appear to be the things he knows he must not necessarily be and to appear to act on principle when

what he's acting on is calculation or what the modern world would refer to as long-term strategy because in a certain way makavelli invented the very notion of a long-term strategy stay focused talk about things that are matter to people you know it's the economy stupid okay so as we always say you know speed kills and and we will die in this debate if we're not there first with our an Bush was on the defense of but perhaps most important mavi's Prince is a political artist he sees the prince as somebody who takes matter as though

it were marble and imposes a form on it as though that person were a sculptor form out of stone order out of chaos civilization from savry Michelangelo and marelli's Prince have much in common trouble is raw material for the prince is human flesh and blood for that the prince must learn how and when to be cruel and he must have studied [Music] War the main foundations of every state are good laws and good arms and because you cannot have good laws without good arms and where there are good arms good laws inevitably follow I shall

not discuss laws but give my attention to Arms the sentence is one of the most marvelous puzzles in all of macavelli you need good arms good arms are the arms of a citizen Army not a mercenary Army how do you get the citizens to serve in the army they have to think that the society meets their own private self-interest so you need to have a republic in order to have a citizen Army you need to have good laws to have a republic you are bound to meet Misfortune if you are unarmed because among other reasons

people despise you and this is one of the infamies a prince should be on his guard against there is simply no comparison between a man who is armed and one who is not well he's right on the money there melli I think is most useful in my judgment uh when you're thinking about intern interal relations rather than the government within a state or a city international relations are different from internal matters for one reason because there is no law between nations in reality there you really do have a jungle out there and that's different from

states where you do have a law which has legitimacy and which uh monopolizes force in the hands of the government uh well the world out there isn't like that and we we in the world today in the west in the United States we hate that idea it makes us very unhappy and very uncomfortable and we refuse to believe it much of the time and so this is where m melli is most valuable in reminding us of those gross realities which haven't changed you've got to have that power no government should ever imagine that it can

always adopt a safe cause this is the way things are whenever one tries to escape one danger one runs into another Prudence consists in being able to assess the nature of a particular threat and in accepting the Lesser evil making careful judgments that's Prudence as uh makavelli says and that's what we hire our government for so in the end melli also says that you shouldn't be over cautious you shouldn't be too prudent in that sense you're going to have to take action it's easy to think of a very immediate example of that in the case

of Bosnia where bush I whom I think had the best chance of dealing with the problem and settling it had from the beginning been willing to look at the reality which is that we are not free to allow that sort of violence that sort of U um what's the word I want to the breaking of international order uh to happen in the middle of Europe and I think we had a lot more leverage on our NATO allies in Europe than we were for whatever reason we were willing to exercise and there was probably a failure

of leadership on our part there's no law of nature that says the United States has to be involved in every crisis at the time we made the final decision we probably had no alternative but on the road to the final decision we certainly did not apply M's maxims we never asked ourselves what is our objective here what is our interest here what are the means available what is the best thing that can happen What is the worst thing that can happen has an American president ever applied that kind of analysis before committing the nation to

some foreign involvement I think Roosevelt did it in his own mind before he went into World War II Roosevelt had the capability of doing it Nixon uh had a great capacity for that Henry Kissinger has been called the American makavelli by admirers as well as critics that would make Richard Nixon his Prince especially talented in foreign policy often brilliant incisive but secretive and suspicious Richard could have profited from nicolo's advice on at least one score a prince must watch that he does not become afraid of his own shadow his behavior must be tempered by humanity

and Prudence so that excessive distrust does not make him unbearable for more than a century Americans enjoyed the advantage of isolation amid Rich natural resources they were the exception among nations immune from Europe's Machiavellian virus the politics of survival is that immunity gone now we cannot afford the pure American exceptional approach indefinitely doesn't mean that every end justifies every every mean but it means that the Purity that we have tended to with some of our academics and some of our leaders have insisted on will be much more difficult we destabilize governments we tried to assassinate

foreign leaders uh we did some things I think again particularly in singling out the Nixon Administration that were a violation of our principles our ideals I think we're suffering from for that today in the first 100 days we will bring to the vote while Makia Valley's real expertise seems to be foreign policy some of his advice on domestic affairs also has residents at least for modern day conservatives a man should not be afraid of improving his possessions lest they be taken away from him or another deterred by high taxes from starting a new business but

above all a prince must avoid taking the property of others because men sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their inheritance seven require a three majority vote to pass a tax increase on the other hand his ideal Prince does bear a resemblance to lenon kill the old Prince and his family create new titles and powers and give them to new men he should make the poor Rich and the rich poor as David did when he became king mak's advice seems so often to cut two or more ways it is Little Wonder

there is a score of differing interpretations of the prince take for instance the bit about fear and love it is far better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both but you must avoid being hated fear is useful hatred is counterproductive most corporate EXE Executives would agree with that strict adherence to Christian virtue is just out of place and so the question he raises is part of the distinction uh that he brings to the modern study of Politics the answer he gives is also particularly distinctive it's an answer that ruthlessly discriminates between politics

and everything else that asserts the autonomy of the political and the manner in which all other human values can be reduced to the struggle for power and the provision or maintenance of [Music] order a copy of the prince was finally presented to a medich who gave no indication he ever read it it would never be published in makaveli's lifetime and when he died he went to hell sort of the demonization of mavelli began very shortly after maki's death and that came at a time when the crisis of the contesting religions was really kicking into full

gear in the 1530s and 40s and both sides saw a demon in maky val poor Nicolo not only is he now a demon but the medi plague him even in Hell his ideas are said to have inspired the massacre of 50,00 ,000 French Protestants in 1572 while Katherine deedi was Queen of France and Protestant England makes Nicolo its prime villain there is the idea that everything that is base and Italian and Southern and Catholic is somehow makavelian it is at that time the time of Marlo and Shakespeare that this association with evilness becomes uh apparent

they talk about Yago is being makavelli and they talk about Richard III is being mellian then there's a kind of Rehabilitation that takes place in the era of classical republicanism including including some of the classical republicanism of England when people began to look at makavelli the Republican the state of makavelli soul is a good deal less important to us than the nature of his legacy the uses to which his ideas have been put in the 20th century has seen him on the one hand as a precursor of autocratic or even totalitarian views of government and

on the other is a good Republican and a fine social scientist who helps us to understand how things work Washington Napoleon Churchill Lenin intellectual Children of the same father alak aelan now history can't tell us where nicolo's Soul ended up but we do know that he believed in keeping up appearances and that his mortal remains were put in the Cathedral of Santa croche among other honored [Music] florentines we also know that his influence is far from dead [Music] [Music] Mak and the prince seem very much in Vogue today for instance a columnist for us news

and World Report used them to critique a president and that same president quoted them to the Washington Post to support his policies it must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out no more doubtful of success nor dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things for the reformer has enemies in all those who profit from the old order and only lukewarm defenders in those who saki AI freelances now as a White House advisor there's more than metaphor here if makavelli invented Politics as we know them Politics as we know

them have given us back some Latter-Day makavel come out advisor lot of strategists political realists maybe not above a dirty trick or two but only in the name of good clean winning and if makavelli seems to work for two very different systems Shing these guys Nicolo is doing well today while his former estate turns out a fine keti wine in his name he has joined Atilla the Hun in the ranks of bigname corporate advisers and he has interests in a couple of games on the market which more or less use his precepts one of them

gets the history a bit wrong and it has a golden rule that might have come from the prince if marll had thought of it maybe all this is nicolo's Purgatory Judgment of his legacy is still in dispute and even his staunchest Defenders will admit he had some well flaws he sometimes got the history wrong too he raided history I think to produce the examples as he understood them to make the points that he wanted rather than seeking to First discover what really happened he was an let's put it this way he was not a producer

of History he was a consumer I think that his assessment of human nature is one where anyone would agree that human nature is imperfect but for melli it's more than imperfect it is never Guided by a good motive and that I think is in fact less realistic like many realists he thought that reality was self-evident and uh in fact reality is the hardest thing to assess makavelli lived when new ideas and Technologies were changing forever the realities of power and the Notions of government so do we and his advice to analyze carefully the required ments

for Success without losing the courage to act seems painfully relevant today the other thing that is left is to that he leaves us is to understand that once you you have to put that analysis in the service of some idea which he did in the discourses where he described his idea of Republican government and I think the prince must be read in conjunction with the discourses because they had two sides what was to him the same coin and that was an important insight there are certain books which are sufficiently complicated that they have a message

for different people in different times because somehow they've touched at an aspect of fundamental Human Experience Plato's Republic is one example of that rouso social contract or lock macelli's prints is a book like that it deals with an aspect of human life in a very profound way the central aspect being the role of leaders and why leaders are necessary in any complicated human Community Gary Hart has written the book which he says makavelli might have written had he been an idealist Hart sees important similarities between nicolo's time and ours I believe that we are living

on the hinge of history on the cusp of history and it's it happens know more frequently than every hundred years sometimes every 500 years and we are so in the middle of this symbolically New Century New Millennium really New Economic age information versus industry or or machines and a new a new order in the world uh to play replace the old Cold War order and what is important is that this country find a new Prince find a patriot who can help us Define what the the next era is some readers of the prince smell Brimstone

in its Pages others find it more like ammonia repugnant but profoundly clarifying in truth much of what mavell wrote merely described how things actually were done in his time the second sense in which I think marlli is to be disagreed with is in the fundamental conclusion that he reached about the possibility of divorcing political Matters from ethical considerations I don't think it can be done in fact it's quite apart from whether it ought to be done yet few with any experience today would deny that much of what he wrote seems merely the common sense of

politics there's another sense in which we say Maki is giving us the common sense of politics and we ought to be more suspicious of this usage uh there all we're saying is that what he says is common sense because we're already imitating him so Mr President having described how things really work in this perilous World let me close with a few additional words of caution choose the most brilliant advisers tell them to speak to you candidly and then be wary of their advice when decision time comes keep your own councel and never ever forget that

you are in Show Business that leadership is 9/10 acting a role never step out of it in public don't for God's sake carry your own [Music] bags welcome to the top of the Heap and lots of luck your humble and admiring servant Nicolo marelli P.S don't look to heaven for your reward [Music] [Applause] [Music] all [Music]