Ada Palmer – Machiavelli is the most misunderstood thinker of all time
6/16/20262 hr 8 min
Had Ada Palmer back on – this time to talk about Machiavelli, perhaps the most misunderstood thinker of all time.
Machiavelli cut his teeth as a high-level diplomat for Florence, a position from which he got to closely observe the most important rulers in Europe at the time, including the ones who were on the path to destroying his dearly beloved Florence.
In 1513 the Medici retook control of Florence and, wrongly suspecting Machiavelli of participating in a coup attempt, fired, tortured, and exiled him.
Machiavelli could have left exile and worked for any number of different principalities that would have been eager to make use of his talents.
Instead, he decided to rot in the countryside and compile his career’s lessons about power, politics, and human nature into a book he dedicated to the very man whose new regime had tortured and exiled him, Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici.
But at least the Medici were in a position to use his insights to defend Florence. Machiavelli the patriot did not want any other hands to touch these books, because those hands, armed further with these lessons, might pose an existential danger to Florence.
The closest modern analogy, at least as Machiavelli would have seen it, would be Szilard’s letter warning FDR about the possibility of a nuclear fission bomb.
What were those insights? And how were they inspired by Machiavelli’s dangerous diplomatic missions all across Europe, and his extensive reading of antiquity? Watch this episode with Ada Palmer to find out!
By the way, Ada is launching a new podcast which I’m very excited about. The first season will be about Machiavelli - a perfect way to dive deeper into the topics we discussed in this episode. Subscribe at Beforecast’s website to be notified of the first episode, subscribe on YouTube, follow her on Patreon, and if you want even more Ada, check out her FixTheNews Podcast episode, and check out her books and more.
Watch on YouTube; read the transcript.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) – How Florence bargained with Cesare Borgia for survival
(00:15:08) – Machiavelli’s analytical innovations
(00:23:58) – Why popes became warlords
(00:36:13) – Why the common people demanded nepotism
(00:47:57) – Cesare Borgia brought terror to rulers and justice to the people
(00:57:55) – Art as a proxy for war
(01:06:41) – Florence, a city famous in hell
(01:15:57) – The Prince was a job application to Machiavelli’s torturers
(01:41:39) – During the Renaissance, original ideas had to be couched in antiquity
(01:50:44) – Why copyright began with the Inquisition
(02:02:12) – Machiavelli wasn’t Machiavellian
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsDwarkesh Patel· Host0:00
Okay, I'm back with Ada Palmer, who is a science fiction author- Yeah ... composer, historian at the University of Chicago. Ada, this time I wanna talk to you about Machiavelli.
Ada Palmer· Guest0:08
Yes.
Dwarkesh Patel· Host0:08
So he writes The Prince, he dedicates it to Lorenzo de Piero de Medici, and, uh, gives it to him 1513, and he says in the final chapter, "You're the only person who can bring Italy from its current place of ruin and ravage." Why were things so bad? What is the historical context- Yeah ... in which he's writing The Prince?
Ada Palmer· Guest0:24
So I'm gonna give a two-part answer to that, although, of course, with any granular history, there can be many parts. Uh, but the papacy is part of it, and then the city-state structure of Italy is another part of it.
Dwarkesh Patel· Host0:37
Mm.
Ada Palmer· Guest0:37
And I'll start with the city-state structure. There's a principle in politics that when there's long continuity of a government, and the government has been in power a long time, that government has a lot of legitimacy. People believe in its institutions. People are used to it. Even if you complain about it, it's the government, et cetera. When you break that, when you overthrow the ruler, when you dissolve the republic, when you put in a new thing, it doesn't have that same staying power, and so it's very common when there's one regime change for there then be five regime changes, rapid fire, over and over. We see this with how many iterations the French Republic goes through.
Dwarkesh Patel· Host1:14
Mm.
Ada Palmer· Guest1:14
With French Republic and then restored monarchy, and then republic, and then monarchy. When a long thing cracks, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you get chaos. Uh, England's Wars of the Roses are similar. There was one stable dynasty for a long time.
Dwarkesh Patel· Host1:26
Mm.
Ada Palmer· Guest1:26
The moment that a king is overthrown, then you have overthrow, overthrow, overthrow,