Philip Rubenstein
How Machiavellian was Machiavelli?
Philip Rubenstein - How Machiavellian Was Machiavelli?
- So how Machiavelli was Machiavelli?
Okay, Wendy, thank you very much.
There are a couple of Machiavellians that we can talk about today, aren’t there? We can go country by country.
There may well be. I have to tell you, I’m looking forward to the questions on this one. I think more than any other session. I just, I can’t wait. I can’t wait for what people are going to say or who they might suggest, but anyway. Okay, can you hear now?
Now we can. So over to you. Thanks Phil. Looking forward. Bye.
Thank you. So, I mean a word of warning to anyone who’s just joined. We’ve been having some problems with the sound, so this may be a little bit interrupted, but I mean, we’ll see. We’ll see how we go. Anyway, thank you to Wendy and hello again to everyone. It’s lovely to be in front of everyone and it’s very exciting for me to do this subject ‘cause I’ve had a lot of fun with it. This is part of the series on Renaissance Italy and the Medicis, which William Tyler kicked off three weeks ago on Lockdown University. So of course today is about Niccolo Machiavelli and we’ll be looking at his life and his times and his intimate connection with Medici, Florence. But we’ll especially be looking at his ideas. Machiavelli’s most productive years, certainly in office and in part when he was writing, they coincide with the period that we know today as the High Renaissance. So these are the years of great artistic achievements in painting and sculpture and architecture by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and others. And it’s striking that if you look through all of Machiavelli’s writings, he’s completely indifferent to the cultural glories of his city. Practically the only reference you see in any of his works is a complaint in his Florentine history where he says, the problem is people keep banging on about old statues when what they really ought to be talking about is the important issue of the day, and that’s statecraft. So there’s a question that in his political works really preoccupies Machiavelli all the time. And the question is this. What is it that we all actually want from our political leaders? Do we want them to be good people or do we want them to do good things?
And Machiavelli says, well, you know, the classical writers like Plato and the mediaeval Christian thinkers like Aquinas, they all say, well this is easy, you know, we want good people, by which they mean honest, decent, kind, truthful, merciful. We want good people in office in politics because only good people can be relied upon to do good things. And Machiavelli, well Machiavelli disagrees. And so we’re going to talk about Machiavelli, but I also, because this is Lockdown University, I just want to throw in towards the end of the session the Jewish view of political leadership and of kingship. And then we’ll do a little bit of compare and contrast at the end. And we’ll see what the actual sources have to say. I’ve decided not to go with any modern Jewish leaders 'cause it’s far too dangerous. But we are going to be talking about certainly the biblical sources. So let’s start. I’m just going to get the slides up. Oops. Where are we? Here we go. So the place I really want to start with is Machiavelli’s reputation. So this is what the 19th century British historian Thomas Macaulay says about him. “We doubt whether any name in literary history be so generally odious as that of the man whose character and writings we now propose to consider.” And McCartney is right. I mean, for 500 years Machiavelli and Machiavellianism have been by words for cynicism, immorality, immorality and cruelty in politics. When “The Prince” was first published, it was very shortly after that that he gets demonised. I mean literally demonised. He’s known in parts of Northern Europe as Old Nic after Niccolo. an Old Nic, of course, is one of the names for Satan, for the devil.
The work is printed in Italian in the 1530s and already by 1539, Thomas Cromwell has got the copy and he gives it to his sovereign Henry VIII and he presents it to him and he says, look, he says, I think there’s some useful stuff in here. He said, there’s some stuff in here we can really use against the popes. In Elizabethan literature, particularly in plays and particularly in the plays of Marlow and Shakespeare, he’s murderous Machiavelli And there’s characters like Iago and Richard III who are very clearly and often explicitly stylized on their view of Machiavelli and his views. But if there’s one institution more than any other institution that’s responsible for Machiavelli’s bad boy reputation, it’s the church. Machiavelli is one of the very few people in the history of the modern church who’s actually managed to unite all of the factions of the church against him. The Catholic Church have always hated him because he’s anti-clerical. He’s not anti-religious, but he’s anti-clerical and he’s highly critical of the behaviour of the popes in his time. The Jesuits who themselves are accused of Machiavellianism by Protestants, they call him it’s great phrase, the devil’s partner in crime. And the Protestants of Northern Europe join in. They hate Machiavelli because they see Machiavelli as the evil councillor to the Medicis. And for them the Medicis means France. It means Catherine de Medici and the appalling massacre of Protestants, which Catherine was said to have instigated on some St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1527. So right until the present day, Machiavelli’s reputation for manipulation and skullduggery has survived. And for those of you who watched William, when he gave his lecture those three weeks ago, he started with a dictionary definition of Machiavellianism.
So he read, he gave the Webster definition, which is “Cunning, scheming unscrupulous, especially in politics.” And here is the Oxford English dictionary, which isn’t much better. “A person who practises expediency in preference to morality, an intriguer or schemer, usually derogatory.” So, who was Machiavelli? Well, Machiavelli is born in Florence in 1469. And his father was a lawyer who by all accounts fell on lean times, but he was wealthy enough to give his son a proper education, which at the time meant a humanist education. So he got, so he studied all the things that you would study. He studied grammar, rhetoric, Latin, a little bit of Greek. And he studies all the classical writers. And it’s really important to understand that he’s been brought up in this humanist tradition. This, the intellectual tradition of humanism is at the core of what drives the Renaissance. The humanists of the Renaissance are not anti-religious, but their focus is not on the Kingdom of Heaven.
Their focus is on the world today. And their belief is that it’s humanity, it’s human beings who have the power and the will to shape the world, to create, to innovate and to bring about and execute ideas. Machiavelli is born into a tumultous era. So this is a map of Florence and the rest of Italy as they were in 1494. And you can see that Italy is effectively divided and it’s divided into five great powers. So at the bottom there we have Naples, then we have the Pope, the papal states, and at the top are Venice and Milan. And the smallest of all the states in the middle there is Florence. Now, when he’s born, the Florence of Machiavelli’s youth is relatively stable. Lorenzo the Magnificent has just succeeded as the effective ruler. And he rules until 1492. And he uses his skills as a diplomat effectively to keep all Florence’s enemies at bay. But 1494 is pretty much the year when everything kicks off and Florence goes pretty quickly from a first class power very much to a second or third rate power over a relatively short period of time. Italy is divided. The papal states start acquisitive wars, and more importantly, we have predators coming from the north, so that’s the Holy Roman empire, and predators coming from the west, the French and the Spanish.
And everyone sees that there are some pickings to be made. So what tends to happen in the next 20 years is that we just get shifting alliances and we get everybody using mercenaries. And Italy is hugely divided and Florence is weakened for that whole period. And this is the Florence that Machiavelli experiences as he’s growing up. It’s a period of high, high instability. And this colours everything in his writings as we’re about to find out. Oops. Put this up. Okay. So Machiavelli’s first job. Let’s get him up there. Here we go. Here he is. Machiavelli’s first job, he gets through daddy’s connections and he’s appointed a junior secretary to the city of Florence. And it just so happens that the city is in absolute turmoil because soon after his appointment, the Medicis who’ve been the effective rulers of Florence for around about 60 years, they’re expelled. And another group takes over the republic. So what happens is that all of the old senior civil servants are all kicked out, they’re rejected, and suddenly there’s a need for new faces. So Machiavelli is in luck because he’s untainted by the old regime. And in 1498, Machiavelli is given the job of the head of the second chancery. So this isn’t the first chancery. The first chancery is where, you know, all of the big important work of diplomacy, affairs of state is done. It’s the second chancery. So it’s dealing with second degree issues and second degree diplomacy.
So he has a kind of, I guess you could say it’s a middling diplomatic position, but he has this position for 15 years. And over the course of that time, he chairs a whole load of small committees. And in these committees he listens, he watches people in power, he sees how it’s done, he’s there in the back room when all the deals are done, and he finds out how politics is actually done. He also is involved in a number of diplomatic missions. Now he’s not an aristocrat, so he’s not entitled to be an ambassador, but he does have a junior role. So he goes on missions to Rome. He goes on missions to the Holy Roman empire and elsewhere. And he’s doing so at a time of great danger to Florence. So his role is to listen really carefully, find out what’s going on and report back so that he can assess what the implications are of what he’s heard everywhere he’s been for the future fortunes of Florence. He’s not beyond a bit of skullduggery. And we know that the French have interests now in Pisa, and they’re trying to separate Pisa off from the Florentines. And the Florentines are obsessed with Pisa, obsessed with gaining control back. And so one of the projects that Machiavelli is set to do is to work with Leonardo da Vinci on a cunning plan to divert the Arno river away from the Pisans, to put pressure on the Pisans. So this is quite a dastardly plan and it fails, but it just shows he’s not beyond a bit of skullduggery himself. In 1502, he gets married.
He marries Marietta and they have six children together, but he’s married only to one love. And his one love is the city state of Florence. And government service is his really great true love. The portrait that you can see is the most famous, I think it might be the only portrait that exists of Machiavelli. And it hangs in the Palazzo Vecchio which is the office in which he worked for most of the time that he was in government service. It was painted by Santi di Tito a few years after his death. But the Italian historian, Lucio Valari, who writes very extensively about Machiavelli, he’s got a lovely description, which is in part based on his own research and is in part based on this portrait. And this is what he writes. “All about him bore the impress of a very acute, observant thinker. He could not easily rid himself of the sarcastic expression, continually playing around his mouth and flashing from his eyes, which gave him the air of a cold and impossible calculator. While nevertheless, he was frequently ruled by his powerful imagination, sometimes led away by it to an extent, befitting the most fantastic of visionaries.” So I think it’s a lovely description. All does not end well, however, because in 1512, the Medicis are back. They’re forcibly restored by the powers of the Holy League, which is a combination, an unholy combination actually of the Venetians, the Spanish under Ferdinand, this is the same Ferdinand who’s kicked the Jews out in 1492, and Pope Julius.
And they’re trying to rest Italy away from the clutches of the French. So it suits them to instal a weakened group of Medicis back into Florence. Poor old Machiavelli is falsely implicated in an anti-Medici plot. So he becomes the object of suspicion. He’s ejected from his role. He’s seen as an enemy of the state, and he’s imprisoned in The Bargello for a year. Now, I just want to just share with you, this is a tourist map of Florence, and I mean, imagine how frustrating this must have been. So if you have a look at this map, number 12 is the Palazzo Vecchio. So this is where, this has been his office for 15 years. This is where he’s been in government service and he’s been having the time of his life. And then right, he’s marched across the square to number 11, which is where The Bargello is. So it’s just moments away. And he’s imprisoned there for an entire year. And during the year as is custom practise, he was tortured. And I mean, all torture is barbaric, but the particular torture that was favoured at the time in the city of Florence was the hoist. And so he was subject to the hoist, and as you can see, it’s pretty nasty. So the arm is secured by a rope at the very top of a bar when the body is hung down. And sometimes weight would be tied to the feet as it is in this particular image.
And if you are hanging there long enough, you’ll break your shoulder and you’ll almost certainly do permanent spinal damage. And we dunno how long he was subjected to it, but we do know that he was extremely bitter about the torture that he received over that time. He’s released after a year, there’s a general amnesty and he’s released, but it’s on condition that he’s exiled. So he’s not allowed to live in Florence and he’s not given his job back. So he returns to his farm, which is 10 miles south of Florence. And as I say, he’s bitter about the way that he’s treated. But he settles down and instantly he begins to write. In December of that year, this is 1513, he writes to his friend Victori, and he tells him that he’s just completed what he calls my little book, a little book about politics. And this of course is “The Prince.” And you know, my imagination is that he didn’t so much write this book. I think it was kind of an outpouring of everything he’d been thinking about and everything he’d wanted to say for the time that he was in prison. He dedicates the book to the Medicis. Now, in a dedication of this time, it’s the normal tradition that you have this kind of clawing modesty about yourself.
You know, “Far be it from me.” “I’m only a humble servant.” But we’ve got none of this from Machiavelli. Machiavelli says “It’s traditional that one offers a leader, one’s most prized possession.” He said, “And my most prized possession is the unique understanding of politics that I’ve acquired both from my reading and from my experience. And this is what I want to offer you.” And he makes it clear that he’s been looking back at all the authorities who’ve influenced the Florentine idea of government. So he’s gone back to all the classical authors like Tacitus and Livy. But he’s combined this with his own experience and with contemporary examples that he finds interesting. “The Prince” is a job application. That’s what it really is. It’s a hundred page job application. It’s very clear from the book, particularly from the dedication that he’s hoping this will get him re-employed. He loved his job. He loved being in government service. And he’s desperate to get back to where the action is. He knows that the Medicis who returned to Florence, they’re kids. They’re young and they’re inexperienced and he desperately wants to be there to advise them. So this book is a pitch, and the sadness of it is that there’s no evidence whatsoever that any of the Medicis actually read it. And so it may have fallen certainly in contemporary terms on deaf ears.
Now you’ll see from this slide that I’ve put up, you’ll see that I’ve put up two books and one of them is “The Prince” and the other one is the “Discourses.” Because when we talk about Machiavelli’s political writings, we’re talking about both of these works. Unlike “The Prince,” which as I say was a nine month venture, the “Discourses” are a monumental work. It’s three volumes. Someone’s not muted. Okay. And it’s three volumes and it took him five years to write. And the book it’s a companion piece to “The Prince.” “The Prince” is all about how you rule, how you win rule and how you sustain rule. So it’s designed for rulers. And the “Discourses” is about the state. Once you’ve actually won the state, in order to hold it, you need to build a state and you need to build the institutions of state. So that’s really what the “Discourses” is all about. And the two should really be read together. Although I have to say I’ve dipped into the “Discourses,” although I have actually read “The Prince” So let’s just get on and just see what he has to say. “The Prince” is a practical manual for, mainly for new princes. He’s not interested in princes who inherit a stable kingdom. He says, look, he said, it’s all right for you guys. Someone’s done the hard work for you.
This is about how you actually do the hard work in the first place. And his obsession is with stability, because he’s living in such unstable times and he cares so desperately that Florence is so weak that his absolute mission is to help a prince build a stable city state, and a stable society. And he comes back to this again and again. He says, “The fundamental obligation of the prince is to sustain and stabilise his state.” From the very start, he’s in opposition to all those classical thinkers like Cicero and all the neo Christian thinkers who say it’s only good men who do good things, who do good moral things. Machiavelli says, he says, forget all that. He says, being honest and being kind and merciful. That’s for the birds, right? It’s all very well. But what the citizens most need is a ruler who is effective, a ruler who can defend and strengthen the state. And for that you need someone who, when it’s necessary, is capable of lying and deceiving and using force. And he says, once we all understand this, we’ll stop being disappointed in our politicians and will be much clearer about what we want from them.
Now this was a shocking idea when it was published. And by the way, I have to emphasise, “The Prince” was never published while Machiavelli was alive. Machiavelli dies in 1527. He goes on to write many other works other than these two. He writes one on war, he writes histories, he writes plays. But “The Prince” is never published while he’s alive. It’s published in the 1530s. While he’s alive, it’s only circulated to a small number of people. But when it’s printed, it’s a shocking, shocking book. The ideas in “The Prince” are not revolutionary because for centuries, people in power, diplomats, politicians, kings, queens, et cetera, when they’re in private among themselves over a late night drink and they talk to each other about power, these are the things that they talk about. But this has never been said in public and it’s certainly never been written down for everyone to see it. This is what he says about real world politics. He says, we need to know how the world really works, not how it ought to work. And, this is from “The Prince.” “How we live is so different from how we ought to live, that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done, will learn the way to his downfall rather than his preservation.” And I’ve been trying to think of a good visual to convey the shock and forgive me, but the best I can come up with is actually “The Wizard of Oz.” So Dorothy and her friends, if you remember towards the end of the movie, you know, they’ve been hearing about the reputation of the great Oz, Oz the Magnificent. And they walk into this austere marble hall and they see this extraordinary figure who’s projected in front of them, who’s got billows of smoke on either side, and then unbeknown to them and unbeknown to anyone, Toto, the dog sees that there’s a curtain, walks over to the curtain and draws the curtain away.
And then we see there’s an elderly man who’s working everything with levers and speaking into a microphone. And this is what Machiavelli does. And this is why the book is so shocking. He draws the curtain away so that we can see the levers. We can see it all. We can see how power really works. This is what’s exciting about the book. But this is what’s shocking about the book. He starts by telling us that the world is run by two powerful forces. One of them is called fortuna, fortune or luck. And the other one is virtu. And fortuna is just the stuff that happens. And luck can be good and it can be bad. Memorably, the British Prime Minister in the late fifties and early sixties, Harold McMillan was once asked, what’s the most challenging thing about running the government? And his answer at the time was “Events, dear boy events.” And that’s what fortuna is. It’s just the stuff that happens that you have to deal with. Sometimes it’s opportunity and sometimes it creates huge problems for you. Now virtu, virtu doesn’t mean virtue. There’s no direct word in English, but it’s probably best translated as ability. And for Machiavelli, the greater the prince, the more ability, the more prowess, the more capability they actually have. And the greater of all princes, the greatest of them, are able to make their own look.
They’re able to use their virtu to make their own luck. The number one responsibility of any prince, as I’ve said, is to defend the state, both from external and internal threats. And that means “The Prince” has to be able to know how to fight and how to manage the people around them and how to manage their own reputation. And he says you need to find a balance between being tough and between being reasonable. Because people should neither think of you as soft, because if they do, you’ll be easy to disobey. But nor should they find you so cruel that you’ll become hated. You say you have to seem strict, but reasonable. And the art is in achieving that balance. He asked a question. “Is it better to be feared or to be loved?” And rather than answer this question, I’m going to hand over to a movie which was made in 1993. It’s called “A Bronx Tale.” Many of you might have seen it. It’s a great movie where Chazz Palminteri, he plays the local mafia boss whose name is Sonny. And throughout the film he has this kid who’s his protege. And pretty much everything you’re going to hear in this scene is direct out of “The Prince.” So I’m just going to play the whole thing.
CLP BEGINS
What the matter?
This guy, Louie Dumps over here, you know, he owes me $20. It’s been two weeks now and every time he sees me, he keeps dodging me.
Yeah.
And he’s becoming a real pain in the ass. I mean, should I crack him one or what?
What’s the matter with you? What have I been telling you? Sometimes hurting somebody ain’t the answer. First of all, is he a good friend of yours?
Nah, I don’t even like him.
You don’t even like him. There’s your answer right there. Look at it this way. Cost you $20 to get rid of him, right? He’s never going to bother you again. He’s never going to ask you for money again. He’s out of your life for $20. You got off cheap Forget it.
You’re always right. You’re always right.
Yeah, I’m always right. If I was always right, I wouldn’t have done 10 years in the joint.
What did you do every day?
There’s only three things you could do in the joint kid. Lift weights, play cards, and get into trouble.
What did you do?
Me? I read.
What did you read?
You ever hear of Machiavelli?
Who?
Machiavelli. He’s a famous writer from 500 years ago. Availability. That’s what he always said.
Availability?
That’s right. Listen to me. I can live anywhere I want to. You know why I live in this neighbourhood? Availability. I want to stay close to everything 'cause being on the spot, I can see trouble immediately. Trouble is like a cancer. You got to get it early. If you don’t get it early, it gets too big, then it kills you. That’s why I got to cut it out, kapeesh? Huh? Come on. You’re worried about Louie Dumps. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Worry about yourself, your family, the people that are important to you. That’s what it comes down to. Availability. The people in this neighbourhood that see me every day, that are on my side, they feel safe because they know I’m close and it gives them more reason to love me. But the people that want to do otherwise, they think twice because they know I’m close and it gives them more reason to fear me.
Is it better to be loved or feared?
That’s a good question. It’s nice to be both, but it’s very difficult. But if I had my choice, I would rather be feared. Fear lasts longer than love. Friendships that are bought with money mean nothing. You see how what is around here? I make a joke. Everybody laughs. I know I’m funny, but I’m not that funny. It’s fear that keeps them loyal to me. But the trick is not to be hated. That’s why I treat my men good, but not too good. I give them too much then they don’t need me. I give them just enough where they need me, but they don’t hate me. Don’t forget what I’m telling you. What’s the matter?
CLIP ENDS
- There it is. And as I said, I mean this is, most of Sonny’s lines are straight from straight from “The Prince.” So as I said, it’s better to hear it from him than than from me. So Machiavelli is saying it is better to be feared than loved. Why? Because if you are the ruler, fear is something you can control. But love is not something you can control. Love is given by the people, but it’s also taken away by the people. And the problem with people says, Machiavelli, God love them, the problem with people is that they’re fickle. And now we come on to the darkest, darkest part of “The Prince” because this is the point where Machiavelli deals with the whole question of the use of force and the use of violence. And what he says is this. He says, in order to defend your state, you need to be prepared to use force and use it,“ he says, only when it’s necessary and use it until you don’t need to and then stop.
And if you do have to use force, you do it swiftly. It’s best done by night. And don’t repeat it too often because if you do, you’ll get a reputation for mindless brutality. He gives us two examples. One that he disapproves of and one that he approves of. So his first example is Scipio. And he doesn’t have much time for Scipio. And this in itself to contemporaries would’ve been shocking because Scipio was one of the most admired, the most revered of all of the Roman generals. And what he says is this, he says, Scipio is known for his mercy, for his leniency, clemency. He said, but I don’t really think this is a virtue. He says to me, this is a vice, this is self-indulgence. And he, the example he gives is that Scipio experiences a mutiny. And in the mutiny, hundreds are killed and he forgives the mutineers and he lets them go. And as a result, there’s a second mutiny in which hundreds more are killed. And Machiavelli says he was wrong to show clemency. He should have dealt with the mutineers ruthlessly and swiftly and brutally. And if he’d done so, he would’ve saved hundreds of lives. But the person who he does admire, and again this is also shocking given his bad boy reputation, is Cesare Borgia. Cesare Borgia of course, son of the Borgia pope. And he gives us as his example, Cesare’s conquest of the Romania region. And Cesare had used a bunch of thugs, mercenaries, and they were headed by a rather unsavoury character whose name was Ramiro del Orco.
Cesare orders del Orco to go into the Romania region and to restore order. And the way that del Orco does this is brutal, okay? He castrates traitors and he beheads men in front of their families. And Cesare Borgia lets him do all of that. And when he’s finished and when order is restored, Cesare turns on del Orco. He ordered him to be sliced in half and for his body to be publicly displayed in the main square 'cause now he’s saying it’s all done. And let me just remind you who the true boss is. And that was enough bloodshed. And immediately Cesare Borgia moves to cut taxes, import cheap grain and built theatres. So order is restored and he and everybody moves on. And for Machiavelli, this is how you do it, this is the playbook. The analogy that he likes to use is the lion and the fox. And what he says is this, he says, if you are a leader, he says, you have to know how to be both a lion and a fox. You have to know when to use the brute strength of a lion and when to use the cunning of a fox. And he says, as you can see here, "The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognise traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.” So you need to know how to be both. It’s not good enough just to be one of these. Is “The Prince” a manual for tyrants?
Okay, now, Bertrand Russell, the philosopher from last century, certainly thought so. And he describes “The Prince” as a handbook for gangsters. And he probably had in mind Mussolini. So Mussolini was one of those who last century praises the book. Not only does he do that, he writes a forward to a new edition in Italian. But the fact is, if you read Machiavelli, and if you look at what he says, Machiavelli is very clearly, he’s anti-tyrannical, he’s anti-dictators, he’s anti-authoritarianism. Restraint plays a very big part in everything that he writes. You should lie, you should deceive, you should use force if you need to, but no more than you need to. And in victory, the great leader is the one who knows when to stop. He reserves his biggest criticism for Julius Caesar. Caesar he says, became a dictator. He became a murderer and a thug. And as a consequence, he was hated and removed from office. That he says is how not to do it. So he talks about restraint, and particularly in the “Discourses,” he talks about the constraints. 'Cause you can never quite trust a leader to restrain themselves. So the whole purpose of the state is to have systems of accountability, checks and balances, the rule of law.
So all these institutions are meant to keep the leader in check. So this brings us now onto the Jewish view of political leadership. And the question that I want to pose and wanted to consider is there any common ground between the Machiavellian view and the Jewish view of political leadership? Machiavelli himself, certainly thought so. And one of the surprising things that you find when you read “The Prince” is that one of his leadership heroes turns out to be none other than Moshe, Moses. So I was going to show Charlton Heston as Moses, but actually I thought better of it because this is the contemporary Moses. This was the Moses that was sculpted by Michelangelo based on the commission that he gets in 1505 from the Pope, from Pope Julius. And it now sits in the Church of San Pietro in Rome. So, when I think of Moses, when I think of Moses’ leadership qualities like many others, I think of Moses’ modesty, right? God approaches Moses to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt. And how does Moses reply? He says, “Who am I?” Okay, he thinks he’s the last person on earth who’s capable of leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. Machiavelli is not interested in any of this. Machiavelli admires Moses because Machiavelli sees him as what he calls an armed prophet. Machiavelli says, there’s no point in being an unarmed prophet because you’re going to fail. Okay? You need to be an armed prophet. What’s he talking about?
He’s talking about the moment where Moses descends from Mount Sinai with the two tablets in his hands. He sees the golden calf. He smashes the tablets on the ground. His brother Aaron, who’s a conciliator, who is an unarmed prophet, his brother Aaron, approaches Moses. And he says, please don’t be angry. He says, you’ve been away for a long time and this is what people do, this is what they’re like. And Moses isn’t having any of it. So he calls over the Levis who are kind of like his pretorian guard, and he orders them to smash the golden calf and he orders them to sort out a mass slaying of all the perpetrators. And then the Bible says, in the most understated matter of fact way that day, 3000 men fell. So this brings us to the Jewish view of kingship. And the Hebrew Bible, the Tenakh is famously ambivalent about kinship. The prophets, especially Gideon and Samuel, exert considerable energies criticising the Israelites for even wanting King. When the children of Israel crossed the river Jordan and they settle on the land, for the first 200 years, there is no king.
In fact, the first 200 years is the most extraordinary political experiment in distributed leadership because the model that we have is a loose confederation of tribal groups, all of whom are led by non-dynastic judges who are chosen on merit. So this is Shoftim. This is right through The Book of Judges. This is the leadership model that’s pursued. And the problem is that even though they give it a really good go, the model is not sustainable. And throughout this period, the tribes are having to face down the constant threat of invasion and oppression. And they also experience economic deprivation. And by the end, by the beginning of the Book of Kings, Melachim, they’re desperate and they’re begging Samuel, they’re begging Samuel for a King. Samuel is appalled because Samuel thinks this is a terrible affront to God, but God accedes to the request and says, look, you know what, if that’s what they really want, okay, let them have a king. But they just need to know, and you just need to tell them that if they’re going to have a king, the king is going to tax them and the king is going to press their daughters into service and the king is going to press their sons into the military.
So it ain’t going to be a picnic. And one way of reading Melachim, the Book of Kings is that by the end, it turns out to be a massive, I told you so. The extraordinary thing about the Book of Kings is the kings are depicted, they really are depicted warts and all. Now, here are three commemorative stamps that were issued by the state of Israel in 1960, and they’re beautiful stamps and they show the three most celebrated of the kings of Israel. So we have, and each of them, each of them is shown with the symbol that we’ve come to associate their Rome with. So we see Saul with the spear. So Saul in his military prowess. We see David with the lyre, with the harp to symbolise his love of music and poetry. And we see Schlomo. We see Solomon with the scales of justice. But if you look at the Book of Kings, if you read the Book of Kings, you find that all three of them, they’re deeply, deeply flawed characters. Saul is something of a kind of lonely, tragic figure who’s disobedient. He doesn’t manage to defeat the Philistines. And he ultimately fails. And he succeeded by David, who is obviously much more successful as a king. Now David reigns, he reigns 40 years and during this time he defeats the Philistines. He builds a state. He unites the Israelites. He builds a standing army and he builds the institutions of state. But there’s a big price to pay. He taxes the children of Israel heavily and he puts them into forced labour. And as a character, he’s highly flawed.
From the time that he becomes king, his character changes. And it’s not in a good way. He becomes far less pleasant throughout the period of his monarchy. And we also see him committing the terrible crime of committing murder in order to marry his wife Bathsheba. So he’s certainly not the perfect plaster saint. And neither, quite frankly is Solomon, his successor. Solomon is shown as a wise and true king, but there’s many troubling aspects to Solomon’s reign. He seems to want to be, he seems to want to have all the trappings of a Mesopotamian king. He wants the bling, right? He wants the vast wealth. He wants the magnificent palace. He has 700 wives. He had 300 concubines, most of them non-Hebrews. And how does he paid for it? Well, he imposes punitive taxes on his people and he borrows heavily. And to repay his debts, he gives away citizen towns to foreign powers. And even worse, he allows the people of Israel to be enslaved to foreign powers in order to pay his debts. So it’s no surprise that when Solomon dies, quite frankly, that people have had enough of kingship and there’s a massive, massive revolt against the idea of kings.
So you read Kings, and really what it does is it tells you politics is a rough, tough game and there’s no easy answers. If we really want to know what the Bible thinks about kingship, we have to look back to Deuteronomy, to Moses’ last speech and a large chunk of Deuteronomy, probably about half of it, is taken up with Moses’ final speech to the Israelites. So the Israelites, they’re on the threshold of the promised land. They’re about to cross the river Jordan. Moses has been told he ain’t going with them. So this is his last opportunity to address them. So here he is talking to the children of Israel and God has given him extensive instructions of all the dos and don'ts that he’s got to tell them. This is a huge, huge list. And Moses is saying, he’s saying, kids, if you thought there were just 10 commandments, think again because I’m going to give you the mother load now. And so as I say, you know, he spends about half his Deuteronomy, there’s pages and pages where he takes them through the entirety covering pretty much everything. It’s all of the other commandments. What does it cover? It covers worship and priesthood and sacrifices, dietary laws, charity, tithes, the remission of debts, employment laws, the penal system, the judicial system, dispute resolution.
I mean, you name it, it’s all there. And at the very end when he finally finishes, he says, don’t worry if you don’t remember any of this stuff, don’t worry because we’re going to write it all down for you. What’s interesting is the silence of the Israelites, because we never actually find out in Deuteronomy how they react. Perversely, I like to imagine this is a bit like the first school trip that your kids do. You are with your kid at the bus stop and you are giving them that final speech, right? And you are just mouthing off at them. You know, this is the one where you say, don’t forget to brush your teeth and don’t forget, you mustn’t leave your bag unattended and use your eczema cream. Okay? That’s what it’s there for. And it wouldn’t hurt you to call me every now and again. And your kid is looking at you and is just thinking, if I just keep nodding, he’s going to stop soon and then I can just get on the bus and be with my friends. Part of this important speech is about kingship. And it’s Deuteronomy 17. It’s the portion which is known as Shoftim. And versus 14 to 20 are the absolute key ones. And it’s extraordinary for what it says. So God says, look, he says, you can tell them if they want a king, right? They can have a king, but let’s just, you know, if you look at number 14, you know what he’s saying is he’s saying you can have a king once you’ve crossed over the river, once you’ve possessed the land, once you’ve settled the land, once you live there, only then can you have a king. What God is saying is we are going to have no founding dynasties here ‘cause founding dynasties are a problem. Founding dynasties have entitlement.
Founding dynasties create myths saying we’ve always been here and we’re always going to be here. And there’s going to be absolutely no entitlement when it comes to kingship 'cause the kings of Israel are going to be there for one reason, one reason only. And that’s to govern, okay? There’s no entitlement and there’s no divine right. And even more in 15, God says, who is the king going to be? It’s going to be from among your brothers. It’s not going to be an aristocrat. It’s not going to be someone from elite. It’s going to be, you’ve always got to choose one of you. So there’s no hierarchy here. And then if you look at 17 to 20, and I’m not going to go through them in detail, but this is, well, 16 to 20, this is all about the constraints that are going to be on kingship. And it’s extraordinary. God says, if a king is going to accept the role, okay, then they aren’t allowed to take too much for themselves, okay? They’ve got to show restraint. They can’t take the Israelites back to Egypt by which God means, okay, they can’t take the Israelites back to slavery. And they have to dial it down in terms of the number of wives and they have to follow the Torah. So when you think about those examples I showed, particularly David and Solomon, again, it’s a massive I told you so.
You know, this is what happens when you turn away from God. So returning to this question, in conclusion, is there common ground between the Jewish view and the Machiavellian view? Well, there’s obviously a huge difference here. Let’s just, I’m just going to get out of this just while we finish. Okay. And here we go. There’s a huge difference between the Torah view and between the Machiavellian view and it’s this. Jewish kings are expected to follow the teachings and the laws of the Torah. When they do, they’re successful. And when they turn away from the Torah, they fail. But there is some really, really interesting common ground. And this is what I think the Jewish view says, and this is what the Machiavelli view says, that to be an effective leader, sometimes you have to be cunning and sometimes you have to be ruthless, which means that when we look for our political leaders, we shouldn’t necessarily be looking for the nicest guys in the room.
And the second thing that the Torah says that Machiavelli says is even when we have the very best of leaders, we just always have to remember that at the end of the day, they’re only human, which means that they’re flawed. And because they’re flawed, the only way in which we can allow them to operate is through checks and balances to constrain them. This, I think, is the paradox of power that both Machiavelli and the Hebrew Bible seek to illuminate. We want our leaders to have enough power because we want to live in security and prosperity, but we can’t give them too much power because that road leads to corruption and tyranny. Thank you. Okay, so Wendy, are you there.
- [Woman] Phillip, do you want to have a quick look if there’s any questions?
Q&A and Comments:
Yeah, yeah, surely. So Romaine has said, “We’re shocked. Why are we so shocked? What scares us about this pragmatic view?” That’s great.
[Wendy] I am here. I just couldn’t unmute, but I very much here. Thank you for an excellent presentation. Sorry, let’s go back to questions.
Q: - Thank you. So Dale says, “How would you compare Henry Kissinger’s use and understanding of real politik with Machiavelli’s advice in 'The Prince?’”
A: Well, very interesting. I mean, Henry Kissinger, again, you know, Machiavelli said, you know, I do this. You know, I say all this for a reason, and the reason is because I care about the state. And so the question really is what you feel Henry Kissinger’s motives were not what you feel his methods were. Kissinger was occasionally asked if he’s read “The Prince” and if he agrees with “The Prince” and Kissinger, interestingly, he always evaded the question like a true politician.
Okay, so we’ve got some nice comments.
Q: “Please repeat the name of the movie.” I
A: t’s “A Bronx Tale.” It’s good movie. It’s not a great movie, but it’s a good movie. It’s well worth the watch. Chazz Palminteri who was the lead character, he wrote the play on which the movie is based. And what really makes it interesting is that much of it is based on his own childhood.
Okay. Right. And gosh, I think that’s it. I think we’re all done. So thank you. Thank you everyone very much for listening and for those joining later at 7:30 UK time, See you then.
[Woman] Thank you so much for it. It was excellent as usual. Brilliant.
It’s fun.
[Woman] Thank you. Thank you. And thank you Jude, and we will see you all a little bit later.
Bye everyone.
[Woman] Thank you.
[Audience] Bye.