CLASSIC: When Ancient India Beat Machiavelli to the Punch

Ridiculous History

iHeartPodcasts

History, Society & Culture

4.3 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2024

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

Commonly regarded as one of humanity's premiere works on the art of pursuing and securing power, Niccolò Machiavelli's book "The Prince" has become so popular that the name of its author is synonymous with unethical behavior in the modern day. However, it turns out that Machiavelli himself wasn't the first proponent of ruthless behavior -- the author (or authors) of ancient India's Arthashastra outlined incredibly similar strategies almost 2,000 years before the publication of Machiavelli's masterpiece. Tune in to learn more with Ben and Noel in this Classic episode.

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0:00.0	Foli, if you are a fan of weird literature, you have probably heard of Machiavelli, his famous book, The Prince, which was either satire or a straight-faced guide to political manipulation to get the stuff you want.
0:15.6	Wasn't there also that posthumous Tupac record that was called Machiavelli?
0:19.8	Well, posthumous. That goes to stuff they don't want you to know.
0:23.6	Oh, okay, fair, no, he's in an island.
0:25.9	But yes, you're right, you're absolutely right.
0:27.4	He's also into Assassin's Creed games, too, and Brotherhood.
0:31.3	He's very important, especially in Brotherhood. He's like one of the leaders of the assassination he was a wily kind of thinker wasn't he I mean he was I guess a very practical philosopher of sorts, you know, almost like a Sun Sioux type figure, you know?
0:47.6	I mean he really had a viewpoint that he was able to funnel into some pretty actionable behaviors that people could consider kind of ruthless and a bit cruel and you know but ultimately self-serving playing the game the climbing of the ladder all of that stuff little finger type shit
1:09.7	Yeah, chaos as a ladder and it turns, as we'll see in this weekend's classic episode,
1:16.1	that Machiavelli himself, even though his name now
1:20.0	functions as a term of manipulative behavior.
1:22.9	Machiavelli himself was not the first proponent
1:26.6	of cold-hearted statecraft.
1:28.6	The actual, like the actual origin of this,
1:31.6	which we discovered in this episode goes back to ancient India and a book with unclear authors seems to have preceded the ideas of Machiavelli by almost 2,000 years.
1:46.2	Jeez, please, that's a lot of years.
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