Hey folks, Mark Linton Meyer from the Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast here.

Does politics have to be Machiavellian?

To win do you need to be ruthless?

Well you would think that Niccolo Machiavelli would say yes.

But to really understand his views you have to read not only his famous manual on acquiring

power, The Prince, but also his discourses on Livy, which comment on republics, established

states where the citizens' interests are supposed to be represented, and keeping those stable.

So Machiavelli is going to distinguish between the ruthlessness that's required to gain

power in a state in the first place, and the new attitude you want to take to make a state

last in the long term.

To take power you want to show ostentatious strength.

You want to get rid of your enemies and it's better to be feared than to be loved.

But to establish a legacy the important thing is to support strong institutions, to have

a well-crafted system of laws that are applied consistently.

Machiavelli recognized that each good kind of government is very similar to an awful

kind, so a benevolent princedom could very easily become a tyranny.

An aristocracy ruled by the best could very easily become an oligarchy.

A democracy could very easily become an archic mob rule.

In fact it claims in chapter 2 of discourses on Livy that when you institute one of these

types of governments, you really instituting it only for a short time because there's

no remedy which can prevent it from degenerating into the opposite kind.

So on the one hand to gain power you have to be audacious, you're going to have to seize

...