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It just occurred to me that Machiavelli could be grouped with Sun Tzu and Saul Alinsky - each one of them wrote an incredibly insightful and influential book on strategy or leadership. Are there any other authors/books in this category?
My takeaway on Machiavelli's The Prince is that it is a diverse collection of ruling / governing practices he observed and recorded back in the 16th-century upon which he tries to extract lessons and learnings, similar to what we see nowadays with entrepreneurship success / failure stories analysis. Machiavelli doesn't seem to actively promote wrongful behavior nor engage in morality evaluations, mostly keeping a neu…
> Imagine that Jerry Seinfeld wrote a book about politics and governance strategy, and sent it to Hillary Clinton, because he wanted to get hired as an aide. Everyone is fascinated by this book, and it somehow becomes an important work in political science. Five hundred years later, Seinfeld is mostly forgotten, but people still call things "Seinfeldian".
That's Machiavelli.
My takeaway on Machiavelli's The Prince is that it is a diverse collection of ruling / governing practices he observed and recorded back in the 16th-century upon which he tries to extract lessons and learnings, similar to what we see nowadays with entrepreneurship success / failure stories analysis. Machiavelli doesn't seem to actively promote wrongful behavior nor engage in morality evaluations, mostly keeping a neu…
I've heard it explained by analogy as, > Imagine that Jerry Seinfeld wrote a book about politics and governance strategy, and sent it to Hillary Clinton, because he wanted to get hired as an aide. Everyone is fascinated by this book, and it somehow becomes an important work in political science. Five hundred years later, Seinfeld is mostly forgotten, but people still call things "Seinfeldian". That's Machiavelli.
What is this ridiculous trend of judging characters of the past by today's standards? According to the author Machiavelli highly original philosophy should be partially dismissed because he frequented prostitutes (male and female).
mental reduction, it prevents people from having to think that the context of civilization is ever changing, which makes judgments very complex. They prefer it single-variable.
Today, we often view the word realpolitik in a somewhat negative sense, because the underlying assumption is that a ruler should be 'good' first and effective second. This is a modern assumption.
What this article doesn't delve into is the idea of virtù itself, and specifically how (someone like Nietzsche) sees this value and the Renaissance in general as a return to pre-Christian, pre-Platonic ideals of excellence, ones that precede modern ideas of good and evil. It is an idea intimately tied up with aesthetic concerns of self-mastery, clarity, and the dispelling of Platonic (subsequently Christian) idealism. Machiavelli himself was quite interested in the ancients, so this is not surprising.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/machiavelli/#PoweVirtFort
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtù
This excerpt from Twilight of the Idols (Nietzsche) is maybe the best brief description of the idea. Sorry for the length, the part about Machiavelli specifically is in the third paragraph.
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I am not indebted to the Greeks for anything like such strong impressions; and, to speak frankly, they cannot be to us what the Romans are. One cannot learn from the Greeks—their style is too strange, it is also too fluid, to be imperative or to have the effect of a classic. Who would ever have learnt writing from a Greek! Who would ever have learned it without the Romans!... Do not let anyone suggest Plato to me. In regard to Plato I am a thorough sceptic, and have never been able to agree to the admiration of Plato the artist, which is traditional among scholars. And after all, in this matter, the most refined judges of taste in antiquity are on my side. In my opinion Plato bundles all the forms of style pell-mell together, in this respect he is one[Pg 114] of the first decadents of style: he has something similar on his conscience to that which the Cynics had who invented the satura Menippea. For the Platonic dialogue—this revoltingly self-complacent and childish kind of dialectics—to exercise any charm over you, you must never have read any good French authors,—Fontenelle for instance. Plato is boring.
In reality my distrust of Plato is fundamental. I find him so very much astray from all the deepest instincts of the Hellenes, so steeped in moral prejudices, so pre-existently Christian—the concept "good" is already the highest value with him,—that rather than use any other expression I would prefer to designate the whole phenomenon Plato with the hard word "superior bunkum," or, if you would like it better, "idealism." Humanity has had to pay dearly for this Athenian having gone to school among the Egyptians (—or among the Jews in Egypt?...) In the great fatality of Christianity, Plato is that double-faced fascination called the "ideal," which made it possible for the more noble natures of antiquity to misunderstand themselves and to tread the bridge which led to the "cross."
And what an amount of Plato is still to be found in the concept "church," and in the construction, the system and the practice of the church!—My recreation, my predilection, my cure, after all Platonism, has always been Thucydides. Thucydides and perhaps Machiavelli's principe are most closely related to me owing to the absolute determination which they show of refusing to deceive themselves and of seeing reason in reality,—not in "rationality," and still less in "morality." There is no more radical cure than Thucydides for the lamentably rose-coloured idealisation of the Greeks which the "classically-cultured" stripling bears with him into life, as a reward for his public school training. His writings must be carefully studied line by line, and his unuttered thoughts must be read as distinctly as what he actually says. There are few thinkers so rich in unuttered thoughts. In him the culture "of the Sophists"—that is to say, the culture of realism, receives its most perfect expression: this inestimable movement in the midst of the moral and idealistic knavery of the Socratic Schools which was then breaking out in all directions.
Greek philosophy is the decadence of the Greek instinct: Thucydides is the great summing up, the final manifestation of that strong, severe positivism which lay in the instincts of the ancient Hellene. After all, it is courage in the face of reality that distinguishes such natures as Thucydides from Plato: Plato is a coward in the face of reality—consequently he takes refuge in the ideal: Thucydides is master of himself,—consequently he is able to master life.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/52263/52263-h/52263-h.htm#THI...
It just occurred to me that Machiavelli could be grouped with Sun Tzu and Saul Alinsky - each one of them wrote an incredibly insightful and influential book on strategy or leadership. Are there any other authors/books in this category?
I could go on. For example, when thinking about the changing landscape of warfare and politics in a nuclear age, I think you can't find a better book than "The Shield of Achilles" by Phillip Bobbit (if you do let me know). With the latest shift in the military strategy space I suspect lots of Mahan and Corbett are being read right now. It is a mistake to too heavily rely on any of these though.
What I have learned over time is that one does not want to look for a "how to" book by a strategic master, or on any subject so esoteric, but rather to glean tidbits of information that over time open up into novel insights, sometimes only after multiple readings.
On the particular subject of Machiavelli, I think the biggest mistake is to focus on the man himself, instead of the greater power struggles of his day. For example the War of the League of Cambrai is one of the most interesting things in the history of Europe to me, and it's almost never talked about or taught.
“Judging by what I have seen and read that it is not impossible to bring [the military] back to ancient modes and give it some form of past virtue, I decided, so as not to pass these my idle times without doing anything, to write what I understand about the art of war for the satisfaction of those who are lovers of ancient actions” - Machiavelli
It just occurred to me that Machiavelli could be grouped with Sun Tzu and Saul Alinsky - each one of them wrote an incredibly insightful and influential book on strategy or leadership. Are there any other authors/books in this category?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategemata
Scroll down for both Latin and English chapter links.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Frontinus...
Edit: someone else asked this question on HN awhile ago, and I just remembered that I have it bookmarked. Some excellent suggestions here:
The author of this piece lacks an understanding of how Machiavelli uses the term `virtu` (admittedly a common mistake). This failure to understand `virtu` is why countless political factions all the way up to the modern US Democratic party have failed their subjects and failed to protect their states -- they were unwilling to sacrifice the appearance of being good, of keeping their hands clean, for the things that re…
The author of this piece lacks an understanding of how Machiavelli uses the term `virtu` (admittedly a common mistake). This failure to understand `virtu` is why countless political factions all the way up to the modern US Democratic party have failed their subjects and failed to protect their states -- they were unwilling to sacrifice the appearance of being good, of keeping their hands clean, for the things that re…