Machiavelli still matters

Paul Lay: Hello and welcome to The EI Podcast. I’m Paul Lay, Senior Editor at Engelsberg Ideas. Today I’m delighted to be joined by historian Stephen Bowd, co-author of a new book, Why Machiavelli Matters Now. Stephen is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Edinburgh, and he’s published extensively on the history of Venice in particular and the Renaissance in general. Welcome, Stephen.

Stephen Bowd: Thank you.

Paul Lay: So, as you write in the introduction to the book, Machiavelli is seen as both an angel and a devil by many different figures throughout history. The word ‘Machiavellian’ has taken on the mantle of other sinister words, like ‘Kafkaesque’ or ‘Beckettian’, and he has persisted in his remarkable influence over the 500 years since his death. But your book very much addresses the question: why does Machiavelli matter now? Can you tell us why he does?

Stephen Bowd: Well, that’s a good question. It’s justifying the title of the book. I think there are a lot of different ways you can take it. One of the things that strikes me about Machiavelli, and why he’s important now, is that a lot of the world in which we live today is partly shaped by the Renaissance, and by Machiavelli’s contribution to Renaissance ideas, discussions and debates.

So, in order to understand some of the questions we have now about violence, about the limits of violence, and about the relationship between violence and morality, for example, Machiavelli was setting out and engaging with many of those questions, and exploring some of the answers to them.

Paul Lay: So you set up, in a sense, a political agenda that some would say still exists?

Stephen Bowd: I think very much so, yes. If we find, when picking up The Prince or another of Machiavelli’s works, that it’s engaging, accessible and familiar, as I think many people do, that’s partly because we are the inheritors of the cultural, rhetorical and intellectual changes that came with the Renaissance. These changes were embraced enthusiastically – and sometimes gingerly, as you refer to with the Machiavellian. They’re not so keen on that across Europe, and then across the world.

Paul Lay: So let’s get some sense of the man, because he’s a much-mythologised figure, Machiavelli. Stephen, who was the man behind this all-powerful myth? What’s his background? What credentials did he have?

Stephen Bowd: Well, he was born in Florence in 1469, to a not particularly prominent family in the city, although it was quite a good name, quite an ancient and well-established name. His father had sort of withdrawn a little bit from engagement with politics, and seems to have run up debts, and that partly prevented him from really coming to the fore in political terms. But there are some suggestions that his father may also have deliberately kept out of the hurly-burly and faction fighting of Florence under the Medici.

Paul Lay: It’s a very factional city.

Stephen Bowd: Yes, it is, absolutely. Florentines are good at one thing. They’re very good at it throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance: falling out with each other and forming factions and different groupings.

But Machiavelli is interesting because he seems to have been, maybe thanks to his father’s withdrawal or semi-retirement from all that, a low-profile figure – a clean pair of hands. He’s not associated with any particular faction. And so, although we don’t know a great deal about his education or the ‘lost years’ which lead up to around 1498, when he’s actually elected to a position as secretary to the Chancery, there’s a lot of argument and debate about how, perhaps because of this relative obscurity, he rises to that position.

Paul Lay: Is he associated with any one faction?

Stephen Bowd: No, he’s really not. He writes a fairly scathing letter about the guys in charge in Florence in 1494 to 1498. And that’s this friar and prophet, Girolamo Savonarola – the Bonfire of the Vanities, and youths parading through the streets and telling older Florentines off if they’re wearing the wrong sorts of clothing.

Paul Lay: He’s a fascinating character.

Stephen Bowd: Yes. You could have a whole interesting podcast about Savonarola, who writes about tyranny, for example. So here’s a very interesting character.

Paul Lay: Who comes to a rather unhappy end.

Stephen Bowd: Yes. He’s both burnt and hanged simultaneously.

Paul Lay: Just to make sure. So this image of Florence as this factional place of infighting, does it persist? And once Machiavelli does get somewhere near the levers of power, what’s his influence on the city, and how does the city influence his work? We know The Prince. It’s a great advice manual to rulers. How do the two interact?

Stephen Bowd: That’s a very good question because he seems to have been quite close to Pietro Soderini. The Soderini family was another prominent family in Florence. Pietro Soderini really succeeds as a leader in Florence in the interregnum period, as it were, between the periods of Medici domination. This is the first decade of the 16th century. Indeed, those hostile to Machiavelli or to Soderini call Machiavelli ‘Soderini’s little puppet’. So he’s very closely suited to Soderini.

But what Machiavelli watches is Soderini being outmanoeuvred by the opposing factions, which are never eradicated, which are always there. And that’s a lesson that Machiavelli takes from this. You have to kill the sons of Brutus, he says. He says that Soderini should have seized the opportunity to wipe out his enemies, whether through execution, exile, or outmanoeuvring them. Otherwise, look what happens: they’re plotting, and they come back and oust you.

So those are some of the lessons that Machiavelli understood or drew from his time within the Soderini government. Then, more particularly, he’s involved with war and foreign relations. And so he learns, and understands very vividly and immediately, how weak Florence is in relation to these great powers like France, the Empire and so on, who have invaded Italy or have been present in Italy since the end of the fifteenth century. Italy is divided. Florence is one republic among many, so they’re all jostling for power within the peninsula.

Paul Lay: And so they can be picked off by superior foreign forces.

Stephen Bowd: Yes. So there’s a divide-and-conquer approach taken by these northern barbarians – so-called barbarians. The Italians call them barbarians.

Paul Lay: Of course they do.

Stephen Bowd: Machiavelli is sent out, as ambassadors or legates are, to lie on behalf of his employers.
Paul Lay: So he’s a real student of statecraft and diplomacy.

Stephen Bowd: Yes. And he has to stand up there before the king, before the king’s counsellors and powerful aristocrats in France, and justify Florence’s position. So he learns how to use language effectively to mask Florence’s real motives, or to present Florence’s manoeuvrings in the best possible light, I think.

Paul Lay: It’s interesting you mention the example of Brutus there. It’s full of classical references, and of course he’s a Renaissance figure who looks back to the classical age for influences. How much does that permeate his work?

Stephen Bowd: It’s hugely important. Many of the models he uses for his writing are adapted from classical models. For example, he’s a writer of comedies.

Paul Lay: We forget that.

Stephen Bowd: Yes, it’s sometimes overlooked. His comedy Mandragola, The Mandrake Root, is sometimes described as The Prince in dramatic form, because so many of the themes of The Prince can be detected in this comedy, Mandragola.

But it’s also very funny. It manages still to be a very funny play. He models that on the works of Plautus, for example, one of the ancient dramatists. He gives it his own twist, but he takes a lot of that framework and construction and runs with it. That’s what makes him interesting. He’s not just a dry imitator of these classical models. He really does inventive and exciting things with them.

Paul Lay: And we always talk about The Prince, and we’ll have to talk about it. But is there in any sense a precursor to that? What are the influences that go into The Prince, or is it this kind of sui generis work?

Stephen Bowd: Yes, there has been, as you know – as many people know – a huge debate and discussion about that. There are certain figures, Quentin Skinner and others, for example, who’ve really said, well, this is a kind of twist on classical republicanism, that that’s what he’s doing here. Then there’s a kind of opposing wing, if you like – Harvey Mansfield, for example, and others – who see Machiavelli as doing something radically different. He’s introducing evil, immorality, or at least the possibility of immorality, into political discourse, which is totally at odds with the classical model that he’s adapting or adopting.

Paul Lay: And you write – these are your words, or Alex’s perhaps – ‘Machiavelli challenges us to learn to see clearly.’ He casts a very cold eye on things, and doesn’t take refuge in warm and empty words, utopian platitudes and universal panaceas. I wonder if he does succeed in those ambitions. By and large, I think we probably agree that he does. But does it give him the right to be called the first realist in the history of modern political thought? This is by the time we get to modern political thought.

Stephen Bowd: I don’t think we say he’s the first realist, or I don’t think we say that. But some people – it has been said. I don’t know. I wouldn’t say so. There are others writing about the nature of expediency and flexible morality in political life. I think he’s not absolutely the first to do that. But I think partly the way he does it is part of the reason for his success.

Paul Lay: And how does he do it?

Stephen Bowd: Well, he does it in an interesting way. It’s almost like a puzzle. He’ll often give a very clear statement of political reality, as it were, and you’re kind of nodding along, going, ‘Yes, I agree with that. That makes a lot of sense.’ But then he’ll immediately, or very quickly, within a sentence or two, challenge that or qualify that or reverse direction, and then explain.

So he challenges you. You sort of almost feel him saying, ‘Well, keep up.’ And that’s what we meant when we say that he uses that challenge to encourage you not to accept the easiest explanation, to avoid panaceas, to avoid the easy way out. He’s saying you need to develop your own scepticism, your own sharp intellect, to be able to distinguish between the platitudes that are in circulation in your own time, as in his time, and to make your own mind up by looking at the facts as they can be detected.

Paul Lay: And The Prince is still read, still influential, 500 years on. It works in that broad sense for anyone who’s interested in politics and political action, in statecraft, in diplomacy. But I wonder if we could just focus on who he was writing it for at the time. He’s obviously become universal. It’s one of those classic books that people refer to again and again, and will do so. But who was he actually writing for when he put pen to paper?

Stephen Bowd: I like to think it’s very much for fellow Florentines. I get a strong sense of that.
Often, with The Prince, people will leap on the example of Cesare Borgia and say Cesare Borgia is a kind of archetypal prince, a successful man and so on. Others will say he’s the antitype of a prince. In the end, he’s unsuccessful in his ambitions, but he comes closest to that figure who is seizing – who uses his virtù, various qualities, to grapple with Fortuna, with fortune, and try to turn it as far as any human can turn it his way. But there is also, of course, the exhortation at the end of The Prince, which is really to the Medici, who are the dedicatees of The Prince.

Some have argued that that last chapter, which is this exhortation to the Medici to throw these barbarians out of Italy and to unite Italy, and seize that moment when they seem very powerful on the peninsula, is a sort of insincere or late addition, or just a means of trying to get himself back into government, into their good books and into some sort of position.

But I really do feel that all the way through The Prince, he’s thinking about Florence. He loved Florence. That was the thing he said he loved more than his soul. And he was Florentine through and through. I think, primarily, in his mind and head, he’s writing for his fellow Florentines.

Paul Lay: And if you could summarise Machiavelli’s political dictums, as we might say, what do you think they would be? What’s the deep philosophy that is The Prince? And I wonder if we could talk as well about what he means by republicanism when we talk about classical republicanism. We think of republicanism very simply as rule without a monarch, and it’s much more complex than that. We’ve seen that influence not just in Florence, but in Britain and the United States – this influence of classical republicanism. You’re a historian of Venice. Nowhere was it embodied more than in Renaissance Venice. What are we talking about? What are those ideals of classical republicanism?

Stephen Bowd: Well, it’s interesting you mention the Venice example. He was very scathing about Venice.
Almost everyone else in the 16th century thought Venice was wonderful. In Elizabethan England, you’ve got John Harrington and others saying, ‘If only we had a Doge,’ and so on. ‘If we could only imitate Venice, we could have their incredible serenity and harmony as well, and be so successful.’ Machiavelli was – this gets us to the core of his philosophy, I think, and this is why I bring it up – Machiavelli was totally dismissive. He says, look, conflict. You can’t, you know, the Venetians pretend they have this political setup which irons out and removes conflict and is all about harmony. This is rubbish.

Conflict is unavoidable in human society. He wrote poems on ambition, on these basic human emotions and forces and drives in nature. So we’ve got to accept that. We’re not utopians. We’re coming back to that quote again. We have to accept that conflict is there. We need to work out a way to channel that conflict. And in a republican setting, there are particular things and ways he had in mind of doing that.

Paul Lay: It’s very interesting reading contemporaries like Hobbes, for example, an early modern English philosopher. The influence is there already. And I think particularly when Hobbes writes about religion and the dangers of religion, which seems to me to be very Machiavellian there. And I think it’s almost impossible to think about Renaissance Italy, Renaissance Florence, the city states, Venice included, without considering the role of religion. I just wonder if you could give us some sense of the way that Machiavelli conceives of religion, of God, and what his beliefs were, his personal beliefs.

Stephen Bowd: Again, this is another question fraught with huge disagreement and debate.

Paul Lay: That’s why we love it.

Stephen Bowd: I would say he’s probably got a problem not so much with religion, but with the religious, the people who claim to represent religion. He’s right, in a way, about the popes, which we don’t see again, I think, until Gibbon and others, who are absolutely dismissive and scathing of their venality and their corruption. This is partly, of course, because the popes had declared war on Florence a few times, so he was slightly irked by that.

But he saw religion as having a very important place. Religion is very useful, and I don’t think he just meant that in a cynical, utilitarian sense. He saw religion as very useful at binding a society, especially societies which were developing their laws, or which had been recently founded. But really, to make a society, you need more than a constitution; you need more laws, you need faith, you need to have faith in something. And I think his idea of religion and his idea of republicanism in that civic Florentine setting, or the city-state setting of the Renaissance, are inextricably bound. And I think he’s not an atheist, in case anyone was wondering.

Paul Lay: Yes. That would be a talking point with Hobbes. That was an accusation often levelled at him. But yes, ‘atheist’ has a slightly different meaning in the 15th and 16th centuries than perhaps it does now. But this idea of virtù, it’s a word that constantly comes up in Machiavelli’s political philosophy, but it doesn’t simply mean ‘virtue’. We can’t translate it as such, as a kind of moral goodness. I wonder if you could define it in some way. It’s quite challenging, and why is it such an important concept to Machiavelli?

Stephen Bowd: Yes. I think it’s an important concept. His focus on this idea of virtù and his exploration of the range of qualities required for virtù, which are sometimes physical, which do include elements of physical bravery, I think, but also are about foresight and planning. They’re also about the ability to have animo. I think animo is part of, or is connected with, this idea of being able to act quickly in response to the changing nature of a situation.

So I think it’s really at the core of it. It allows Machiavelli to break free and break out of some of the boxes into which political life and political figures have been put, and say, well, even women can, you know, what is it about the relationship between gender and virtù? Can a woman have this too?
And really, in Machiavellian terms, she can. There’s nothing that’s connected with virtù that a woman cannot have. For example, commanding armies can be part of her virtù. He cites examples of women who are commanders of armies, leaders, queens and others. And really, I find that quite an interesting side of virtù: the way it breaks down a lot of these very traditional, established boxes.

And again, it’s part of this aim that he has to let us seek to make sure we see things more clearly. We understand – we brush aside the boxes, the platitudes, the structures which maybe limit our viewpoints, limit our understanding.

Paul Lay: Now, he will forever be known as the author of The Prince. But, as you’ve already hinted at, there’s a great deal more to his writing, however important and foundational it is. I wonder if you could talk about those other major works of his, and how they relate to The Prince, how they relate to his political philosophy and his biography.

Stephen Bowd: Yes. So, I guess the second major work is the Discourses, which is written a few years after The Prince. So he’s writing this around 1517, 1518, 1519, when the Medici – or their proxies – are in control in Florence.

Machiavelli seems to be associated with a group which meets in the Rucellai gardens, meeting in these gardens to discuss ideas of republicanism and republican ideals. Some of the people from that group later on are involved in plots, or accused of plotting, against the Medici. So there’s always been this question mark about where Machiavelli’s loyalties lie.

But in the Discourses, he’s very much moving on. In some ways, it shares a lot with The Prince. Some people have sometimes said, well, the Discourses shows the republican Machiavelli, while The Prince shows the princely Machiavelli, someone who sees the prince as a way to bring in stability and to organise a state. But the Discourses does share some characteristics with The Prince, while being really much more concerned about institutions rather than individuals. So the Discourses is a much longer, important book. And, to come back to your earlier point, it’s a really interesting meditation on and engagement with Livy. So again, it’s stimulated by the classics and by his reading of the classics.

Paul Lay: And what does he take from Livy?

Stephen Bowd: Well, he’s fascinated by Livy’s account of the rise and corruption of the Roman Republic.
He’s fascinated by what Livy says, but he wants to learn the lessons. Florence has gone down the wrong path. Rome was successful in many ways. Its republic, for a long time, was successful until it wasn’t. And he wants to learn lessons from that and say, well, how can we get back onto that track of republicanism? Maybe we can learn something from the Roman example to do that.

Paul Lay: And what do you think he was trying to express there? What should the leaders of Florence learn from the Discourses?

Stephen Bowd: I think one of the things he’s saying to the people of Florence is that the faction fighting in Florence has undermined civic politics. It’s pulling everyone apart. It’s not constructive. It’s not helpful.

And so look at Rome. Rome was able to direct and channel the energies of the people through the tribunes, who worked successfully together with the more elevated sort in the republic in order, for a time, to lay the foundations for the greatness and expansion of Rome. So perhaps if the Florentines paused a minute and stopped angling to do down their enemies and to attack those of the better sort, they might also be successful.

Paul Lay: So he’s a historian as well.

Stephen Bowd: Oh, yes, very much. He signs off one of his letters as Machiavelli, storico – historian. He’s very proud of being a historian.

Paul Lay: What did Machiavelli’s contemporaries think of him? I’m thinking in particular of the Medici, the leaders of Florence. What was their opinion of this man who, if we go back to the old stereotype of Machiavelli, is trying to manipulate them in some way?

Stephen Bowd: He had his enemies, certainly. We know that certain members of the old aristocratic families, for want of a better word, didn’t like him. They disliked him. They thought he was jumped-up, and they write about him in quite a disparaging way. I can’t remember the word they used, something like ‘cocksure’, you know, an impudent man or something. But really, what the Medici thought about him is absolutely fascinating. We don’t know enough about that.

There are suggestions that Machiavelli, as a youth, was very close to Giulio de’ Medici, who later became a cardinal and then Pope – a very disastrously unsuccessful pope, it must be said, Pope Clement VII. So I think the Medici probably were wary. I suspect for a long time they were wary of Machiavelli. He was too clever by half, too sharp, and they were a little bit worried about him. But in the end, they brought him back as a historian. So Giulio de’ Medici, Cardinal Giulio, asked him to write the Florentine Histories. So that’s another one of his great works, which is very neglected, I think, more broadly. And they did bring him back to do things like inspect the fortresses of Florence in 1525-26. And he’s also connected with the papal army as well. So they do recognise his skills and experience. They can turn them to their advantage.

Paul Lay: So he has a significant status.

Stephen Bowd: Yes, absolutely. The Prince has been copied out in manuscript fairly early on, so there’s a demand for it. And then, when his comedies come out, we have letters, people writing saying, ‘Have you heard the latest comedy by Machiavelli?’, and people writing to each other asking for copies of it.
So he had a status as a wit, as someone with sharp repartee. As an improviser, he’s known to improvise poetry and sing and strum his lyre at parties and so on. So he’s quite an entertaining figure, I think.

Paul Lay: So he’s a skilled courtier in this way, like a Castiglione or something?

Stephen Bowd: Yes, absolutely. He does have to kiss the Pope’s foot. I always think that’s a wonderful image: the great Machiavelli having to stoop down as ambassador, as legate. He’s a sort of second-tier ambassador, as legate, to the Pope. And you do have to kiss the Pope’s foot. And Machiavelli probably thought, ‘Hmm. I have to do this for my country.’ But he was probably thinking, ‘This Pope isn’t such a smooth operator.’

Paul Lay: And he has this status in Florence. He’s very influential. When do his ideas start spreading beyond Florence? Because he is a hugely significant figure in Western civilisation, and no doubt beyond. When does it start spreading beyond?

Stephen Bowd: Almost immediately. We have a version of The Prince, a sort of adaptation of The Prince, coming out in 1519, 1520.

Paul Lay: So he’s writing at the right time, isn’t he, with The Prince?

Stephen Bowd: Yes, absolutely. Within six years. Although, of course it isn’t in print in Italian until 1532. So for about 15 years it’s circulating as manuscript copies. And there’s a similar diffusion, of course, to England, or to the English-speaking world, including Scotland. I would have to say, by manuscript for at least about a century, because it’s not printed in English, it’s not translated into English until the middle of the 16th century.

Paul Lay: That’s incredible. It’s as if Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species had been left unpublished, circulating in manuscript for a century and a half.

Stephen Bowd: And why was that?

Paul Lay: Well, it’s a hot potato.

Stephen Bowd: It is definitely a hot potato. We have comments from English courtiers and religious figures like Cardinal Reginald Pole, who hates mostly everything but definitely hates Machiavelli, condemning its immorality. They see it as an attack on the Church. They don’t like what he says about the Pope, about the papacy, and about papal power and corruption.

Paul Lay: And would you say that there’s any particular place or period where it really has been significantly influential? That it’s changed the course of history, or has been crucial to a particular political figure?

Stephen Bowd: I guess you could make a case for sixteenth-century France. There is, of course, in France, from the middle of the 16th century, the Wars of Religion, between the Huguenots and the Catholics and the powerful Huguenot and Catholic families.

And, of course, at this time the regent is Catherine de’ Medici, an Italian, someone of Florentine birth and extraction. And her actions around the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, or her supposed role in that massacre of Huguenots, are linked by many people to the agenda, the lessons of Machiavelli, that she’s just enacting that violent, ruthless, immoral political behaviour in order to further her own ends.
And I think that’s when we see this particular bitter twist and turn in the image of, and the word, ‘Machiavellian’, which is then displayed across the Channel in England on the stage.So you have the murderous Machiavelli that’s mentioned in Richard III. And you have other playwrights and dramatists who are using the figure of Machiavelli as the epitome of evil.

Paul Lay: And every time there’s a move on a politician, or someone tries to succeed or topple anyone, the word ‘Machiavellian’ is almost routinely employed. It’s almost like a trigger reaction. We just know that ‘Machiavellian’ will be used. What is it we get wrong about that word?

Stephen Bowd: What do we get wrong? That’s a difficult question. It’s understood as expediency which is almost divorced from the idea of consequences. But I do think Machiavelli is much more aware of the dangers of acting for what could be seen as immoral ends. He’s not really saying that’s the best thing to do. He’s saying sometimes that’s unavoidable in certain situations, under certain conditions.

Paul Lay: So he’s a realist in that sense.

Stephen Bowd: Yes. I don’t think he’s saying, ‘You must all go out there and you must do this.’ But I think there’s always a caveat around the way he talks about it. Be aware that that won’t necessarily make you glorious, won’t necessarily make you popular, and it won’t necessarily be a very long-lasting success. I think he’d say those sorts of people don’t often last very long, those who are using expediency in that way.

Paul Lay: And when you look at his great political writings, what is it that you would like to tell modern democratic politicians that they could learn, that they could take from a reading of The Prince or the Discourses?

Stephen Bowd: I think the one thing above all that Machiavelli would say is: don’t take the people for granted. And I think now there’s sometimes a feeling that our leaders, politicians, underestimate the intelligence of the electorate. That’s obviously a much more complex relationship between people and power, and democracies are a bit more complex than they were in Machiavelli’s day, when there was much more restricted, formal access to power. But I think, yes, he’d say that people have huge power. And he would say you need to respect that power and use it very carefully.

Paul Lay: And that, again, presumably is a lesson learned from his classical background.
S
tephen Bowd: Absolutely.

Paul Lay: Well, that’s fantastic, Stephen. That’s really brilliant. There is so much more to say, and it’s all in Why Machiavelli Matters Now, which is written by Stephen Bowd and Alexander Lee, an old friend of EI. So thank you so much for taking us through that. It was brilliant. Thank you.

Stephen Bowd: Thank you very much.