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19 | Machiavelli: Cunning, Fortune, and Republican Virtue (Patreon)

Published:
2021-08-01 00:53:33
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2026-06
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Content

In this episode we talk through the work of one of the most infamous figures in the history of political thought, Niccolò Machiavelli. Looking both at the Prince and some passages from the Discourses, we ask ourselves what the Florentine can teach us about strategy, the need for vision and flexibility, and the virtues of leaders and citizens in a world of duplicity and chance. Is he a ruthless lover of cruelty, a clear-eyed political scientist, or a partisan defender of freedom as non-domination?

patreon.com/leftofphilosophy | @leftofphil

References:

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, eds. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince, in Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971).

Louis Althusser, Machiavelli and Us, ed. François Matheron, trans. Gregory Elliott (New York: Verso, 2000).

Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

Comments

Zoyd Noid

this ties in really well with Foucault’s the analytic philosophy of politics

allison brown

i just want to say after listening to this my high brain told me to go watch bloomberg and i found it to be an extremely generative experience. doing like baked armchair news analysis using this historical materialist machiavellian (?) lens makes current upcoming inflationary pressures and the potential for the Fed to raise interest rates (with a potential specific time conjuncture of, say, the upcoming climate talks this fall) suddenly a materially/politically salient upcoming historical juncture for a “people”, constructed by machiavelli as a material political agent observing the field of political relations by way of a media apparatus marketed towards political/economic actors self-constructed as such. this is like being written from a phone so if this doesn’t read as coherent when i’m down in the morning i’ll delete but i think/hope it does? i’m gonna sleep y’all are awesome

allison brown

OH i think this also relates to lillian’s mention of Habermas because the United Nations and human rights (extremely lame) do serve this ritual function in a constitutional society??