How Machiavelli's Florence bargained with Cesare Borgia for survival – Ada Palmer

Had Ada Palmer back on – this time to talk about Machiavelli, perhaps the most misunderstood thinker of all time.

Machiavelli cut his teeth as a high-level diplomat for Florence, a position from which he got to closely observe the most important rulers in Europe at the time, including the ones who were on the path to destroying his dearly beloved Florence.

In 1513 the Medici retook control of Florence and, wrongly suspecting Machiavelli of participating in a coup attempt, fired, tortured, and exiled him. Machiavelli could have fled his exile and worked for any number of different principalities that would have been eager to make use of his talents.

Instead, he decided to rot in the countryside and compile his career’s lessons about power, politics, and human nature into a book he dedicated to the very man whose new regime had tortured and exiled him, Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici.

But at least the Medici were in a position to use his insights to defend Florence. Machiavelli the patriot did not want any other hands to touch this book, because those hands, armed with these lessons, might pose an existential danger to Florence.

The closest modern analogy, at least as Machiavelli would have seen it, would be Szilard’s letter warning FDR about the possibility of a nuclear fission bomb.

What were those insights? And how were they inspired by Machiavelli’s dangerous diplomatic missions all across Europe, and his extensive reading of antiquity? Watch this episode with Ada Palmer to find out!

By the way, Ada is launching a new podcast which I’m very excited about. The first season will be about Machiavelli – a perfect way to dive deeper into the topics we discussed in this episode.

Subscribe at Beforecast’s website to be notified of the first episode: https://beforecast-seven.vercel.app/
Subscribe on YouTube: @Beforecast
Follow her on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/adapalmer
Check out her FixTheNews Podcast episode: https://savingtheworldpod.transistor.fm/
And if you want even more Ada check out her books and more: https://www.adapalmer.com/

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒
* Transcript: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/ada-palmer-2
* Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ada-palmer-machiavelli-is-the-most-misunderstood/id1516093381?i=1000772996754
* Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Wx4gaPNEuauMODv8W2XTA?si=Bzfl_SSvSXCr4Xh4u2Q6lg

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
* Cursor recently saved one of my podcast recordings. When a video file from a shoot came out corrupted, I pointed Cursor at it: it recovered the footage on its own, tracking down the right reference file from the file’s metadata and realigning the out-of-sync audio. My whole team now uses Cursor for everyday tasks, not just coding. Get started at https://cursor.com/dwarkesh

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To sponsor a future episode, visit https://dwarkesh.com/advertise.

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
00:00:00 – How Florence bargained with Cesare Borgia for survival
00:15:08 – Machiavelli’s analytical innovations
00:23:58 – Why popes became warlords
00:36:13 – Why the common people demanded nepotism
00:47:57 – Cesare Borgia brought terror to rulers and justice to the people
00:57:55 – Art as a proxy for war
01:06:41 – Florence, a city famous in hell
01:15:57 – The Prince was a job application to Machiavelli’s torturers
01:41:39 – During the Renaissance, original ideas had to be couched in antiquity
01:50:44 – Why copyright began with the Inquisition
02:02:12 – Machiavelli wasn't Machiavellian