Lecture: Why Good People Make Terrible Leaders | Machiavelli's Ethics Explained
Power Will Cost You Everything, It’s Worth It
For Machiavelli, the ideal ruthless political operator is Moses. Above Caesar, above Alexander, above Cesare Borgia… it is Moses that Machiavelli holds up as the model of how to enter into evil.
How can this be anything but blasphemy?
When we think of Moses we think: good, honest, humble, compassionate. When we think of Machiavelli we think: evil, deceptive, prideful, violent. How can Moses be Machiavelli’s model of entering into evil when he is literally the lawgiver who established the Ten Commandments?
Machiavelli responds, look at how he established those commandments: “since he wished his laws and his orders to go forward, Moses was forced to kill infinite men who, moved by nothing other than envy, were opposed to his plans.”
If you read the Bible closely, you will see Moses massacre, deceive, genocide… all for the greater good. This is why he was Machiavelli’s favorite leader: someone who was willing to do what was necessary to achieve the most noble goals.
Machiavelli highlights Moses to teach the few and not the many. He wrote his books to teach those “rare and marvellous men” that come once every few hundred years how to achieve the grandest political projects: the founding of states, civilizations, and even religions.
His chief lesson is this: always being good makes you weak and effeminate, you will lose to those who aren’t. Good people make terrible leaders.
As a leader you must operate on a different set of rules than everyone else. It is good that you are selfish, it is good that you have a lust for glory. You must be willing to cheat, lie, murder if necessary. But you must do all of this while appearing to be good: like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
That is what you will learn in this lecture: why and how to enter into evil… as Moses did.
Topics We Cover:
1:49 Moses: The Machiavellian Mastermind
7:12 True Religious Leaders Use Violence
12:12 Politics Requires Lying
20:54 Spare Your Enemies… Or Eliminate Them
30:33 Cruelty In The Service of Good
39:24 Machiavelli Wasn’t a Machiavellian
45:31 Force: The Ultimate Machiavellian Virtue
54:41 Why Harry Truman Didn’t Feel Guilty About The Nukes