Question 1

Q: What did this one leave behind?

Accepted Answer

A Florentine diplomat, secretary of the republic's second chancery, and the author of The Prince. He was not teaching people to be wicked; he was the first to detach politics from moral instruction and study it on its own. The adjective made from his name now means unscrupulous, which flattens what he actually did: he wrote down how power behaves whether or not anyone approves, and he attached limits to it that the famous quotations leave out. His conclusions and Han Feizi's line up across seventeen hundred years, not because both men were sinister but because the mechanics repeat.

Question 2

Q: What actually happened?

Accepted Answer

In 1512 the Medici returned to Florence, and the man who had run the republic's second chancery was arrested, put to the rope, and released into the countryside. He spent his days among farmers and card players. In the evening, he wrote to a friend, he took off the mud-caked working clothes, put on court dress, and entered the courts of the ancient men, where he was received kindly and was not ashamed to speak with them. That is where The Prince was written. He dedicated it to the new ruler hoping for a post and never received one. The man who understood power better than anyone then living could not obtain any of it for himself.

Question 3

The parts · Start from what is done, not what ought to be done

Accepted Answer

How one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live, he writes, that a man who neglects the first for the second learns his own ruin. That is a statement of subject matter rather than a licence: the book is about how politics runs, not how it should. e.g. An allowance everyone is trusted not to abuse gets used to the last unit. Assume that, then set the number.

Question 4

The parts · Feared rather than loved, and never hated

Accepted Answer

If one has to be given up, being feared is safer than being loved, because love runs on the other person's willingness. Then the clause that rarely travels with the quotation: avoid being hated, which means keeping off their property and their family. e.g. Cutting a bonus is inside the rules. Humiliating someone in front of the room, or withholding pay already agreed, is over the line and buys an enemy.

Question 5

The parts · Half is fortune, and the other half has a deadline

Accepted Answer

Fortune is the arbiter of about half our actions and leaves the rest to us. The river floods and carries everything away, but in quiet weather men can raise dykes and channels. The half you govern has to be finished before the water rises. e.g. Cash buffer, second supplier, a backup for the person who holds the system. All look like waste until the day they are the only things working.

Question 6

The parts · Injury is remembered longer than benefit

Accepted Answer

Men forget the death of a father sooner than the loss of a patrimony. Nine good turns and one injury leaves the injury standing. Read as design guidance rather than complaint, it says avoiding a memorable harm beats manufacturing a memorable delight. e.g. The first rule of interface design is not to let people make mistakes. One bad experience erases ten pleasant ones.

Question 7

The parts · New arrangements have weak friends and strong enemies

Accepted Answer

Nothing is harder to take in hand than the introduction of a new order, because those who would gain from it are lukewarm and those who lose by it are committed. That asymmetry, not stupidity, is why reforms stall. e.g. The people a change would help have no way to speak for it. The people it costs have every resource needed to push back, and they use them.

Question 8

Q: How do I use it today?

Accepted Answer

Take one rule or incentive you are responsible for and re-read it as though everyone using it were maximising their own position with no goodwill at all. Whatever breaks under that reading was built on ought. Rewrite that part before it is tested for you.

Question 9

Lines to keep

Accepted Answer

How one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live. It is far safer to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both. Men forget the death of a father sooner than the loss of a patrimony. Fortune is the arbiter of half our actions; she leaves us the rest.

Question 10

Q: What should I read alongside?

Accepted Answer

Han Feizi — The two closest political realists East and West, seventeen centuries apart: both studied how power actually works, and both were destroyed by the power they studied. Socrates — Opposite poles of political philosophy: Socrates died for a principle, Machiavelli spent his life on the question of how to stay alive inside power. Feng Dao — Machiavelli argued in a book that outcomes outrank motives; Feng Dao spent a life doing it. Theory and specimen, both abused for centuries. Wu Zetian — Political realism written and political realism lived: he set down what a prince must actually do, she had already done it eight centuries earlier. Julius Caesar — Machiavelli says an injured enemy…

Question 11

Further

Accepted Answer

Han Feizi Liu Bang Cao Cao Sima Yi Sun Tzu Hannah Arendt Feng Dao Lee Kuan Yew Wu Zetian The Art of Worldly Wisdom The Crowd La Rochefoucauld

Machiavelli

What actually happened?

Start from what is done, not what ought to be done

Feared rather than loved, and never hated

Half is fortune, and the other half has a deadline

Injury is remembered longer than benefit

New arrangements have weak friends and strong enemies

How do I use it today?

Deep read

Read alongside

Further

Lines to keep