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The Charlie Kirk Show
Do the Ends Ever Justify the Means? Machiavelli Demystified with Dr. Khalil Habib
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Happy Saturday everybody. No advertisers except our partner, Hillsdale College for this Saturday episode of the Charlie Kirk show. Charlie for hillsdale.com that's Charlie F O R hillsdale.com I am currently taking a Hillsdale Online course that is incredible. It's Constitution 201. Every single person here, you got to be taking these Hillsdale online courses. It will bless you and it will give you wisdom and will give you a worldview that will make sense of things happening around you. You can go to charlieforhillsdale.com I just started Constitution 201. It's amazing. In fact, since the last time we talked, I finished the Winston Churchill and statesmanship course. It is incredible. The Federalist Papers course is totally worth looking at. They have a proper understanding of K through 12 education, the presidency and Constitution class. The introduction to Aristotle course. Aristotle course is amazing. The second World wars course I encourage you to check out. And so much more that that you guys can look at@charlieforhillsdale.com that's charlieforhillsdale.com including the American Heritage from colonial settlement to current day terrific course. Oh, and maybe an Athens and Sparta course for you. Take these courses everybody. Charlieforhillsdale.com Machiavelli I'm sure once or twice you've heard people say that's very Machiavellian of that politician. Or what is the Machiavellian nature? We talk about that with Dr. Khalil Habib from Hillsdale College, the beacon of the north. Hillsdale College is terrific. Charlieforhillsdale.com it's also Hillsdale EDU. You guys can check it out where we talk about who Nicolio Machiavelli was. Do the ends ever justify the means? Is it better to be loved or hated? These questions we wrestle with. Was Machiavelli right about anything? How does he impact our world today on this incredibly important, deep and intellectually focused episode of the Charlie Kirk show that I think will clarify and give you hopefully some understanding of what's happening in the world around you. Again, go to charlie4hillsdale.com enroll in those online courses. It's a free way. You could support this program. You guys can be blessed by it. For charlie4hillsdale.com Dr. Khalil Habib is here. Buckle up. Here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
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I want you to know we are
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lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
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Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
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I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy, his spirit, his love of this country, done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point usa. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Hey everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show. We are so thrilled to have this episode brought to you by by Hillsdale College. Remember, it is charlieforhillsdale.com Charlie F O R hillsdale.com I am currently working through the Constitution 201 course. I started the CS Lewis course and we took a little bit of a pivot away from that. And so it's Dr. Khalil Habib back from the beacon of the North Hillsdale College. Dr. Habib, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
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Charlie, it's great to be with you.
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So we kind of stumbled into Machiavelli last conversation and I promised our listeners we will get back to it. Commonly you'll hear on cable television with almost no explanation. Someone say, well, that's very Machiavellian by this politician. Or that's very Machiavellian. And I think people at best have a very surface knowledge of Machiavelli. Who was this man and why was he so important?
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So Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy, and he lived during the middle of the 15th century. And he lived at a time during the Renaissance where there was growing frustration with politics with the church. Times were corrupt. And it was a movement known as the Renaissance that wanted to revive classical virtue, stress the emphasis of moral education on restoring civic harmony and restoring statescraft. Essentially, Machiavelli comes in and crashes in on this party and says, that's a no go. You can't restore politics on classical moral virtue. And so what he wants to stress in books like the Prince, which is the book he's most famous for today, although the Discourses many years ago was the one that people mostly focused on, he stresses that politics requires cunning. You have to be manipulative, you have to be willing to use force. There are times when you're going to have to break with traditional moral virtue to essentially affect a transition in politics. So, for example, in one of his many critiques of the Renaissance, the attempt to bring Christianity and classical moral virtue together in a modern republic, Machiavelli and the Prince talks about a situation in which a group of Christians in a small town wanted to deal with criminals, but on Christian grounds. And he says, well, this guy, Treasurer Borgia, who was a brutal dictator Essentially showed mercy to the innocent by crushing these people, not turning the other cheek. So in other words, you measure your use of force in relation to your end goal. And if it's to bring about law and order, you don't do it by upholding some kind of classical moral virtue. Force is necessary. And so that, of course, earns him the reputation of some kind of gangster. Sort of a low philosophy of politics. But it's incredibly influential and foundational in many ways.
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A
And so let's dive deeper into that. You know, you mentioned how Machiavelli basically, you know, criticized Socrates and Plato, and mostly Plato, saying, why are we trying to build these imaginary republics? We know what we want, let's just go get it. Can you talk about how Machiavelli in some way liberated this conversation? Not in a good way, of the will of. Kind of how the political will should triumph the good.
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Yeah, that's excellent. Actually, you're referring to chapter 15 in the Prince, and it's one of those chapters that are so crucial that anytime I ever teach Machiavelli, this chapter has to get almost a full day of line by long line reading. Well, in chapter 15 of the Prince, Machiavelli says he's going to depart from all classical writers. So forget the debate whether or not Machiavelli was doing something new or if he was just sort of an ancient and modern clothing. He tells us that he's doing something new. Well, what is it that he's doing new? It just so happens, Charlie, that I have that chapter in mind. Let me just read it to you. He says, and because I know that many have written about this politics and friendship, etcetera, I fear that in writing of it again, I may be held presumptuous, especially since in disputing this matter I depart from the orders of others. So he tells us he is not going to follow anything that had been written about before regarding moral philosophy and politics. And then he says the following. Since my intent is to write something useful, suggesting that classical thought is not useful to whoever understands it, it has appeared to me more fitting to go directly to the effectual truth of the thing than to any imagination of it. So he makes a distinction between philosophy that is simply imaginary and philosophy that is actually effectually true, which is a unique phrase. No one's ever used that before. And I'll parse that out in a moment. But what is he talking about? He says that many have imagined republics. He's referring to Plato and principalities and kingdoms, say St. Augustine, Kingdom of God, that have never been seen or known to exist in truth. Why? Because they are so far from how one lives to how one should live that he who lets go of what is done for what should be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation. So now he tells you what philosophy really should be. The effectual truth is that which preserves your life and preserves your republic. An imaginary truth, moral or political, is that which leads to your ruin. So if turning the other cheek in a political circumstance leads to your ruin, then it's an imaginary teaching. And in that same chapter, he gives us a list of classical virtues, generosities, magnanimity, courage, etc. And then he mixes them up and makes it almost impossible for us to determine which one's the vice and which one's the virtue. And that's revolutionary because he's essentially saying that the virtues are not good in themselves. What they are are only effectual. So sometimes it's good to be merciful, and sometimes it's bad to be merciful. No one had spoken about moral virtue in those categories before, and that makes him completely revolutionary. And so for him, anything that would lead your own personal life to ruin or anything that would lead, say, the United States national interest to ruin is an imaginary moral prejudice.
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So do you think that he was onto something or, you know, without imparting too much of your own critique on this, I'm sure there's some truth in this, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about him. But I'm. I'm guessing he did not anticipate a couple hundred years later how someone would pervert kind of his revelation for this and say, you know what? There is no such thing as absolute truth. Instead, basically a power play. Let's try eugenics as an extreme example. You could see where this leads you, right when you start to say that we're not going to have the struggle between the vices and the virtues or have, you know, some sort of golden mean, as Aristotle would say. Instead, Machiavelli says, well, we kind of know what we want and let's just do it. Can you, can you help unpack that?
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Absolutely. In fact, Machiavelli does anticipate that in the same book in the Prince in chapter 25, he talks about the conquest of fortune. Now, what that essentially means is we can put our mind and our will behind a conquest of nature. We don't need to be submissive to nature. We don't need to assume God has any providential role in politics. So you funny, you bring up eugenics. Machiavelli would say that is a testament to man's ingenuity and capacity to govern his own affairs. So anything else would be servile. He has absolutely no problem going in that direction and, in fact, encourages it. Now, whether or not, as you said, that would lead to sort of a corruption in the hands of the wrong person, that could be quite deadly. Machiavelli would say, so be it. They're a threat regardless. At least I, Machiavelli, I'm teaching you about how the world really works.
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So in the Declaration of Independence, it says the laws of nature and nature's God. Would Machiavelli rather say the will of man and what we want?
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Absolutely. It would be acquisition. In other words, imperialism and tough military institutions. Machiavelli never speaks of natural law. There's no natural right teaching in Machiavelli. There's not even a state of nature teaching from which you could deduce any of those principles in Machiavelli. So, no, he is not. I hate to put it this way, it's simplistic, but I think it would explain a lot. Machiavelli's political teaching is very flexible. You don't want to hamstring your political leaders or your institutions behind any moral prejudice of any kind that could get in the way of your country being effective in defending its own national interest.
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So Machiavelli is used as pejorative in some sense. What can those of us that believe in the natural law, which both you and I do, what can we glean from Machiavelli? What. What can we learn from him where he says, wow, he was really right about this, or he was really right about that. You know what? Where can we say that we need more Machiavelli in our political process?
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Well, where Machiavelli was right was on the importance of citizens remaining vigilant over their liberty. One of the innovations that he spotlights for us in the Discourses is he says, everyone prior to me assumed that civic harmony was the goal of politics and that liberty could be achieved when there was moral virtue permeating society and people were just in harmony with one another. He says the secret to liberty is actually clashes and tumults, properly guided by institutions to form checks and balances. Where he's absolutely right, he thinks that if a populace becomes indifferent to its liberty, it will lose it. And so he was not a fan of people simply just abnegating to public responsibility and just living just merely private lives. In the Discourses, he constantly ties Rome's Liberty and the strength that it had as a republic to the vigilance of its people. If you could say one thing about Rome, it had this. It trusts, but verify every one of its leaders. Everybody had skin in a game and nobody would turn their back on politics there. He's absolutely right.
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Yeah. Even in the Roman emblem, I believe it was the Senate and the people of Rome. Right. Spqr. It was the whole idea of the people must be involved in. In the Roman project. So let me. There's so many questions I have about this. Let's ask this question. Who in history was the first one to dust off the prince and say, oh, I like that, and become like a disciple of Machiavelli, who In history, post 1532, I think, when it was published, all of a sudden said, I'm going to implement this?
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Well, I mean, there's certain elements in Francis Bacon that are very Machiavellian. He mentions Machiavelli by name and says that he had heard the clarion call of Machiavelli. What's interesting about Bacon is he primarily focuses on metaphysics. He focuses on philosophy of science. He wrote the great inspiration. He was a Machiavellian in the sense that he wanted to bring the spirit of conquest not so much to politics, but to nature. And so he encourages the liberation of science from the theology and morality so that it can conquer disease, it can conquer geographical limits that had previously held people back. And so Bacon, in his works wants to inspire a new kind of conquest. Not so much the militaristic thing that you find in Machiavelli's Discourses, but one in which science can interrogate and conquer nature and squeeze her for her secrets. That's very Machiavellian, but taken in a different direction. There are writers like Montesquieu who clearly read him and thought very highly of him, but saw him as ultimately a corrosive influence. And in the spirit of the laws, Montesquieu says, we have yet to cure ourselves of Machiavellianism. He thought that Machiavelli had some great insights in politics and on Montesquieu would polish them up and reform them and take them in different directions. But overall he thought that he was a terrible influence. He didn't like the emphasis on militarism. He didn't like the emphasis on fear. From honest view, our nature inherently seeks tranquility. Machiavelli equates tranquility with the death of liberty. He wants tension, conflict, clashes. He wants you to wake up every morning thinking your Liberty is somebody wants to take your liberty away from you. And he thinks that that is the kind of knot in your stomach you should have that will incentivize you to stay vigilant and focused on politics. What Montesquieu thought Machiavelli got right was the stress on the separation of powers that you begin to see developing in Machiavelli's Discourses. Montesquieu will adopt that, but its ultimate aim is not empire. It's sort of a domestic commercial republic whose fundamental goal is tranquility and peace. That's not Machiavelli's taste at all.
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And so then Machiavelli influenced Bacon, who he influenced almost everybody, as he kind of just upended the tradition before. And it's important to note, I think we talked about this in the previous podcast, where Machiavelli was in the midst of warring Italian city states. Now, were these small republics, were these same republics that they were talking about in the Federalist Papers, like the Genoan city states or Genoa and city states, Is that right?
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Yeah, that's exactly right. And they reflected the classical republics in the sense that they were completely unstable. But you add to the mix, though, something that wasn't in the classical world according to Machiavelli, and that is the Catholic Church. So he never tires of critiquing the institution of Christianity. And in the Discourses and in the Prince, he says, essentially, what you have is an institution that is too strong to simply take over, but it's too weak to unify Italy. And his goal, ultimately is to unify Italy, but unify it with a civil religion in which the state has national sovereignty, and you don't have a universal institution like the Catholic Church dictating what a nation ought to do or not to do. A classic example of this is Shakespeare's play King John, where you have France and England at each other's throats, but it's the papal legate who's determined, thus undermining their national sovereignty. So Machiavelli's other agenda for those times that you're talking about is to also considerably weaken the church as a political player and subordinate it to the state ultimately.
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And so if you were to ask, kind of normal political philosophy student at a school not like Hillsdale, you know, what did Machiavelli stand for? There's two things that they would say. The most common things, they would say, the ends justify the means, and it's better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both. So let's start with that one, this kind of tension between, as a ruler, you have to make a decision of do you want the citizenry to fear you or love you? Can you talk about that? Because that is something that is commonly quoted, but I don't think properly understood as Machiavelli wrote it.
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Sure. The key to understanding almost every point Machiavelli wants to make is that chapter 15 that you had alluded to earlier. Remember, for Machiavelli, the truth is effectual. How do you and I know a moral theory is true or not? Machiavelli would say, if it leads to your ruin, it's imaginary. So take better to be feared than to love. For Machiavelli, people rarely fall out of fear, but they fall out of love. And if your only leverage over them is love and people are fickle, it's not effectual. He also doesn't think that you confound government on anything, such as love and instances where you have that have only shown that the people, especially criminals, will exploit it. But he also qualifies that very same idea and criticizes, for example, Agathocles and Ancient. And he talks about how sometimes you have to also adopt the Persona of being loved, but only when circumstances allow it. So in other words, if you're dealing with hostile foreign actors, you don't want to take the moral high ground and want to be loved, you're going to end up losing your lunch. But if there's nobody really to fear and you've put your threats under control, then Machiavelli, say, would be okay to be loved. But it's all optics for him. Okay, it's all effectual. It's all what the circumstances determine or dictate.
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So I'm going to ask you something that I personally am not able to explain well, which is the end justifies the means. We don't like saying that. That's usually something that we're very dismissive of. First talk about that. Then I have a very specific question about that of someone that we would consider to be a hero that could be put in that category. What did he mean by that? As I guess we've covered this partially, but basically you have to know what you want, and then if you have to do something along the way, then so be it. Is that right?
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Right. So the ends justify the means, which is a phrase he never actually says, but you can infer it from what he teaches. Essentially comes down to a rejection of the idea that moral virtue, say, moderation, is just inherently good in itself. For Machiavelli Sometimes moderation is good, sometimes it's bad. The way you determine whether it's good or bad is based on what the end goal of what it is that you want to achieve. So we'll go back to his favorite example of Treasurer Borgia, who didn't use mercy, didn't display any Christian virtue at all toward the criminals who were ransacking this town. I forget the name of it. He basically brought down the hammer on these guys. He used cruelty, Machiavelli says, but cruelty, he says. Well, used. Why? Well, because the end was to restore peace and law and order. Well, you can't be loved by criminals. You can't sing Kumbaya with them. You can't turn the other cheek. And if you do that, they're going to take advantage. And so the end, security and law and order justifies the means, cruelty. So what's inherent in that phrase is this idea that there's no such thing as a moral absolute. That's just simply good in itself. It's good for something. It's good for me, it's good for us, it's good for our community. And that's where you take your moral compass from, not some kind of abstract moral idea.
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And so two people that I love and we talk about frequently here on the Charlie Kirk show that Hillsdale College has actually statues to would be Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln. Now, the two critiques that some people would have towards Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln is that they were willing to kill a lot of people, suspend habeas corpus and participate in firebombing in Dresden. But the justification at times, and, you know, Dr. Arne would have a really good answer on the Churchill side of this would be no. They knew what they wanted and they knew that there was something that was greater and they had to eliminate the enemy. Now, obviously, this was in a combat, you know, theater and in a place of war, which obviously is an exception to just kind of domestic tyranny. But was Machiavelli totally wrong in this sense, is that sometimes we need to put what we would consider to be, you know, peacetime morality, you know, and suspend it if we have to crush evil?
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B
No, he's absolutely right on that. And where it gets tricky, though, is if you're constantly fighting foreign wars, eventually the means that you're using to conquer your enemies can often come back home and be inflicted on your own citizens. That's where things get hairy and dicey. So, for example, if you are involved in foreign theater and you're overturning Elections for your own national interest. Well, it's only a matter of time before something like that can turn on your own citizens. So, yes, Machiavelli's right. Obviously, if you have a republic form of government, you have principles that you cherish, you have to be willing to defend him. But I think, you know, with Machiavelli, though, you defend him by becoming expansionistic. He wants, eventually, empire. And I'm not sure Churchill was an imperialist.
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I don't either. I'm a huge Churchill fan. I'm saying, though, that some people would criticize Churchill for what he did at Dresden or his campaign to.
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Almost mercilessly, Machiavelli would say he did what he had to do.
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Yeah, and. And I agree, because he was at war against.
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That goes back to your question. Is it better to be feared of love? Well, if Churchill was governed by being loved, what impact would that have had on the enemies he was confronting? It wouldn't lead to anything other than probably more aggression. War is a tough business, and there are very few rules of engagement to it, according to Machiavelli. And you have to be tough.
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A
And so there's a quote here that I want to ask you about that Machiavelli said, which segues beautifully. There is no avoiding war. It can only be postponed to the advantage of others. Now, I suppose you could take that a variety of different ways. Did he mean war in the sense that we mean war, or was he writing this as advice to a political figure, saying, like, if. If you have, you have to crush your political opponents now, or else they're only going to grow stronger?
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Both. You're referring to a quote that comes, I believe, from chapter three of the Prince, at least in that particular chapter, he lays out the differences between ancient Rome and the way modern politics conducts its business. In modern politics, Machiavelli says there's an inclination that you think that somehow war is avoidable, that if you just avoid war, it won't come to you. In the context of the quote that you're mentioning, Machiavelli is talking about foreign enemies. For Machiavelli, it's natural for human beings to want to expand and to acquire. And so it's the natural inclination of all governments to want to grow, and that means impinge upon your own borders and national interests. So then you're caught in an arms race, so to speak, of expanding yourself. So for Machiavelli, he thought that the secret to Rome, a classical Rome, was they never thought war was avoidable, and they always took to Fight to their enemies. Now, in the discourses, he talks about the same phenomenon domestically. He says, sometimes you're going to find that you have enemies within you better strike while they're still weak before they grow and become a faction, in which case you're going to have to have, you know, either a civil war or even worse.
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A
Yeah, and that's why I believe, and you don't have to comment on this from Hillsdale, but I can, that some, some aspects of the Biden regime striking their domestic political opposition as taking a page out of the Prince. So help me unpack this quote. Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Everyone sees what you appear to be, but few really know what you are. What did Machiavelli mean by that?
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B
He was giving advice in the Prince to a ruler that has to always appear, he says moral, has to always appear religious. But he, he just can't be either if he wants to be effective. And he's trying to encourage this leader to do what it takes to win political points against one's domestic and foreign enemies and essentially tell them it's okay. People judge with their eyes. So if you just walk around with a Bible under your arm, they're going to just think you're pious. But behind the scenes, don't let piety get in the way of what's politically expedient. So, so he's teaching you optics there, as people say.
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Yes. All right, so let's. Optics. So just pretend to be something, right? You know, kind of basic public relations. So let's talk now about, and I hate to do this because I, I, I think you could learn something from everyone, but I, I could just already hear so many of our listeners being like, man, this guy is so dark and kind of all about earthly power and all this. What were some of the weaknesses in kind of what he wrote? And again, it is written 500 years ago, so who are we to try to critique weaknesses? But let's say, like, if someone were to embrace Machiavellianism, what are some of the spots that make it most vulnerable if it's employed as a governing strategy?
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Well, two things come to mind, and I'll just cheat off the smart kids like Montesquieu. Montesquieu raised the very same question and concern. He thought that what was wrong about Machiavelli is this assumption that empires not only inevitable, but desirable. So in a short work called On Universal Monarchy in Europe, Montesquieu essentially argues that if you Follow Machiavelli's advice and just have this foreign policy of imperialism. You're going to lead yourself to ruin. So he turns the tables on Machiavelli. If what's imaginary leads to your ruin, adopting Machiavellianism in the modern world is actually imaginary. Why? Manisky said when Machiavelli was writing, there wasn't anything equivalent to, say, nuclear weapons. Commerce hadn't really taken shape. The playing field has now evened out. Technology has made it almost superfluous to have the kind of ancient virtue that Machiavelli was talking about. So you're never going to cultivate that kind of gusto that he thought was necessary. So if you wanted to adopt Machiavellian policies in the modern world, which is to say imperialism, you're going to end up bankrupting your nation. The only way you could continue to fight these foreign wars is if you keep printing money. This is all from honesty. So Montesquieu saw clearly that. Look, what he got right was his business about institutions and mixing republics and all that. That's good. Where he goes off the rails is this idea that empire is necessary for Montesquieu. Empire in a modern age, especially when you throw in modern weaponry and modern wealth from manufacturing and industrialization, you're going to have to bankrupt yourself, arming yourself to the teeth. That would be necessary for some kind of Machiavellian enterprise or agenda. The other thing I think he simply goes wrong is he just claims that it is natural for human beings to acquire. And what he means by that is there's no such thing really as moral virtue, which teaches you not to acquire and indulge your desires, but rather to moderate them. Now, the reason why I say that's fundamentally flawed is because, one, I don't think it's natural for human beings to do that. And also what happens is if you don't encourage restraint and moral virtue, well, then you're going to have a society of degeneracy and license rather than liberty. So I think there's a fundamental flaw there. And in spite of the fact that he wants us to have skin in the game and be concerned with our liberty, what he says about morality actually teaches license and hedonism and not virtue.
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Yeah, I think we're living through that. An era of licentiousness. And the Founders talked a lot about that. So that's an interesting question, which is what? So Machiavelli was. He was not necessarily. He was writing for a very specific type of person or a nation or a CEO, that whereas Aristotle in the ethics was talking, was writing for all people, right? How to be a properly sold individual. I don't think a 19 year old college student all of a sudden saying, you know what? I'm going to become a Machiavellian. That's that. What I'm getting at is how if you applied Machiavellian belief to your own personal life, forget the macro side of it, like you're running, you know, Russia or Syria or India, like, let's just say, you know, a regular school teacher says, you know what? I'm gonna be a Machiavellian. How does that end?
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B
Well, I've seen books sort of like that. I can't remember. There's one that comes to mind. I own it. I've read parts of it. It was like Machiavellian for the modern executive. And it's essentially a watered down version of what Machiavellian. Machiavelli was fundamentally political. He was interested in institutions and politics, you know, warts and all. What it means for our daily lives is that you essentially just live a life of duplicity. You know, I mean, that's what it ultimately translates to. But, you know, you don't need Machiavelli for that. That's just soaked in our popular culture at this point.
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A
I think it's in our nature. And that's where I, I laugh because I was, I wanted to say, like, just indulge your desire, like indulge your nature and you'll independently kind of live a Machiavellian life, I guess.
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B
Well, Machiavelli wrote such a work for that, actually. It's called the Mandragoula. It was a comedy play and it was performed during his lifetime. He never wanted the Prince and the Discourse was published while he was alive. But in the Mandragoula, it's a play about people pursuing their sexual desires. It's a play about infidelity. It's a play about let's just all pretend we're faithful to each other, get what we ultimately want and just kind of play up appearances. So he's kind of written a book for something like the Prince for the average guy, and it's in the Mandragoula, but it has a deeper message as well. And I would say that somebody like Francis Bacon picked up on it. And that is. It's a story about an old man who wants to have an heir, but he can't have a child. And so they concoct a bed trick to get his wife pregnant. Well, what Francis Bacon would say is, well, all of that would be unnecessary. Just allow me to conquer nature. Maybe we can find a way to overcome the limits that nature had placed on us temporarily. So there are Machiavellian ideas that do permeate everyday life. I would just say these days it comes mostly from science.
- [31:51]
A
Well, and I just want to reinforce this and emphasize this because this is why we're doing the partnership with Hillsdale College, which, you know, I'm oversimplifying it, but that's my job, because I don't have, you know, the time to do a whole four years of this.
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B
But, yeah, Charlie, Yet. Yet. I'm telling you.
- [32:10]
A
That's right. Who knows? I would be. I would be happy to. And so the tension is. Is the following. Do you respect and appreciate, at least acknowledge, a natural law, or do you think the will is superior to whatever we're called, the natural law? And that is what I believe is the tension in America and in the west right now. And in some ways, that debate has been going on for quite some time. But Machiavelli was the one that blew this whole thing open. And that's really why we've just dedicated this conversation to. It is prior to Machiavelli, there was at least. People were at least going through the motions that, yes, okay, we acknowledge, you know, the five proofs of God, of Aquinas, or we acknowledge that there is a natural law giver. Machiavelli says, oh, it's your will. Is that right? And then from there, you get Hobbes and you get Rousseau, and then you get Marx and you get Hegel, and then you get Marx, and then you get Nietzsche, and then you get Derrida, you get Foucault, and the next thing you know, you're sending your kids off to college and they say, yeah, there is no such thing as God. I don't even know if existence is real. Is that.
- [33:11]
B
Yeah, no, but that's actually quite accurate. Now. That's quite good. In fact, you can even trace a reading list exactly as you articulated. And you can trace the death of God in one way. You know, I had an undergraduate teacher who's phenomenal, and I remember he introduced us to Nietzsche. Yeah, of course, Nietzsche's famous. Famous for saying God is dead. And I remember the theme of this course was to ultimately claim that Machiavelli was the first to stab, you know, God. And then. And then what you see subsequent to that is the God's long shadow, sort of, you know, waning as we get to the modern era. So, no, you're actually. That's quite accurate, I would say. And you put your finger on the question. There is a tension between, say, something like a natural law, which some would argue is too restrictive for modern politics, meant something like the extreme of Machiavelli, where, like I said, he never speaks of natural right or natural law, but then you have sort of a middle ground. And I would say that that would be modern natural right, that there is a standard by nature and we have a right to protect our lives and our property and our liberty. And sometimes that means we have to employ Machiavellian means to do it. So I would say there is a middle ground in natural right teaching.
- [34:21]
A
So 11 years from now, I want you to publish a book that says 500 years God on trial, because that would be the 500th anniversary of the print. If my years are right. Yeah, 1532, that'd be 500 years. And yeah, I would love for you back.
- [34:37]
B
I'll do it if you write the forward.
- [34:39]
A
I'd be happy to in my kind of very limited knowledge of all of this. But I'm glad you mentioned Nietzsche. And we're short on time here, but that's a nice segue to.
- [34:50]
B
Actually, I was going to say, I see a future episode, my friend. Nietzsche's phenomenal. He's absolutely vital.
- [34:57]
A
Yeah. And what I want to emphasize though is that a lot of Christians and conservatives will say, well, Nietzsche proclaimed that God is dead. That is wrong. He was troubled by this. He said that this is going to create an existential problem in the West. Look, Nietzsche has so many problems. He was nuts. First of all, he lost his mind by the end of his life. And, you know, he influenced a lot of evil activities from Leopold and Loeb. Randomly killing University of Chicago student is a perfect example of that to entire, you know, civilizations. I believe, you know, the triumph of the will actually echoes and goes back to Nietzsche. But he pinpointed better than anyone else and said out loud, hey, the west is going to fall apart, everybody, if you don't get this right. And I don't think we, as people that respect the natural law, give him credit for that.
- [35:49]
B
No, you're absolutely correct. And I would say he, like Machiavelli and Montesquieu are the thinkers. You can't afford not to know. We are living in many ways, some of the consequences of Nietzsche's ideas, for better or for worse. And he did have insights. And you're absolutely correct, he was not declaring it a trump with a triumphant note that God was dead. He was worried that there would be. There would be anything that could replace the old tablets of good and evil and good and bad in the modern world. And his ultimate fear was nihilism. Now, some would say he was a nihilist, but I think he would defend that and say, no, he's actually concerned with elevating human beings from modern decadence and modern nihilism. So you're absolutely correct about that.
- [36:31]
A
Well, we're going to have to get into Beyond Good and Evil and Zarathustra, if I remember correctly.
- [36:37]
B
And Zarathustra, among other things, was the book that inspired those two Chicago students to commit a murder. Leopold and Loeb was the pale criminal, the passage on the pale criminal, and thus Big Zarathustra.
- [36:48]
A
And they thought they could become the overman and the Ubermensch, which is a very interesting thing when you combine that with modern science and you look at kind of what these massive billionaires are doing to try to live forever and challenge, you know, kind of how we were made. This is all very interesting questions, but I think that our listeners, you know, we. We have all people of all faith backgrounds that listen. You know, we have a lot of Christians that listen. This is so important because the unraveling of society you see around you can go back to thinkers that might have just been passed over in your college experience or in your life experience, but that's why we're unpacking them and giving the good and the bad and because we actually acknowledge good and evil, unlike some of these other thinkers. So any final thoughts, Doctor, as we summarize this one and we tease Mr. Nietzsche, we go to Germany next.
- [37:44]
B
Yeah, let's do that. I would love to. No, Charlie, just wanted to thank you again for drawing attention to not only Hillsdale College, but the importance of these books. And like you said, we're living in a world where we're affected by these ideas. And so if you're interested in seeing the direction of where our culture may or may not be going, it's crucial to go back to the sources, the intellectual sources of those ideas. So I think you're doing an enormous public service here.
- [38:07]
A
Thank you. And I will go a step further. For me, and the work we do on the. On the show and Turning Point, we're actually more effective because we know what motivates some of these people. We know what they're going to do next. And it gives us a piece of, you know, a piece and some comfort saying, okay, we kind of understand the philosophical underpinnings and we, we can more effectively counter them. I know that's more my job than your job, but it's so important to be able to pinpoint it because we're all, we all are born into a world we did not create. And in some ways we're living in Machiavelli's world.
- [38:39]
B
Absolutely. And increasingly Nietzsche's.
- [38:42]
A
Yes. And that's what I want. So that is a perfect tease for our next conversation. So consider reinvited charlieforhillsdale.com Sign up for a course. Thank you so much, Doctor.
- [38:53]
B
You got it. And safe travels, Charlie. Thanks for having me again.
- [38:55]
A
You bet.
- [38:55]
B
All right. All right, Take care.
- [38:59]
A
Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us your thoughts freedomarliekirk.com and if you want to support our program, it's charliekirk.com support. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can Trust, go to charliekirk.com.