Podbit · Dwarkesh Podcast

Ada Palmer – Machiavelli is the most misunderstood thinker of all time

Explore episode Jun 16, 2026

History

When Machiavelli Became Exciting: Hobbes and the 19th Century

Ada Palmer – Machiavelli is the most misunderstood thinker … · Jun 16, 2026 History

The Prince drifted in obscurity until Hobbes's Leviathan hit European thought 'like a truck full of bricks.' Philosophers trying to refute Hobbes went back to Machiavelli as the ancestral monster. Then in the 19th century, newly republican governments needed a political framework without God — and Machiavelli was the only major theorist who didn't plug religion in.

Where this was said

The Prince was a job application to Machiavelli's torturers

At 1:28:30 · chapter starts 1:16:57

Machiavelli hand-copied Lucretius from memory. The Renaissance treated antiquity as the only credible source. Original ideas were disguised as Livy or Plato commentary — the Discourses were Machiavelli's prestige vehicle.^{[1]

— Ada Palmer

"In the Renaissance, original ideas were out of fashion. If you wanted people to take your thought seriously, you dressed it up as Livy or P…"

1:36:40}

History

The Prince Was a Job Application to His Torturers

Ada Palmer – Machiavelli is the most misunderstood thinker … · Jun 16, 2026 History

Every foreign court in Europe would have paid to hire Machiavelli. He turned them all down and chose to rot in a countryside hamlet, writing The Prince not for fame or publication but as a loyalty demonstration to the men who had tortured and exiled him. He wanted only one job: serving Florence.

History

Machiavelli turned down all foreign offers

Ada Palmer – Machiavelli is the most misunderstood thinker … · Jun 16, 2026

Despite being tortured and exiled, Machiavelli refused lucrative positions at foreign courts and chose to remain in rural exile, writing The Prince as a loyalty demonstration to Florence.

Machiavelli says, no, I'm going to stay and I'm going to rot, and I'm going to write The Prince, which is my job application, begging the new regime to bring me back and let me work for them and demonstrating my loyalty.

Ada Palmer

Ada Palmer – Machiavelli is the most mi…

History

The Prince: secret proprietary technology

Ada Palmer – Machiavelli is the most misunderstood thinker … · Jun 16, 2026

Machiavelli did not circulate The Prince broadly; he treated it like classified state intelligence, sharing it only with Florence's rulers and his closest scholarly circle.

History

Machiavelli Was Not Machiavellian

Ada Palmer – Machiavelli is the most misunderstood thinker … · Jun 16, 2026 History

'Machiavellian' means calculating and self-serving. Machiavelli gave up wealth, social life, career, and freedom to serve the government that tortured him — refusing to let his political secrets benefit any other state. He is possibly the least Machiavellian person in history.

Machiavellian means self-serving — well, Machiavelli himself is one of the most selfless men I've ever read about in the history of the Earth, who will give up and sacrifice career, diplomacy, fame, friends, the opportunity to even be in a city and have a nice day to rot in the countryside to be faithful to his country.

Ada Palmer

Ada Palmer – Machiavelli is the most mi…

History

Machiavelli first published 1532, banned by 1559

Ada Palmer – Machiavelli is the most misunderstood thinker … · Jun 16, 2026

The Prince was first published in 1532, after Machiavelli's death, by relatives seeking family fame; it was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books by 1559.

History

Hobbes triggered 40-year Machiavelli revival

Ada Palmer – Machiavelli is the most misunderstood thinker … · Jun 16, 2026

Hobbes's Leviathan sparked a 40-year effort by European philosophers to refute it, which led scholars back to Machiavelli as the intellectual ancestor of Hobbesian thought.

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