The clock is ticking down to when I start The Prince by Machiavelli.
The bookclub is about to begin.
For anyone new, my official bookclub is launching. The first topic: Machiavelli. It’s open to all paying members and it’s required to read either of the works.
This week I’m preparing.
I just went through Ritchie Robertson’s The Enlightenment. Robertson is an Enlightenment scholar, and while no specific chapter is devoted to Machiavelli, I looked through to see the Machiavelli influence on some Enlightenment thinkers, and found some good tidbits. Mainly, some good tidbits relating to Edward Gibbon and the Roman Empire. He also reminded me of the claim that The Prince was satire. A unique claim, nothing too much of a rabbit hole, but certainly a little bit of conspiracy tinged food for thought.
I also ordered Anti-Machiavel by King Frederick of Prussia. Frederick wrote why Machiavelli was wrong based on his experience. Which is interesting since Frederick, from the little I know of him, was what some consider a Machiavellian leader, since he was a Realpolitik player. Yet, as Pierre Manent shows, one can assert, whether it’s power or dominance or will, in a manner that is not Machiavellian, even if it’s an aggressive assertion. More food for thought.
This week I will likely also dig into the Manent books I ordered, not fully, but just to get some topics and mark some chapters of The Prince to take note of.
Start Date
Again, it’s not required to read to join in. You can ask questions, engage, and watch some of the videos.
But for those of you reading, let’s peg Monday, March 23rd as the start date.
No law says you must start on that day. You can begin sooner, you can begin after, you can begin well after if you’d like. But we’ll mark that day as the day to begin.
This week I plan to record a video on handling introductions and translator notes of a book of this sort through the new Substack Studio feature. Classic books, among others, almost always have an introduction written by either a scholar on the topic or a notable figure. Introductions matter. They can set the tone, provide clarity, give context, and guide or misguide. As to the latter, man is a political animal, and a person’s worldview does seep into works or lenses. Sometimes it’s not as explicit, and some authors and writers are great at leaving most of it out, but it will come out in some manner. That can set a tone so it’s important for our own critical thinking to provide context to the context being provided to you.
Plus, a big plus, modern publishing industries, especially a big player like Penguin, in my experience (being somewhat a Penguin Classics maximalist myself) attempt to hijack thinkers, authors, stories into the Left umbrella. And some of this hijackins is to the point of comedy, like Amartya Sen’s introduction to Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, where Sen makes a case that Smith was actually arguing for modern monetary theory and Socialism styled economic theory. That absurdity is so absurd it’s comedic.
Also another reason I do this, the best class I took in college was for history majors, and you had to have high grades to get in, I got in and am still proud as it was selective. Much of the class discussed the various styles of historical writing, how to theme a museum, how to present those plaques you see at a historical marker, and how to spot the worldviews or leanings and why it mattered. It didn’t make me a savant of knowing worldviews, but I recognized the importance to understand the lens of a writer or historian to get a handle on how they’re presenting it, whether it has an agenda, whether it’s counterfactual, so on and so forth. It was an invaluable class.
Enough rambling, I’ll save it for the video. And I’ll do a video on the introduction for The Prince once I get into it.
Again the edition I’m reading: The Prince ISBN: 978-0-140-44915-0
This bookclub is open to all paying members. I recognize some of the peeps joining, and know personally of another, in other words, a great handful have raised theirs hands to join in. Each will bring a lot to the table and it should make for good discussion.
Monday, March 23rd we begin.
Expect a video on the introduction to arrive in the next few days, possibly tomorrow. The video is exclusive to paid members.
If you’d like to join along for the ride and are not a paid member, upgrade your membership.
If you’re joining along, are a paid member, are reading either or both, or are not reading but planning to engage somewhat, go ahead into the chat, let me know you’re in and in what capacity, do that HERE.