Ada Palmer: uncertainty

Transcript context

…So why would it have been so bad if Valentino took over Florence and he had survived? He would’ve massacred maybe the ruling regime at the time, the republic, but I don’t know what Machiavelli is especially concerned about. Would the cultural treasures of Florence and everything have survived? The cultural treasures of Florence would potentially have been okay. There’s two answers to that. One of them is that Machiavelli is very adamant that if you live such that there is somebody who can have you summarily executed—he can walk by you in the street and point at you and say, “Him, kill him,” and it happens—then you are not free. In his vocabulary in the text, if you live in a state where there is an arbitrary power who can have you put to death, you are a slave. If instead you live in a system where there must be a trial, and there must be a process, and this must be examined and public, if there is a system, then you have liberty. That system may be unfair. It may be biased. It may be, in Machiavelli’s case, the very system that tortured and exiled him. But there was a system. He considers that difference to be enormously important. So if Valentino conquers Florence, it’s not going to be that system anymore. There will be a man who can walk down the street and point at a Florentine citizen and say, “Kill him,” and they will kill him. Will that tyrant be fair? Maybe. Will that tyrant exercise this power well? Perhaps. Will his successor be worse or better than him? We don’t know. We can’t predict. It’s a monarchy. It’s vulnerable to good successors and bad successors. But the people of Florence are not free if there exists a man who can say, “Execute him.” That meant a lot to Machiavelli, and it meant a lot to the Florentine people. It’s kind of hard for us to see how few liberties and how little franchise they had and yet how much they cared. Florentines are constantly willing to go into the street and risk their lives flying the banner that says “Libertas” across it: liberty. The banner LIBERTAS is the coat of arms of the Signoria, the Senate, which is selected from the 1% super mega elite, tiny minority of the city that is eligible to be in government. They aren’t rioting to defend their right to participate in the republic. They’re rioting to defend their boss’s boss’s right to be in the republic. Yet they care so deeply about it, and they consider it fundamentally different from the situation in which there is a man who can walk down the street and point at you and say, “Him, kill him.” That tradition of liberty means a lot and would be gone even if the most beneficent tyrant in the world took the city. So that’s half of the answer. Can I ask about that real quick? When Lorenzo de’ Piero di Medici takes over, is he not that guy?…

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