Niccolò Machiavelli
Why good politicians can’t always be loved
Intro
Niccolò Machiavelli, an Italian Renaissance figure and statesman, is considered by many the father of modern political philosophy. Machiavelli’s legacy is immense, extending far beyond the realm of philosophy - so much so, the adjective ‘Machiavellian’ and its translations are used around the world to describe particularly cunning or devious ideas. Machiavelli is best remembered for his ideas about political leadership and state behaviour. The most powerful above all others, and most likely to endure, is his career-defining book The Prince, which was published posthumously in 1513. It offers a cynical and atheist view of politics, which sets it apart from earlier political commentary because it considers the world as it actually exists, rather than as it should. In contemporary philosophy, we often discuss ideal versus non-ideal theories of political action and we can think of behavioral science as taking a non-ideal approach to the study of human behavior. For this reason, Machiavelli is an important figure who brought the study of politics closer to a realistic understanding of the way individuals think and act.
Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.
- Machiavelli in his book, The Prince
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.
