Palmer is wearing The Best Suit Ever today, black-with-white-pinstripes with a white-with-black-pinstripes bowtie.
The Machiavellian revolution in thought is the most important revolution in thought in Western history with the possible exception of Socrates, who founded political philosophy. He begins the modern era of political thought with these things.
The Hebrew bible says that man is born into a garden created by God. God is concerned about man and therefore makes woman for a companion for him. They are not masters of the garden, they do not rule after it. They are to look after it and live in harmony with it. They have an assigned place with limits. They break the rules and suffer dire consequences. The teaching is that human beings ought to accept the limits given to them by God because it is good for them, is what is natural and right. If they follow the rules they will be in God’s favor and live free, happy lives.
Athens teaches that there is right by nature and there are things that are wrong by nature. Nature is the moral standard. Every being that exists has a “telos” or purpose or acme or peak or natural end. “It is the purpose of human beings to act in this or that way, they are meant to do that by nature, so if they don’t it is unnatural (wrong). They ought to be living a life of virtue, and if they are therefore moderate in all things, they will be correct.” Even if man is the measure of all things, he is still not the master of all things. It’s true also that in the Biblical account, the earth and animals are made for man, they are not made to be mastered by him. Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden, not for eating the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, but because God was afraid they would also eat from the tree of life and become Gods. Man is meant to be mortal. The difference between ethics and morality is that a vicious human being (a vice-practicing person) is not operating at his peak or fulfilling his telos, and an immoral human being is one which is judged to be evil according to a certain ideal or set of rules. A virtue allows you to be excellent, a moral tells you what to do.
Christianity, more than classical thought, taught that there is absolute good and evil. The Jewish story is more about living in harmony with nature, while the Christian story is living according to good and evil.
Some myths say that in the Underworld, you get punished for your bad acts in life. The Greeks and Jews mostly believed that you just went to a shadowy existence, but if you were a hero and lived an extraordinary life, you went to the “Isles of the Blessed.” The possibility of punishment was morality.
The biggest difference between Aristotle’s ethics and Christian morals is that humility is a vice in Aristotle’s ethics and pride is a sin in Christianity. Aristotle says blushing is good for a young person as a sign that they desire not to do shameful things but that an adult should not blush because they should learn what a shameful thing is.
In the Prince, Machiavelli rejects the classical Greek ethics, the Jewish ethics, and the Christian morals.
