Machiavelli Lectures by Seyed Javad Tabatabaei

Seyyed Javad Tabatabai’s lectures on Niccolò Machiavelli rank among his most important efforts to reconsider the foundations of modern political thought and its relation to the questions of the state, freedom, the republic, and Iranian history. Delivered in the late 2000s, this series is not merely a commentary on Machiavelli’s works; it is an attempt to understand the transformation that Machiavelli brought about in the language and logic of politics: a shift from viewing politics as unitary rule and the moralisation of power to understanding it as a field of forces, institutions, conflicts, and the common good.

In these lectures, Tabatabai presents Machiavelli as one of the principal founders of modern political thought: a thinker who drew politics out of traditional unity-centred frameworks and understood it in relation to historical reality, power relations, and civic institutions. In this view, power is not a fixed substance external to society; rather, it is the outcome of relations among forces present in society and acting upon one another. For this reason, politics cannot be understood without recognising the mechanisms of power distribution, the means through which dissatisfaction is expressed, and the institutions that turn conflict into a stable order.

A significant part of the lectures is devoted to the historical context of Italy on the eve of the Renaissance and in Machiavelli’s time: the condition of Florence, Venice, and other city-states; the conflict between republicanism, oligarchy, and personal rule; the role of the Medici family; the arrival of foreign powers in Italy; and the place of figures such as Savonarola, Guicciardini, and Soderini. Tabatabai shows that Machiavelli reflected on politics in the midst of these very crises: at a time when the balance of forces in Italy had shifted, the arena of politics had moved from the court to warfare and diplomacy, and the survival of states could no longer be explained through moral exhortation or hereditary legitimacy.

In this account, Machiavelli is a theorist of modern war and one of the first thinkers to attend fundamentally to military organisation, strategy, and the relation between the army and the survival of the state. For him, the importance of this question is not merely military: a state unable to defend itself and create a force suited to its historical necessities cannot preserve its freedom and independence. From this perspective, the survival of the political order is inseparably connected with institutions, law, civic education, and defensive capacity.

Tabatabai also stresses the place of language in Machiavelli’s works. His Italian was the product of a period in which Italy had not yet achieved political and linguistic unity, and in which diverse linguistic, social, and historical layers were intertwined. Machiavelli cannot therefore be read simply through the translation of terms; one must understand the changing meanings of words such as stato, ordine, vivere libero, parte, grandi, and res publica within their historical horizon. In this conceptual world, the state is not yet an entirely abstract concept independent of the ruler, and the “common good” is not merely another name for the interests of a particular group.

One of the central themes of the lectures is an interpretation of the Discourses and The Prince. Contrary to readings that treat The Prince as an independent work and merely a guide to personal rule, Tabatabai reads it in connection with Machiavelli’s broader project in the Discourses. The Discourses reflect on Roman history and the possibility of republicanism, whereas The Prince is related to the question of founding, the salvation of Italy, and the necessity of creating a new order. In this interpretation, Machiavelli is less a defender of autocracy than a theorist of the republic and civic freedom—a freedom that can be realised only through enduring institutions and a distributed structure of power.

Machiavelli’s central model is the Roman Republic. Tabatabai explains that, in the Roman experience, power was distributed among three forces: rulers, aristocrats, and the people. The emergence of institutions such as the tribunes, which mediated between the people and the aristocracy, provided a means of turning social conflict into a political mechanism. In this sense, a republic is not simply the transfer of power from one group to another; it is an order in which each social force acquires a place and a share in power, and the totality of these relations constitutes political power.

Within this framework, conflict is not a sign of society’s collapse but a part of its life. Drawing on Machiavelli’s language, Tabatabai speaks of two “humours,” or two enduring forces within society: the people and the great. The people do not wish to be dominated, while the great seek to command others. Neither of these two humours can be eliminated; the task of politics is to establish an always unstable equilibrium between them. A free society is not a society without tension, but one that possesses legal channels for the emergence, restraint, and readjustment of tensions.

Law and institutions thus assume a fundamental role in Machiavelli’s thought. Institutions break up power, set it in motion within society, and prevent disagreements from appearing as rebellion, factionalism, or destructive revolution. When ordinary institutional paths for expressing dissatisfaction are closed, social forces emerge through exceptional and extra-institutional routes, a condition that may lead to the destruction of government. Here Tabatabai stresses the importance of protest, competition, and mechanisms of internal reform: a stable political order is not one in which no problems arise, but one capable of addressing smaller problems before they become major crises.

Another part of the lectures is devoted to the theory of mixed government. Relying on a tradition known since Aristotle, Machiavelli holds that no pure form of government can endure on its own. Political durability depends upon the combination and balance of different elements of power. From this perspective, neither the name nor the outward form of a government is decisive; what matters is the substance of the political order, the relation of forces, and the extent to which the common good is secured. The republic, in the sense of res publica, is the sphere in which public affairs become the subject of politics.

Tabatabai’s analysis also considers Machiavelli’s critique of political moralism. Machiavelli does not explain politics through what political actors appear to be; rather, he attends to what takes place in the reality of power relations. This does not mean a complete rejection of morality or religion. In these lectures, religion is not separated from politics; instead, its place in the founding of order, the cultivation of civic ethics, and the preservation of public cohesion is examined. For Machiavelli, the founder does not merely create new institutions; in some cases, he also creates a moral horizon and a shared framework for political life. Yet when religious institutions become a source of corruption and despotism, they themselves can become among the principal causes of political decline.

The question of founding and reform likewise has a distinctive place in this series. Tabatabai distinguishes between establishing an order and reforming it: founding takes place at a moment when existing institutions are not yet capable of creating a new order; thereafter, however, the endurance of the system depends upon transferring power to institutions and citizens capable of safeguarding the common good. In this sense, the founder must not be equated with an autocratic ruler. His importance lies in creating institutions that open the path to freedom and enable political life to continue after him.

In addition to offering an extensive reading of Machiavelli, these lectures address many common misunderstandings in the Persian language of politics: from conflating popular rule with democracy to the imprecise use of terms such as state, sovereignty, civil liberty, raison d’état, aristocracy, oligarchy, and faction. By restoring these words to their conceptual histories, Tabatabai shows that modern political thought cannot be understood without precision in language and without knowledge of the historical transformation of concepts.

The audio files of these lectures are being made available so that this intellectual legacy may be accessible to Persian speakers, people of Iranian descent, and students of political thought around the world. This series invites listeners to read Machiavelli not as a name synonymous with deception and immorality, but as a thinker who formulated the questions of power, freedom, law, institutions, and political survival in a new language and within a historical horizon.

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You can download the audio files of the Machiavelli lectures below:

Audio of Seyyed Javad Tabatabai’s Machiavelli Lectures — Part 1

Audio of Seyyed Javad Tabatabai’s Machiavelli Lectures — Part 2

Audio of Seyyed Javad Tabatabai’s Machiavelli Lectures — Part 3

Audio of Seyyed Javad Tabatabai’s Machiavelli Lectures — Part 4

Audio of Seyyed Javad Tabatabai’s Machiavelli Lectures — Part 5

Audio of Seyyed Javad Tabatabai’s Machiavelli Lectures — Part 6