Politics
c. 350 to 275 BCE (traditional), Pataliputra, Mauryan India
The Arthashastra and the science of statecraft - realpolitik, spycraft, and the paradox that the king’s happiness lies in his subjects’ welfare.
Start learning Chanakya →Kautilya’s Arthashastra - one of the world’s first systematic treatises on government, economics, and war - and its radical claim that artha (material welfare and power) deserves a hard science of its own, t…
Kautilya’s anatomy of the state - the seven prakritis or limbs of sovereignty (king, minister, country, fort, treasury, army, ally) - and his cold geometry of foreign relations, the mandala or ‘circle of kin…
Kautilya’s toolkit of statecraft: the four upayas or expedients (conciliation, gifts, dissension, force) and the shadgunya or sixfold policy (peace, war, neutrality, marching, alliance, and double-dealing) - forei…
The Arthashastra ’s vision of the state as an all-seeing administrative apparatus - a vast intelligence network, an army of superintendents regulating trade, taxation, and agriculture, and, taught with unnerving c…
The other face of the Arthashastra : the doctrine that in the happiness of his subjects lies the king’s own happiness, the punishing daily schedule of the ideal ruler, and the conquest of the senses - self-mastery…
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