How Does Machiavelli's Influence Politics

Machiavelli was widely influential throughout history and throughout all of Europe, he also helped contribute and create the realpolitik movement in political history. Writers often associated with Machiavellian thought include,Thomas Hobbes, Viscount Robert Stewart Castlereagh, Prince Klemens von Metternich, Heinrich von Treitschke, and Otto von Bismarck. These practitioners and thinkers tend to be associated with a cold-eyed, unsentimental approach to statecraft. One academic journal notes that The Prince is, “. . . treatise on the means of gaining, holding, and expanding political power, certainly announced a dramatic break with previous political doctrines anchored in substantively moral and religious systems of thought. Unlike his classical

Biagini another historian also adds, writing, “Machiavelli's view of humankind greatly influenced his political and literary works. ‘According to Machiavelli, men are selfish, greedy, and cowardly opportunists, who will never willingly do anything that does not further their own interests.’ This line of thinking would reach its apex with the philosophy of the Englishman, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who wrote that without the socializing influence of a sovereign, the world would devolve into a war by all against all” (Biagini 3). The Prince was also extremely influential in political thought. Many other famous writers would pull from his lessons, making them more applicable to that day while bring the lessons once again into the world of politics. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes is best known for his political thought, and deservedly so. His vision of the world is strikingly original and still relevant to contemporary politics. His main concern is the problem of social and political order: how human beings can live together in peace and avoid the danger and fear of civil