How Princes Should Honor their Word: "The Prince” by Niccolo` Machiavelli

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In this book “The Prince” written by Niccolo` Machiavelli attempts to persuade the readers how princes should act in order to keep their thrones, or how to capture a throne and uphold it. He also illustrates to us how by not following this system can lead to death or becoming overthrown. I was amazed at how well his compositional skills were and in my attempt to show you how skillful of a writer and persuader he is we will look at chapter XVIII. By introducing the chapter with politics, coming up with clear and logical main points, and laying out all possibilities and consequences of those points I believed that this chapter made a very impressive persuasive argument.

From the beginning of chapter XVIII “How princes should honor their word” Machiavelli gives us a political view on how a prince should honor his word and be straight forward rather than crafty. I believe that by just stating that “everyone realizes” he is being very persuasive. Just because of how other people review it, you would want to believe what everyone else believes. Also, the facts that Machiavelli lays out for you, if you were a subject to the prince or if you were a new prince you would want know how you should be behaving. You would agree with this statement because it is logical and is what the citizens believe.

No one wants a prince to behave in crafty dealings and not be able to keep his word so Machiavelli gives us other reasons why a prince should do this. It is just not about being there for the people, it’s about being smart. Machiavelli shows us in the course of keeping your word there are other things you can do as well. Princes who achieved more were the ones who kept their word they didn’t put too much on them selves other wise they wouldn...

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...He tells us what we have become which are the lion and the fox. He tells us why we should become these two animals and how important it is to know how to be both. He gives us examples of how not being a fox could disarray you and just being a lion is brainless. He gives us potential objections in dealing with appearing to have these qualities and gives us consequences to why it could be a good or bad thing. In the end Machiavelli makes sure that you know just how to be true to your people. Know how to be a fox and a lion so you would know how to remain true to your word but in addition, know how to be the opposite if you have to be. So for a young new prince you need to have all of these qualities and it should have made it easier for him to understand how one should behave. From the title to the end Machiavelli made it clear “How princes should honor their word”.

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