Similarities Between Machiavelli And Hobbes

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Within the pantheon of Western Political thinkers, two names are routinely and repeatedly referenced, Niccolo Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes. This essay seeks to identify and dissect how the two conceptualize authority and the resultant views on politics. By examining the authors’ abstract approaches within Machiavelli’s The Prince and Hobbes’ Leviathan we can more readily see where they differ and what that means for their politics. To these ends, this paper will focus on two divergences, their respective ethics and authorial perspectives. The two works explore the same larger question, being what is the nature of man, but very early on Machiavelli and Hobbes take differing paths both in focus and propositions to the state of man. In The …show more content…

This additional deviation gives the texts curious symmetry, as Hobbes, through his empirical means, assembled a commonwealth from components of man to man to state whereas Machiavelli worked top-down starting with the workings of the principality and concluding with man being ‘ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life and children.’ Throughout both texts one can find arguments and ethical structures being provided by both authors. These, not unlike the symmetry of their approach, run parallel in their own fashion. Superficially reading of The Prince one can find a call for violence to seize power however exploring further this is not a suggestion but an invocation. Per Machiavelli that force must be applied unilaterally by the ruler to shore cohesion and prevent division that erodes the state. As he conveys for the authority it ‘is much safer to be feared than loved’ his sole interest is using any and all means necessary to wrangle his citizens and keep power consolidated. Through this lens, the use of violence and force has a better context. The suggestion being, a singular authority corrals the common man who would otherwise only serve his own

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