The book The Prince by Niccoló Machiavelli is an instructive guide on how to properly govern people. This book was written to Lorenzo de’ Medici as a guide on how to be a smart and powerful prince. This book, although written about 500 years ago, can also be very prevalent to politics today. When New York Times author Jared Diamond, was asked what book he thinks President Obama should read, he responded with, The Prince. His reason was, although Machiavelli is known as a cynical and cruel man, he is “a crystal-clear realist who understands the limits and uses of power”. In the beginning of the book, Machiavelli backs up his intensions for writing this book and how he, a citizen, can know so much about power and ruling people. He says that …show more content…
After being appointed, one must simply maintain previous laws and keep them up to date with the modern times. Machiavelli makes many very important points in this book. All of which form a guideline on how to keep your people under control yet content with the head of state. He has several tactics on how to keep the people under control. One of which, is to desecrate the people, to scare them, as to secure the prince’s place of power over the people. Especially in former republics, the citizens will still cling onto the liberty that they possessed before being taken over, which is very bad. This can lead to the citizens organization and deposition of the prince. This can be avoided by destroying them. Machiavelli states several ways that a man can become a prince. He talks about people who gain power through misconduct. In other words, one may cross someone of equal or higher rank to gain power, or gain the trust of people to use them to his advantage. He gives the example of King Agathocles of Syracuse. Agathocles was just an ordinary man in the militia who gained rank and used this to his advantage. He had a meeting with other people of high rank and gave them an order to kill the leaders and make him the sole leader. Throughout his career as ruler, Agathocles had many threats to overthrow him. Machiavelli states that if a prince rises to power using crime, …show more content…
This is important because when an enemy is attacking a barricaded town, and the people are becoming angry at the prince due to all of their belongings being destroyed, the prince will be able to rally them up and destroy the enemy. He would do this by telling them that their belongings can be replaced and rally the people up by loading them with nationalism and chauvinism. This will allow the prince to get the victory and make the people adore him even more. Machiavelli goes on to mention many more parts of a principality that all form the guideline for his ideal prince and how he would
Niccolò Machiavelli was a man who lived during the fourteen and fifteen hundreds in Florence, Italy, and spent part of his life imprisoned after the Medici princes returned to power. He believed that he should express his feelings on how a prince should be through writing and became the author of “The Qualities of a Prince.” In his essay, he discusses many points on how a prince should act based on military matters, reputation, giving back to the people, punishment, and keeping promises. When writing his essay, he follows his points with examples to back up his beliefs. In summary, Machiavelli’s “The Qualities of a Prince,” provides us with what actions and behaviors that a prince should have in order to maintain power and respect.
The most astounding aspect of The Prince is Machiavelli’s view that princes may indeed, be cruel and dishonest if their ultimate aim is for the good of the state. It is not only acceptable but necessary to lie, to use torture, and to walk over other states and cities. Machiavellianism is defined as “A political doctrine of Machiavelli, which denies the relevance of morality in political affairs and holds that craft and deceit are justified in pursuing and maintaining political power (Def.)” This implies that in the conquest for power, the ends justify the means. This is the basis of Machiavellianism. The priority for the power holder is to keep the security of the state regardless of the morality of the means. He accepts that these things are in and of themselves morally wrong, but he points out that the consequences of failure, the ruin of states and the destruction of cities, can be far worse. Machiavelli strongly emphasizes that princes should not hesitate to use immoral methods to achieve power, if power is necessary for security and survival.
Machiavelli believes that a government should be very structured, controlled, and powerful. He makes it known that the only priorities of a prince are war, the institutions, and discipline. His writings describes how it is more important for a prince to be practical than moral. This is shown where he writes, "in order to maintain the state he is often obliged to act against his promise, against charity, against humanity, and against religion" (47). In addition, Machiavelli argues that a prince may have to be cunning and deceitful in order to maintain political power. He takes the stance that it is better for the prince to be feared than loved. His view of how a government should run and his unethical conduct are both early signs of dictatorship.
Machiavelli is undisputedly one of the most influential political philosophers of all time. In The Prince, his most well-known work, he relates clearly and precisely how a decisive, intelligent man can gain and maintain power in a region. This work is revolutionary because it flies in the face of the Christian morality which let the Roman Catholic Church hold onto Europe for centuries. Machiavelli's work not only ignores the medieval world's ethics: The Prince suggests actions which oppose the four most basic of Christianity's Ten Commandments.
In The Prince, Machiavelli separates ethics from politics. His approach to politics, as outlined in The Prince, is strictly practical. Machiavelli is less concerned with what is right and just, and instead with what will lead to the fortification of the government and the sustainment of power. Machiavelli believed that a ruler should use any means necessary to obtain and sustain power. He says, “…people judge by outcome. So if a ruler wins wars and holds onto power, the means he has employed will always be judged honorable, and everyone will praise them” (Machiavelli, 55). According to Machiavelli, the ends of an action justify the means (Machiavelli, 55). His motivation for these views in The Prince was the reunification of the Italian city-states (Machiavelli, 78-79). Machiavelli wanted Italy to return to its glory of the Roman Empire (Machiavelli 78-79). Some of the beliefs of Machiavelli could be perceived as evil and cruel, but he found them necessary. Machiavelli was not concerned with making people happy. His purpose was outcome and success, and in his opinion, the only way to be successful was to be realistic. These views of Machiavelli could classify him as one of the earliest modern
Possibly the most controversial book ever written, The Prince by Machiavelli, focuses on how a Prince or leader should rule. Many of the techniques that are stated in the text have caused many debates ever since it’s publication. When Machiavelli composed the Prince, his contemporaries were shocked at the ideas and themes presented. The Prince introduced a whole new way of thinking that was almost completely contrary to present beliefs. For that reason, in 1559 the Pope banned the printing of the Prince and the rest of Machiavelli’s writings.
Machiavelli in his famous book “The Prince” describes the necessary characteristics for a strong and successful leader. He believes that one of the most important characteristics is to rule in favor of his government and to hold power in his hands. Power is an essential aspect of Machiavelli’s theory, and a leader should do whatever it takes to keep it for the safety of his country because “the ends justifies the means.” To attain and preserve the power, a leader should rather be feared than loved by his people, but it is vital not to be hated. As he states, “anyone compelled to choose will find far greater security in being feared than in being loved.” If a leader is feared, the people are less likely to revolt, and in the end, only a threat of punishment can guarantee obedienc...
Machiavelli enumerated in his work, different types of princedoms and whether they are bound to fail from the start, simply based on their type and the way they are attained. Those princedoms are either Hereditary, Mixed, or completely New. Hereditary princedoms would of course be those in which power is passed down within a family. Mixed princedoms would be princedoms that are reinvented through
In secular democracies, power is necessarily derived from the will of the governed. That power is then entrusted to a leader, who Machiavelli would understand to be a "prince". Inherently, his book, The Prince, has been close at hand for most politicians for centuries, as it provides general, historically proven advice for principalities and republics on how to govern and maintain relations with their most important resource and the very core of their power, which would be the people themselves.
As he begins to conclude, Machiavelli states that the prince: “should think about avoiding those things which make him hated and despised.” (Mach 48) Although these lack any withstanding moral values, they are effective in the sense that they better serve their purpose. Machiavelli was seeking to display a way to hold political power by any means possible not a utopian state. This may mean malicious acts, imprisonment, and torture, or it may mean the utilization of power to achieve a common good. Machiavelli doesn’t elaborate on this. He concentrates on a realistic approach towards government, as he remains concerned with the establishment and protection of power.
Although Machiavelli gives numerous points on what it takes to excel as a prince, he also shows some raw examples of how he feels a prince should act in order to achieve maximum supremacy. First, when he says, "ought to hold of little account a reputation for being mean, for it is one of those vices which will enable him to govern" proves Machiavelli feels mighty adamant about his view that being mean will help a prince achieve success (332). It is absurd to imagine the meanest prince as the most successful. Also, when Machiavelli states, "our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft" revealing his attitude to manipulate people into fearing and respecting the prince (335). Also, Machiavelli shows that for a prince to be successful, he must not think about good faith.
Niccoló Machiavelli claims in “The Qualities of the Prince” that a prince must have certain qualities that will allow him to seize and maintain his power as a ruler. Machiavelli asserts that these qualities will guarantee the ruler to be able to govern his subjects effectively. According to him, a prince must study the art of war, must understand generosity and to what extent he must be generous to be effective, must choose to either be loved or feared, and be able to keep his word to his citizens according to the situation. These qualities can still apply in today’s politics, and will be useful for a modern time politician as long as they are used carefully.
The Prince by Niccol Machiavelli isn't about one man's ways to feed his power hungry mindset through gluttony, nor is it just explaining altercations between a nation's states. This writing is regarding how one's self-confidence can make them become powerful in a society and also, the way morals and politics differ and can be separated in a government. Originally, Machiavelli wrote The Prince to gain support from Lorenzo de' Medici, who during the era, was governor of Florence. As meant as writing about how a society should be run, this book has been read by many people around the world who want to have better knowledge of the perfect stability of beliefs and politics required to run a good civilization. Enlightening people from the average Joe to the high monarchs of countries, The Prince is one of the best, if not the best, books relating to politics of all time.
Niccolò Machiavelli wrote, in his novel The Prince, that strong central political leadership was more important than anything else, including religion and moral behavior. Machiavelli, writing during a period of dramatic change known as the Italian Renaissance, displayed attitudes towards many issues, mostly political, which supported his belief that strong government was the most important element in society. These attitudes and ideas were very appropriate for the time because they stressed strong, centralized power, the only kind of leadership that seemed to be working throughout Europe, and which was the element Italy was lacking. Machiavelli understood that obtaining such a government could not be done without separating political conduct and personal morality, and suggested that the separation be made. The Prince, written to the Medici family over five hundred years ago contained many truths, so universal and accurate that they still influence politics today.
The book The Prince was a book of advice to politicians regarding how gain power and keep that power. The title The Prince is not about someone who has inherited land and a decedent to a king. In Machiavelli’s perspective a prince was a man of the citizens....