preview

Compare The Prince And Niccolo Machiavelli

Satisfactory Essays

Comparison Essay between Ibn Khaldun’s ‘Muqaddimah’ and Niccolo Machiavelli's ‘The Prince’ and their approach to History

History has many forms. It can be writings by historians from earlier times, it can be our childhood memories, it can be a recollection of events and political circumstances. What we learn from history can determine what paths or choices we make or to change the course of time to not make the same bad decisions. We learn about the political history that helps you to determine what affiliation you most closely represent. We learn about the settlement of the world, and how the people used to do things. We also learn about wars and how they started, how they were fought and how they ended. If it weren’t for early writings from authors such as Ibn Khaldun and Niccolo Machiavelli, such as ‘The Prince’ and ‘Muqaddimah’ we wouldn’t gain the knowledge of what occurred in those early times which ultimately could have changed the future. “The present, as well as the past, can yield insights into laws of history and furnish models for political action”.1
Niccolo Machiavelli lived from 1469-1527. It can be said that Niccolo Machiavelli was directly influenced by the works of Ibn Khaldun. By using the ideas of Khaldun, Machiavelli was able to develop those ideas further resulting in some differences among several similarities which I will reveal later in this essay. ‘The Prince’ is a literary piece that takes place during the Italian Renaissance and references many examples of their contemporary political turmoil. He was a senior official in the Florence Republic and was in charge of diplomatic and military operations. Machiavelli made his emotional plea for a new leader to free Italy from the "barbarian" control that it was governed by for so long. “Machiavellianism is a widely used negative term to characterize unscrupulous politicians of the sort Machiavelli described most famously in ‘The Prince’. Machiavelli described immoral behavior, such as dishonesty and killing innocents, as being normal and effective in politics. He even seemed to endorse it in some situations. The term "Machiavellian" is often associated with political deceit, deviousness”.2 Some readers of ‘The Prince’ felt

Get Access