The Prince And Niccolo Machiavelli's The Republic

Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince was met with much criticism after its publication over five hundred years ago. It was written to guide leaders for a republican form of government. The latter chapters describe the qualities of the ideal leader, or prince, particularly those concerning morals and perception by the public. Machiavelli prioritizes the upholding and maintaining of the government and sacrifices traditional morals. Because of his theory of the qualities a prince should exhibit, he was condemned as evil by many. Machiavelli’s theory that a prince should be stingy, feared, and deceitful is fitting for a modern republican government.

In 1512, the Medici family rose to power once again in Florence Italy. Once in power they became privy to internal plots against the Medici family, and despite his innocence, they exiled Niccolo Machiavelli. A year after his exile, in 1513, he wrote a political treatise named The Prince. Written for the current ruler of the Medici family, Lorenzo de’ Medici, the contents of this political insight was all about what makes a good prince. The reason for why this piece was created is still debated though; many are unsure whether it is a political satire, or if it was to try to get into good graces with the family that had exiled him, or just an example of what people thought made a good leader at that time.

Niccolo Machiavelli was born on May 3, 1469, in Florence, Italy. The Prince was written in 1513 but was published five years after Machiavelli’s death in 1527. Machiavelli wrote the Prince as advice to Lorenzo de’ Medici and as a plea for his position back in the Medici Florentine government. Machiavelli gives great advice on what a Prince should do in order to keep a country under his rule, but his main ideas are that a Prince should not be liked or loved by his people but feared and never hated and that a ruler should be willing to do everything in his powers to keep his kingdom stable, even if that means he needs to lie and get a little violent. When reading The Prince readers can see the ways it is reflected in today’s modern society.

In Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics", the concept of knowledge is expressed by the author as truth of the soul which guides one to find the virtuous middle ground between excess and defect (Aristotle, Pg. 126-128). This aspiration to intellectual virtue is a political one because it is an attempt at doing the right thing and achieving the "good". Within Book VI, Aristotle identifies three different kinds of knowledge: scientific, craft and practical (Aristotle, Pg. 128). Scientific knowledge, as described by Aristotle, is comprised of necessarily eternal truths which are "ungenerated and imperishable" (Aristotle, Pg. 129). Knowledge of science, therefore, must be concerned with the unchanging truths of the natural world. Craft or the intellectual

Machiavelli did not seek to change the worldview of leadership when he composed The Prince in 1513. However, The Prince later became widely praised and criticized for its ruthless and immoral tactics for a ruler to gain and hold power. Machiavelli wrote The Prince as a guide to gain power; he wrote it in a blunt way without flowery language so that anyone who read the book would understand exactly what was required to gain and hold absolute power. One of the main focuses of the book is an explanation of the characteristics of an ideal prince and how those defined traits can help one hold and maintain power.

Plato has also mentions how the soul is made up of three important parts. The first one is the capacity for reasoning, according to Plato the “rational” part of the soul is designed to help an individual to seek to make rational decisions, which is an important element found in guardians. The second element is “courage” which is what is presented when one acts in the best interest of the state to protect the state. The third element is “temperance” which is “unlike courage and wisdom,” it has the ability to “produce harmony of the weaker and the strong and the middle class,” (pg.69) which is discovered in the producers of the social class because they have the ability to be the middle ground and maintain a sustained lifestyle by producing

To describe what it is to be “Machiavellian” one must first describe what it is not. It is not being cruel for the sake of cruelty, just as it is not being good for the sake of goodness. It is being deliberate in one’s actions for the success of the state, or whatever one is ruling over. Machiavellians do not concern themselves with reputation, as long as those they are trying to rule do not hate them. I would describe a Machiavellian as intelligent, motivated by power, and someone that would not hesitate to deceive or manipulate others to reach their goals. While those traits might have brought someone success in ruling as a prince during the Renaissance, disregarding morals and ethics in today’s politics would not get someone very far.

The prince was written at a time when Italy was in chaos, in the Prince Machiavelli offers advice on how to an effective and successful ruler. in Machiavelli’s the prince he assumes that all men are bad egotistical, motivated by greed, and cowardly and can’t be trusted. Doing the righteous thing as a ruler according to moral codes, puts you at a disadvantage, people’s moral concerns are easily changed to suit their own needs. According to Machiavelli on the Prince, man will forgive you for killing his father, but do not touch his property, this is sacred “and above all others he must keep his hands off the property of others, because men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony”. REF HERE. FOR MACHIAVELLI

The Oxford Dictionary defines the term “Machiavellian” as someone who is cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous, especially in politics or in advancing one’s career. These principles, as well as others, were established in Niccolo Machiavelli’s book, The Prince. The Prince dwelves on what a person needs to do to obtain and maintain power in a principality. Although it was written nearly 500 years ago, it has influenced countless rulers over time. A great example of one of these rulers is Joseph Stalin, dictator of the U.S.S.R (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) from 1929 - 1953.

Niccolò Machiavelli had a very negative view when it came to the nature of humans. He made the weakness of human nature the central message of all his writings. Machiavelli’s mannerist cynicism about human weakness came about from wounded idealism, for life had taught him that his early optimism was wrong. In most of his writings, he is meaning for human nature to restore sanity to a world that he believed to have gone mad. Machiavelli’s most enduring contribution that left the strongest imprint on Western culture was, The Prince, which led into the worldly debate of whether the end justifies the means.

In Niccolo Machiavelli’s book The Prince, Machiavelli portrays many qualities that a leader should have. Machiavelli also describes how a leader should work. Adolf Hitler portrays all of the qualities of what Machiavelli believed a leader should have. Adolf Hitler proves that Machiavelli’s advice to leaders is still relevant today.

Machiavelli then moves to the final section of The Prince where he writes about prudence and change around Italy at that time. He starts with stating that there are many princes around Italy that simply lost their states. Machiavelli goes on to state that the reason for this is not because of bad luck or fortune but simply because their power got to their heads, they thought they were invincible, and in the end they found out that they weren’t and crumbled along with their states. Machiavelli then writes that fortune is two ways. Part of it is influenced by actions and the reactions to certain scenarios. The other part is the “sweet” part of fortune that many people believe that they have no control over where in reality they do. Basically

On the surface, Machiavelli's The Prince teaches leaders how to best acquire and maintain power. Machiavelli said that his purpose of writing is to tell the "real truth of the matter". The truth according to Machiavelli is that people who are seldom are what they appear to be and that people who focus on ideals and principles or what ought to be done will end up ruined. Some people thought that Machiavelli's intentions was to expose how autocratic leaders have truly exercised their power throughout history. Some even say that he wrote The Prince to secure a government position from Lorenzo de' Medici, who was the ruler of Florence. Others believed that he meant it as a warning to Florentines to look out for tyrants like Medicis. Machiavelli

Niccolo Machiavelli’s advice towards leaders in his book The Prince is both relevant and not relevant today in many ways. The European leader that I have chosen to prove what advice Machiavelli gave in The Prince is relevant and what is not, is Edward Heath. Some of Edwards work relates to the advice given by Machiavelli while many of it is the pure opposite of Machiavelli’s advice.

“..The prince should, as I have already suggested, determine to avoid anything which will make him hated and despised.” (Machiavelli 102). Nicolae did not take this advice, nor anyone else’s for that matter. He continued to make life miserable for the people until he was despised by everyone. In 1987, thousands of working men mobbed the Communist Party headquarters in Brasov (“Nicolae Ceausescu Biography”). From that point, people came to fear Nicolae less, and hate him more. Until one day, on Christmas Day, there was another mob. This time however, the people were helped by the army. “His defence lies in being well armed and having good allies.” (Machiavelli 103). Unfortunately, Nicolae had become so despised that he had no allies or army