Preview

Humanity Exposed In Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
370 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Humanity Exposed In Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince
In The Prince, a 16th-century political-science book on how to gain and keep power by Niccolo Machiavelli,

The idea Machiavelli presents in The Prince, that humanity is innately corrupt and self-interested, is not a foreign one, nor is it completely false. Machiavelli argues many times that a Prince must expect the worse from others if he is to plan around the motivations of the people. This same idea applies to a Prince needing to lie rather than be manipulated by the lies of others. Though believing humanity is depraved is perhaps the safest school of thought, it is also not constructive towards a betterment of society. There is an Augustinian concept of total depravity that encompasses all these ideals Machiavelli presents. Looking at

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    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.…

    • 514 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince examines how to acquire and maintain power of a nation. Machiavelli states that nations are either republics or principalities. The four types of principalities are hereditary, new, mixed and ecclesiastical. Hereditary principalities occur when the prince inherits the nation from his ancestors. Hereditary states experience fewer difficulties compared to newer states because they are accustomed to the family of the prince. New Principalities are acquired either by the power of others, one’s own power, luck, or ability. New Principalities are either accustomed to the rule of a prince or was a free state. When a prince conquers a free state it threatens the people’s lifestyle and customs. Therefore, the people…

    • 678 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A good leader is one who can stand up against the norm and take risks to uphold their state. According to Machiavelli, in his book The Prince, this includes taking actions that are not favored by the majority. Though Machiavelli was born on May 3rd, 1469 and only wrote his book in 1513, his ideas were so significant that they apply even to contemporary leaders. Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, is facing situations that can either prove her strength as a leader or set the European Union on a road to destruction. On top of dealing with the major Greek debt crisis, she has been faced with the task of deciding how to handle the Syrian refugees. Using the examples and analysis provided by Machiavelli, Merkel’s best plan would be to pressure…

    • 1193 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This is a significant analysis of Niccolo Machiavelli’s book The Prince. This book explores multiple concepts on leadership and governance for a Prince to legislate on his road to success. Therefore, I will bring a compelling conclusion on how Russian President Vladimir Putin is a modern Machiavelli. To get a full understanding towards Niccolo Machiavelli’s political theory, we must first examine what’s managed to inspire his view of an ideal government. In the book, The Prince, Machiavelli introduces insightful claims on how the Roman Empire’s legitimacy brought a secure and stable society. In fact, presenting the Roman Empire’s platform helped the reader to thoroughly understand Machiavelli’s political theory regarding governance and the…

    • 230 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the fourth paragraph, under the subtitle The Prince, Vincent Barnett states that Machiavelli refers to all men as “ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers.” He also states that men were not loyal, but greedy and self absorbed. Machiavelli also wanted the “prince” to make himself feared, but not hated.…

    • 167 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of Machiavelli’s standards for rulers of a country is to be focused on warfare by claiming, “A prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select…

    • 174 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Machiavelli's The Prince, hints of future democratic theories can be pulled out of Machiavelli's plan for the success of a prince of a state. Within Machiavelli's concentration of plotting out successful achievement of a stabilized state within a principality, he often reveals the importance of the satisfaction the people within the governing walls of that principality. One of the themes to Machiavelli's plan included the dismissal of the affection of virtue of the nobility as well as the significance of an honest people. Even though Machiavelli may have had other motivation for the writing of "The Prince",…

    • 1215 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Machiavelli was an author and an aspiring political figure who had a strong influence on several aspects of Europe’s government. Due to his critical writings in The Prince, many historians see Machiavelli as a cruel and diabolical political figure whose true intentions were to gain power for himself. However, after looking further into Machiavelli’s political past, one can see that Machiavelli is in fact an intelligent man who possesses a hidden motive to write his novel. In his work, he covered several topics that were used by future city-state leaders to help them become successful. Machiavelli proves to be an astute political mind who used his political experience to assess the actions of famous princes and to write The Prince as a noteworthy…

    • 931 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Machiavelli was a Florentine man of many skills. He was a renowned politician, author, and philosopher during the Renaissance, whose views and opinions affect the way people still think today. The Prince is his most famous work and in it he essentially states that humans are “ungrateful, fickle, deceptive and deceiving”. For that reason, a leader should rule through fear rather than love. However, what Europeans needed during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries were compassionate rulers. They were already frightened and disunited during the middle ages, thus adding a fearful leader to the mix would not help citizens feel safer.…

    • 101 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Prince was written in the 1500’s by Niccolo Machiavelli, whom name became a synonym for crafty plotting. As noted, it is a political and social document, as relevant today as when it first appeared. Machiavelli’s work became thought of as a blueprint for dictators instead of a guide for efficient democratic government. The Prince does not give us all of Machiavelli’s political thinking; however, he devised this reading for the man who seeks power. It treated the most severe problem of Italy, its inferiority in political organization and military strength to nearby states like Spain and France and was addressed to princes like the Lorenzo “The Magnificent” Medici, to whom it was dedicated. As difficult as it was to read, I did not find…

    • 1617 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Machiavelli intended The Prince to serve as a guide to creating and holding on to a principality. In it, he also characterizes a "good" society and the necessary tools for building one. Although Machiavelli conceives the republic as being the most practical form of government, he reasons that it is still possible to create a good society under a monarchy, as long as the leader of the monarchy follows the stipulated guidelines. Machiavelli realized that humans are predisposed to act perniciously and therefore it is the responsibility of the prince to exploit that nature in a way that will benefit society as a whole. In this way, Machiavelli's prince is an ideal crafted from the actual, rather than an actual crafted from the ideal.…

    • 1111 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Machiavelli thought human nature was two-dimensional. He saw humans as predictable, foreseeing their responses to the princes’ actions. Because humans are so unsophisticated in Machiavelli’s eye, they can only love or hate their prince, making them unable to see an intermediate to the good and bad in their ruler. Humans’…

    • 1205 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Overall, Machiavelli shows that in order to be an effective prince, one must disregard the morality of one’s actions in certain times for the welfare of the state. This strong belief shows that Machiavelli’s best interests are in the state and not in the general population. Because he…

    • 358 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Prince was written by Niccolò Machiavelli while he was in exile. In his efforts to return to politics, Machiavelli wrote the Prince in order to exert the true nature of a successful leader, and once again be in the good graces of the Medici’s who were rising to power in Italy. The Prince reveals what Machiavelli views to be a successful leader. The Prince also reveals how Machiavelli views the nature of humans and how that effects how a dictator/leader should rule. Machiavelli believes human beings are selfish, greedy, easily manipulated, and incapable of self-governing as it often ends in their own demise. “[F]or men change their rulers willingly, hoping to better themselves, and this hope induces them to take up arms against him who rules: wherein they are deceived, because they afterwards find by experience they have gone from bad to worse” (Machiavelli 201). Human selfishness inhibits the individual’s ability to make rational long-term decisions thus deeming them incapable of self-governing. If given the people the right to make their own decisions, their greed ill cloud their judgment and cause them to make decisions that may not be in their best interest. If the society is not capable of self-governing they will need a strong leader and Machiavelli has the recipe for the perfect…

    • 1869 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Machiavelli's the Prince

    • 1252 Words
    • 6 Pages

    "The state is the highest achievement of man, a progressive and elaborate creation of his free will. The individual, the leader, the people, cooperate in maintaining it." This idea of state was put forth by Niccolo Machiavelli in The Prince, which was in essence a ruler's handbook to governing and maintaining his land. Machiavelli conjured his theories for government by basing his ideas in his belief that men, especially men in power, tend to follow the same directions, and therefore by looking at past leaders and their follies we can better determine how to run a state. "Men are always the same and are animated by the same passions that lead them fatally to the same decisions, acts, an results…. That one can foresee the course of political development by mediating upon the cycles and phases of historical events, and that essential to a statesman is not only the experience of modern events and constant study of the past. But also the ability to exploit this knowledge in actual political actions."…

    • 1252 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays