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Amy Neild

Machiavelli’s Ideas

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Machiavelli’s The Prince is a treatise, which describes the methodology of the seizure of power as well as discusses governing methods and skills that are required for a perfect ruler. Thus, in chapters 15-19, the writer discussed the qualities, which were needed for a prince. Throughout the history, philosophers believed that the ruler had to be a special kind of person with the entire set of virtues such as wisdom, fairness, impartiality, etc. that are important to ensure the stability of the rule of law. However, Machiavelli advised a prince to ignore particular virtues that were mostly admired in the private life and considered as necessary characteristics by many other writers. Instead, he argued that a virtuous ruler could become a disaster for his people despite the fact that virtue reputation was considered to be quite helpful. In these chapters, the author stated that it was better for a prince to be not loved, but feared by his people. Being mean and lying is normal for a ruler in Machiavelli’s interpretation.
Machiavelli stated that men by nature were fickle, ungrateful, and prone to deceit and hypocrisy. People would rather forgive the father’s death that the loss of property. The author considered people bad until they would be forced to goodness. Thus, human nature is the same in all countries and among all peoples: interest is the most common cause of human actions that make up their relationships, institutions, and history. In order to control people, it is necessary to know the reasons of their actions, their aspirations and interests.
As Machiavelli stated, people were selfish by nature; therefore, there can be no question of the choice of means for achieving well-being. “The end justifies the means” is a famous motto of the founder of the Jesuit order Ignatius Loyola, which became recognized by the politicians of that era. Machiavelli developed this principle as following: the emperor should be like a lion and fox. The lion was afraid of traps, and the fox was afraid of wolves. Thus, it was needed to be like a fox to get around the traps and a lion to frighten wolves. Machiavelli believed that all means, including illegal and even immoral, can be justified in the struggle for the desired goal.

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Amy Neild works at the company writinghelpessay.net. She dedicates most of her time to enriching the website with updates in the sphere of writing in order to satisfy the visitors. If you are interested in other Amy's articles, check her essay examples.
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Updated 08-01-2018 at 08:30 AM by Amy Neild

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