The Prince

There are several advantages to being the kind of ideal ruler that Machiavelli recommends in The Prince. Most importantly, you're much more likely to hold onto power. If you follow Machiavelli's...

Machiavelli places his most famous work, The Prince, well in the tradition of other humanist works which were very popular during the Renaissance. Humanism draws heavily on using examples of actual...

The first main theme is politics. The Prince was written as a manual for new rulers who desired complete control. Machiavelli argued that the prince must maintain sovereignty over his subjects....

First, it is important to establish that "liberality" for Machiavelli means willingness to spend lavishly, not any political ideology in the way the term is used today. With that in mind,...

The main criticism that modern readers level at Machiavelli is that his notion that the "ends justify the means," when put in practice by governments, can lead to horrific consequences. In a modern...

In 1511, Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was in the service of Piero Soderini, the Prior of the Florence Republic, as an ambassador to Pope Julius II, and to Cesare Borgia as Secretary of the...

Machiavelli is considered the first political realist because he argued in The Prince that a ruler does not have to be virtuous but merely appear virtuous to the people. In fact, he goes on to say,...

As Machiavelli explains in Chapter 16 of The Prince, it is better to be stingy, though he notes that it can be advantageous to cultivate a reputation for generosity. However, the lavish displays...

Machiavelli advises his audience that Princes should not keep promises, nor live uprightly, if they intend on keeping their power. He argues that in the time The Prince was written, those Princes...

Though the conventional view of The Prince is that it promotes a supposedly amoral ideology for political leaders to embrace, this is probably not the only reason the religious authorities banned...

Machiavelli takes a very cynical, jaded view of human nature that can be summed up by the following statement in Chapter 17, "Concerning Cruelty and Clemency, and Whether It is Better to Be Feared...

Niccolo Machiavelli’s early-sixteenth century The Prince is considered a treatise on how rulers should conduct themselves and handle affairs of state, should they wish to survive. Machiavelli was...

The Prince flew in the face of a prevailing theory that a virtuous prince would rule most successfully. Instead Machiavelli advised that too much virtue could be the downfall of a ruler and that...

This question refers to one of the most famous statements in all of Machiavelli, regarding the question of whether it is better to rule by fear than love. Machiavelli, in answering this question,...

Machiavelli's most prevalent and well-known idea is perhaps the most impactful, in large part due to its controversy. I will address this concept for those reasons and because I believe it is the...

Machiavelli was greatly influenced by humanist thought when composing his seminal work, The Prince. Humanism concerns the potential for power that individuals have in determining their fate and...

Machiavelli actually says it is “safer” to be feared than loved. He bases this assertion on the premise that men are “thankless, fickle, false, studious to avoid danger, greedy of gain, devoted to...

While I hate to say it I totally agree with Machiavelli on many points including this one. When I first began studying Machiavelli I thought his system was too black and white and way too cold, but...

As was the case with Hugo Chavez (or with any ruler we see as bad), Mugabe exemplifies the idea that a ruler should care only about maintaining his own power. All ideas about ethics or about...

Machiavelli writes, at the beginning of chapter 1, that "All states...have been and are either republics or principalities." As the title suggests, almost all of The Prince is devoted to analysis...

In The Prince, Machiavelli depicts humankind as far more motivated by fear than by love. Since The Prince is a work about how a prince can best maintain his power, Machiavelli advises princes to...

Machiavelli discusses the prince's acquisition of power in relation to the acquisition of territories. He draws a distinction between hereditary and composite principalities. The acquisition of...

At the time when Machiavelli wrote The Prince most Italian states relied on mercenaries for their defense. Machiavelli's own Republic of Florence was one such state, much to Machiavelli's...

In The Prince, Machiavelli makes a dramatic break from former advice books to princes by distinguishing between virtue and the perception of virtue. To Machiavelli, it is more important for a...

The Prince is replete with examples of contemporary leaders, whom Machiavelli uses to support his arguments about how a prince should behave if he wants to be successful. He points, for example, to...

Niccolo Machiavelli is best known for his idea (which was groundbreaking at the time) that a ruler should not worry too much about morality. He said that rulers should, instead, do whatever was...

Humanism is evident in both works and in both senses of the word. As has already been mentioned in a previous contribution, Machiavelli cites a number of examples of classical wisdom—Livy being an...

The Prince was infamous among political and intellectual circles during the Early Modern Era. To quote from the introduction to The Portable Machiavelli: "It is a remarkable book, one which...

Even in Machiavelli's own time, his ideas were regarded as immoral by many, and the ruthless, cunning, cynical, exploitative "Machiavel" became a stereotypical figure on the Elizabethan stage....

The answer to this question can be found in Chapter XVII of The Prince. Here Machiavelli observes that, given a choice, rulers would obviously want to be loved and feared. But if this is...

Mixed principalities are countries comprised of both the prince's original holdings and new territories he has taken over. Machiavelli says that ruling a mixed territory is tricky, because people...

In The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli goes to great lengths to illustrate the different kinds of kingdoms a prince may acquire and the relative advantages to each of them. Machiavelli begins his...

There are really two parts to this question. The first deals with the concept of humanism that gained sway during the Renaissance in Italy and beyond. The second addresses the related issue of...

The publication date of Machiavelli's The Prince is generally given as 1532. This is the year in which Pope Clement VII, a cousin of the Duke of Urbino, to whom Machiavelli had dedicated his work,...

Machiavelli's main motivation in writing The Prince was his profound frustration and anger at the contemporary political situation in Italy. At that time, the Italian peninsula was divided up into...

(continued from previous answer) "now to speak of ecclesiastical principalities, touching which all difficulties are prior to getting possession, because they are acquired either by capacity...

Well, in regards to your first question, it's important to understand that Machiavelli is NOT talking about democratic rulers, he is talking about autocratic rulers; therefore, not all of the...

Renaissance humanism is considered to have first developed in Florence, Italy, beginning in the 14thC. for a variety of reasons, and perhaps the two most important are the rise of the Medici...

Machiavelli was a true child of the Renaissance. He was a thoroughgoing humanist who looked fondly to antiquity for models of learning, wisdom and statesmanship. The Prince stands as a monument to...

You might want to concentrate on chapters 15 through 23. They concentrate on the qualities that a Prince should cultivate to be successful. If you take a quick glance at the subtitles you should...

There are two kinds of principalities according to Machiavelli. They are hereditary principalities and new principalities. To define hereditary principalities didn't occur to Machiavelli, so there...

The work that Machiavelli is most famous for is titled "The Prince," though it was not published during his lifetime. The reason why it stood out at the time it was published was because it was...

Machiavelli, in The Prince, espoused qualities of initiative and calculated ruthlessness: this second part is particularly important, because Machiavelli is sometimes misunderstood on this account....

Lord Macaulay notes in his essay on Machiavelli that The Prince was so shocking both to Machiavelli's contemporaries and to succeeding generations that they strove to account for it by various...

Machiavelli definitely believed that it was better to be feared than to be loved. He said that it was best of all to be both feared and loved, but that the two rarely go together. The major...

A Machiavellian leader should lie to his subjects if it is necessary. A leader has to always act in ways that will make his people respect him, even if this means that he has to break his word....