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The Prince
In The Prince and Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli exhibits the characteristics of humanism in many ways. First, both works are full of allusions to classical politics, especially to the Roman...
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The Prince
In The Prince, Machiavelli argues that a leader's reputation and honor are all important. Perception is reality. A prince doesn't have to be virtuous, but must appear virtuous to the people he is...
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The Prince
Always a controversial figure, Machiavelli is perhaps at his most polarizing in his account of human nature. In general, Machiavelli argues that human nature is primarily based upon self-interest....
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Macbeth
Though Macbeth is initially portrayed as an honest, loyal thane of King Duncan, we see very early on that he is capable of extreme acts of violence, as he disembowels and decapitates the rebel...
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Macbeth
Examining Macbeth using Machiavelli's The Prince is a great way to draw connections between texts. I believe that, while he would praise Macbeth's ability to instill fear in the hearts of his...
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The Prince
Machiavelli had an interesting and profound viewpoint, which has impacted many political thinkers and government studies to this day. In order to thoroughly answer this question, it is vital to...
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Utopia
More and Machiavelli's differing backgrounds gave rise to two distinctive works about politics and governance. Sir Thomas More was a devout Catholic who served under King Henry VIII in his native...
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The Prince
While the Prince is perhaps the most often read of Machiavelli's works in modern classrooms, many of his other works were actually more influential and widely read. His Discourses on Livy in...
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The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli's work, The Prince, appears on the surface to follow the common genre of the "mirror for princes", a type of medieval and Renaissance genre of non-fiction that set out the...
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The Prince
By main points, I'm assuming you are asking about major themes that are present in the pamphlet. There are several of these, the first one being Machiavelli's purpose for writing The Prince in the...
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The Prince
Throughout his writings in The Prince, Machiavelli discusses people in a rather scientific way, the idea being that if you take a certain action the people will respond a certain way. If you take...
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The Prince
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...
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The Prince
Machiavelli makes it clear to his readers that both Fortune and free will play a vital role in the success of a Prince. He even remarks that "Fortune is the mistress of one half our actions,"...
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The Prince
If you start to read Chapter XVI of The Prince, you will think that Machiavelli is saying that a ruler should be liberal. However, you will soon find that he is really saying the opposite....
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The Prince
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli is advanced reading for a high school student, but it will repay your effort in the way in which it will help you understand the Renaissance in particular and...
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The Prince
Theme 1: proper politics, effective governing, and the correct way to use the military and fight a war. Machiavelli's big change from the norm at the time was to see the military as a natural...
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The Prince
If I had to argue against Machiavelli’s famous adage, I would say that he does not understand what love really is. In the passage where he says that it is better to be feared than loved (if you...
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The Prince
Niccolo Machiavelli’s views of human nature strongly influenced his recommendations for governing. The Prince is a handbook for how one should rule. It is, by nature, cynical regarding the...
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The Prince
Let me start off with Machiavelli's words: "Because how one ought to live is so far removed from how one lives that he who lets go of what is done for that which one ought to do sooner learns...
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The Prince
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...
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The Prince
Machiavelli's work was reflective of many tenets in Renaissance Humanism. The intellectual movement was driven by a sense of Rationalism. The Rational feel of the time period sought to move...
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The Prince
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...
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The Prince
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Social Sciences
Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince is a handbook for how leaders should govern in order that both the ruler and the state should survive. It can be considered one of the most important books ever...
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The Prince
Machiavelli was a product of his times. Italy in the 15th and early 16th Centuries was an extremely turbulent system of city-states riven by violence and intrigue. In addition to the governments...
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The Prince
In The Prince, Machiavelli talks about classical humanist ideals, which comprised a different world view than our present day "humanist ideals" encompass. Machiavelli spoke of classical Renaissance...
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The Prince
According to Machiavelli, the most effective leaders governed not according to some abstract notion of morality, but more pragmatically. Machiavelli begins from a view of human nature that is...
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The Prince
In many ways, Machiavelli sums up the ideal characteristics for a good prince with his famous "lion and fox" analogy. A leader should be wily and tough, willing to use force but always looking for...
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The Prince
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...
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The Prince
While The Prince is, of course, a work of non-fiction, it is full of recurring characters, mostly figures from classical antiquity and from Renaissance-era Italy, Machiavelli's own time. These...
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The Prince
The Prince was written by Machiavelli as a political guide. The book instructed political leaders on how to gain and keep power. Due to the invention of the printing press, this book was spread and...
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The Prince
Machiavelli places a great deal of significance on an effective military, claiming in chapter 12 that the "main foundations of all States...are good laws and good arms." Yet he also recognizes that...
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The Prince
I tend to think that political philosophers continue to study the ideas that Machiavelli puts forth in The Prince because politics is a force that is still not understood. If one were to construct...
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The Prince
After the Medici family got back in power in Florence in 1512, the political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli, who had been part of the government that had thrown them out, wrote the political treaty...
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The Prince
Numerous commentators have noted that Machiavelli was a modernist political thinker in that he rejected universal principles of morality and ethics to posit a form of statecraft based on exigency...
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The Prince
According to Machiavelli, the ideal prince should be ruthless and willing to eschew conventional morality to maintain his power. In fact, they should not allow themselves to be govern according to...
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The Prince
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,...
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The Prince
This is a great question and one that gets to heart of the counsel of Machiavelli. Machiavelli states that virtue is central in the life of the prince, at least in his public persona. He defines...
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The Prince
Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince to present his philosophy of conduct for the ruler of any land. The short summary of that philosophy would be that the ruler should do whatever is necessary to...
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The Prince
First of all, please note that this book is not a work of fiction. Therefore, it is not set in any time period. Instead, this book is a work that gives advice to rulers as to how they should keep...
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The Prince
The major criticisms of the ideas in this book today are not really different from the major criticisms of those ideas in the past. The major criticism is that Machiavelli's ideas are immoral and...
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The Prince
Most of Machiavelli's advice would not apply at all to the modern world because it is aimed at autocratic rulers. Modern democratic rulers could not gain much by reading this book. However, there...
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The Prince
Machiavelli was not being sarcastic or a moralist; he was being honest. From his observations, he wrote what he percieved to be true -- this is how leaders operate, particularly the Borgias of his...
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The Prince
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....
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The Prince
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...
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The Prince
The most important way in which Hugo Chavez exemplifies the ideas from The Prince is in the fact that he seems to care about nothing other than holding on to power. His goal is not necessarily to...
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The Prince
I think that any self-respecting Marxist would find lots to comment on in the way in which Machiavelli talks about manipulation of the populace to ensure power. This finds so many parallels in the...
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The Prince
I think that this is an interesting point into which much delving can reveal even more. On one hand, the book is a dedication to Lorenzo de Medici, a member of the ruling family in Florence. The...
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The Prince
The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli, first appeared in 1513. The original title of the work, written in Latin, was De Principatibus. It was not until 1532 that the first actual publication was...
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The Prince
Agathocles the Sicilian belongs in the Ninth and last Circle of Dante's Inferno. Dante designated that level of hell for the most loathsome of creatures. It was reserved for people like Agathocles...