Machiavelli's The Prince

In association, Machiavelli showed that a prince who only professes peace and faith, even if hostile to both can maintain a state; whereas, if he had observed both he would lose his state and/or reputation: “So let a Prince win and maintain his state: the means will always be judged honorable, and will be praised by everyone (71).” In this same way religious institutions have maintained their grips on humanity, by withstanding hard fought arms battles all due to the reverence and devotion of pitifully ignorant pawns to the Lord and the religious institutions themselves. Furthermore, Machiavelli explicitly observes that principalities or regimes cannot be founded without crimes having been been committed: “In taking hold of a state, he who …show more content…
Conventionally, we assume the rationality of ourselves and our decisions; however, Machiavelli clearly brings this into question as he seems to believe that the only thing rational about human beings is our inherent quest for self-interest: “[Humans] are ungrateful, fickle, pretenders and dissemblers, evaders of danger, eager for gain. While you do them good, they are yours (66).” This excerpt is instinctually hard to digest; therefore, in order to have any clout behind Machiavelli fundamentally questioning our understanding of ourselves and our society. He starts by identifying the effectual truth and then working down to the crux of the issue which often ends up being that humans inherently act out of …show more content…
Throughout The Prince Machiavelli often distinguishes Moses from other founders of civilizations as well as other armed prophets. However, these examples all display the connection between faith and fear which is incredibly hard to fathom for those who haven’t true fear. The leader of a new order must attain the loyalty of their subjects through some combination of virtue and violence once given opportunity through fortune, in order to maintain a functional society within their new domain. If the leader has trouble peacefully recruiting faithful subjects, then they must do so through instilling fear by the means of violence: “things must be ordered in such a mode that when they no longer believe, one can make them believe by force (24).” In order to instill faith through fear a leader must deliberately and swiftly use cruelty and utilize mercy with care as to attain infamy without hatred, for the improper use of mercy can lead to one’s

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