Comparing Machiavelli’s Principles and the Ten Commandments
Machiavelli is undisputedly one of the most influential political philosophers of all time. In The Prince, his most well-known work, he relates clearly and precisely how a decisive, intelligent man can gain and maintain power in a region. This work is revolutionary because it flies in the face of the Christian morality which let the Roman Catholic Church hold onto Europe for centuries. Machiavelli's work not only ignores the medieval world's ethics: The Prince suggests actions which oppose the four most basic of Christianity's Ten Commandments.
Machiavelli's revolutionary philosophy begins with the opposition of the First Commandment: "Thou shalt not have strange gods before me." This Commandment is the basis for the entire Judaeo-Christian worldview, and is in essence the foundation of any monotheistic religion. Machiavelli instructs the prince to attempt to appear religious (135), (since such an appearance is useful to manipulate the populace), but there is no instruction for an actual observance of faith. Furthermore, a prince is instructed to consider one thing over all others: "A prince, therefore, must not have any other object nor any other thought, nor must he take anything as his profession but war, its institutions and its discipline;" (124). These thoughts of war override piety and prayer, and thus undermine and attack the First Commandment.
All about a prince is the danger of death. This danger may come from treason within his government, war with foreign enemies, or a rebellion of his people. The situation is always kill-or-be-killed, and the Fifth Commandment - "Thou shalt not kill." - is discarded before it is ...
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...cerned with spiritual matters, instead they are “ungrateful, fickle, simulators and deceivers, avoiders of danger, greedy for gain; and while you work for their good they are completely yours, offering you their blood, their property, their lives, and their sons, as I said earlier, when danger is far away; but when it comes nearer to you they turn away.” (131). For the followers of Christ, it is the total abandonment of the search for salvation. For Machiavelli and the many who have followed his philosophy, it is mere survival.
Works Cited:
Machiavelli, Nicolo. The Prince. From The Portable Machiavelli, Translated by Peter Bonadella and Mark Musa, Penguin 1979.
Peter Cardinal Gasparri, Catholic Catechism "published with Ecclesiastical approval" and bearing the imprimatur of Patrick Cardinal Hayes, Archbishop, New York. P. J. Kennedy & Sons, 1932.
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