Machiavelli's The Prince

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What is an Ideal Prince?
Throughout Machiavelli’s The Prince, he illustrates what it means to be an effective prince. His view that Princes should focus on statecraft permeates throughout his work, meaning that princes should present foresight, practicality, fortune, aggressiveness, self-acquired skill, and ingenuity. Princes need to do whatever it takes to acquire the state and stay in power. He argues that the most successful kings were not the ones who acted according to the dictates of the law, or justice, or conscience, but those willing to do whatever was necessary to preserve their own power, and thus, indirectly preserve order within the state. In other words, if Machiavelli were rule under a political system, he would rule under an …show more content…

He says that the people only seek to not be oppressed, meaning, if people are cheated and lied to, they will not mind, as long as the end result is that they are not oppressed. In Machiavelli’s autocracy, he would most likely do what most dictators do, which is give the people the bare minimum, meaning, just enough authority so that they are complacent, but not so much that it gives them the power to overthrow the ruler. He may even manipulate the people into thinking that they need him by saying if he is not in power, then violence will ensue, ultimately making the people fear what life would be like without the ruler in power to keep the peace. Not only would Socrates disagree with this, but he would say that speaking falsely instead of what is true, that the prince who speaks false is not just. This comes from Socrates’ claims that he is one who tells the truth and that he is to always do what is just, therefore, stating that being truthful is inherently just, and speaking falsehoods is unjust. Since the truth is just, he believes that the people deserve to be told the truth by the ruler, even if that hurts the ruler’s chances of staying in power. Machiavelli, however, will cheat and lie to the people just to stay in

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