Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince

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Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince" is a book about how to gain, keep, or maintain power. In this book he speaks about a number of things concerning this topic, including fear, class conflict, policy, free will, and more, but the most intriguing topic is the one of morality. What is morality? Merriam-Webster says that morality is beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior, but Machiavelli doesn't seem to concerned with what is right or wrong, as long as it doesn't compromise power. The average person may concern themselves with morality because they want to do the right thing. However, Machiavelli believes that morality is purely something to be used to your advantage when circumstances would allow it.. An important difference …show more content…

In the book “The Prince,” it is apparent that Niccolo Machiavelli is not a moral person nor does he care if the ruler is a moral person, for he only concerns himself with whether being moral or immoral is beneficial or detrimental for the leader in question at any given time.
As previously mentioned, Machiavelli believes that it is good for a prince to abide by morals in certain situations but he also believes that it is good for a prince to not do so in certain situations. We see this when Machiavelli says, “So it follows that a prudent ruler cannot, and must not, honour his word when it places him at a disadvantage and when the reasons for which he made his promise no longer exist.” (page 55). He is essentially saying that if it is good at the time for a Prince to be moral, then do so, but if it’s more beneficial to be immoral, then do that instead. Knowing this, one could say that it isn’t really morality that Niccolo Machiavelli wants the leader to portray, he just wants the leader

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