Usurper And Dynastic King In Machiavelli's The Prince

Machiavelli is notoriously unpopular. People think, due to his writing “The Prince” that he is cold-hearted, lacking in morals, and self-seeking. However, some argue otherwise. Some argue that Machiavelli is practical. That his thinking of the ends justify the means is logical and wise. In his time, Machiavelli made waves with “The Prince” because he rejected the God-Ordained thinking of his time. That is to say that he believed that a king became king, not because God particularly wanted him and his bloodline to be kings, but because it happened. Due to this thinking he saw no real difference between a usurper and a dynastic king. In Machiavelli’s book, a ruler is a ruler, they are all the same and must abide by the same guidelines to rule.

The first was his status. He was wealthy and upper-class. He had power, at least he did before his exile. The second, which links with the first, is that he had no patron. In the time Machiavelli wrote, a writer (or any kind of artist) often had a patron. A patron, or a person who covers the pay and living of the artist, was vital to most artists of the time. However, Machiavelli was able to live without a patron in his life. This gave him a freedom to write whatever he pleased. Among the things Machiavelli wrote about, he wrote about human nature. Machiavelli believed, or at least wrote, that humans were fickle by nature. This is a reasonable argument. Even today, people flip-flop back and forth, both on small and large matters. In this idea that humans are fickle, Machiavelli does not account for rulers to be fickle as well. They are expected to be above such things. Machiavelli accounts for human fickleness in his argument about whether it is better to be loved than feared. He said it was better to be feared because love is fickle, as are all human emotions, whereas fear is more concrete and goes beyond a feeling into the instinctual. However, Machiavelli also wrote that it was a fine line between feared and hated, and that a ruler must never cross that line. To be feared is good, it is to be respected. To be hated is to invite a revolt, which is how one loses his

To be generous would cause the territory to become poor, which would cause a strain on the people, and actually be less generous than not offering generosity at all. However, Machiavelli also discusses the kinds of generosity, to argue that neither of them benefit society. The first kind of generosity is true generosity. This means that one gives without expecting a reward. They give in secret. On a small scale, this could include buying groceries for a hungry neighbor incapable of affording food, and just leaving the groceries on the doorstep, never telling them it was you. The other kind of generosity is fake generosity, this is generosity for the sake of thanks. This, on a small scale, could be buying a coffee for the cute girl in front of you in line a Dunkin Donuts, so that she might flirt with you. Machiavelli is a fan of dishonesty when it suits the needs of the ruler. It is good to be honest, Machiavelli writes, but the good guys finish last. No one gets ahead on goodness and virtue alone. They have to lie and be cunning. So, he says to start out honest, and with honest intentions, but don’t hold onto them. Be willing to throw out that honesty the second dishonesty is more