Thursday, August 2, 2012
Machiavelli's outrageous statements in the Prince
In the first 50 pages of this book, Machiavelli spends most of his time talking about how Princes rise to power and difficulties they encounter along the way. He then spends a lot of time talking about the Prince in his high position and what happens to him there. I was reading specifically about why men, or princes are praised and blamed when I came across this quote: "Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires." This seemed to me a ridiculous notion, after spending the last half hour reading about virtue, strength and good acts so that a Prince acts like he should within society. Now Machiavelli is telling us that they need not only to learn how to play dirty, but to actually play dirty when necessity requires. After thinking about this for a while, I have decided that Machiavelli is right, but one needs to be very careful when reading about this and taking this advice into consideration. It is necessary to become acquainted with the not-so-good side of society, to know what people do when they get down in the dirt to play dirty, but a Prince should spend his time rising above this, leaving those with less integrity down in the dirt. In this way, he would be using this advice the way Machiavelli meant it.
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It's hard to understand this statement, especially coming from a church members stand point when the leaders that we see in our culture, like Nephi and Captain Moroni, were such great men without having to resort to "playing dirty." But in our society now, it seems that Machiavelli's position on this might be true.
ReplyDeleteI like how you put this quote into context. It seems confusing how in order to be a successful leader Machiavelli suggest they need to learn how not to do good. I would assume that during that time politics was a cutthroat business and full of deceitful people(one could say the same about today)and in order to succeed leaders needed to learn how to get their hands dirty to put down people who had evil intentions.
ReplyDeleteReally good thoughts! It is such a strange concept to think that being too good would be a vice. It is also interesting to think of "learn[ing] how not to be good," that would imply that his belief is that being good is a natural state.
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