About Law And Leadership As Pertained To Machiavelli Advising The Prince (Essay Sample)

Machiavelli’s Advice to the Prince
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Machiavelli’s Advice to the Prince
Many thoughts have been shared and others written about leadership. Rulers too, are continuously striving to be the best history has ever recorded. The only difficulty that persists is that none of this guides always provide clear-cut recipes to successful leadership, and most rulers often find themselves in grave dilemmas. The book that most people believes to have set the standard for a leader is The Morals of the Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli. The author begins by advising every prince who wishes to ascend and succeed in power to master the art of wrongdoing, and to always make use of it in so long as necessity demands. The advisement only shows how deeply rooted Machiavelli’s beliefs in political wrong-doing are—but who really is Machiavelli?
Niccolo Machiavelli was a Florentine diplomat in 1511, secure and respected in his position. He was highly esteemed as a scholar and political mind of his time until 1512 during the fall of Florentine republic to the brimming papacy. Machiavelli, having been implicated in a conspiracy, was thrown into prison, tortured, threatened and later released as an exile by the new ruler. He retreated to the country where he lived his life as a political writer. The Prince, from which this excerpt was taken, was meant as a gift to the prince, Lorenzo, a book that man also believes was mostly intended to satirize his father’s leadership rather than guide him as a ruler in waiting.
The author’s attitude becomes clear when he states that he seeks to depart from the typical methods of others and that he intends to conjure up his own ideas—making apparent his cocky demeanor too. Yes, it is nice to be nice, even Machiavelli believes in this point, yet in the world of The Prince, it suffice just to be seen as nice. He defines traditional virtues as the general qualities usually praised by others as good, and these include attributes such as generosity, piety, and compassion. Machiavelli believes that a leader must always appear to be virtuous, but that acting virtuously for just virtue’s sake can even be more detrimental to his state than being stark cold. A prince should not just avoid vices like deceit, cruelty or greed; too blatantly, especially if using them will help him benefit his state. He is also quick to point out that these vices should also not only be followed just for the vice in them, and virtue just for the sake of virtue, but must be conceived as means to the desired end.
On one hand, the author advocates for generosity, leniency, and liberality, yet on the other, he knows that a ruler must be cruel, cunning and sometimes even ruthless in preventing power hungry subjects from taking advantage of his kindn...