Machiavelli's THE PRINCE Discussion Thread

It is a pleasure to welcome any of your comments and questions.

Machiavelli in his book, "The Prince" discusses tactics and behaviors which can be used to achieve one's political goals. He made an effort to justify those actions, should the goal be appropriate. Some of Machiavelli's teachings lack any sense of moral base, which therefore leads to despicable behavior.

However, Machiavelli did not write "The Prince" to create a despot/dictator. He wrote about how a dictator/despot thinks, acts, and wins. Heeding his message is comparable to knowing our enemy, the 1st rule of war.

"The Prince" - How to gain and hold political power. Machiavelli merely looked at the human being as a social animal, evaluated its behavior based upon his prior experience, and prior experience available to him through historians. From those experiences developed certain general rules regarding how a leader gains power, removes the threat of the prior regime, and then holds power. However, Machiavelly ignored the spiritual element of man, which is a fatal flaw in his work.

Both a Republic and an Empire must resort to
Machiavellian tactics to survive.

Please provide any comments.

 

It's been a long time and I only read a few selected chapters from this book when I did read it, but I'll just say that I feel Machiavelli's, well, Machiavellian nature is somewhat overrated.

Quite honestly, I agreed, at least in part, with a lot of what he had to say. It's not pretty, but, really, government is like sausage. If you're going to stomach it, you don't want to see how it's made.

 

But Machiavelli died!.....or did he?

 

Well, he must have or else he'd be really old.

Question is: did he die like everyone thinks?

 

thats what I meant!