you know the prince was satire right?

@ Sicarius - notsureifserious.jpeg

I dont think you can clearly say that it is a satire as no one can interpret the intentions of Machiavelli but it was obviously written to advice the sovereigns of that age...

Yet if you follow the advices given there, you can be a great player of diplomacy =3
<.< and at the same time a horrible human being.

@ Sicarus - No.

I think Machiavelli has gotten a bad rep. There's a huge difference between him and Mephistopheles, but I think a lot of people have them jumbled together in their minds.

I think Sicarius is satire. ;-)

@Mujus O.o tell me I misunderstood it and you are not trying to compare Machiavelli with "Mephistopheles"? Are you refering to Faust of Goethe or Faust/Mephisto themed ancient stories ?

If so, Faust and Mephistopheles or any other variants of it are much different then Machiavelli's Prince. As the latter one is written to advice politicians and claim that states need to be "amoral" not "IMMORAL" , the first ones show that "we, human beings, should be moral" by showing what is immoral in a classical theatral style which shows you the evilness to direct you to 'right' and 'divine' ...

Oki as I have started writing let me clear some other issues. I dont really think that it can also be claimed that such classical literature pieces should be considered as a satire because they dont ridiculate or use sarcasm to show critisize. They dont use these at all. They just show you what is bad and evil so that you can see your own wrongs. So you may consider Machiavelli is a satire but it does not make sense if you consider such classical / romantic writers like Faust of Goethe as a satire.

Completely irrelevant but I just realised I missed debating on literature *-*

My point was that Machiavelli's advice does not necessarily make one a horrible human being, although some of this advice is not only amoral but also immoral--lying, for example. But Machiavelli is not the demon that he is often made out to be. Just my humble opinion.

I do appreciate your analysis of the reason behind the two, the writers' purposes, and you are absolutely correct that they are not the same at all. But I'm not the one that said Machiavelli was a satire.

I never thought of the comparison of Machiavelli with Mephistopheles. I think the comparison is apt the more I think about it. I honestly don't think Machiavelli is held in low esteem. Many hail him as one of the founders of political science. [The Ancient founder being Thucydides].

Incidentally The Prince & The History of the Peloponnesian War should be taught in every classroom, IMO.

Poor Niccolò is always pictured as an "exitus acta probat" kind of thinker when in reality it were his opponents from the Catholic Church who championed that cause. As Nebuchadnezzar pointed out, Machiavelli's thoughts were ammoral, not immoral. A Prince is allowed to use any legal or illegal, moral or immoral mean in order to maintain firm grip over his domain because politics is a sphere beyond morality. Killing a pretender to your throne is the politically correct thing to do but the murder is in no way morally justified by its neccessity. On the other hand, while murder is otherwise a gravest sin, killing a Saracen on a crusade to Holy Land is a noble deed because crusader's goal of spreading his faith with sword is honourable.

That being said, I think that Niccolò would be fascinated by Nietzsche's master morality as it embodies many aspects of his concept of virtù and is also more similar to the Ancient pagan civil religions than to servant morality of Christianity.

@Mujus Mate I know you didnt said that it is a satire. Dont think my comments is critising you. =D I, being inspired by your message, just wanted to consider to what extent we can compare Faust with Prince.

Now regarding Machiavelli, I'm afraid I dont really agree with the general thoughts here. I think a state -whatever it is- must be moral. Yet for me the issue is "what a state is". Now taking the classical definition for granted, I still believe a state must be MORAL and it doesnt matter if someoen is a non combatant or combatant, if he is killed in an unfair war, that's murder. Yet only the person to accuse is not the soldier but the generals or the MPs who gave the decision of waging an unjust war.

Machiavellie puts the governors on the top, not the public. People(or individuals) are just an instrument for the sovereigns and I think that thought is unacceptable.

As being the founder of the political science, that's not really true but maybe Putin means that he is one of the the founders of "International Relations discipline". To be honest, Machiavellie can only be founder of the realist paradigm of international relations and one who should be avoided to explain the contemporary international relations as his thoughts are not capable of promoting peace, justice or freedom together.

@Ulytau : I coudlnt hold myself to say that but you told that if a crusader kills a Saracen on a crusade it is honourable. Then I wonder what you think about radical islamists who kills for jihad-which nowadays became the equavelent of crusaders of muslims-. I'm afraid if you really believe in the first sentence you must admit that all these terrorist attacks are also "honourable".

I think religion cannot be a reason to kill, especially spreading a religion. it doesnt matter if you are muslim, christian or judaist you must remember your first commandment is not "spread your religion". It is clearly "Thy shall not kill!".

Actually the greatest commandment, according to Jesus, is "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind," and the second, also according to Jesus, is "Lover your neighbor as yourself." And from these two commandments proceed all of th teachings of the entire Bible.

Correction, embarrassing typo:
Actually the greatest commandment, according to Jesus, is "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind," and the second, also according to Jesus, is "Love your neighbor as yourself." And from these two commandments proceed all of th teachings of the entire Bible.

another typo: the. *sigh*

When I did my Politics degree I read both The Prince and the Discourses on Livy and I have to say that I feel the former was a work to curry favour with those who had exiled him, while the Discourses were his real opinions. I found his analysis of governments and societies in the discourses to be far more interesting and sincere than what he talks about in The Prince.

I'll put the Discourses on my reading list. :-)

Machiavelli's The Prince, one of the most notorious political treatises ever written, designed as an instruction manual for the Florentine dictator Lorenzo de' Medici to help him be more of a bastard. Completely disregarding moral concerns in politics, the book serves as a levelheaded discourse on the best way to assert and maintain power, noting that it's better to be feared than loved, and that dishonesty pays off in the long run as long as you lie about how dishonest you are.

Actually, Machiavelli was totally just trolling. He was a renowned proponent of free republics, as noted in a few obscure texts called 'everything else he ever wrote'. The reason The Prince endured the ages while the rest of his philosophy gathered dust in the back of an old library warehouse is chiefly 1) it's really short, and 2) it angries up the blood. By far the best way to get a book on the best-seller list is to write something that pisses everyone off, but the drawback is that it steamrolls the message of any work that's only meant to be understood in context.

The context in this case is that the Medici family to whom he dedicated his love letter is the same group who personally broke Machiavelli's arms for being such a staunch advocate for free government. He worked for the Florentine Republic before the Medicis marched in, mowed down the government and mercilessly tortured him, and then he sat down and wrote The Prince from his shack in exile, assumedly with some really bendy handwriting (on account of the arms). When you learn about that, it kind of adds a new layer of meaning to the text -- it suddenly sounds like it's dripping with sarcasm.

Not everyone was in on the joke.

For centuries, the consensus on Machiavelli's best-known work has been that he was just trying to brown-nose his way back into the government. But a deeper study of his full body of work reveals that this is a pretty absurd ambition, considering not only did Machiavelli repeatedly say that "popular rule is always better than the rule of princes," but after he wrote The Prince, he went right on back to writing treatises about the awesomeness of republics. Considering also that he was no stranger to the literary art of satire, scholars these days are turning to a more likely scenario -- Machiavelli was the Stephen Colbert of the Renaissance.

Part of the blame might also be leveled at the shitty job that people have done in trying to translate his work into English. It's from Machiavelli that we get the notorious phrase "the end justifies the means." A much more accurate translation from the original Italian is something more like "one must consider the end," which kind of means something totally different.

http://www.unt.edu/honors/eaglefeather/2007_Issue/kniatt4.shtml

Sicarius, that's very informative! I really didn't have the context in which M. wrote his Prince. And context is important.

Thread end.

bam.

Wasn't the Prince published after he died? If so then the book could hardly have been written for his own advancement.

@Nebuchadnezzar: I don't know why are you atributing to me the view of medieval Catholic Church since I didn't make such remark. However, it is obvious that contemporary mujahedeens consider their religious war a Just War in the same way crusaders did.

@Sicarius: Thread end my ass,"the outcome justifies the deeds" comes from Ovid and his opus The Heroines ;)

I do not understand why one cannot be a republican and an adherent of Machiavellian realpolitik. Especially in the case of Italy during Machievelli's time, which was a divided society dominated by foreign interests. I would wager that Machiavelli preferred any government to foreign domination, and therefore advised princes to do what it took to strengthen the state. Much like liberals backed Bismarck, though an archconservative, because of his efforts for the unification of Germany.

@ Sicarius - do you genuinely believe the Medici didn't have their own impact on the further development of the republic? Serious question, not trolling.