Similarities Between Aristotle And Machiavelli

Aristotle and Machiavelli both have separate stand points on what moral virtue means to them. While Aristotle connects moral virtue to a regime he calls mixed polity, Machiavelli says mans essence is determined through metaphysics. Mans essence is defined by both Aristotle and Machiavelli as the development of men.
Aristotle argues that leaders should have moral virtues or what he calls regime, not just have them but have the highest amount of it. A regime by definition is a set of norms, But in Aristotle's understanding a regime is “the organization of offices in a city, particularly the most authoritative; the effective government or governing body of a city; the way of life of a city as reflected in the end pursued by the city as a whole and by those consisting it’s governing body”. According to Aristotle, the person must have it in perfection. What we gather from this is that moral virtue is what makes them leaders. A leader very necessary in a society, without one there is …show more content…
He states that the prince should only ever appear to have moral virtue, because if moral virtue is weakness and the prince should never be weak if he is ruling among the rest. According to Machiavelli, the leader must know how appear virtuous but be able to be evil because the princes enemies are able to be evil and you must always be one step ahead of your enemies. In other words one must only act good and not be good. Which simply means that one must put up a facade up telling everyone that they are morally good and secretly be unjust and have ulterior motives.Machiavelli also believes that mans essence is determined through metaphysics which by definition is the first principle of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time and space.Machiavelli argues that you do not need be virtuous you just need to know how things work and make them work in your