Lucrezia Borgia

Machiavelli’s The Prince could be used as a manual for navigating tough decisions that leaders face every day, or viewed as a defense of negligent and callous autocratic leadership. While Machiavelli encouraged a more coldhearted approach to leadership, Socrates pushed for an improvement in the morality of daily life including leadership. The prince is a very determined powerful leader, who by almost any means, desires to protect and preserve his nation as well as his position as the prince. He…

Morality and Necessity: What Makes a Prince Just? Whether using the Machiavellian terminology (i.e. the prince) or the Socratic nouns (i.e. citizen, philosopher, or civil servant), the three literary works, “The Apology”, “Crito”, and “The Prince”, address the same topic: what should a leader be. Socrates valued individual characteristics considered to be moral and just more than anything. He was not afraid to place leaders to the same standard as the ordinary citizen and in fact encouraged…

The Complex and Challenged Friendship of Amir and Hassan Thomas Aquinas, a famous Italian philosopher, once said “There is nothing on this Earth more to be prized than true friendship”. True friendship isn’t easy to obtain. True friends are there for someone, no matter the situation. But this friendship can fall apart, especially if jealousy sneaks its way into it. This idea is very relevant for Amir and Hassan in the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. In the novel The Kite Runner,…

In Homer’s Odyssey, the overall meaning is that in order to rule over others, one must be able to fully understand themselves and their role in society. For Odysseus to return home, he had to first become a mature individual that was able to rule over his kingdom. In the adventures and tales of Odysseus it is demonstrated that even though he desires to return home to his wife, son, and kingdom, he has to face the temptations that draw him away from his main goal in order to mature into the ruler…

Sly, coning, deceitful, ruthless, words often used to described the political philosophy of Niccólo Machiavelli. He was the first philosopher of the renaissance, lived in an Italy divided by states, he lived in Florence Italy under different Florentine empires. His exile ethic took place under the Medici family rule. "One should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person,”Machiavelli was a realist and made a point of writing things as they were rather than as…

Machiavelli believes it is safer to be feared than loved. He states that “it is desirable to be both, but because it is difficult to join them together, it is much safer for a prince to be feared than loved, if he is to fail one of the two” (Prince). Princes, in Machiavelli’s eyes, needs to be feared because if he fails, it is safer to be feared than to be loved. Machiavelli favors fear over love for many reasons. One of the reasons are his views on politics as well as past experiences on…

Comparison of Machiavelli’s behavior of known Politicians According to Niccolo Machiaville, he himself felt he was the most widely-read of the Renaissance thinkers. He retired from public service in order to become a writer and felt he was a Florentine politician. Shortly after his early retirement he was able to accomplish his dream and in 1513 he wrote his best known work, entitled The Prince, Principle II. In his book his main focus was on the way a good ruler or prince should perform. He…

Rulers around the world have many different ideas and thoughts about what makes an effective ruler. Some may think that having supreme rule over of all aspects of a person’s life marks a great ruler. Others see true leadership as the ability to lead by example, showing that a ruler is human like everyone else. Nicolo Machiavelli was of the former thinking. In his book “The Prince,” Machiavelli gives guidance on what believes to be the best practices for ruling. However, Machiavelli’s…

The Prince, written by Niccolo Machiavelli, is a controversial work of literature that offers the frightening reality of how any government is truly ruled. It varies from the popular patriotic belief that our nation does no wrong, and produces the idea that greed, lies, and sin are necessary evils to a functioning nation. During Machiavelli’s time there were many transitions of power, as mankind was still settling in, and it seemed necessary to him to outline steps for the new rulers, the…

In order for a protest to be effective and get into the heads of the targeted audience, those who are protesting must have self-interest at heart. Self-interest is necessary because it directly connects the protesters to their cause. This connection would result in that protester being more driven and dedicated to expressing their beliefs and trying to accomplish their goal. Without being related to the issue at hand in some sort of way, a person’s actions may not all have the intention of…