{"id":877,"date":"2019-09-24T23:06:28","date_gmt":"2019-09-25T03:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/?p=877"},"modified":"2019-09-24T23:06:28","modified_gmt":"2019-09-25T03:06:28","slug":"machiavelli-the-prince-1030","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/2019\/09\/24\/machiavelli-the-prince-1030\/","title":{"rendered":"Machiavelli- The Prince (10:30)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In\u00a0<em>The Prince,<\/em>\u00a0Machiavelli gives advice on the best way(s) for how rulers are to approach governing new cities with citizens who formerly lived freely under the law. In a way, citizens weren&#8217;t really restricted by laws because they helped create, implement and maintain their laws; they were autonomous. So, a ruler, maybe a prince, was to be the one who established any true &#8220;laws&#8221;. Because they were autonomous, I believe their &#8220;laws&#8221; should be called &#8220;agreements&#8221; or &#8220;[shared] norms&#8221; instead. Although Machiavelli gives three options for princes to take when governing a formerly autonomous, he strongly advises the first option for a prince to despoil the preexisting laws. He heavily supported the first option using this logic: if a prince takes reign over a\u00a0<em>free\u00a0<\/em>city without destroying it, then the prince will be destroyed by it because people can rebel against his rule in the name of liberty and tradition. I agree to the extent that citizens would only desire to return to their old way of law and rebel if the ruler does something undesirable\/unfair and lacks authority anyway. Therefore, I believe the best option for a prince to take is option 2: &#8220;go and live there in person&#8221;. I understand this advice to be equivalent to, &#8220;If you can&#8217;t beat them, then join them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Machiavelli&#8217;s reference to Moses as a &#8220;prince by merit&#8221; challenged my thinking. I always thought that Moses was\u00a0<em>chosen\u00a0<\/em>by God because God had divine favor on him, not because of anything special that Moses had done or possessed. When I think of merit, I think of hard work and dedication put into something (that would eventually produce an outcome). So, would it really be appropriate to say that Moses was a &#8220;prince by merit&#8221; and not fortune? In technical terms, Moses was not a prince by fortune either. I think of &#8220;fortune&#8221; having a more secular connotation, in which the universe, not God, can reward one with &#8220;good fortune&#8221;. Perhaps, it would be more probable to make good &#8220;fortune&#8221; synonymous with &#8220;blessings (in Biblical terms).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In\u00a0The Prince,\u00a0Machiavelli gives advice on the best way(s) for how rulers are to approach governing new cities with citizens who formerly lived freely under the&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/2019\/09\/24\/machiavelli-the-prince-1030\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Machiavelli- The Prince (10:30)<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4569,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4569"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}