{"id":879,"date":"2019-09-24T22:58:33","date_gmt":"2019-09-25T02:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/?p=879"},"modified":"2019-10-15T14:02:25","modified_gmt":"2019-10-15T18:02:25","slug":"machiavelli-the-prince-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/2019\/09\/24\/machiavelli-the-prince-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog Post 5: Machiavelli, &#8220;The Prince&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli\u2019s famous 16th-century work, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Prince<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the author presents a guide of written solutions to successfully ruling a regime with an absolute monarchy. His argument is concise: big, radical ideas lead to political divisiveness. Machiavelli says, \u201cthere is nothing more difficult to carry out, more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order\u201d (105). In this response, I want to focus on this idea that Machiavelli presents saying that brand new ideas can result in a weak government and scare away followers\u2019 loyalty. In his first few chapters, the author presents all different leadership scenarios and different ways that princes may have seized power. This framework for the rest of the book allows Machiavelli to present various situations a prince might put his values before those of the people, leading to a detrimental effect on the people. Conversely, Machiavelli argues that princes \u201cmust not mind incurring to the charge of cruelty for the purpose of keeping his subjects united and faithful,\u201d (119) meaning that leaders sometimes have to make immoral decisions in the best interest of the people. However, what is important is that the prince<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> appears<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to be one of the people, even if that is not necessarily true.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Prince<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> reminded me of many of the same principles of Plato\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Allegory of the Cave<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and the discussion we had in class today that leaders may not always be 100% truthful to their followers. This idea ties into Machiavelli\u2019s argument that if a prince presents lofty ideas to his people, the government will be weak, and the opposite effect if he makes a seemingly \u201ccruel\u201d decision. Plato\u2019s work argues that a leader cannot give followers reality <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">all<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of the time and that we cannot know everything and anything, while Machiavelli argues that the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">appearance<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of being reliable may be just as important as actually executing that promise. The idea of the \u201creal\u201d, the \u201cmodel\u201d, and the \u201cshadow\u201d apply to lead in situations such as those presented by Machiavelli in the earlier chapters of his book.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli\u2019s famous 16th-century work, The Prince, the author presents a guide of written solutions to successfully ruling a regime with an absolute monarchy.&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/2019\/09\/24\/machiavelli-the-prince-3\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Blog Post 5: Machiavelli, &#8220;The Prince&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4302,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-879","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\/879","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\/4302"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}