{"id":884,"date":"2019-09-25T09:13:09","date_gmt":"2019-09-25T13:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/?p=884"},"modified":"2019-09-25T09:13:09","modified_gmt":"2019-09-25T13:13:09","slug":"machiavellis-the-prince","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/2019\/09\/25\/machiavellis-the-prince\/","title":{"rendered":"Machiavelli’s The Prince"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Machiavelli’s The<\/em>\u00a0Prince,<\/em> one line in particular stuck out to me: “One, however, who becomes prince by favour of the populace, must maintain its friendship, which he will find easy,\u00a0 the people ask nothing but not to be oppressed” (113). I found this interesting because it goes directly contrary to how we thought of monarchies before this point. In England, if a person came into power legally (bloodline, designation, conquest), he would be a legal ruler regardless of the people’s preferences. The idea of needing the approval of the people reminds me of American democracy. To rise into the any political office requires the “favour of the populace,” but a person can only stay in that position if they can continue to maintain approval.<\/p>\n

Another portion of the reading that caught my attention was on page 123 where Machiavelli talked about appearances versus actuality. He says that princes only need to appear as if they have the true qualities of a prince, and it does not matter whether they actually possess them or not. This reminded me of our discussion on charisma and whether it can be learned behavior versus inherent. Basically, our conclusion was that we ourselves cannot know unless we know the leader personally. Machiavelli says exactly this, that princes need to present himself with mercy, faith, humanity, sincerity, and religion, and only these 5 things, and his own qualities or personality traits do not matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Machiavelli’s The\u00a0Prince, one line in particular stuck out to me: “One, however, who becomes prince by favour of the populace, must maintain its friendship,…<\/p>\n

Continue readingMachiavelli’s The Prince<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-884","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\/884","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\/4107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}