Week 7

Machiavelli

Machiavelli wrote about qualities that he believe all princes should have in order to rule their kingdom properly. He based most of his methods on the emotions of the population. He mostly played on the emotion of fear. He believe that if you instilled fear into the people that they would be scared enough to listen to everything you say and scared enough not to challenge the thorn. One other main idea of his that I felt was important was the false reality that he tells the prince to create. This false reality includes things that he wants the general public to believe, yet that have no truth. An example would be that he said he wanted the public to believe that he cared for them, even though he didn’t. He used the word appear many times. He believes strongly in deception. I can relate his use of fear and deception to an episode of Dr. Phil I recently watched. There was a married man deceiving his wife by lying to her about the status of their relationship while this man was going off and having relation with a 17 year old female. He was also deceiving this 17 year old female by telling her that he loved her and was going to leave his wife for her once she turned 18, however had no intentions of doing so. He instilled the fear of him cheating and separation in his wife and also in the female. This was a sick man, but, in Machiavelli’s case it was very strategic and intelligent and I believe his qualities would make a great prince.