Reaction to Machiavelli’s “The Prince”

Andrea
14 September 2007
19:140

Upon completion of “The Prince,” I was immediately struck by how little faith Machiavelli held in the human race. He himself called men “ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger and covetous of gain (p. 83).” Later in the same paragraph he encourages Princes to kill a subject’s family member rather than steal since “men forget more easily the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.” This makes humans seem so despicable that it makes one wonder why it would be desirable in any way to rule them.
However, I changed my mind after reading the excerpt for a second time. It seems to me that he cannot believe that the human race is as stupid and base as he makes it out to be. He obviously wants his Prince to care about his public image – the ruler should be feared but not hated, miserly with his own goods yet generous with the spoils of battle, et cetera. Machiavelli himself says the Prince must “seem to be all mercy, faith, integrity, humanity and religion (p. 85).” There is no reason for a ruler to make such an effort to appear so good if his subjects are pitiful, stupid and horrible.
So if he does indeed value the opinions of the people, why such a tough demeanor? Machiavelli lived in Italy during a time of great political turmoil. Kings were ousted and reinstated quite frequently, and he himself was exiled for a period. Perhaps he felt that the only way for a ruler to survive in such a cutthroat political environment was to be cutthroat himself. As they say, when in Rome….