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Niccolo Machiavelli's The Morals Of The Prince

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Many thoughts have been shared and others written about leadership. Rulers too are continuously striving to be the best history has ever recorded. The only difficulty that persists is that none of these guides provide clear-cut recipes to successful leadership, and most rulers often find themselves in grave dilemmas. The book that most people believe to have set the standard for a leader is The Morals of the Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli. The author begins by advising every prince who wishes to ascend and succeed in power to master the art of wrongdoing, and to always make use of it as long as necessity demands. This advice only shows how deeply rooted Machiavelli’s beliefs in political wrong doing are - but who really is Machiavelli? Niccolo Machiavelli was a Florentine diplomat in 1511, secure and respected in his position. He was highly esteemed as a scholar and political mind of his time until 1512, during the fall of Florentine republic to the brimming papacy. …show more content…

Yes, it is nice to be nice, even Machiavelli believes in this point, yet in the world of The Prince, it suffices just to be seen as nice. He defines traditional virtues as the general qualities usually praised by others as good, and these include attributes such as generosity, piety, and compassion. Machiavelli believes that a leader must always appear to be virtuous, but that acting virtuously for just virtue’s sake can even be more detrimental to his state than being stark cold. A prince should not just avoid vices like deceit, cruelty or greed too blatantly, especially if using them will help him benefit his state. He is also quick to point out that these vices should also not only be followed just for the vice in them, and virtue just for the sake of virtue, but must be conceived as means to the desired

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