Tag: chapter 18

Morals in ‘The Prince’

A portrait of Machiavelli

“The Prince” is a text by Machiavelli, an Italian poet, philosopher and diplomat. This text has a common theme of morality amongst the chapters. It often discusses the role that the prince must take on, along with what he should and shouldn’t be doing. Machiavelli spoke a lot about the dichotomy between sticking to one’s morals and doing what helps them stay in power; he states that the prince should be doing things to his own accord, whether it’s good or bad.  For example, in Chapter  15, Machiavelli states that “it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.” He says this because he believes that the prince should take all precautions when it comes to gaining and maintaining any power. Machiavelli also discusses how the prince needs to have a balance between acting like a man and acting like a beast. He states that there are two methods for this, “the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the man”. In chapter 18, he explains that this is necessary because if men were good, then there would be no need to consider being bad, however,“because they are bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe it with them”.

Virtue in “The Prince”

Pope Alexander the Sixth, who Machiavelli mentions in chapter 18 of “The Prince” as someone who “never did what he said”.

One of the core themes of Machiavelli’s “The Prince” is that of virtue. In particular, “The Prince” stresses how important it is for a leader to appear to be virtuous. This is exemplified in chapter 18 especially, as seen in the quote “Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them”. In this passage, Machiavelli focuses on the balance between a leader’s appearance and his actions. He believes that in order to secure his power, a leader must appear to have various virtuous qualities (some of these qualities include being “merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright”) to his subjects, but he also needs to be prepared to act the opposite way if the time calls for it. Machiavelli even uses Alexander the Sixth, who “did nothing else but deceive men, nor ever thought of doing otherwise”, as an example of someone who mastered the art of deceiving people with his image. 

To help the reader better understand this concept, Machiavelli uses a simile in the first paragraph, as seen in the quote “ A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion…Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves”. In this quote, Machiavelli likens a leader’s behavior to that of both a fox and a lion (which represent a balance of intelligence and violence), and when a leader must adjust his behavior according to the circumstances. This particular chapter of “The Prince” is interesting because Machiavelli takes a different approach to the concept virtue than most would expect; While most people believe that a leader should be purely good and only exhibit humane traits, such as being merciful, Machiavelli acknowledges that this is unrealistic if a leader wants to maintain his power. Instead, he presents his opinion that actually being virtuous and having good qualities isn’t as important as appearing to have them, and that a leader’s behavior should be able to “turn itself accordingly as the winds and variations of fortune force it”.