Niccol Machiavelli's The Prince - Book Report/Review Example

202096 Yet as I have said before, not to diverge from the good if he can avoid it, but to know how to set about it if compelled. Machiavelli is considered to be one of the greatest political thinkers even today and his relevance kept on increasing over the centuries. No doubt, Machiavelli was not much appreciated during his life time and thought to be an immoral and cunning person, especially after he wrote The Prince; in reality, Machiavelli was a moral thinker and was trying to portray the life of a prince as morally as possible. The circumstances in which he wrote the book were not particularly favourable and the book was misunderstood with the ongoing conflicts and prevailing confusion of the day. He was well aware that he was plunging into a controversial subject which might be attacked by many and would give him a bad name. Even though his personal life was beyond reproach, he was considered to be devious, cunning, fraud, corrupt due to this work for centuries. His writings were dominated by the realistic conception of politics and the work of any ruler. Only one book that could be compared with The Prince, was written in Sanskrit by a Minister of Mourya Dynasty, whose name was Kautilya (also called Chanakya) and the book is Arthashastra. Apart from this, The Prince remained unparalleled. But for the people who uphold traditional morality, his book is definitely immoral and unethical. His every suggestion and dictum was used to ridicule or demoralise the book with the writers name. The inner meaning and the circumstances combined with the compulsions of political situations were never taken into account till recently. His words like "Men are either to be kindly treated, or utterly crushed, since they can revenge lighter injuries, but not graver,1" were interpreted in a narrower sense, totally apolitical, despite knowing that he was advising a politician who is also a prince, and any prince to be successful, has to be one. For the person, who is looking for moral and ethical sense, there is plenty of it in the book. The times in which the book was written was not a highly enlightened one. Plots and counter-plots, spies, cunningness, hatching of powerful and treacherous plans were the order of the day and that is how the rulers gained, survived and prevailed over one another. Every ruler had his own plans against the other and it was a show of cunningness to survive. The rulers who did not plot and plan against the other, did not survive for very long in the difficult days of political upheaval. The rulers were loved, hated passionately, but they knew that they had to make the best of it either by cunningness or by strength. They also knew that strength alone would not help them, and they needed the assistance of cunning plots. Machievelli said: "As Princes cannot escape being hated by some, they should, in the first place, endeavour not to be hated by a class; failing in which, they must do all they can to escape the hatred of that class which is stronger 2. This does not mean that there is no moral sense at all in the way machievelli spoke. There is plenty of it for the person who could read through the lines. His advice against the mercenary forces is the soundest one that could be found in the region of politics. "He who holds his State by means of mercenary troops can never be solidly or securely seated. For such troops are disunited, ambitious, insubordinate, treacherous, insolent among friends, cowardly before foes, and without fear of God or faith with man. Whenever they are attacked defeat follows; so that in peace you are plundered by them, in war by your enemies. And this because they have no tie or motive to keep them in the field beyond their paltry pay3. He is so correct about these forces, who are not tied by any noble cause, or any kind of emotional bonding, but work for the person who pay the most. If the enemy shows an inclination to pay more, these forces will desert the original prince and serve the better paying one, by spilling all the beans about the earlier prince's secrets! After years and years of decrying The Prince, today's commercial leaders have found it highly suitable for their overtaking, mergers, combinations, beating the foe in the market, branding, sleuthing about the other company's products, and resurrecting them again and again in the business world. Today it is suggested that Machaievelli provides sound advice to the present leaders of corporate sector. "The Prince provides valuable and timeless insight for modern managers facing the difficult choices involved in right-sizing, acquisitions, mergers, hostile take-overs, and fierce competition in the marketplace. Any institution of higher learning professing to prepare business leaders for the challenges of tomorrow should include Machiavelli's The Prince as part of their business ethics curriculum" Oldham, http://www.pillowrock.com/ronnie/machiavelli.htm This does not mean that today's business world is immoral, unethical and corrupt. Because of his writings, Machiavelli was spat upon as an immoral and degenerated person. It was not so, because even the people who disliked his writings in his days, left evidence that his personal life was beyond reproach. And a personality like Lord Macaulay wrote: "Machiavelli, a man whose public conduct was upright and honourable, whose views of morality, where they differed from those of the persons around him, seemed to have differed for the better, and whose only fault was, that, having adopted some of the maxims then generally received, he arranged them more luminously, and expressed them more forcibly, than any other writer.' 4 Recent scholars and analysers have arrived at the opinion that the book actually is quite ethical; but the bluntness of the language outshines it. Machiavelli does not pose a problem to morality; instead, he only informs the prince to be careful to any eventuality to have all his cards himself without depending on others. "From our analysis we have seen that The Prince carries in it an ethics of political convenience. It does not preclude morality, virtue or Christian values entirely but allows them only when opportune. Otherwise it sanctions in cold blood, massacres, deception and betrayal given that the state benefits from this. This ethic is entirely moulded from political conveniences and is subservient to the political dimension in The Prince".5 He knew that it was good to be moral and ideal; but he had also seen that such rulers were dethroned and assassinated. So, he wants the prince to be cunning, understand the human nature, which is definitely not moral always and act accordingly by being prepared for the worst. When he calls upon the prince to understand the human nature, he means to say that the prince should understand not only the nobility and generosity, trustworthiness of the human nature, but also the frailties, weakness, greed, ambition, wickedness, hatred, jealousy, and the desire for destruction of others to gain self-gratification. "So, basically what he is saying to the prince is this: it would be a fine thing to be good in a world where all men were good, but since this is not the case, since this is the world we live in and since men are not good, this is what you must do in order to succeed". http://members.tripod.com/Tosca/Machiavelli/prince1.html He does not have any intention to gloss over the truth. Whatever he wanted to say, he said it with perfect honesty and sincerity without worrying about the repercussions of such a book and the aspersions on his name. His intent was pure, and that was guiding the rulers from any pitfalls. "But since I intend to write something useful to an understanding reader, it seemed better to go after the real truth of the matter than to repeat what people have imagined. A great many men have imagined states and princedoms such as nobody ever saw or knew in the real world, and there's such a difference between the way we really live and the way we ought to live that the man who neglects the real to study the ideal will learn how to accomplish his ruin, not his salvation. Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires.6" This dictum is not relevant only in his time. History has proved time and again that being naive and incurably noble has cost kingdom, kin, happiness, power and life. Trusting indiscriminately has led not only the princes of yore, but also the leaders in recent years to many wars, unhappiness and the destruction of kingdoms. Trusting Adolf Hitler has led the European countries into the brink of disaster and wiped out an entire generation from the face of the earth. The miseries that were connected into his mayhem could never be totally erased away. Terrence Ball says that Machiavelli is almost a modern theorist in his outlook. No doubt, we have the luxury of saying so with the advantage of hindsight. Without having such luxury, he has rendered perennial advice to the continuing generation of princes, in whichever way they appear, either as princes, or as leaders of business world, or as democratic and popular leaders of today. "Machiavelli is the first genuinely modern political theorist in that he investigates political phenomena in purely instrumental, and not ethical terms" Ball (1995, p.33). Machiavelli was neither compelled nor governed by ethical principles, his focus being the prince and his correct way of retaining power, security and safety for his countrymen and the way to keep himself and his country out of danger. He cannot do that unless he himself is out of danger and so, it is imperative that the prince should be over-careful in his dealings. He also should not worry about morality whenever it costs him a lot, even though being highly moral could be beneficial if he is winning. Butterfield in his study of Machiavelli, talks about him like an artistic magician, who could be interpreted in both the ways, ethical and unethical, moral and immoral, because Machiavelli walks on the sharp line between the two, throughout his controversial book. "Only one twist of the screw - and a touch of spite - were needed to turn him into the preceptor of Barabbas, the source of the miser's sins and ingenuities. And, though it is caricature, it is not meaningless misrepresentation to depict him as a teacher of artifice, holding in his hand a bag of tricks" Butterfield (1955, p.104). Perhaps it is difficult to find a more apt description than this anywhere by any critic or scholar. There had never been any doubt about the popularity of the book. It might have been called immoral and full of wrong advice; but it has never been ignored or forgotten. All these years after it was written, it had always been in the news, either greatly worshipped, or passionately hated. The in-between line of thought presented itself very recently. Hence, there has never been a question about the book's enduring relevance. Pocock wrote the book The Machiavellian Moment connecting Machiavelli to the recent historical events where he describes those moments:" It is further affirmed that 'The Machiavellian moment' and a continuing history in the sense that secular political self-consciousness continued to pose problems in historical self-awareness which form part of the journey in western thought from the medieval Christian to the modern historical mode" Pocock (1975, p.viii). The book is a tribute to the great man and his continuously influential political thoughts. At the same time, it is important to note that Machiavelli was guided by political thoughts alone. There is no evidence that he had any political ambitions or political siding with any of the princes. But he was a political thinker and such a focussed one, and naturally, other subjects like ethics, morals, religion and compassion did not mean much, when they are discussed in the context of politics, even though he was a kind and principled person in his private life. He was the first person who discussed politics and social phenomena on their own terms without confusing them with ethics, morality or jurisprudence. He discussed them on their own, and for their benefit. His focus was on them and other things did not matter. Morality comes a poor second here and from that standpoint, The Prince is not an advocacy of moral thoughts and moral ways of life. "For Machiavelli, politics was about one and only one thing: getting and keeping power or authority. Everything else-religion, morality, etc-that people associate with politics has nothing to do with this fundamental aspect of politics-unless being moral helps one get and keep power. The only skill that counts in getting and maintaining power is calculation; the successful politician knows what to do or what to say for every situation" http://www.wsu.edu/dee/REN/MACHIAV.HTM It is not possible to say that Machiavelli was highly moral in his book, The Prince. But he does not advocate terrible immorality either. He only shows the way, where immorality to some extent, could be combined with the morality, and he shows the helplessness of the ruler, while being in such situations that make morality insignificant and inapplicable. From the rulers' point of view, perhaps there could never be a better treatise than The Prince, where the writer has foreseen every eventuality and every cornering situation with apt replies and resolutions. It is definitely great to work with moral views at every step. But from a prince's point of view, it might not be always possible, because the enemies and opposition could not be always brimming with morality. It is not possible to defeat immorality with flourishing morality. History has been a witness to such many events all over the world, where high nobility had been defeated many times by cunningness and jealous plots. While weighing the morality in The Prince, one should always be guided by the thought that in those days of despotic rules and uncertain peace, the intention of the writer is to keep the ruler and ruled safe, because unless the ruler and kingdom were safe, there was no safety for the ordinary citizens. This applies even to the changed political scenarios today. Unless the ruling government is safe and sound, the citizens cannot be safe. We have to simply look around to justify this fact. Machiavelli has imparted the best political wisdom possible that should be used judiciously as judiciously as it was imparted, neglecting the high risk for his life and reputation. It is very difficult to weigh such works that are intended for some other subject by the yardstick of another, totally different subject. One might say that the book was immoral; but the reality would redeem the book. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Ball, Terrence (1995), Reappraising political theory, Oxford, Clarendon Press. 2. Butterfield, Herbert (1955), The Statecraft of Machiavelli, London, Bell. 3. Gilbert, Felix, 'The Humanist Concept of the Prince and the Prince of Machiavelli', The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 11, No. 4. (Dec., 1939), pp. 449-483. 4. Pocock, J.G.A. (1975), The Machiavellian Moment, Princeton University Press. 5. Souvik Mukherjee, The Devil's Morals: Ethics in Machiavelli's The Prince, http://www.literature-study-online.com/essays/machiavelli.html ONLINE SOURCES 1. http://www.pillowrock.com/ronnie/machiavelli.htm 2. http://members.tripod.com/Tosca/Machiavelli/prince1.html 3. http://www.wsu.edu/dee/REN/MACHIAV.HTM 4. Read More