MACHIAVELLI
An Introduction
After 14 years of patriotic service, the Secretary to the Second Chancery of the Signoria was removed from office, tortured and banished to his villa outside the city. Aspiring but failing to be an on-air political analyst for a television network, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince.
The manuscript was ignored by Lorenzo de’ Medici and printed only after Machiavelli's death.
Most would think that a "prince" is someone who is intended to inherit control of his country, yet the princes of Machiavelli's time were by no means that secure; the prince had to be careful to keep the support of his citizens if he wanted to remain in power.
The Machiavellian Philosophy
The Greek political theorists, primarily Socrates, Plato and Aristole, made politics subservient to higher quests for good and knowledge. Politics to them was an instrument in the pursuit of the “greatest good”. On the contrary, to Machiavelli politics is the prime subject, second......
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