It Is Better for the Prince to Be Feared or Loved - Essay Example

Obviously the capability of being feared by the s is an essential part of a prince’s virtue. Though a prince’s compassion or sympathy is much admired by the fellow people, he must not show it unwisely. If he is too compassionate, and fails to punish adequately the disloyal subjects, they will be encouraged to do what they like. Indeed such failure to adhere to the enforcement of laws and rule irrespectively off showing compassion necessarily gives birth to an atmosphere of chaos and disorder. Unwisely compassioned subjects can easily degrade to crimes like murder and theft. Whereas punishing or execution harm only the person who commits crimes, crime that goes unpunished harms the whole community by causing disorders. Therefore for the sake of the betterment of an entire community, the individual who commits crimes should not go unpunished. (Laine 90-94) Yet since punishment or execution has a close association with cruelty and brutality, a prince must carefully temper it with prudence and humanity. Indeed a prince’s strict adherence to the executions of crimes contributes to the conjuration of his image as one who champions laws and punishes disorder. Machiavelli claims that it is better for a price “to be feared than loved”, though ideally he should be both “love and feared” (Machiavelli 45). When a prince cannot both be loved and feared, it is “much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with” (Machiavelli 45). In support of his position, Machiavelli argues that people in general are “ungrateful, fickle, dissembling, anxious to flee danger, and covetous of gain.” (Machiavelli 45). When the prince is far away from dangers, they will show their eagerness to sacrifice their lives for him. But when the prince is in real dangers, they will abandon him; even they will turn against him, as Machiavelli notes, “they will offer you their blood, property, life and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you” (Machiavelli 45). According to him, breaking the bond of love at odd times is much easier than a bond of fear, friendships and love can be earned by payments. In this regard, Machiavelli says, “men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails” (Machiavelli 73). Machiavelli’s claim about the general people’s nature reveals his lack of faith in man. From a political realist’s perspective, his distrust in human nature can be excused to a great extent. Indeed he has endeavored to champion orders, laws and rules while keeping aside the emotion and compassion that can prove to be a potential threat to orders, laws and rules which are, in the very first place, meant to ensure peace and happiness of the subjects. The fact whether laws and rules can bring peace and happiness is not Machiavelli’s primary concern. Rather he is primarily concerned with maintaining them in a country or a state assuming it as a machine that should be run according to some rules. (Ferrerro 570-2) If the rules and laws can bring peace and happiness for the subjects, they should be changed, but the ways or processes how rules and laws will be maintained should not be changed. Though critics often consider Machiavelli as the first modern political thinker, he was essentially an early modernist who has been able to trace the subtle transformations in the political playground of his age. His perception of the changes of the time provoked him to advise the political leaders to be stricter in order to retain the medieval hold on the subject. That is, he has written the “Prince” not to champion the causes of the ruled, rather to champion the rulers’ causes. Even while championing a ruler’s causes, Machiavelli has not transgressed the limit of sanity and rationality. He simply advises how to rule the subjects; he never bothered about what the purpose of ruling a country should be. Machiavelli’s realism is his clear opposition against the idealism of medieval monarchic system. (Merrilee 58-9) Opposing the medieval assumption that rulers are favored by fortune and god, political leaders should be more virtuous than they are fortuned. As Machiavelli treats virtue as the qualities that assist a prince to withstand the blows fortune, it appears to be the fabrication that a human being controls with his effort. As Nederman says, “Machiavelli reinforces the association of Fortuna with the blind strength of nature by explaining that political success depends upon appreciation of the operational principles of Fortuna” (Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy). According to Machiavelli, both good fortune and ability are necessary for a prince to hold control over the territory or states that are acquired by fortune or by ability. Fortune and ability both contribute to the mitigation of the difficulties in controlling a state or acquired territories. Machiavelli notes, “Now, as the fact of becoming a prince from a private station presupposes either ability or fortune, it is clear that one or other of these two things will mitigate in some degree many difficulties” (Machiavelli 23). But the dualism of the concept of “fortune’ in “the Prince” is often so severe that it does not yield any clear demarcation whether fortune is the fate of or the outcome of a prince’s virtue or ability. For example when Machiavelli says “he who has relied least on fortune is established the strongest. Further, it facilitates matters when the prince, having no other state, is compelled to reside there in person” (Machiavelli 27), the word “fortune” denotes to both one’s fate and achievements that are acquired by virtue. In “the Prince”, it is remarkable that Machiavelli’s practicality has a great logical support for the role of virtue or in other word “human” fabrication to curve fortune into human achievement. It sounds completely nonsensical that Machiavelli a man with the sense of naked practicality considers fortune as a catalyst in the way to power and glory. The answer lies in his diplomatic zeal that pushes him to reflect the traditional view that monarchy is the heavenly assignment. Though Machiavelli is of the opinion that fortune can be achieved by virtue, he certainly stresses on the point that fortune is a good start for the journey at the highest of power and glory. Fortune needs to be shaped into the desired mould by the human effort. In this regard, Machiavelli refers to some examples from the lives of Moses, Cyrus, Romulus etc. According to him, what fortune provides a prince is nothing but opportunities. Only a virtuous man can mold the opportunities to reach his goals, as he says, “One cannot see that they owed anything to fortune beyond opportunity, which brought them the material to mould into the form which seemed best to them” (Machiavelli 41). Both fortune and a virtuous mind are complementary to each other, as Machiavelli argues, “Without that opportunity their powers of mind would have been extinguished, and without those powers the opportunity would have come in vain” (Machiavelli 65). In order to depict the relationship between “fortune” and “Virtue” Machiavelli proposed two analogies. First he compares it with “one of our destructive rivers which, when it is angry, turns the plains into lakes, throws down the trees and buildings….everyone yields to its fury and nowhere can repel it” (Machiavelli 102). Fortune is like the raging river. Though it is destructive, it is not beyond one’s control. But Machiavelli makes the most striking depiction of fortune through the analogy of a woman. According to him, Fortune is like a woman who shows power and tries to impede the spirit of prince, if she is not resisted by virtue and wisdom. She only accompanies the young men as they are less cautious and more daring. Machiavelli says, “it is better to be impetuous than cautious, because Fortuna is a woman and it is necessary, in order to keep her under, to beat and maul her” (Machiavelli 97). Indeed the political system which Machiavelli has written for can essentially be marked for its unrests and rapid ups and downs. In a society that was preparing itself for the changes in the upcoming centuries, Machiavelli’s attempt to view a political leader’s duty from a realist’s perspective was the demand of his age. The beginning of the 16th century was ultimately the preparation for the European nations’ move to the rise of the individual during the Industrial Revolution. The spread of reading materials, printed books and the increasing availability of translation greatly contributed to the Enlightenment and the self-awakening of the general people. Being provoked by this liberating spirit of the age, people were provoked to reorient themselves as a component of the state and to reexamine their role and relationship with the ruling class in terms of their individual interests (Kain 34-35). This self-reorientation of the people in the state pushes them to raise their voice and to go into clash with the existing political system. Therefore, when Machiavelli claims that general people are “ungrateful, fickle, dissembling, anxious to flee danger, and covetous of gain” (Machiavelli 67), he straightforwardly refers to the growing individualisms of his age. Meanwhile he suggests that a political leader in his age must emphasize realism in the ethics of ruling and keep the idealism aside. Works Cited Ferrerro, Guglielmo. "Machiavelli and Machiavellism." Foreign Affairs. April 1939, 569-577. Kain, Philip. “Niccolò Machiavelli—adviser of princes.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 25 (1) (1995), pp. 33-55. Laine, Timo. “The concept of virtue in Machiavelli”. 19 November, 2008. 17 March, 2009 Macchiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince, ed. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Merrilee, H. Salmon. “Machiavellis The Prince”. Landmarks in Critical Thinking Series, 17 March, 2009 Nederman, Cary. “Niccolò Machiavelli”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 13 September 2005 Read More