Niccolo Machiavelli: Guidebook of Successful Political Practices
Niccolò Machiavelli was an Italian historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He was for many years an official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He is recognized as the founder of modern political philosophy. Machiavelli was considered a "realist" because he concerned himself only with the political situations that actually arose in reality, while previous philosophers were concerned largely with the theoretical politics of an "idealist" perfect society. The definition of a realist is a person who accepts the world as it literally is and deals with it accordingly. In Machiavelli’s The Prince, written to the ruler of Florence at the time, Lorenzo de' Medici, he analyzes the characteristics of numerous past rulers. In doing so, Machiavelli presents Lorenzo de’ Medici with a sort of guidebook of successful political practices. There were two types of government that Machiavelli considered to be legitimate, one being a republic and the other being principalities. Machiavelli prefers the system of a republic that to principalities. From examples from The Prince as well as The Discourses, he explains why both forms are legitimate, but considers a republic to be superior because he believes that “a people that governs and is well regulated by laws will be more stable, prudent, and grateful than a prince who would be ungrateful, inconsistent, and imprudent” (Machiavelli pg. 263) and also retains humanistic qualities in the descriptions of these governments through how the people should be treated. Although Machiavelli’s book The Prince primarily talks about how a prince should rule in a rather harsh, cynical, and backstabbing way, he was not a supporter of princely rule at all. In fact, he was considered to be more democratic. Machiavelli believes “there are six types of government, of which three are very bad, and three are good in themselves but easily