The Prince Rhetorical Analysis

*Metaphors or Arguments*

Metaphors are an important ingredient to speech and argument. It is used to show comparison between two things, a way to create new meaning. Niccolò Machiavelli in his book The Prince discuss of social and political along with his creative usage of metaphors. His ideas consist of Medicine, the Fox and the Lion, as well as The Archer. These are the metaphors that I will be discussing as we go in more debt about Machiavelli and James Kastely thoughts of argument. Machiavelli on the other hand may have used these metaphors as arguments. He does not imply it directly, but his twist and turns of his writing may be comparable to Kastely arguments about "rendering the indeterminate determinate" but not quite so with the
"prince must know how to make good use of the nature of the beast…..he should choose from among the fox and the lion; for the lion cannot defend itself from traps and the fox cannot protect itself from wolves. It is therefore necessary to be a fox in order to recognize the traps and a lion in order to frighten the wolves." Machiavelli in this chapter describes how necessary it is for a person to have instincts of two kinds. You can't be a powerful leader if you don't know how to win a war, and you can't be a smart leader if you cannot get out of one. Kastely argues "We argue by description, by narration, by types of inference, by ethical embodiment, and by other means…..acknowledge that both reasoning and character do play important roles in argument." It is proven that Machiavelli metaphor does support Kastely's argument. As Kastely had said, both reasoning and character play important roles in argument; as the fox and the lion play as characters and the concept of the fox being the smart one, the lion being the aggressive one, it shows reasoning. So is that why we have two sides to make one
"who, aware of the strength of their bow when the target they are aiming at seems too distant, set their sights much higher than the designated target, not in order to reach to such a height with their arrow but rather to be able, with the aid of such a high aim, to strike the target." Machiavelli in the chapter may be arguing along the lines of the "indeterminate determinate". Machiavelli describes how an archer is well aware of the bows capability, but he I still discovering a way to identify how to aim at a distant target. He does so by indeterminately aiming higher hoping to create a temporary achievement for that situation. The archer still does not know how he had hit the target, but he has permitted others to steal and take credit of his idea of aiming higher for longer distant targets. He has temporarily achieved the bow and arrow. Kastely had argued, "argument is a mode of discovery, and what one is discovering is the identity of a self or a community. This identity is temporarily achieved when the argument moves the original indeterminacy to closure by creating a situation that permits either individual or communal