Comparing Utopia And Machiavelli's The Prince

Human Nature
Human nature is usually the manner in which individual’s of a certain society reason and act on that reason. The reasoning can be constructive or unconstructive to the institution as a whole. This concept of human nature is constantly seen in Thomas More’s Utopia and Machiavelli’s The Prince. Each believes human nature to be corrupt; however, More offers an alternative to correct such a problem while Machiavelli does not. Therefore, the creation of an ideal institution is not seen possible by one of these literary works. Both works do describe the community that is possible under certain circumstances. Some individuals may not agree that More’s Utopia and Machiavelli’s The Prince are at all much different from one another on
Machiavelli’s use of virtú holds that a prince will act in accordance to the situation presented regardless of whether it is morally correct or not. The word virtú means energy, strength, merit, talent, skill, power, abilities, etc. It requires that the prince be able to alternate between behavior that is good and behavior that is bad. Mastering such behavior means the prince can effectively carry out his power over his state. Virtú cannot act on its own without Fortuna, which means chance. He believes that fortuna is out of our control, but can be controlled to some extent by preparing through virtú. Fortuna is described as “a woman, and a man who wants to hold her down must beat and bully her” (Machiavelli 69). The meaning of virtú and fortuna do not deal with moral goodness, but instead deal with the cruelty of a society like Machiavelli’s in which such behavior must be elicited for control and power. There are some virtues that are taken into consideration depending on their effectiveness. Good virtues are defined as those that result in the ending to be obtained. For example, the virtue of generosity is said to be beneficial to the prince.
Based on my interpretation of the text, both works create their own ideal community on the basis of human nature. Machiavelli’s ideal community, for example, is constructed on the ideal of a superior authority while More’s is constructed on the abolishment of all evils. Although More’s Utopia would be the ideal society, it is nearly impossible to achieve all of its aspects. It is, however, possible to implement some of these ideals into our society now in hopes of alleviating some individuals from injustice. Human nature, does indeed, entail the creation of the ideal