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Machiavelli The Prince Chapter Summaries

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Machiavelli The Prince Chapter Summaries
The Prince was written by Niccolo Machiavelli for Lorenzo de Medici so that Machiavelli could get back in his good graces. After his many years in politics, he wrote this to explain what would make a prince virtuous and how to rule properly. The book shows the background of politics and to some people it can be seen as immoral. There are two types of principalities: a hereditary prince or a new prince. Machiavelli focuses more on the new princes and uses other princes as references to what should or should not be done by a prince.
Machiavelli believes that a prince should be seen as virtuous, but should not actually be virtuous. The reasoning behind this is because no person, even a prince, can control fortune, therefore a prince may need to act certain ways depending on the fortune. This is stated in chapter 18 when Machiavelli writes: …show more content…
And so he has to have a spirit disposed to change as the winds of fortune and variations of things command him, and as I said above, not depart from good, when possible, but know how to enter into evil, when forced by necessity. (Machiavelli 70)
This can also be interpreted as fortune taking the morality away from princes because sometimes a prince needs to do certain things to save the whole kingdom or to maintain the principality. When it comes to which prince is virtuous and how one gain’s virtu, it is all about appearance. If the prince is running his empire or kingdom successfully then he can be considered
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