Similarities Between Nicolo Machiavelli's The New Prince
Convergences between Nicolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince” and
Dick Morris’s “The New Prince”
Nicolo Machiavelli was born at Florence on 3rd May 1469. From 1494 to 1512 held an official post at Florence which included diplomatic missions to various European courts. He died at Florence on 22nd June 1527. Dick Morris was born on November 28, 1948. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1967.He served as Bill Clinton 's political consultant. Nicolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, is, by far, one of the most widely known and read books about politics in the last 500 hundred years, as well as an extremely innovative book, being one of the first books of the modern political philosophy. …show more content…
Originally entitled “De Principatibus”, meaning about principalities, it was first published in a printed form in 1532, after Machiavelli’s death and it was dedicated to “the Magnificent Lorenzo Di Piero De’ Medici” 1.
The book is about princes and princedoms and how they can come to power, directly instructing kings or lesser rulers on certain aspects of rule and behaviour, but also how to tyrannize. Dick Morris, through its book’s very title “The New Prince : Machiavelli Updated for the Twenty-first Century”, shows its readers that he, in one way or another, shares the same ideas as Machiavelli, through the point of view of how one should rule, but, evidently, ideas and advices that are updated for the century we live in. Dick Morris has the same approach as Nicolo Machiavelli in a lot of matters. For example, in his book, Dick Morris emphasizes the importance of the polls nowadays, which is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample, in this case, the level of popularity of a politician, essential for his image. We can agree that this is a modern method of grading a political actor’s popularity, whereas in Machiavelli’s time, there was no such thing. Instead, the only way of grading a prince’s popularity was the love or hate that he would receive from his people, which would be the poll’s equivalent in
contemporanity. Another common subject among the two authors would be that each one of them wrote about the society they lived in, Dick Morris wrote about the United States of America and Machiavelli wrote mostly about the Italian society, wheather it was about Rome, Florence, Naples or Venetia. Because they wrote about societies that were so familiar to them, the readers expect from them accurate and based on realism information, which, in my opinion, they did not fail to deliver. Due to the fact that political actors were of utmost importance in Machiavelli’s time as well as in Morris’s, both writers put emphasis on the most important events of their time through them. History is all about men who stood up from the crowd and meant something for their society and people. While Machiavelli wrote about great leaders such as Francesco Sforza, Louis the Twelfth, Alexander the Great, Darius, Moses, Romulus, Cesare Borgia or Charles VIII of France and about their great deeds and extraordinary personalities and capacity, Dick Morris wrote about important figures of modern and contemporary USA, mostly about presidents or presidential candidates, such as Bill Clinton, George Bush Senior, Newt Gingrich, John F. Kennedy, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman or Ronald Reagan. In conclusion, the concepts presented in both books are especially innovative for this field of study, as well as it is a very useful guide to whomever is planning on becoming a political figure in these very difficult and extremely demanding of times. Nicolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince” is a classic book, among the greatest books ever written because of its innovative, spectacular and shocking nature, whilst Dick Morris’s “The New Prince”, while not as popular and innovative as the other book, is still a useful guide, a handbook for politicians who wants to get themselves elected.
BIBLIOGRAPHY :
1. Dick Morris, Noul Principe, 1999, translated in Romanian by Victor Gaetan, Ziua Publishing House, Bucharest, 2003.
2. Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, consulted on 20th October 2012 http://www.planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/free_ebooks/The_Prince_T.pdf
Dick Morris’s “The New Prince”
Nicolo Machiavelli was born at Florence on 3rd May 1469. From 1494 to 1512 held an official post at Florence which included diplomatic missions to various European courts. He died at Florence on 22nd June 1527. Dick Morris was born on November 28, 1948. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1967.He served as Bill Clinton 's political consultant. Nicolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, is, by far, one of the most widely known and read books about politics in the last 500 hundred years, as well as an extremely innovative book, being one of the first books of the modern political philosophy. …show more content…
Originally entitled “De Principatibus”, meaning about principalities, it was first published in a printed form in 1532, after Machiavelli’s death and it was dedicated to “the Magnificent Lorenzo Di Piero De’ Medici” 1.
The book is about princes and princedoms and how they can come to power, directly instructing kings or lesser rulers on certain aspects of rule and behaviour, but also how to tyrannize. Dick Morris, through its book’s very title “The New Prince : Machiavelli Updated for the Twenty-first Century”, shows its readers that he, in one way or another, shares the same ideas as Machiavelli, through the point of view of how one should rule, but, evidently, ideas and advices that are updated for the century we live in. Dick Morris has the same approach as Nicolo Machiavelli in a lot of matters. For example, in his book, Dick Morris emphasizes the importance of the polls nowadays, which is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample, in this case, the level of popularity of a politician, essential for his image. We can agree that this is a modern method of grading a political actor’s popularity, whereas in Machiavelli’s time, there was no such thing. Instead, the only way of grading a prince’s popularity was the love or hate that he would receive from his people, which would be the poll’s equivalent in
contemporanity. Another common subject among the two authors would be that each one of them wrote about the society they lived in, Dick Morris wrote about the United States of America and Machiavelli wrote mostly about the Italian society, wheather it was about Rome, Florence, Naples or Venetia. Because they wrote about societies that were so familiar to them, the readers expect from them accurate and based on realism information, which, in my opinion, they did not fail to deliver. Due to the fact that political actors were of utmost importance in Machiavelli’s time as well as in Morris’s, both writers put emphasis on the most important events of their time through them. History is all about men who stood up from the crowd and meant something for their society and people. While Machiavelli wrote about great leaders such as Francesco Sforza, Louis the Twelfth, Alexander the Great, Darius, Moses, Romulus, Cesare Borgia or Charles VIII of France and about their great deeds and extraordinary personalities and capacity, Dick Morris wrote about important figures of modern and contemporary USA, mostly about presidents or presidential candidates, such as Bill Clinton, George Bush Senior, Newt Gingrich, John F. Kennedy, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman or Ronald Reagan. In conclusion, the concepts presented in both books are especially innovative for this field of study, as well as it is a very useful guide to whomever is planning on becoming a political figure in these very difficult and extremely demanding of times. Nicolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince” is a classic book, among the greatest books ever written because of its innovative, spectacular and shocking nature, whilst Dick Morris’s “The New Prince”, while not as popular and innovative as the other book, is still a useful guide, a handbook for politicians who wants to get themselves elected.
BIBLIOGRAPHY :
1. Dick Morris, Noul Principe, 1999, translated in Romanian by Victor Gaetan, Ziua Publishing House, Bucharest, 2003.
2. Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, consulted on 20th October 2012 http://www.planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/free_ebooks/The_Prince_T.pdf