Niccolo Machiavelli: Political Genius.
Niccolo Machiavelli was a man who practiced what he preached. From the time he took his first political office as the Secretary of the Republic of Florence until his death in 1527, he poured himself into his writing and politics. Not everyone necessarily embraced his many thoughts on political methods, and he was even imprisoned and tortured because of his ideas. Being the upstanding man that he was though, Machiavelli took this in stride, sticking by his views when others would have simply given in. He had the qualities of a prince, which is something that he wrote about in one of his many works, entitled The Prince. In this work, Machiavelli gives each piece of his advice a chapter. He writes in one chapter that a prince should be well versed in war and in another that he should know when and when not to be generous. He goes on to talk about why it is safer to be feared than to be loved. His views on these subjects, though not accepted by everyone at the time, were the work of a political genius. In the following paragraphs, this paper will not only discuss the advice Machiavelli gives in The Prince, but will compare it to the way he led his own life.
Machiavelli believed that a prince should be well versed in war. In his work, The Prince, Machiavelli writes, "a prince, therefore must not have any other object nor any other thought, nor must he take anything as his profession but war, its institutions, and its discipline (Machiavelli 37). He is basically saying, above all else, that a prince must eat, sleep, and live war. Now, during these times in which Machiavelli was living, countries were always at threat of war for land, resources, and religion. So he was justified for having these thoughts. Machiavelli was skilled at war himself. He put together a militia after persuading the chief magistrate of Florence to allow him to do so.