For the prince by machiavellis what does this book strive for in a leader to do? good o+r bad? ?

Question

also which leader would be a extremly good or bad exampale of following his advise. adolf hitler, cazar nicholas II, vaclav havel,john major, boris yeltsin, joseph stalin, and benito mussolini

Answer 1

In my opinion, good but ALWAYS with a large dose of "what's in it for me."

As to Part 2 of your question, my personal opinion is none of the above. Probably Hitler is the most obvious. Had he followed Machiavelli, he wouldn't devolved into a murderer of innocents. If he'd kept his eye on the prize, he would have been more successful. I AM NOT defending him. I'm trying to answer your question honestly.

Answer 2

bush is a good example of someone who did not follow his advice in regards to Iraq. Its actually pretty eerie in one instance Macchiavelli goes into a lot of detail about countries that are vulnerable to attacks, and occupations and countries that are not.  He described one example of a country where the leader could easily be topped and and invasion would succeed fairly easily but that the occupation would be a defeat for the invaders for several reasons including the multiple parties formerly under the thumb of the previous tyrant who would not now be vying for autonomy, to enemies of the invading country being attracted to the invaded land to create mischief, to neighbors of the invaded land taking steps and actions disrupting the occupation to protect their own interests on fill vaccums.  Its eerie cause it was as if he was describing iraq itself.   So, yeah, obviously Bush did not read Machiavelli.

Answer 3

The Price actually becomes a somewhat deceiving work, as if you ever read anything outside of The Prince (for instance, The Discourses) you'll find that Machiavelli's thought are far different.

The idea of the Prince though is almost always summed up in one quote from The Prince

"The answer is of course, that it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved."

The idea of The Prince, in Machiavelli's eyes, is that the ultimate rule will rule by force, rather than by emotion. Why bother making people happy, when it is much easier to control them, in every aspect of their lives, and keep them scared, and afraid?

However, to really understand The Prince, you have to understand the historical context of Machiavelli's writing. The Prince was written for Lorenzo D'Medici, a ruler of Florence (Italy as a loose collection of City-States at the time,) and the idea that is currently accepted by many historians is that Machiavelli meant The Prince as very well disguised satire.

Now, rulers really, of any stripe that brutally repress their people could be referred to as "Machiavellian." Stalin, Pol Pot, (not Hitler though, remember, he didn't repress his people, in fact they loved him, he only got rid of the "undesirables") and Chairman Mao (who falls somewhere in between Hitler and Stalin) are good examples of "Machiavellian" leaders.