One prince of the present time, whom it is not well to name, never preaches 20 anything else but peace and good faith, and to both he is most hostile, and either, if he had kept it, would have deprived him of reputation and kingdom many a time.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
Why must a prince "know how to do wrong"? What connection, if any, does Machiavelli see between ethics and politics?
How does Machiavelli justify being "miserly" as a leader? List the major reasons for this assertion: "And a prince should guard himself, above all things, against being despised and hated; and liberality leads you to both."
Why does Machiavelli reason that it is better for a prince to be feared than loved? How is cruelty a motivating force to keep order? What restraints does he put on inflicting fear? Why does he name these limits?
How does Machiavelli use the analogies of the fox and the lion as part of his argument? What qualities of a leader does each represent? How does the ideal leader combine these qualities?
Do you believe that Machiavelli is correct in his estimation that having a reputation for good character traits is actually better than having those character traits? What is the difference, in political terms, between reputation and reality?
Why are the historical references to past rulers important to Machiavelli's argument? What points of his argument concerning the essential duality of a leader do these stories illustrate?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
How does Machiavelli employ the "just hypocrisy" argument that Christine de Pizan (p. 397) also proposes? Are the two operating from the same basic presumptions?
How does Machiavelli instruct princes to deal with the negative aspects of human nature, such as lust, greed, ambition, and dishonesty? How does he instruct princes to deal with the more positive aspects of human nature, such as trust, loyalty, and a willingness to believe in the good of others? Is it possible to deduce from The Prince a sense of Machiavelli's overall conception of human nature?
How does Machiavelli's pragmatism compare to that of Sun Tzu in The Art of War (p. 476)? The two types have often been grouped as examples of "win at any cost" thinking. Do you agree? Explain.
Does Machiavelli's approach to leadership suggest a kind of natural selection comparable to what Darwin saw in nature (p. 314)? Are political leaders subject to the same "survival of the fittest" rules that pervade the natural world? Why or why not?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Consider whether Machiavelli's idea that it is better for a ruler to be feared than loved applies to contemporary politics. Does the emergence of democracy in many parts of the world alter this equation? If so, how so? If not, why not?
Examine the underlying ethical structure of Machiavelli's argument that the goal of political stability justifies cruelty, deception, and hypocrisy. Do you believe that this is true? Do the peace and prosperity brought about by political stability justify the kind of leadership that Machiavelli proposes?
Compare the concepts of human nature in Hobbes's Leviathan (p. 94) with those in Machiavelli's The Prince (p. 405).
Rebut Machiavelli's argument that effective leadership requires duplicity. Cite examples of cases in which honesty and straightforwardness have produced strong and effective leaders.
Examine Machiavelli's use of historical examples. Is he ultimately writing a prescriptive argument (one that instructs rulers how they should exercise power most effectively) or a descriptive argument (one that simply describes how power has been exercised effectively in the past)?
abraham bosse
Frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan [1651]
ARTIST AND PRINTMAKER Abraham Bosse (1602-1676) was born in Paris to German immigrant parents. After an apprenticeship with Melchior Tavernier, a well- known Belgian illustrator and publisher, Bosse began his career as a book illustrator, eventually becoming one of the most influential and imitated French artists of the seventeenth century. Though Bosse worked occasionally in watercolors, most of his works were etchings on copper plates, a printmaking process to which he made important technical contributions. In his lifetime, he produced more than 1,600 etches, most of them illustrations for books, but some of which became popular as stand-alone works of art.
In 1651, Bosse collaborated with the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes to produce the frontispiece—the page opposite the title page in a book—for Hobbes's major book, Leviathan (p. 94), which was published by the well-known London publisher Andrew Crooke. Hobbes spent most of that troubled period in France, where he interacted frequently with the Royalist exiles—supporters of King Charles I who were forced into exile after they were defeated by the armies of Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War that lasted from 1642 to 1651. The Civil War so profoundly disturbed Hobbes that he felt compelled to respond to them with a detailed theory of the civil state, which he called the "Leviathan." The Leviathan state, Hobbes argued, was the only power capable of preventing the "war of all against all" that would occur if human beings were left to their own natures.
Hobbes collaborated extensively with Bosse on the design for the frontispiece, which, he believed, should compress the major arguments of the book into a single, unforgettable image. The etching is dominated by a giant crowned figure whose body is composed entirely of other people. This is Hobbes's great metaphor for sovereignty in a Leviathan state. The sovereign is a single person, but that person's sovereignty comprises the natural sovereignty of all the people, which they voluntarily cede to the state in exchange for the civil peace that allows them to maximize their own happiness.
The sovereign holds both a sword, the symbol of military force, and a crosier, an emblem of religious authority—the two chief forms of power that Hobbes believed resided in the sovereign. At the top of the etching is a Latin inscription from the Book of Job describing the sea-monster Leviathan, for whom Hobbes named his most important concept: "Non est potestas Super Terram quae Comparetur" ("There is no power on earth to be compared to him"). Hobbes believed that this image would capture the primary argument of his book: a powerful sovereign can create a safe and orderly society when supported by the people of the state. But when people rebel against a legitimately constituted authority—as many of Hobbes's countrymen did in the 1640s—they jeopardize the entire body politic of which they are a part.
abraham bosse Frontispiece to Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, 1651 (etching on copper plate). Wikimedia Commons.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
Hobbes believed that people entered into a "social contract" with their governments in which they exchange certain natural freedoms in exchange for specific protections. How do you think this image might illustrate such a social contract?
What does it mean that the sovereign in the image holds symbols of both military and religious power? How might Hobbes have seen both of these kinds of power as tools that the sovereign can use to produce a stable state?
Explain how the quote from the Book of Job—"There is no power on earth compared to him"—characterizes the kind of state that Hobbes advocated. Why, according to Hobbes, must the sovereign of such a state have incomparable power?
Identify the ten objects in the lower portion of the engraving. How do they support the engraving's central argument?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Read the excerpt from Leviathan (p. 94) in Chapter 2 and explain the different ways it relates to the Bosse drawing.