Machiavellis The Prince: Absurd or Unrecognized Genius?

Elizabeth Ball
December 14, 2010
Moulder/Woodmansee

Machiavellis The Prince: Absurd or Unrecognized Genius?

After being exiled from his beloved town of Florence in 1513, Niccol Machiavelli began
to write The Prince, a new princes guide to being a good leader. Unlike philosophers before
him, such as Plato and Aristotle, Machiavelli focuses on how to act in the real world rather than
in an imaginary perfect world. After all, knowing how to act in an ideal society is not helpful if
that society does not actually exist. One of the pieces of advice in The Prince is on the subject of
cruelty and compassion, found in the first half of chapter 17. The given advice was followed by
most rulers at the time that Machiavelli wrote The Prince, but does it still apply in modern times?
Sally, a staff member at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM), does
not follow this piece of advice and is a poor leader as a result. Machiavellis advice on cruelty
and compassion is still relevant today, and ignoring the advice like Sally does brings about
negative results.
In The Prince, Machiavelli advises against allowing disorder to spread, stating that it is
more compassionate overall to punish the few who deserve to be punished than to allow
everybody, even the innocent, to suffer from the resulting chaos. Machiavelli uses Cesare Borgia
and the people of Florence as examples. Cesare Borgia restored order to the Romagna, united it,
[and] rendered it peaceful and law-abiding through his supposed cruelty (51). A good ruler
will do whatever it takes to maintain order, even if it requires punishing a few individuals;
otherwise, the society will degrade and tear itself apart. This is exactly what happened with
Pistoia in 1501, a city that was, at the time, under the control of Florence. The people of Florence
allowed Pistoia to decay because they did not want to get involved in the internal strife and
wanted to avoid being thought cruel (51). Machiavelli argues that Cesare Borgia was
significantly more compassionate than the people of Florence, even if he was thought of as a
1

cruel leader. When it is someones duty to look out for and care for people, it is better for him to
provide a firm guiding hand than to stand back and watch his people disintegrate. Being friends
with his subjects should not be a rulers priority. He must do whatever it takes to protect them,
from outsiders or from themselves, even if it means that he will be considered cruel.
Rulers today are different from rulers in Machiavellis time and are present in a wide
variety of power-positions. Sally has the position of Student Life Instructor (SLI) at NCSSM,
meaning that she lives on a residence hall with a group of students as their adult supervisor. The
main responsibility of an SLI is to look out for the welfare of his or her assigned students, and
the welfare of the students is supposed to come second to the SLIs reputation among those
students. Machiavelli writes in The Prince that while a good ruler will of course want to be
considered compassionate, he should not mind being called cruel, as long as he keeps his
subjects peaceful and law-abiding (51). A good ruler will put his reputation second to the good
of the subjects, just as SLIs are expected to do. Sally, however, seems to put her reputation ahead
of the welfare of the students, seeming to prefer to befriend them rather than discipline them.
When Sally finds a student breaking a minor rule, she looks the other way. This is not
detrimental to her skills as a leader when the rules only involve one student or do not affect the
students safety. It is, however, harmful to her leadership ability when she applies the same
approach to matters of conflict resolution.
Sally is unable to deal with conflict resolution, which requires striking a balance between
compassion and cruelty. This inability manifested itself in a situation last year, when one student
approached Sally to complain about a Residential Life Assistant (RLA) on the hall. The RLA had
taken advantage of her leadership position and was giving orders to other students more often
than necessary. According to Machiavelli, it is more compassionate to impose harsh
2

punishments on a few than, out of excessive compassion, to allow disorder to spread (51).
However, Sally did not impose a punishment at all. Instead, she permitted the aforementioned
RLA to continue acting the way she had been, just as the Florentines allowed Pistoia to continue
in their actions. Sally wanted to avoid the possibility of the RLA disliking her for punishing her,
just as the people of Florentine wanted to avoid being thought cruel (51). Even though Sally
retained the favor of the RLA, she lost the favor of the student who had approached her. Sallys
decision not to punish the RLA allowed disorder to spread on the hall. Because Sally had not
punished the RLA, she affirmed the RLAs idea that she would be able to do whatever she
pleased without facing punishment. As knowledge of the situation gradually spread to the other
hall members, Sally lost the favor of even more students. The year ended, the involved and
discontented students going their separate ways to attend different colleges. Had it not, it is
quite possible that the hall would have followed the example set by Pistoia, collapsing and
tearing itself apart with the conflict. If Sally had simply followed the advice set forth in chapter
17 of The Prince and punished the RLA for the good of the hall, disorder would not have spread
the way it did.
While many people argue that The Prince does not contain serious advice but is rather a
satire piece, the specific advice on cruelty and compassion and when to exercise the two is
surprisingly useful. Sally is an ineffective leader because she does not seem to realize the
importance of occasional punishment. Sally would benefit from following Machiavellis advice
and punishing the few for the good of the whole. In fact, in todays individualistic society,
everybody would benefit from learning to think about the good of society as a whole and how
their actions affect everybody else. Machiavelli uncovered a kernel of wisdom during his time in
exile, and he should be taken seriously after all at least when it comes to cruelty.
3

Works Cited
Machiavelli, Niccol. The Prince. Selected Political Writings. Ed. & Trans. David Wootton.
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1994. 51. Print.