How many authors get a word based on their name? Not many, that is for sure. However, poor Machiavelli might have gotten his a little unfairly. His book The Prince was meant to be an instruction manual for rulers of his time. It does not really tell the leader to keep bad faith, though I think every leader ends up breaking promises. Really, the book tells the leader how to be the best possible while still maintaining a ruling position in the country. While having never tried it, I imagine it would be rather effective in medieval Italy. However, many of his directives would not be so effective in the modern day.
The most famous of these is generally paraphrased as "It is better to be feared than loved". Machiavelli explains this by saying that fear is more reliable than love because the bonds of fear are stronger than those of love. But he also points out that either one is preferable to being hated. (Unlike Yoda, he leaves out the point about fear leading to hatred). On multiple occasions he references how a prince should not let the women of a conquered country be molested (which is still good advice, mind you). There are many other tidbits of wisdom as well, however, overall, the book is pretty dry and boring.
As much as it pains me to say it, this is probably not as enjoyable as a higher level summary of the book that makes the effort of relating it to the modern day. Machiavelli does make a few good points but a lot of it is lost under things that don't pertain to modern reader.
Overall, I would give this book a 60%.
No comments:
Post a Comment