With Chapter XV entitled, “The things for which men, and especially princes, are praised or blamed”, Machiavelli tackles the issue of virtue and morality as he manifests a paradigm shift in morality. This shift turns the focus from a morality of intentions to a morality of consequences. In short, Machiavelli concentrates not on how a prince ought to live but how a prince actually does live. He writes, “I have thought proper to represent things as they are in a real truth, rather than as they are imagined.” (pg. 49) Plato may have had a very utopian idea represented in The Republic, but that situation has never been a reality, and, most likely, will never come to be. Instead, Machiav

Machiavelli is not saying that the public is not intelligent, but he is emphasizing the distance between the ruler and his subjects. It is a realistic look at the situation a prince is in, which is that he can manipulate his image and the information given to his people to make him and his actions and diplomacy look good and moral. Realistically, the only thing the public will respond to is the condition of the state they are living in. A prince can rely on the fact that “men in general judge by their eyes rather than by their hands.” (pg. 58)

elli wants to focus on what princes and rulers have done in the past and what one can actually do in the future to maintain power in a state or republic. The actions that a prince should take ought not to move him “towards self-destruction rather than self-preservation.” (pg.49) Machiavelli goes on to name important “virtuous” aspects a prince could and probably should posses in an archetypal moral logic. He goes on to map out the polarity of the moral realm. Ideally every man and prince alike would like to posses all moral and virtuous qualities, but “because of conditions in the worlds, princes cannot have those qualities, or observe them completely.” (pg.50) Therefore what he practices will be virtuous if it brings prosperity and actions detrimental to his empire will be vices.

There is a question of whether or not the way Machiavelli thinks in this book is the way things are and should be. Ideally we could live in one of those utopian societies that so many philosophers and theologically grounded thinkers wrote about. But Machiavelli demands that we think about politics in a realistic sense. The thoughts in The Prince shifted the way one thinks about politics by taking them in a Christian idea led world of stated intentions to a real world of consequences and results. The interesting concept is that Machiavelli did not think up this consequential way of thinking, but merely decided to look at what was happening around him and write about it. He could have very well not even prescribed to what he wrote, for he was only trying to win favor with the Medici’s. Machiavelli talks about the reality of international politics and takes into account everything you can’t control (fortune) and tells you how to control everything else. There are six billion people on this earth and, furthermore, there are also countless collective leaders of those people. If they all decided to sit down and decide to start doing things differently, to all believe in one god, to adopt a universal set of moral rules, and strive towards an ideal, perfect, philosophical, utopian society, then maybe we can throw The Prince in the trash. Unfortunately such and idea is prosperous and impossible.

Machiavelli did not so much redefine the term “virtue” but placed it in the perspective of a realist. In a certain sense, perhaps Thrasymachus was right when he said, “justice or right is simply what is in the interest of the stronger party.” (The Republic, Plato, pg. 19) If by “right” one could mean what furthers oneself and one’s people. If, in a realistic int

Some topics in this essay:
Chapter XVIII, Republic Plato, Medici’s Machiavelli, Instead Machiavelli, Chapter XV, Niccolò Machiavelli’s, political world, pg 58, reality machiavelli, deception lying, pg 56, real world, utopian society, redefining virtue, reality instead, “virtuoso” prince,