Can sum one help me plz, ill give you 150-300 points! Graded Assignment

Machiavelli’s The Prince

Complete and submit this assignment by the due date to receive full credit.

(50 points)

Directions: Read the excerpt from Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (1513) and answer the essay prompt highlighted below

Note:

Machiavelli hoped to impress, and get a job working for the powerful Medici family in Florence with this work on politics. It didn’t work, but it has proved to be a much loathed and admired analysis of human affairs from a coldly realist point of view. When Machiavelli speaks of a “prince,” he does not mean the son of a king, but is using the word in its older meaning “the first,” or the ruler of a territory. Italy was divided into many small city-states and other domains, which were in constant competition with each other.

From Chapter 17: On cruelty and compassion, and whether it is better to be loved than to be feared, or the contrary

Descending next to the other qualities mentioned before, I say that each prince ought to desire to be believed compassionate, and not cruel, nonetheless he must be alert not to use this compassion badly. Cesare Borgia was believed cruel; nonetheless, that cruelty of his restored the Romagna, unified it, and led it back to peace and to faith . . .

A prince, therefore, must not care about the infamy of cruelty in keeping his subjects united and faithful, because if he makes a very few examples, he will be more compassionate that those who, through too much compassion, allow disorders to occur from which arise killings and robberies. For the latter usually harm an entire population, but those executions that come from the prince harm a particular person . . .

From the above a debate arises whether it is better to be loved than feared or the contrary. The answer is that one would want to be both the one and the other, but because it is difficult to join them together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one has to do without one of the two. For the following may be said generally about men; that they are ungrateful, changeable, pretenders and dissemblers, avoiders of dangers, and desirous of gain, and while you do them good they are wholly yours, offering you their blood, their property, their life, and their children, as I said above, when the need is far off, but when it comes close to you they revolt. And that prince who has founded himself wholly on their words, because he finds himself naked of other preparations, is ruined. For the friendships that are acquired at a price, and not with greatness and nobility of spirit, are paid for but they are not possessed, and when they come due they cannot be used. Men have less fear of offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared, since love is held in place by a bond of obligation which, because men are wretched, is broken at every opportunity for utility to oneself, but fear is held in place by a fear of punishment that never abandons you…

Nevertheless, the prince must make himself feared in such a way that, although he does not acquire love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women. But when it is necessary for him to proceed against the life of someone, he must do it on proper justification and for manifest cause, but above all things he must keep his hands off the property of others, because men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. Besides, pretexts for taking away the property are never wanting; for he who has once begun to live by robbery will always find pretexts for seizing what belongs to others; but reasons for taking life, on the contrary, are more difficult to find and sooner lapse. But when a prince is with his army, and has under control a multitude of soldiers, then it is quite necessary for him to disregard the reputation of cruelty, for without it he would never hold his army united or disposed to its duties.

Score

Essay Prompt: Write a 4-5 paragraph essay answering the question, who was Machiavelli and what was his opinion on the way a leader should rule; through love or through fear?

Make sure to include the following:

An introduction with background information on Machiavelli and Italy during the early Renaissance

One body paragraph explaining the main ideas of Machiavelli’s The Prince and why they were important to leaders in Florence at the time

One-two body paragraphs explaining Machiavelli’s opinion on whether it is better to be loved or feared and why a leader should avoid being hated.

Conclusion paragraph



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