The Prince

The Prince

For History class a few days ago, we came in having read a reading called the prince. It was a mans speech about what makes a good prince and a good leader. He brought up many different facts about the way people think and I thought those views were very interesting to think about.

In this speech by Machiavelli, the idea that a good ruler has to be mean was brought up a lot. We talked about this in class quite a bit too. Here are two examples of different types of rulers. One will be very nice to the people and give them things like money or no taxes. But eventually this ruler needs money so he stops giving it away and starts charging taxes on the people. This makes the people very angry because the ruler just switched on them so they begin to resent the ruler and actually start to hate him. Back then, the people hating their ruler could end in them killer him. The other type of ruler is the kind that starts out mean so that the people are scared of him and they don't really feel like he owes them anything, they haven't lost anything. They may resent things that this ruler does but at least they don't hate this ruler. So, according to this person, it is better to be a ruler that starts out mean from the very start, then a ruler that is nice but as the possibility to need something later on. I don't really think that this is the morale thing to do or the most virtuous of rulers but it is the way to be an effective ruler and have the people follow you.

I think that this way of rulering is the total opposite of Confucianism because Confucianism promotes the notion that a nice ruler will be a good example to make the people good too. Machiavelli's idea about good leaders is closer to Han Fei-Tzu's idea of a good leader, they both think that good leaders should be more on the mean and harsh side. But the difference between these two people's ideas is that Machiavelli thinks that if you are mean the people won't do anything that is bad, Han Fei-Tzu thinks that if the people will be bad regardless, so you need the punish them in return and this is the best way to teach them their lesson. So Machiavelli's way of leading thrives off of fear while Han Fei-Tzu's way is based off of learning lessons. So out of these two, to me Han Fei-Tzu's way is more moral them Machiavelli's way. I think this because at least with Han Fei-Tzu's way, the people doing the bad are learning a lesson and the leader doesn't have to be unnecessarily mean to the innocent people. So out of all of these way, I can see the reasoning behind all of them but I have to say that I think the one least likely to work is the Confucianism way because it is taking to big of a risk, what if the people are bad regardless? Then what would happen, the leader just say the same and keeps being nice to the people? That would only mean that the people would think that they could just do whatever they want because that is what the other people did and they got away with it. I can understand how the other two ways would work a lot more. I think that Machiavelli's way is also probably unlikely to work because it too is very risky because there is always going to be the people that aren't afraid to stand up against a mean ruler, people will get fed up eventually. So, I think that the best way is Han Fei-Tzu's way because it doesn't really leave any loopholes open.