Machiavelli: The Prince's Relationship with the People
Machiavelli in The Prince provides detailed instruction to a teenaged ruler, one who has already received the childhood moral education from fairy tales and folk parables and is ready for actual, direct instruction in his official duties. This work was a specific guide, written on the model of historic rulers and societies. Based, in no small part, upon the life of Caesar Borgia, a heavy-handed dictatorial ruler, Machiavelli sought to describe the perfect state, one that, if it must have a Prince, should be run in the manner described. The work, however, would meet with a great deal of dismay and horror by the people he intended to "get in" with. In his need to become part of the political life of Italy (in which he had, at one time, been as influential and significant as Sir Thomas More had been in England) created The Prince, a tract that did not truly reflect his own philosophies of political life, but one, he vainly hoped, would be received well by the ruling family. The purpose of The Prince also encompasses a trade-school-like approach, where the intricacies of policy, management, and behavior are spelled out directly, in clear, plain language. It is the intent of this paper to examine the role of the Prince in relation to the people from the framework of political function as outlined in Machiavelli's work.
