Relevance of Machiavelli’s The Princeto Todays World Essay

The Relevance of The Prince to Todays World The only way it was possible to get ahead was to be part of the inner circle. It didnt really matter what the issue was or what sort of implications it carried. All that mattered was knowing the right person, having the right information, making the right introductions, and going to the right parties. The most valuable information was not necessarily something you knew about an enemy but something you knew about a friend. Staff and advisors were, in many ways, far more powerful than the aristocrat holding office. As much as it sounds like it, it was not late 20th century Washington, D.C. but early 16th century Italy. The tell all book is not Primary Colors, And the Horse He Rode†¦show more content†¦After his release he retired to his estate near Florence, where he wrote his most important works. Despite his attempts to gain favor with the Medici rulers, he was never restored to his prominent government position. It is not hard to understand how Machiavelli developed h is theories considering his years in politics with all of the constant ins and outs of being in favor with the powerful or not. Machiavelli spent the great majority of his political and governmental career attempting to establish a state that would be fully able to resist any sort of foreign attack. All of his thought and all of his writing revolves around the means by which a state is created and maintained. In his most famous work, The Prince, he describes the method by which a prince can acquire and maintain political power. This study, which has often been regarded as a defense of the authoritarianism and tyranny of such rulers as Cesare Borgia, is based on Machiavellis belief that a ruler is not bound by traditional ethical norms. In his view, a prince should be concerned only with power and be bound only by rules that would lead to success in political actions. Machiavelli believed that these rules could be discovered by deduction from the political practices of the time, as well as from those of earlier periods. One of the most powerful premises of the book is the idea that a leader must do what theyve got to do. They should do what works, always