Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince (1517) is a book which openly states that the end justifies the means. Essentially, Machiavelli's political philosophy claims to be scientific and empirical. It is founded on his own experience in the political arena in Florence during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. When all the idealism is stripped away from the behavior of the human animal, he finds, ethics and morals disappear in favor of naked self-interest. Machiavelli has come to represent this idea in the political realm.
Machiavelli looked to such historical figures as Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus as examples of great leadership. Certainly, Machiavelli's methods have enormous utilitarian value regardless of their moral worth. He writes:
This follows from another common and natural necessity: a prince is always compelled to injure those who have made him the new ruler, subjecting them to the troops and imposing the endless other hardships which his new conquest entails (Machiavelli 35).
In modern times, we have seen these concepts in action in Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, Castro's Cuba, and the Third World countries of Africa. Yet, these examples show that Machiavelli is wrong when he says his ethos leads necessarily to success.
The Prince is dedicated to a younger member of the Medici Family, Lorenzo the Magnificent. Machiavelli's infamous masterpiece was partly motivated by a desire to demonstrate how useful its author could be as a political advisor. The scope of the book ranges from philosophical discussion of the nature and the workings of principalities to realistic and practical teachings on the relations between a prince and his subjects. A considerable emphasis is placed upon the military. Machiavelli was in favor of citizen-soldiers engaging in combat, instead of mercenaries, for the purpose of protecting the state.
The opening chapters of The Prince are concerned with the many v...