Plato and Machiavelli
Plato and Machiavelli both wrote a
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Plato and Machiavelli both wrote about politics with a vision to an ideal society that might not appeal to many people today. Both see an ideal society as one involving some degree of despotic control, with plato talking of governance by an elite and Machiavelli describing the ideal Prince as a leader ruthless and decisive. Yet, the two visions are not morally equivalent. Plato in the Allegory of the Cave in The Republic emphasizes that the philosopher must return to the cave to understand the relationship between the ideal and its projection in this world. Plato's conception of the existence of Forms as the ideals of the imperfect objects and ideas of this world derived in part from the ongoing discussion in Greek philosophy over change versus permanence. The allegory also relates to issues of epistemology as to what we can know and how we can know it. The cave becomes the touchstone, the example that serves to demonstrate the relationship between the idea and the reality, between perception and reality, between the perfection of the idea and the imperfection of the reality. Plato is attempting to attain the ideal as much as possible by making this philosophical inquiry,, including an ideal state. Machiavelli, however, has accepted the idea that the individual will never attain perfection, and instead he has decided to remain in the cave and to accept the prevailing ethos and only to be more successful with it. The question is raised whether this mea
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pass in becoming accustomed to the things illuminated and the source of illumination, and he is still in the realm of appearance as long as perception is the key.
MACHIAVELLI
The development of humanism in the Renaissance involved a shift in how people thought, and this occurred at the same time that the horizons of the West were expanding, be they geographical, mental, social, economic, or political:
Concurrent with these advances was an important psychological development in which the European character, beginning in the peculiar political and cultural atmosphere of Renaissance Italy, underwent a unique and portentous transformation. . . Whereas in earlier times, the life of the state was defined by inherited structures of power and law imposed by tradition or higher authority, now individual ability and deliberate political action and thought carried the most weight. The state itself was seen as something to be comprehended and manipulated by human will and intelligence. . . (Tarnas 227).
Tarnas sees this shift as a return to pagan (meaning classical) values. There as a new value placed on individualism and personal genius, and this was a shift from the more collectivist, social view of the medieval period:
The me
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Approximate Word count = 4067
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)
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