A prince should do good if he can, but be ready to do evil if he must. Yet a prince must be careful to always act in a way that appears virtuous, for many can see you, but few know how you really are.

Themes

• Statesmanship & Warcraft. Machiavelli believes that good laws follow naturally from a good military.
• Goodwill & Hatred. To remain in power, a prince must avoid the hatred of his people.
• Free Will.
• Virtue.
• Human Nature.

The qualities of the ideal prince according to Machiavelli include ruthlessness when necessary, the ability to inspire respect, military expertise, and a willingness to set virtue aside.

In this chapter, Machiavelli introduces the theme that will occupy much of the rest of the book: how princes should act. He announces his intention to turn the reader’s expectations upside down by recommending that princes be bad rather than good.

A prince should present the appearance of being a compassionate, trustworthy, kind, guileless, and pious ruler. Of course, actually possessing all these virtues is neither possible nor desirable. But so long as a prince appears to act virtuously, most men will believe in his virtue.

“it is much safer to be feared than loved because love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”

“Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.

Machiavelli discusses why a prince must avoid being hated and despised. There are two primary dangers to a prince’s domain, according to Machiavelli: the threat of invasion, and the threat of conspiracy. An invasion is an attack from a foreign power. The prince can protect himself from this by organizing his army.

The two essential components of a strong state are good laws and good armies. Good laws cannot exist without good armies.

The Prince was never published in Machiavelli’s lifetime. When printed copies became widely available after 1532, the Catholic Church banned it as an evil work. Others criticized it as a “handbook for tyrants.” By the early 1600s, Shakespeare was using “Machiavel” to refer to an unscrupulous and scheming person.

1 : of or relating to Machiavelli or Machiavellianism. 2 : suggesting the principles of conduct laid down by Machiavelli specifically : marked by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith He relied on Machiavellian tactics to get elected.

Machiavellianism is a personality trait that denotes cunningness, the ability to be manipulative, and a drive to use whatever means necessary to gain power. Machiavellianism is one of the traits that forms the Dark Triad, along with narcissism and psychopathy.

An example of something Machiavellian is the idea of using schemes to obtain political power; a Machiavellian idea. Machiavellian is defined as a person who follows Machiavelli’s ideas of deceitfulness in The Prince. An example of a Machiavellian is a person who will lie and cheat to get the throne.

Key Points. The Dark Triad personality traits – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – can be toxic and damaging in the workplace. But be aware that someone exhibiting these traits may initially be a high achiever and potentially charming, conscientious and achievement-oriented.

Dante Zogratis

Recent research has found that people with so-called “dark” personality traits are more physically attractive than others. They wanted to find out whether these three traits, referred to as the “dark triad,” are associated with a greater ability to successfully enhance one’s physical appearance.

Psychology reveals a new personality type: dark empaths. This personality type defines those people who seem cold and have dark personality traits, but who also are kind, compassionate, and emotionally connect to others. It’s a new psychological construct that would define a small percentage of the population.

It seems like everyone knows at least one person who is deeply empathetic, a good listener, and manages to get others to talk about their feelings, but full empaths are likely rarer. About one to two percent of the population are true empaths, according to a study published in Nature Neuroscience.

They associate with people, with the sole goal of draining their energy, sabotaging them, and bringing them down to their miserable level. This low vibration state is what the empath fights against. In their plutonic state, an empath thus becomes a narcissist’s narcissist.

As an empath in a tense moment, your heart rate may quicken even more than normal. Your anger may feel heightened, your sadness more intense. It’s harder to control your own emotions because you have your emotions and your partner’s emotions running through your body.

Are empaths born or made? The good news is that empathy is something you can learn and practice – and you can always increase your empathetic ability. However, there are those who are born with it. We are all born with this ability to an extent, but these people are born with a very strong sense of empathy.

Yes. It is possible that empaths cry when overwhelmed with emotions. This is because they are highly sensitive people who can easily detect emotions of others, are compassionate and feel for people.

When overwhelmed with stressful emotions, empaths can experience anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and fatigue and may even show physical symptoms such as an increased heart rate and headache. This is because they internalize the feelings and pain of others without the ability to distinguish it from their own.

Their acute sensitivity allows them to truly feel, and even absorb, another’s pain. Empaths’ hyper awareness of their partner’s feelings often leads them to hold their partner’s feelings, allowing their narcissistic partner to not have to feel the painful emotions themselves.

Empaths tend to have high affective empathy. When people you care about face worry and stress, you experience that emotional pain right along with them. As long as they continue to struggle, you might feel anxious and concerned on their behalf.

Empathy is an enormous concept. Renowned psychologists Daniel Goleman and Paul Ekman have identified three components of empathy: Cognitive, Emotional and Compassionate.

Themes

• Statesmanship & Warcraft Machiavelli believes that good laws follow naturally from a good military
• Goodwill & Hatred To remain in power, a prince must avoid the hatred of his people
• Free Will
• Virtue
• Human Nature

Is ‘The Prince’ by Niccolo Machiavelli a difficult read? It’s written in Medieval Italian, so, if you’re a monolingual American, it would/will be difficult In translation into English, it is not difficult for so someone with schooling through at least 10th grade by standards in place to the late 1980s

3 hours and 10 minutes

Word counts of CS The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe – words Prince Caspian – words

26 chapters

Non-fiction

In stating that “it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good,” did Machiavelli mean that a prince should not be good? Machiavelli means that the Prince should not be good at certain times He thinks that a Prince needs to discover when it is necessary to be bad

determine to avoid anything which will make him hated and despised” A prince will earn hatred if he steals “the property and the women of his subjects,” and therefore he “must refrain from these” A prince will be despised “if he has a reputation for being fickle, frivolous, effeminate, cowardly, [and] irresolute” A

While Machiavelli states that it is “splendid” for a prince to have a reputation for generosity, he argues that a prince who is genuinely generous “will come to grief” This is because for a prince to actually earn a reputation for generosity, he must be “ostentatiously lavish” in order to attract the attention of the

Machiavelli believes that it is “safer to be feared than loved” because “and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by

Liberality, or generosity, is a quality that many men admire In the end, the prince will be forced to burden his people with excessive taxes in order to raise the money to maintain his reputation for generosity Ultimately, the prince’s liberality will make the people despise and resent him

Why? Why does Machiavelli warn The Prince against liberality (Chapter 16)? Because if the Prince is with liberality he will be kicked out of office due to his generosity and virtue He should be parsimonious

A prince must avoid becoming hated or despised Taking the property or the women of his subjects will make him hated Being frivolous, indecisive, and effeminate will make him despised All a prince’s actions should show seriousness, strength, and decisiveness

A prince should worry about two things: internal insurrection from his subjects and external threats from foreign powers Defending against foreign enemies requires a strong army and good allies A strong army always leads to good allies

Machiavelli argues that Italy’s present ruin has spurred its people to reclaim “the worth of an Italian spirit” Machiavelli argues that the masses desire change, seeking the birth of a new Italian state This emphasis on the people’s wishes underlines the modern power of the masses