Machiavelli

Only one other contemporary of More's evokes so immediate and direct a response, and only one other contemporary work -- Niccolo Machiavelli and The Prince.

Agathocles was cited as from the lowest, most abject condition of life and as an example of “ those who by their crimes come to be princes ” in Chapter VIII of Niccolò Machiavelli ’ s treatise on politics, The Prince ( 1513 ).

However, many later disapproved of his actions, including to an extent Machiavelli, who claimed " It cannot be called prowess to kill fellow-citizens, to betray friends, to be treacherous, pitiless, irreligious.

Machiavelli goes on to reason that Agathocles ' success, in contrast to other criminal tyrants, was due to his ability to mitigate his crimes by limiting them to those that " are applied at one blow and are necessary to one's security, and that are not persisted in afterwards unless they can be turned to the advantage of the subjects ".

* von Vacano, Diego, " The Art of Power: Machiavelli, Nietzsche and the Making of Aesthetic Political Theory ," Lanham MD: Lexington: 2007.

Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age.

Other utilitarian-type views include the claims that the end of action is survival and growth, as in evolutionary ethics ( the 19th-century English philosopher Herbert Spencer ); the experience of power, as in despotism ( the 16th-century Italian political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli and the 19th-century German Friedrich Nietzsche ); satisfaction and adjustment, as in pragmatism ( 20th-century American philosophers Ralph Barton Perry and John Dewey ); and freedom, as in existentialism ( the 20th-century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre ).

* Niccolò Machiavelli ( 1469 – 1527 )

Following an interpretation of power similar to that of Machiavelli, Foucault defines power as immaterial, as a " certain type of relation between individuals " that has to do with complex strategic social positions that relate to the subject's ability to control its environment and influence those around itself.

Niccolò Machiavelli cites Cesare's dependence on the good will of the Papacy, under the control of his father, to be the principal weakness of his rule.

Machiavelli argued that, had Cesare been able to win the favor of the new Pope, he would have been a very successful ruler.

Niccolò Machiavelli met the Duke on a diplomatic mission in his function as Secretary of the Florentine Chancellery.

Machiavelli was at Borgia's court from 7 October 1502 through 18 January 1503.

In The Prince, Machiavelli uses Borgia as an example to elucidate the dangers of acquiring a principality by virtue of another.

Machiavelli attributes two episodes to Cesare Borgia that were at least partially executed by his father: the method by which the Romagna was pacified, which Machiavelli describes in chapter VII of The Prince, and the assassination of his captains on New Year's Eve of 1503 in Senigallia.

This seemingly makes it obvious that Machiavelli admired Cesare Borgia's father but not Cesare himself.

* The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

The Education of a Christian Prince was published in 1516, three years after Niccolò Machiavelli ’ s The Prince.

Machiavelli stated that, to maintain control by political force, it is safer for a prince to be feared than loved.

In political and historical writing Niccolò Machiavelli and his friend Francesco Guicciardini initiated a new realistic style of writing.

Machiavelli in particular was scornful of writers on politics who judged everything in comparison to mental ideals and demanded that people should study the " effectual truth " instead.

Furthermore, it has been established that a substantial portion of it was taken, without citation, from a 1864 satire on Napoleon III by one Maurice Joly ( his French language work, The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu )-so that it also constitutes plagiarism.

A second individual of unusually acute insight was Niccolò Machiavelli, whose prescriptions for Florence's regeneration under strong leadership have often been seen as a legitimization of political expediency and even malpractice.

In other words, Machiavelli was a sort of political thinker, perhaps most renowned for his political handbook titled, The Prince, which is about ruling and the exercise of power.