Why do so many people think Machiavelli is evil?

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I hate to use the L word.

But he literally wrote the lawful evil playbook.

>>587446
Because he spoke well of things we associate with malice

>>587450
He just wanted a unified Italy and knew it could only happen using military force

Because people think he advocated for totalitarian autocracies and he's been made into a 'Real life GOT guy'

When really he was a republicboo

>>587450
Lawful evil my ass. If anything the prince is chaotic good.

In the Prince, he argues against using evil excessively. You should use it sparingly and exactingly.

>>587506
I'd call it ruthlessness.

It can be construed as righteousness if you back it with feel-good words.

He was right in that politicians shouldn't care if they get dirty hands. That's the price you pay in politics. There isn't an inherent evil to it; it's just the way things operate. So while politicians may be tainted, politics is the catalyst that pushes such an agenda.

He was also right in establishing there isn't such a thing an altruistic, good, clean politician. They are all self-serving and the state is the metric used to measure their influence. It shouldn't matter whether you have to be ruthless of use excessive force. If you can justify it, people will be claimants to your cause.

>>587446
He spoke the truth that was meant to be carried out only in actions, not words. Humans are supposed to pretend they are benevolent and pretend all of their genocides, war crimes, and destructive tendencies are either nonexistent or a minor bump in the road to our transcendence over instincts. Machiavelli said people never change. If you are a politician, you work with people, and you'd better not have any ideological misconceptions of what that means.

Basically, he was too confronting.

>>587446
Same reason people try to dismiss his ideas as being "satire"

He was pretty much right about everything but people can't handle the implications of what he says being true

>>587542
>He spoke the truth that was meant to be carried out only in actions, not words.

/thread

Harvey Mansfield

>>587446


In before "he was really a great guy and The Prince is satire because this Cracked article says so"

>>587652
And then it's not because a Cracked article says so?

>>587661
No, that's not what he's saying you idiot

>>587674
I know... don't be a jerkass, I'm saying you can't use "Cracked" as a "if cracked says so, then it's not", it's the same shit as using is at a good proof.

Because they don't want to face up to the truth. Machiavelli was brutally honest and took the world as it was, not as he wanted it. Fact of the matter is that in politics you have often have to commit evils on an individual level to do good for wider society.

>>587661

It's not because the sentiments mentioned in the Prince largely echo his notions of what creates an efficient state in the Discourses on Livy, which nobody would argue is a satire.

MakeVeLi DoN in dis bitch

>>587446
He doesn't wear decent pants

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>>587446
He spoke of values that ran against the christian dominated culture at the time, and after lingered a vague cultural preception

Not say that Christians were being stupid or anything, they just didn't like his ideas and that trickled down through history.

"Hello and welcome to 16th Century Jerry Springer! Today we have Niccolo from Florence has cheated on his wife with a very unusual lady."


"What the hell, Luigi, you can see what fortune can do to men. You had just finished fucking your woman when you want another one. I've been in Modena for several days when I came across an old woman who washes my shirts. She asked me to come into her hovel because she wished to show me some fine shirts. Innocent prick that I am I went in. There was a woman over in the corner. "This is the shirt that I wanted to sell you," the hag said. I was terrified. But I fucked her. I found her thighs flabby and her cunt damp. Her breath stank. But I was horny. When I was finished I took a torch and looked at her. I nearly dropped dead. The woman was ugly. She had a tuft of hair on her head but her head was bald. Her forehead was scarred. One eye looked up, the other down. Her eyes were filled with mucus, and she had no eyebrows. Her nose was twisted into a funny shape. Her mouth looked like Lorenzo de' Medici's but was bent to one side. She was toothless and saliva drooled out of her mouth. Her upper lip had a moustache. I looked at her stupefied. "What's the matter sir?" she asked me. As soon as she opened her mouth, such a stench came out that my eyes and my nose were assaulted and my stomach indignant. They could not bear it, and I vomited all over her."

*crowd goes wild, hangs Jerry Springer for being a Jew. *

>>588704
Wut

>>588710
It's a letter from Machiavelli about the time he vomited over an ugly woman

The Prince is one of my favourite books, though there is debate whether it's supposed to be satire or not.

>>587678
t. Michael Swaim

>>588732

> though there is debate whether it's supposed to be satire or not.

No, there is not.

>>588704

http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/churchhistory220/Lecture13/MachiavelliLuigi.html

It's fucking true.

Dude what.

>>587446
Because they don't know he was mocking the Medici

>>587450
it was satire

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>>588791
>it was satire
NO IT FUCKING WASN'T!!!!

Machiavellism and Stoicism are best when used together. Often times one justifies the other.

>>587446

on some boards its called moralfagotry

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>>588903
>NO IT FUCKING WASN'T!!!!
yeah it was. Machiavelli said so.

>>589181

When and where?

>>589181
No. Quit memeing. Machiavelli intended the Prince to be a serious treatise on how despots should gain and keep power as a gift to the Medici family after his exile from Florence.

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>>588903
>>590549

>Medici take over his offices, incarcerate him, torture him, break his limbs
>Exile him to some rundown villa where he is deprived of any influence or chance at influence, which he is all too aware of
>implying Machiavelli, an obviously intelligent and shrewd man, was under any illusions as to his chances at gaining political favor with these people

>The Prince was written in a common Italian, of the sort that was common to the lower literate classes, rather than the Latin of the elite
>The Prince was never presented to the Medici in the form of an opulent tome as was the standard for such "Mirror of Princes" works of that era
>The Prince was instead published and read widely by the lower classes after Machiavelli's death
>after writing The Prince, Machiavelli continued his work about how awesome republics were such as in the Discourses on Livy

"Satire" may not be the correct word, but I don't think Machiavelli was entirely serious when he wrote The Prince. If anything, I think his message was, "Hey, fuckers, I know exactly how things are. I know history, I know you. Don't think for a second I don't, and don't think that they're aren't others who know, either."

>>587446
Because amoralism is equated with evil by people who consider themselves morally virtuous.

>>587450
Think of it this way. When Darwin wrote his books on natural selection and survival of the fittest, he wasn't trying to say that state of affairs was better or worse than anything else. He was just making an objective study on what those things were and how they operated.

Likewise, Machiavelli didn't exactly endorse the tactics he put out in The Prince. He was just telling us about what tactics would lead to success in politics, regardless of whether anyone considers them "right" or "wrong".

>>587446

They don't understand satire.

>>591504
this is the correct answer

>>587446
Because people don't realize he was satire

Or at the very least he was very clear when he was saying of the Prince, "this is not a book about ethics, but about tactics"

And people who use those tactics are probably evil. So he as a person gets grouped in with the deployment of some of his theorization.

>>590629
Machiavellis defining trait is exactly that kind of sardonic attitude. Maybe it was just a Florentine thing, but out of all his writings he seems uniform in his irony. Also, he was writing to the Medici that freed him, so he might have been less vehemet in his hatred, AND he had a huge history boner for a unified Italy in some kind of new Roman republic, I read it as a acknowledged fantasy he had for a strong Italy able to properly compete with the larger European courts.