So is Machiavelli a realist? or a devil? i would say he's a realist, as he broke away from the usual "should be's" of how a king should behave, usually in a religious context, and looked at how truth manifests itself in practicality, or, in other words, he was more interested in truths that manifest themselves through effect, in the real world, not in a systematic value system that has no grounding in the :real world"...but this philosophy works for those who are practically minded, those who cannot rise to the shoulds of religious virtue, those who care not to rise to them and only care for worldly power...but there are those who rise, who seek to rise, and have the optimism to try and reach them, and are revered because of it, Machiavelli was only interested in the prince and his keeping of power, his keeping of the state, and if this meant he must do evil deeds then he must, but if you read elsewhere, he deplores the ones who do nothing but malice upon his own people and those of others, yet they are a good case study in how to keep power, because fortune deals her blows in whatever way she seems fit, and if evil triumphs over her obstacles, then, to Machiavelli, so be it...
whatever to keep your power, to Machiavelli, this is the name of the game in this treatise: power, to have said anything else, would be to regurgitate what had already come before, and his work would have drowned among the many
it is interesting how people have approached this work, how the term "Machiavellian" came to be, the senses it connotes, when i don't think he believed in these things, i don't think that murder and deceit and cunning are things he believed was at the heart of great men, or that he thought these things were "right", whatever that may mean, i think his code was beyond good or evil, it is about power, and the use and keeping of it, is power beyond good and evil? is that why power studies became so popular? because it is a step away from morality? is being a realist one who is out of morality's bounds? "whatever it takes" mentality, "no matter what you have to do" and these kinds of diatribes
its about a code of living, and, ironically it seems, that the lives of kings, kings of men, must be more practical than most, even though they are regarded as being the closest to God (minus the pope?) and could this be a message then? of the system? that the closer one is to reality, the closer one is to God? yet i cannot accept this version either, for in the mundane we are lost in it, the world...yet to find, once again, a balance, to find God in the World, that would be the goal? maybe its Einsteinian, the relativism of it all, that one must know thyself to realize which of the truths will work best, either for you, or any given situation...some need practicality, some need spirituality, could there ever be, one code?
Machiavelli says that man will have his virtues and his vices no matter what, and it is up to him, and his virtu, to decide how he will use them...in terms of kings, how they will serve him in his ruling of the state, and by extension, the ruling of one's life in all its forms, the State as life proper or the State as metaphor for life...i like to read Machiavelli like this, like Sun Tzu's Art of War, read as metaphor, as a how-to guide for living one's life
