Authority And Dominance In Machiavelli's The Prince

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Machiavelli, in his work The Prince, details several distinct ways in which a ruler must conduct himself to maintain order and dominance. One of which is the following: “And so he needs to have a spirit disposed to change as the winds of fortune and variations of things command him, and as I said above, not depart from good, when possible, but know how to enter into evil, when forced by necessity.” (Sec 18. Machiavelli, The Prince) Here Machiavelli is reinforcing his idea of controlling what you have the ability to control. The winds of fortune are always swaying, and it takes a good Machiavellian leader to adjust his plans amidst the unruly breezes. The Prince also touches on not consistently straying from the path of good, but knowing when a situation is dire enough to momentarily break that rule. “Thus, since a prince is compelled of necessity to know well how to use the beast, he should pick the fox and the lion…one needs to be a fox to recognize snares …show more content…
Romulus and Remus were abandoned in a desert and became the founders of Rome, Moses was lofted down a stream and became a part of the Pharoah's family, and even Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot somehow found himself rising to power after being doomed to the sewers. As displayed in the 1992 fantasy thriller, Batman Returns, Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot, portrayed by acclaimed actor Danny DeVito, survived his trek through the sewers. Oswald was, in a way, raised by the penguins living in the sewers. From this, he adopted the identity, “The Penguin”. The Penguin had remembered that his parents rejected him as a child, causing the Penguin to resent them beyond any common distaste. Like any good Machiavellian Prince, Oswald beat fortune with ease. He had risen from an almost assured death to an empowered master of many who were willing to do his
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