POLS 2900 Lecture Notes - Parallelogram, Social Forces, Appeasement

• School: York University
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLS 2900
• Professor: Adam Hilton

Document Summary

I would like to move on now to consider two more of machiavelli"s accomplishments, accomplishments that presuppose the break with tradition described earlier. The aim of machiavelli"s political science is the establishment and preservation of order, order that will protect a universal egoism the pursuit of life, liberty and property. Against the ancients, the virtues are judged by whether or not they contribute to order, not vice-versa. Only that which contributes to order is judged a virtue. And if something otherwise vicious contributes to order under certain circumstances, then it is not to be judged a vice. Thus the cruelties of a prince, when necessary and economical, are virtues because they bring order out of chaos: yet machiavelli is not only the theorist of princely virtue. The answer is, first of all, that the monarchical absolutism of a prince is a desperate remedy for a situation of near complete breakdown and corruption.