POL200Y1 Final: final exam review
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Final exam review pol 200 y 1 y (1) compare and contrast cicero and machiavelli on generosity. While for cicero, obligations were the focus of politics, for machiavelli, a leader"s obligations to his people were merely an instrumental means of establishing political power. This accounts for the differences between cicero"s conception of generosity on the one hand, and machiavelli"s conception on the other. For cicero, generosity is conceived of as a obligation as a matter of justice. For machiavelli, generosity is not essentially a duty for the leader at all, because the principle of social stability is the leader himself, not justice, much less the leader"s obligations to his citizens. Accordingly, while leaders have a duty to be generous to their citizens for cicero, for machiavelli a political leader ought to merely appear to be generous. For cicero, all members of the state have a duty to be generous to one another.