Daniel Camacho Ms. Zimmerman AP Lang (P. 2) October 9th, 2012 Machiavelli V. S. Hobbes (Revised) Niccolo Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes both have many distinct views yet still manage to also share some common ground with each other. Hobbes believed that all men are created equal which leads to the natural state of man being war, and that to avoid chaos within men they need to be ruled by a strong government.
Machiavelli believes that the people should be able to sacrifice anything in order to help a king that is trying to get his kingdom to the top. He believes that a king should primarily study the Art of War and do whatever it takes to make his land the best. Even though they have different views on life they both think that men were all born evil, corrupted, greedy, and are able to cause chaos. When you further analyze both ideas you can easily see how Machiavelli clearly knows what he’s saying.
Machiavelli’s idea is much more efficient and accurate than that of Hobbes. When reading Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ to anyone who is not a king his ideas would sound horrible, but what most people don’t know is that his ideas are everywhere in modern day society and most people agree with those ideas without even knowing that they do. Whether it’s history, presidential debates, or pop culture, Machiavelli’s words have lead to inspire many where as Hobbes hasn’t received as much acknowledgement and acceptance for his views.
If you’d ask a group of people if they believe in the saying “It doesn’t matter where you’ve been, only where you going” or “It’s all about what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done” most people would agree with it, without knowing that is exactly what Machiavelli is trying to express in his book ‘The Prince. ’ In history, one always ends up reading about a country that tried to make peaceful treaties with the many territories around him and tried not to dive into many wars but always ends up loosing his land.
Why? His people were conquered because the king of that land did not study the Art of War as Machiavelli says he should’ve. Even as recent as 2012’s First Presidential Debate, Obama has been recorded saying, “It does not matter what one has been through, but where that one person is going,” and that one phrase touched nearly the entire audience. Now we’ve seen that the historians are affected by Machiavelli’s views, the politicians are too affected by Machiavelli’s views, but what about the teens of today?
Well if you look into teen pop culture, in the hit song by Ne-Yo and Calvin Harris ‘Lets Go’ the chorus mainly “It’s not about what you’ve done, its about what you’re doing… It’s all about where you’re going, no matter where you’ve been… ” People sing along to that song all day without even knowing that’s Machiavelli’s primary theory. So as you see Machiavelli’s views affect and are accepted by many people of all ages and all over the world. While people can argue that Hobbes may have had a better and stronger message than Machiavelli, his didn’t reach out and affect the world as much as Machiavelli has.
If you truly analyze Machiavelli’s work and how the world works today you can easily see how Machiavelli does indeed have the right idea about how society works and how to get to the top, while Hobbes idea sadly only looks good on paper, but can never really come into the effect that Machiavelli’s can. Citations: * Fry, David K. “Niccolo Machiavelli. ” Niccolo Machiavelli. CTBW, 9 May 1996. Web. 9 Oct. 2012. <http://www. ctbw. com/lubman. html>. * “Two Different Ideas. ” Machiavelli/Hobbes. Ed. Mike J. Clingson. BBN, 10 Dec. 2008. Web. 9 Oct. 2012. <http://www. adventure. com/library/encyclopedia/ka/fmachi. html>.
