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Feard Or Feared In Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince

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Is it better to be feared as a ruler opposed to being loved? Machiavelli gives good evidence as to why it is more powerful to be feared in his writing of “the Prince” where he goes over all the main concepts of a good leader and why it is better to be feared rather than loved if one cannot be both. Niccolo Machiavelli, a medieval Italian philosopher, provides the following contention of what is needed in good leaders. A leader; Should be feared rather than loved “if you cannot be both” in order to avoid a revolt; Should have the support of the people because it’s difficult to take action without their support; Should hold good virtues; Should never turn to outside auxiliary or mercenary units, but always rely on his (or her) own arms; and Should be …show more content…

In these years new state offices (prikazy) —no longer household offices—came into being, with an army office (razriad), one for landed estates, and others for bandits, petitions, and other functions. (c) Ivan the Terrible earned his name due to his actions of terror such as slaughtering thousands of people through use of a secret police organization called the Oprichnina. The 6,000 police in the Oprichnina were assigned to go into the country (Russia) and find people that were apparently planning to go against Ivan, then confiscate their land and sentence them to death. He, additionally, took the life of his own in-vitro grandchild when he beat his daughter-in-law for the style of clothing she wore and, after arguing with, took his own son’s life fatally beating him during a psychotic episode. Although Ivan the Terrible was, indeed, terrible, his contribution to strengthen the foundation of government far outweighed his acts of “terror” by providing a basis that has been improved upon for centuries to come, involving the Sudebnik law helping define the Russian justice system, starting a colonization of Siberia, and the Prikazy

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