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Similarities Between Luther And Machiavelli

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Luther’s and Machiavelli’s Views on Generosity Archit Khosla While Luther’s opinion on generosity is intertwined with his views on faith and God’s magnanimity and mercy, Machiavelli takes a more practical and brutal approach where he advises the ruler to use the virtue of generosity only when it is advantageous, in fact, Machiavelli advocates being miserly in order to consolidate power. While Luther’s style of writing is more religious and spiritual in nature, Machiavelli’s view is highly political. While Luther talks about how the church should propagate the God’s message and not get embroiled in politics, Machiavelli expounds on how essential it is for a ruler to be prudent and practical to the point of being ruthless. Luther wanted his …show more content…

Their arguments center on the need for longevity and eternity. Machiavelli does so by suggesting tactics as to when the ruler should be generous and when he should not. For example, he says that Caesar, Cyrus and Alexander were only generous when it came to giving away the belongings of those they had plundered and that this made them successful rulers. Therefore Machiavelli argues that the purpose of generosity or being miserly at the opportune moment increases the length of the reign. Throughout the book, his main aim is to provide the ruler with tactics and tricks to amass and consolidate power and increase the time for which he rules a country. In the same way, the purpose of Luther’s argument is to provide man with a set of guidelines to experience long, healthy and a sin free life. He instructs his readers that God (Christ) is eternal, omnipotent and cannot sin and if they are faithful to Christ, then Christ’s generosity would extend to them, and they too would live sin-free long lives. Therefore, one can see that Luther, too, links generosity to a long lasting life. However this counterargument can be overcome by looking at the ways Luther and Machiavelli describe the virtue of generosity. Machiavelli aims to use generosity for a selfish need and Luther talks about God’s generosity as something

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