INSIDER | COLUMN
Tank Goodness, Our Leaders Are Not (All) Like The Prince
DUC PHAM, SCHOOL OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
Lest my esteemed readers think I only study old books, such as Sun Tzu’s 2500-year-old Te Art of War (CMM Vol 7, No 5), my subject today is a much newer work — Niccolo Machiavelli’s Te Prince, authored only some 500 years ago.
I first encountered Te Prince in my philosophy class at school. Machiavelli, we were told, was a Florentine Renaissance politician, diplomat, philosopher and writer. Te Prince, his best-known book, was published posthumously in 1532 although it had originally been distributed in 1513, a year aſter his dismissal from office as a consequence of the fall of the Republic of Florence and the return of the Medici family to power.
Te Prince was writen as advice for princes and dedicated to Lorenzo de Medici who dominated the Principality of Florence between 1513 and 1519. Te suggestions in the book were the result of observations by the author of how rulers had behaved and how successful they had been at preserving their empires.
Te counsel that the book proffers is intended to be pragmatic but is oſten controversial and generally regarded by many as unethical. For example, believing that the end justifies the means, in chapter 17, Machiavelli advocates fear as the method for securing a prince’s powers. He argues that it is beter for a prince to be feared than to be loved because “men are less hesitant about leting down someone they love than… leting down someone they fear.”
The counsel that the book proffers is intended to be pragmatic but is often controversial.
Typical of the kind of deceitul conduct promoted in the book is that recommended in Chapter 18 relating to the qualities a prince should have: “So a prince needn’t have all the good qualities I have listed, but he does need to appear to have them. And I go this far: to have those qualities and always act by them is injurious, and to appear to have them is useful - i.e. to appear to be merciful, trustworthy, friendly, straightorward, devout, and to be so, while being mentally prepared to switch any virtue off if that will serve your purposes.”
Another example of a piece of unscrupulous advice can be found in the same chapter concerning whether princes should keep their word: “A prudent lord, therefore, can’t and shouldn’t keep his word when that could be used against him and the reasons that led him to give it in the first place exist no longer. If men were entirely good this advice would be bad; but in fact they are dismally bad, and won’t keep their promises to you, so you needn’t keep your promises to them.”
True enough, there are modern-day leaders in business, industry, politics, and, dare I say it, the academy as well, who regularly adopt Machiavellian practice.
28 | commercial micro manufacturing international Vol 7 No.6
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