Os Erros de Maquiavel

My Book: Board of Shadows | ♟️ 100 Manipulation Strategies: https://nerofreitas.com Niccolò Machiavelli was a Florentine thinker who lived during the Renaissance and wrote the book entitled *The Prince*, dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici. In this work, the author suggested the necessary conditions for an absolute sovereign to be able to conquer, reign, and, above all, maintain his power. The most complex task for a sovereign, in Machiavelli's view, was maintaining the power of a king. In his observations, Machiavelli believed that the good administration of the sovereign depended on rigid political articulation and great wisdom, linked to personal characteristics such as audacity, sagacity, perspicacity, and charisma. The Florentine thinker maintained the idea that the good exercise of political life depended on the happiness of man and society, because no prince, even the wisest, could be as wise as the people. Machiavelli made The Prince a manual of political action, whose main objective was the achievement of absolute, unshakeable power. In the work, he discussed how political power should be exercised over a territory and a population, establishing forms of relationship between the monarch and the nobility, the clergy, the people, and his ministry. Machiavelli raised the following question: is it better to be loved than feared, or feared than loved? According to the author, one desires both: to be loved and feared would be ideal, but since it is difficult to have both, if it is necessary to renounce one, it is much safer to be feared than loved... for, of men in general, one can say the following: they are ungrateful, fickle, deceitful, and greedy for gain. As long as you do good to them, they are all yours; they offer their own blood, their possessions, their lives, their children. All this when you have no need. But when you need them, they turn their backs on you. In summary, the thinker argued in this passage that a prince who expects gratitude from his people will be defeated. Machiavelli's thought was shaped in an Italy decadent from the Revolution of the Communes (city-states), a country fragmented into small states and at risk of losing its national independence due to foreign invasions, such as those from Spain and France. From this historical context, in 1513, the entire scenario for the elaboration of The Prince emerged. Machiavelli analyzed how Italy could be rebuilt according to the principles of a modern and unitary state, because, for him, "no country has ever lived united and prosperous unless it has been entirely subdued," and it would be the prince's responsibility to politically unite the failed Italy. #theprince #machiavelli