{"id":6115,"date":"2018-12-18T17:03:28","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T22:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/?p=6115"},"modified":"2018-12-18T17:03:28","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T22:03:28","slug":"machiavellis-soft-underbelly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/2018\/12\/18\/machiavellis-soft-underbelly\/","title":{"rendered":"Machiavelli, Man of the People"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve known our share of allegedly misunderstood literary figures (lookin&#8217; at you, Nietzsche). <a href=\"https:\/\/aeon.co\/essays\/the-prince-of-the-people-machiavelli-was-no-machiavellian\">But is Machiavelli one of them?<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>In <em>The Prince<\/em>, Machiavelli argues that leaders shouldn&#8217;t be objectively virtuous or truthful, but rather effective at preserving their reign. Hence a just end can excuse a leader&#8217;s horrendous acts, or &#8220;the ends justify the means.&#8221; But in this article, Sam Dresser claims that Machiavelli only appeals to powerful leaders in order to protect the people, since &#8220;<span>Satisfying the desire of the people to be secure in their lives, families and property is and ought to be the end or purpose of government.&#8221; <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Aw, Machiavelli, ya big softy! He was just looking out for the little guy all this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve known our share of allegedly misunderstood literary figures (lookin&#8217; at you, Nietzsche). But is Machiavelli one of them? In The Prince, Machiavelli argues that leaders shouldn&#8217;t be objectively virtuous or truthful, but rather effective at preserving their reign. Hence a just end can excuse a leader&#8217;s horrendous acts, or &#8220;the ends justify the means.&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7336,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[898,3857,48628],"tags":[3884,48816,37486],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6115"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6121,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115\/revisions\/6121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}