How Things Really Are

     In my reflection of Machiavelli, I want to stress a point that many people seem to confuse.  This is the thin line in the sand between what people believe to be personal opinions and directions of how a ruler should act and observations of how rulers are successful and how they hold on to power.  I’m not sure if Machiavelli takes his own words to heart but I am sure that many of his points, especially in The Prince, are observatory reflections of gaining and maintaining power.  Machiavelli never says that men should act ruthlessly and kill off the populace as advice, he As a pre-eminent thinker in the school of thought that later came to be known as realism, Machiavelli is providing insight on things with a realistic view, things the way they are.  

Fast forward a few hundred years, more like 400 years, and Hans Morgenthau in his Politics Among Nations describes the use of morals and ideologies in realism.  He believes that morals and ideologies are only a mask for the true policy of a state, to maintain or increase power.  When ideas are stripped the world can be seen for how it really operates.  This is what Machiavelli is trying to convey.  He is not immoral but amoral.