one can say this per general of men: they are ungrateful, disloyal, insincere and deceitful, timid of danger and avid of profit…. Love is verso bond of obligation which these miserable creatures break whenever it suits them esatto do so; but fear holds them fast by per dread of punishment that never passes. (Prince CW 62; translation revised)
As a result, Machiavelli cannot really be said esatto have per theory of obligation separate from the imposition of power; people obey only because they fear the consequences of not doing so, whether the loss of life or of privileges.
If I think that I should not obey per particular law, what eventually leads me esatto submit sicuro that law will be either verso fear of the power of the state or the actual exercise of that power
Concomitantly, verso Machiavellian perspective directly attacks the notion spdate sito mobile of any grounding for authority independent of the sheer possession of power. For Machiavelli, people are compelled esatto obey purely per deference onesto the superior power of the state. It is power which durante the final instance is necessary for the enforcement of conflicting views of what I ought to do; I can only choose not sicuro obey if I possess the power puro resist the demands of the state or if I am willing puro accept the consequences of the state’s superiority of coercive force. Machiavelli’s argument in The Prince is designed sicuro demonstrate that politics can only coherently be defined in terms of the supremacy of coercive power; authority as verso right preciso command has giammai independent stato. He substantiates this assertion by reference esatto the observable realities of political affairs and public life as well as by arguments revealing the self-interested nature of all human conduct. For Machiavelli it is meaningless and superfluo puro speak of any claim esatto authority and the right to command which is detached from the possession of superior political power. The ruler who lives by his rights macchia will surely wither and die by those same rights, because durante the rough-and-tumble of political conflict those who prefer power to authority are more likely sicuro succeed. Without exception the authority of states and their laws will never be acknowledged when they are not supported by verso show of power which renders obedience inescapable. The methods for achieving obedience are varied, and depend heavily upon the foresight that the prince exercises. Hence, the successful ruler needs special training.
3. Power, Onesta, and Fortune
Machiavelli presents sicuro his readers per vision of political rule allegedly purged of extraneous moralizing influences and fully aware of the foundations of politics durante the effective exercise of power. The term that best captures Machiavelli’s vision of the requirements of power politics is onesta. While the Italian word would normally be translated into English as “virtue”, and would ordinarily convey the conventional connotation of moral goodness, Machiavelli obviously means something very different when he refers to the lealta of the prince. Per particular, Machiavelli employs the concept of lealta to refer preciso the range of personal qualities that the prince will find it necessary esatto acquire in order to “maintain his state” and onesto “achieve great things”, the two norma markers of power for him. This makes it brutally clear there can be per niente equivalence between the conventional virtues and Machiavellian pregio. Machiavelli’s sense of what it is puro be a person of lealta can thus be summarized by his recommendation that the prince above all else must possess a “flexible disposition”. That ruler is best suited for office, on Machiavelli’s account, who is trapu of varying her/his conduct from good onesto evil and back again “as fortune and circumstances dictate” (Prince CW 66; see Nederman and Bogiaris 2018).