Machiavelli Thomas More Thomas Hobbes

Machiavelli, Thomas More, Thomas Hobbes Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes appear to recommend political actions and systems that take people "the way they are." In contrast, Thomas More and Aristotle appear to recommend political actions and systems designed to help people change the way they are.

To what extent is this description of their approaches accurate? According to the introduction to his text The Prince, Machiavelli believes that "the way humans act and should act are seldom the same." What Machiavelli means by this, however, is not that human beings fail to uphold their innately good ideals. What the theorist and advisor means is that a human being in a position of power does not have the luxury of asking himself what is good.

A leader only can ask what is expedient for his state and what will continue his reign of power as a leader.

In direct contrast, the Greek philosopher Aristotle begins his Nichomedian Ethics by stating that "Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim." Aristotle, although he did influence leaders such as Alexander the Great is not concerned with the 'ends' of leadership or purely what is accomplished through one's actions, as is Machiavelli.

Aristotle's text is concerned with the abstract, namely what constitutes what is ethically 'good.' Aristotle assumes that all things, human and nonhuman tend to do what is good. In contrast, Machiavelli believes that all things, especially leaders of nation, wish to survive. For Machiavelli, because he is advising a Prince of a nation, for the Prince to survive is deemed to be good for both the man and the state -- however, it is not the goodness that is to be aimed at, but the ends, namely survival.

The means is whatever gets one to that ends of political survival and achievement. Thomas Hobbes likewise attempts to paint a picture, not of an idealized world of good, but as a place where things tend, not to the 'good' but to evil. Not only is life, in the philosopher's famous phrase, nasty, brutish and short.

Hobbes stated "for as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself." (Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 13) In other words, Hobbes contradicts Aristotle's thesis that all objects tend towards the good. Rather, Hobbes believes that life is a constant state of battle for survival of the fittest. This pre-Darwinian struggle is not moral.

The good or morally fit may be defeated, in Hobbes' understanding, but the evilly, immorally strong, and one should not ignore this or attempt to change this, merely obey the brutish laws of the human jungle and prevent one's subjects from killing one another. Thomas More offers not a picture of how things are in the political arena but how things should be. In case the reader was in any doubt of this, he calls his primary text Utopia.

Moore, unlike Machiavelli, does not even use many examples drawn from life by and large, but creates a politician fable of Utopia and its dwellers to provide moral instruction. More believes that the purpose of a great king is not simply to survive, but to lead his subjects morally and ethically as well. This does not mean that a king should not treat his subjects without respect to the good of their physical condition -- for instance, he must not go to war needlessly nor enrich himself with high taxation.

(More, 61-62) Like Hobbes, More acknowledges less than beneficial impulses within the heart of a leader and subjects,.