Just War in Machiavelli, More, and Hobbes: A Comparison
This paper compares how three influential political thinkers — Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas More, and Thomas Hobbes — approach the question of when war is justified. Drawing on The Prince, Leviathan, and Utopia, the paper argues that Machiavelli treats war purely as a tool of political survival with no moral dimension, Hobbes sees war as a natural condition that strips away ethical distinctions entirely, and More insists that war is justifiable only when a state's physical and moral survival demands it. Together, these three perspectives illustrate fundamentally different relationships between political power, ethics, and armed conflict.
- Introduction: Correcting misconceptions about Machiavelli and war
- Machiavelli: War as Political Expediency: War justified only when it serves the prince's survival
- Territorial Conquest and Its Costs: Colonial expansion weakens rather than strengthens rulers
- Hobbes: War as the Natural Human Condition: War as a natural equalizing force among states
- Ethics and Justice in Hobbes's State of War: No justice or injustice exists within a state of war
- More: War as a Last Resort: War justified only to preserve physical and moral survival
- Conclusion: Three thinkers span expediency to moral restraint
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What makes this paper effective
- It frames a three-way comparison around a single focused question — when is war justified? — which keeps the analysis coherent across very different thinkers.
- It uses direct quotations from primary sources (The Prince, Leviathan, Utopia) to ground each thinker's position rather than relying on paraphrase alone.
- It highlights the key contrast between expedience and ethics, showing how Machiavelli and Hobbes sidestep moral judgment while More engages with it directly.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates comparative analysis across primary texts: it identifies a shared question, maps each thinker's distinct answer, and uses contrast (especially "unlike Machiavelli" transitions) to build a structured argument. This technique is foundational in political philosophy courses where students must synthesize multiple canonical works around a common theme.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by correcting a common misconception about Machiavelli before explaining his purely pragmatic view of war. It then turns to Hobbes, noting his broader philosophical framing and more permissive attitude toward armed conflict. Finally, it presents More as the clearest moral counterpoint, arguing that only the defense of a state's physical and moral existence can justify war. The conclusion is implicit — the three thinkers represent a spectrum from pure expediency to principled restraint.
Introduction
Because of the rather negative perception of Niccolò Machiavelli's theories of political survival and expediency at all costs, one might be tempted to assume that the Italian political theorist believed the ideal leader — the Prince — should go to war at every opportunity to demonstrate his strength. However, Machiavelli was not nearly so bloodthirsty or reckless. In fact, Machiavelli believed in self-promotion and the preservation of the Prince's political future and the state at all costs. War might occasionally serve as a means to this end, but it should only be undertaken in extreme circumstances. Discussing a specific political situation that plagued Italy at the time, he noted that war should only be waged "when one cannot avoid it" (Machiavelli, The Prince, 112).
Machiavelli: War as Political Expediency
Machiavelli is supremely uninterested in what is moral or good during times of war or peace. He is simply interested in advising a leader how to survive, prescribing a code of behavior rather than a code of ethics. To Machiavelli, it does not matter when it is ethical or good to go to war — all that matters is whether war advances one's own cause as a leader. Is going to war necessary to secure allies, consolidate existing territories, and strengthen one's standing in the eyes of subjects and colleagues? If so, one should go to war. If not, one should keep the peace.
Territorial Conquest and Its Costs
This pragmatic calculus is one reason Machiavelli advises leaders not to acquire too many colonial territories. Overexpansion "always causes a new prince to burden those who have submitted to him with his soldiery and with infinite other hardships which he must put upon his new acquisition. In this way you have enemies in all those whom you have injured in seizing that principality, and you are not able to keep those friends who put you there because of your not being able to satisfy them in the way they expected, and you cannot take strong measures against them, feeling bound to them" (Machiavelli, The Prince).
In other words, although holding a great deal of territory might make a ruler appear strong in the short term, the resentment it stirs among subjects may well outweigh the show of force. The question is never one of right or wrong, but always one of political calculation.
Hobbes: War as the Natural Human Condition
Unlike Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes wrote his Leviathan not to advise a particular prince, but more generally as a political theory of human governance and the human condition. Hobbes views war far more expansively than Machiavelli — not as something that might negatively impinge upon a prince's power, but as a sorting mechanism for weak states, rulers, and soldiers in a world of roughly equal political forces. If a prince falls in Hobbes's view, so be it: it means he was weak. War, in this framework, functions as a form of non-human "power" that keeps all of humanity — princes and commoners alike — "in awe" (Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapters 13–14).
Conclusion
Taken together, these three thinkers represent a spectrum of attitudes toward the ethics of war. Machiavelli treats war as a tool of political survival, entirely indifferent to moral judgment. Hobbes sees war as the natural baseline of human existence, one that renders ethical distinctions meaningless. More, by contrast, insists that war demands moral justification and should be embraced only as an absolute last resort. The distance between More's moral seriousness and the cold pragmatism of Machiavelli and Hobbes reveals just how fundamentally these thinkers disagreed about the relationship between power, ethics, and armed conflict.
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