"The Prince is a concise statement of Machiavelli's belief that classical and Christian political theory is unworkable in a world that defines politics as the exercise of power and the struggle for power. It is also implicitly a rejection of a nihilistic counterethic, that only power and brute force matter." (Dante Germino, Machiavelli to Marx: Modern Western Political Thought, p. 32)
Discuss to what extent you agree or disagree with this statement. What evidence can you bring to support your position?
Assuming I understand Germino in this quote, which I probably do not by the way, I disagree with his assertion that Machiavelli uses moral ethics in The Prince. Machiavelli makes it abundantly clear throughout his book that the only ethic governing a prince is practical rather than moral. It is the prince’s job to remain in power once power has been obtained, disregarding, for the most part, those who may be hindering. However, he will still have to make his subjects look on him in favor so that they support him being in power.
If one defines politics, in that which a prince would mingle, as “the exercise of power and the struggle for power,” there does not seem to be a lot of room to discuss right or wrong, healthy or harmful in a purely objective sense, in that the morality would remain for the prince to decide. If politics simply deals with power, then one dealing in politics only has a commitment to power, leaving moral ethics up to personal beliefs or convictions of the particular prince. However, if the definition of politics did contain a certain moral standard, I believe Machiavelli’s book would have to deal with the issue. How it is now, though, Machiavelli does not deal with morality; Machiavelli’s only ethic is a practical one.
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