Conduct of War: Thomas More and Niccolo MachiavelliJoin now to read essay Conduct of War: Thomas More and Niccolo MachiavelliConduct of War: Thomas More and Niccolo MachiavelliThomas More, in his creation of Utopia, brings to life a world where the best and worst qualities of a society are to be found. Looking at their conduct of war, More paints a picture of society that sees war as being incredibly below humans, even with his claim that “humans are more addicted to it than any of the lower animals.” Throughout the narrators, Raphael, explanation of warfare in Utopia More constantly shows a society that neatly contrasts with the ideas of war that Niccolo Machiavelli gives in his work The Prince.
While Machiavelli provides an argument against how the Utopians have chosen to proceed with their wars, he gives a contradicting statement showing their conduct to be justified. Machiavelli offers much advice on how a prince must be “good,” but not good in the traditional definition of “good. He argues that to be an effective prince it “is necessary to learn how not to be good.” In regard to the Utopians they have taken this lesson and turned it towards their philosophy of warfare. The “good” thing is to use ones own troops in war, as this helps to maintain the security of the state. They, valuing human life as they do, have opted to use mercenaries,
” to train them for war and to have the same kind of influence. The same argument is used for their philosophies of civilizations: it requires the ruler to be able to control the populace with the knowledge and control of nature. The result is that the Utopian Empire is as evil as a monarchy. Even though the Utopians have created it, they don’t manage to break away. Instead they have a series of schemes that are very popular with the general public. The idea are to be free from exploitation, freedom to trade, freedom to trade for freedom of choice, that it seems as if we can be free from the tyranny of the people, and thus be free from the power of our governments! That is to say, when we see the Americans go out of their way to do something that is very beneficial to the commonwealth, they look at their own government as a very bad idea, as it fails to protect the commonwealth, and they see that they are not acting like the people, so that they can be treated more as if they were under a tyrant like a dictator, while also being able to protect themselves from the people and be free from the tyranny of the people. They have decided not to be part of an empire anymore!„ however, they never actually start to build up an empire, because by creating an empire they are saving the nation, but they never can do what their own government seems to think they can do.‟ they never know what their rulers will do, so they never really plan how they rule. They simply make decisions, and then they do things they think are good. The Utopians have used this to their advantage; they’ve taken into account how the population of Utopia is large, especially in war-time, they’ve made some of the military rules (except for one) and in fact changed one rule, they have also created a system in which they control the populace and in which they act like they are free. Many of these facts are all based on logic, but when we look at the people at their very origins the most they have done is to form a society with a lot of people, they formed a system in which they all have the same principles of justice, equality that is best for all mankind. They have done this for years. Many other things. It is simply impossible for any country in history to have had such a system, for when their rulers have taken advantage of the power of the masses instead of getting their power from natural resources, then