Comparison With Locke, Machiavelli, And Plato Essay, Research Paper

John Locke and Niccol Machiavelli are political philosophers writing in two different lands and two different times. Locke s 17th century England was on the verge of civil war and Machiavelli s 15th century Italy was on the verge of invasion. Yet, students and political philosophers still enthusiastically read and debate their works today. What is it that draws readers to these works? Why, after three hundred years, do we still read Two Treatises on Government, Discourses on Livy, and The Prince?

The answer to those questions lies in each text itself, and careful review will produce discourses on those questions and many others. The focus of this discourse is to examine the treatment of the people by both authors, to discover what Machiavelli and Locke write about the people s role in their different structures of government. In particular, this paper seeks to understand that role in regards to the political power each author yields to, or withholds from, the people. In addition, these treatments of power and the people will be compared to the writings of another timeless political philosopher, Plato. By juxtaposing Two Treatises on Government, Discourses on Livy, The Prince, and The Republic against one another, this paper will show how writers from three very different centuries all agreed upon an identical notion of the relationship between the power of the people and their role in government.

This theory is not readily apparent upon initial reading of these authors. Indeed, most political philosophers would argue that each author has a very distinct notion of what role the people play in government. Therefore, an ideal place to start is in the differences of each author s portrayal of the people and the political power they wield.

Machiavelli, the most pessimistic of the three writers in regards to humans and human nature, writes that all men can be accused of that defect which Livy calls vanity and inconsistency (The Discourses on Livy, 115). He continues by writing: people [are] nothing other than a brute animal that, although of a ferocious and feral nature, has always been nourished in prison and in servitude (Discourses on Livy, 44). Animals, that are by their nature ferocious, become scared and confused when released from captivity. Without the shelter and food they had come to expect when domesticated, they are more susceptible to future attempts at captivity. Man also becomes scared and confused in freedom after living under the government of others. Machiavelli writes that these men lack understanding of public defense or public offense, and quickly return beneath the yoke that is most often heavier than the one it had removed from its neck a little before (Discourses on Livy, 44). Men are docile like domesticated dogs or cattle, according to this description, and have a role in government of little political power.

With Plato, there is a continuation of the same theme started by Machiavelli. The people primarily play a subservient role in Plato s structure of government under the rule of monarchs, aristocrats, or philosopher-kings. When discussing with Adeimantus the virtue and reason behind a regime instituted by philosophers, Plato does not paint a picture of men much greater than Machiavelli s animalistic comparison above. Indeed, he portrays them as easily swayed and ill-informed by those from outside who don t belong and have burst in like drunken revelers, abusing one another and indulging a taste for quarreling (The Republic, 179). For Plato, the largest majority of men constitute unknowledgeable masses that persecute the very group that can best lead them, the philosophers. Even in a democratic regime, a regime based on the will of the people, Plato does not give us a particularly optimistic view of men. This regime is composed of three types of men according to Plato; the multitude; the oligarchic; and the men most orderly by nature (The Republic, 243). The oligarchic rule the city through the license of the multitude, and the orderly rule in business through the disadvantage of the multitude.

Thus, Machiavelli sees the people as subjugated and Plato sees the people as fatuous, both doomed to political ineptitude. With Locke, however, the character of the people is redeemed. The people, for Locke, represent a political power akin to force. Indeed, the people are the ultimate source of power for Locke s government, whether that government is a legislative body or a prince.

In the closing chapter of his second treatise, Locke details the ways that government can dissipate when rulers misuse their power. The third way a prince may dissolve the government is when he arbitrarily alters the electors or the ways of election, without the consent, and contrary to the common interest of the people (Two Treatises, 409). Locke makes the actions and behavior of the sovereign subordinate to the interests shared by all men, and limits his actions within the confines of public consent. Locke frames the essential question when he asks, who shall be judge whether the Prince or Legislative act contrary to [the people s] Trust? The answer, according to Locke, is that The people shall be judge (Two Treatises, 426).

Machiavelli echoes this answer, albeit in a subtler manner, in his writings of the Civil Principality, Chapter IX, in The Prince by stating that the people exert an influence over the formation of a principality. According to Machiavelli, the people neither desire to be commanded nor oppressed by the great (The Prince, 39). In this sense, the people constitute a humor of the city, the opposing humor being the desire of the great to command and oppress the people. A man should be wary of becoming prince with the support of the great instead of the support of the people. Without their support, the prince is doomed to govern either a territory filled with an unmanageable great…

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Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Peter Laslett, ed. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. 1997.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield. 2nd Ed. University of Chicago Press: Chicago & London. 1998.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. Discourses on Livy. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield & Nathan Tarcov. University of Chicago Press: Chicago & London. 1996.

Plato. The Republic. Allan Bloom, ed.