PHI 1500 Lecture Notes - Eknath Easwaran
Document Summary
Dante and machiavelli existed in an italian society that was full of corrupt politicians who murdered people to stay in power, and a community that was plagued by wars. They were both writes who tried to express what good leaders are in their writing based on morality and ethics. However, their philosophical analysis of what good and moral leaders are entirely different; they had conflicting ideologies even though they underwent the same challenges, suffered and lost a lot from the atrocities that occurred to the city of florence. On one side, dante takes a religious perspective on what a good leader should; he believed that morality, virtue was the way to go for not only the leaders but also the citizens in the city. However, machiavelli dwells much on earthly power bestowed upon the leaders in the society; in his writing, he went ahead to discredit the importance of true virtue as well as morality in political leaders.
