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Essay on Comparing and Contrasting Mirandolla and Machiavelli

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This compare and contrast essay will focus on the views of leadership between Mirandolla and Machiavelli. Mirandolla believes that leadership should not be false and that it should follow the rule of reason. He believes that leaders should strive for the heavens and beyond. On the other hand, Machiavelli believed that leadership comes to those who are crafty and forceful. He believed that leaders do not need to be merciful, humane, faithful or religious; they only need to pretend to have all these qualities. Despite both of them being philosophers, they have drastically different views on leadership, partially because of their views on religion are different. Mirandolla was very religious, and Machiavelli was a pragmatist, which means that …show more content…

His belief is that a leader should be ambitious, free of mediocrity, and tries their best to attain new heights. A leader should be seen as god to others and that they should always believe in god’s reasoning. He believed that a true leader would admire all that the real god has given him and then he will be rewarded with the “light of angels”, which is being like rewarded by becoming leader. Mirandolla’s depiction of leadership is one that was centered around god and religion. Also, he believed leaders to be just and righteous. As a complete contrast to the previous view, Machiavelli’s depiction of leadership is one that is centered on deceiving one another to become leader. Machiavelli’s view on leadership is quite different from Mirandolla’s; he believes that the law is quite often not sufficient and force must be used. He illustrates his view of leadership through the example of a fox and a lion, “the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves.” He thinks that a leader cannot solely rely on being only a fox or a lion, but a little bit of both. But through what he says, it is clear that he prefers the cunning and deceitful fox over the

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