/lit/ - Literature

Just finished reading The Prince and now I'm beginning on Discourses in pic related.

I saw no suggestion that The Prince was satire, none. Before TP I read several of Machiavelli's letters to his bff's and in some of them he was clearly being satirical. Dat hooker None of this was found in TP.

It read like a very straightforward manual for any would-be autarch. But other than this it simply describes how some principalities fail while others do not and why.

Also, nowhere is the phrase "The ends justify the means" used. This could be attributed to translation >reading translations but this is what I read, and it's considerably more nuanced than the watered down "Ends justify means":

Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.

For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on.

>TL;DR Have I been trolled?