I was glossing over The Prince by Machiavelli when on of his famous quotes caught my eye;
However, he also states that;
Initially this baffled me. If you have to chose to be feared or loved, it is much safer to be feared, and yet in order to be best protected you require the affection of the people? At first these statements appeared mutually exclusive. However, Machiavelli points out that there is a gulf of difference between being feared and hated;
Which begs the question, is this possible? How often has this been seen throughout history? Machiavelli uses the example of Hannibal as one who is feared but not hated; which seems in his eyes to be the safest state in which a Prince can conduct himself;
So, my question is really twofold; the original question of whether it is safer to be feared or loved, and a secondry question - is it possible to be feared without being hated?
It’s possible to be feared without being hated…when I was a kid, I was afraid of my parents, in that I knew they could and would punish me if I did something I shouldn’t, but I don’t think I ever hated my parents. Likewise, I’m afraid of policemen, but I don’t hate them.
It’s been a while since I’ve read The Prince but from what I can recall Machiavelli was speaking of a specific type of fear that is more akin to respect than it is to quaking in your boots terror. Your subjects should be afraid to cross you but provided they don’t do so then they’ll get along with you just fine.
Interesting, I hadn’t considered the case of parents. In that case it seems to outright prove Machiavelli wrong; it is possible to be both feared and loved simultaneously. However, outside of the bonds of family, I doubt this is often the case, or how ol’ Nic meant the phrase.
The case of police is an interesting one too, and probably relates more to what Machiavelli was thinking; is it safest for those in authority, who are not family, to have the fear of the populace rather than affection?
Edit: @ Odesio, thanks for your response, I didn’t quite read it that way, which may well be the intention. I was reading to mean subjects being so afraid of you that they dare not act out of hatred, something we’ve seen many times over in the long-lived dictators of the 20th century.
I fear the legal system, but I do not hate the legal system. I fear lions, but I do not hate them.
I think the trick is to be benevolent unless you’re provoked; to be clear and consistent about what will provoke you, and to not be provoked by things that the populace considers their right. Oh, and when you are provoked, to retaliate with a fearful punishment.
On reflection, I want to retract this. I don’t hate lions because they’re otherwise prevented from doing things that I feel infringe on my rights. If I was forced to deal with them in the wild for any length of time, I’d probably hate them. Or feed them.
Not quite what Machiavelli was talking about, but look at a typical physically and emotionally abusive relationship between a married or dating man and woman – she may love him, but above all she fears setting him off or, eventually, leaving him, while his (warped) ‘love’ for her can provoke his ire, through jealousy, and may very well end up with her dead (between 2003 and 2005, 44 percent of female murder victims in New York were killed by a partner – one who, presumably, loved her at some point if not still).
True, the ‘crime of passion’ defense carries less and less weight and he could end up in jail – but, technically, he’s come out on top.
The record of history, though, does seem clear. Rulers whom the people are afraid to cross seem to do much better than those whose people are united to them by any affection. As an example, look the the French monarchy. It thrived, not on love, but on respect. Peoples’ passions go back and forth Even though Louis the 14th and Marie Antoinette were kind, generous, and effective monarchs, they were neither feared nor respected.
IIRC, Mencius had a lot to say on the topic. The only relevant (?) quite I can find at the moment (admittedly, finding a quote on the Internet to paraphrase Mencius is something of a sin) is:
If the prince of a State love benevolence, he will have no opponent in all the empire.
I think there’s two important considerations that you need to take into account.
Whether you’re considering the possibility of being overthrown by a mass uprising, or being overthrown by a conspiracy of a few key insiders (I think the latter has been more common over the course of history).
It’s difficult if not impossible to be loved by everyone. It’s much easier to be feared by everyone.
Being feared appears safer, but is imprisoning and isolating, either self imposed or imposed on you by those who fear you. It is a miserable existence.
Being loved may be safer in reality as it will lead to a more forfulling life and in that a person would actually live instead of just exist.
I’d say it depends on what you do. If you are fearful only because you are strict in your enforcement of the law, but are also just in your enforcement of the law (and the law itself is not overly oppressive) I believe you can engender the sort of fear being discussed without evoking hatred.
Not necessarily. It can be the things the populace doesn’t understand that came make them fear you. There are plenty of people that fear Obama, not because they hate him, but because they do not understand what he is saying, or doing. Fearful of the unknown… huge influence on us humans.
It’s been ages since I’ve read The Prince - or well probably just skimmed it in high school - but it struck me as odd to use Hannibal as an example of fear vs. love. Looking at wiki, it seems even stranger than he’d compare him to Scipio Africanus. Scipio did of course defeat Hannibal. Hannibal was beyond any doubt a military genius of the highest order as Cannae, Lake Trasimene, and Trebia more than attest to. Had any nation but Rome been dealt such massive defeats and losses in such short order it would have collapsed. After these victories, however, Hannibal was deep in Roman territory without a siege train and he’d apparently been relying on defections against Rome for supplies and the creation of a siege train.
Despite Rome’s clear peril at this point, no cities in Italy rallied to Hannibal; rather the years of benevolent rule (as far as things went and to them at least) by Rome paid dividends. Even when the defeat of Rome seemed possible if not probable, ‘love’ of Rome won out over fear of Hannibal.
