In Henry Thoreau’s “Civil
Disobedience” we find that in order to counter complete deprivation of voice,
typical civilians must devote their lives to stopping “the machine” that is the
government. “The Morals of the Prince”
by Niccolo Machiavelli displayed the idea that a prince who could manipulate
his people in order to retain office would be the ideal goal for any prince of
his time. Though these two contrast each
other through their conflicting viewpoints, they share some very common ground
when referring to power.
At one point in his essay, Thoreau
states that politicians often resist the public’s viewpoints in order to
further themselves personally.
Meanwhile, in Machiavelli’s piece he states that the underlying goal for
a prince was to keep his throne. Both of
these scenarios display the major government’s efforts to steal power from the
people. First, in “Civil Disobedience”,
Thoreau explains that many elected officials tend to serve themselves rather
than the community. Often they support
the majority, silence the minority, and wreak the benefits of their own
powers. It is in this case that Thoreau
calls government a “machine”. With a bad
connotation, Thoreau intended to argue that those who step in front of the
government are the ones that will topple it down. Machiavelli’s excerpt expresses the power of virtue
and how many different core values both good and bad are necessary to keep one’s
power in the kingdom. One of these
reasons was fear. Many times politicians
would try to intimidate their people so they will be inclined to vote for them or
support them during reelections and wars.
This intimidation could be very responsible for the silencing of people
to the point where they won’t stand in front of “the machine”. By having the same core structure based on
fear, Thoreau explains to his readers how to work around it while Machiavelli
explains to his readers how to enforce it.
From either ends of the spectrum both philosophers had totally different
viewpoints that, together, built the overall problem at hand for the public.
hey, I think this is a really nice basis of a thorough blog. There are some changes that I feel are necessary. First, its a bit confusing. Your audience is people that have already read the works so I get that you left out the big picture. However, I think with the work you are doing, you're scratching the surface and not fully examining which makes it a little hard to follow. Maybe, you could cut out some fluff sentences and dive deeper. Or, you could just make it longer. Which brings me to my next suggestion, its way too short to be complete. I get its in the word count range but I think it would be so much better if you went further. Or instead of writing, at one point in his essay… you could just give us a quote which would place s in the essay better, making it clear and also stronger. Finally, your thesis is a bit odd. I would just make it more clear on your stance. Thats it. Have a lovely rest of your sunday. Hope football is entertaining.
ReplyDeleteHi Drew, I thought you had some really strong ideas in this blog. In terms of improving your blog, Annie did a good job of pin pointing certain areas. Your second paragraph could be broken up into another paragraph, as it is a little long. I would then recomend that you expand on your ideas. You presented some very interesting concepts, so I'd like to hear more about them. I thought your thesis was good, only it was a little vague. This makes it a little unclear, so you may want to make it more specific. But, overall I thought your blog was well done.
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