Question

What is Machiavelli’s advice to a leader who is confronted with doing the virtuous thing or the thing that best assures survival

Answer 1

Machiavelli's advice to a leader confronted with doing the virtuous thing is that, although virtuous acts are necessary for a ruler to be seen as generous, compassionate and honorable, those characteristics are only useful for a ruler to get to leadership. However, those attributes for a man who has achieved leadership are in fact dangerous, because generosity creates expectations on people that are not always possible to fulfill. Another problem is that a kind and emphatic leader won't be able to mantain people in control, therefore, authoritarism is a useful tool to achieve good lidership. A leader is required to be "seen as generous" rather than be generous, and make difficult choices, which most of the times, means that a ruler has to be bad to stay in power. Following this line of thought, one of his most famous maxims is "it's much safer to be feared than loved" which means that at the end, the only way to assures a leader continuity in power is to be a cruel leader without people noticing it.