aquinas an d machiavelli
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According to Aquinas, a ruler must have a good relationship to their people which is called friendship. Friendship brings the greatest pleasure (hoi extract 1 ,20). Furthermore, Aquinas believed that friendship between king and the people can unite the natural origin, similarity of custom, and any other common fellowship (hoi extract 1, 20). However, the greatest advantage that can be got is the respect feeling from the people to the king. The king is loved by most of the people because the king also show love for them and it will lead to a stability of a kingdom (hoi extract 1, 20). Aquinas took Julius Ceasar as a good example to support his idea about the friendship between a king and people that make the people devoted to their services. Julius Ceasar always regard his soldiers greatly that after hearing the death of some of them, he will cut neither hair nor his beard until he had avenged them (hoi extract 1, 21). Beside that, he also used Octavian Augustus as a example that when he was dying, the people offered their own sacrifices to make him remain alive ( hoi extract 1, 21).
However, according to Machiavelli, a good friendship between king and the people is not a must. A good king had to be loved and feared, but it is very difficult to combine those things together, so it is better for a king to be feared rather than to be loved if he can not be both (hoi extract 2, 54-56)...