Common Themes
Prince and Tempest:
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Human Nature:
 Machiavelli had a negative view about human nature.
 Shakespeare had both
Politics:
 Related to Human Nature, Machiavelli view politics, as politics of survival (doing
anything to survive)
 End justifies means
 Humans are born evil
 Fortunes come in
 Prince should be flexible
 Tempest: Both positive and negative
Optimism:
 Tempest: In the end, promise of a new better society
 Machiavelli was not optimistic
 Politics is not idealist activity but rather realistic
 Politics deal with reality of things so it will stay the same, misleading to ask
about future
 Calling upon princes to change
Power and knowledge:
 Machiavelli says a prince should be knowledgeable about war, internal, external,
strategies, politics…
 To be educated and know his stuff
 To be virtuous
 2 senses
 As good qualities
 As being skillful, talented (recommend to encourage those skills)
Deception:
 Prospero used the tempest
 Machiavelli: Prince should be like a fox
Morality:
 Tempest: Positive and negative
 Politics should be a moral
Both are Modern
Bacon and Tempest:
- Science:
 Tempest: Magic and science were the same thing
 Bacon: all about science
- Rationality:
 2 senses (Tempest):
 Knowledge
 Opposite of feelings
 Bacon:
 Imperial view: Knowledge based on 3 things:
 Instrument
 5 senses
 Understanding
 Reason alone isn’t enough
 Has rational attitude about science (Separates it from magic and superstition)
- Power over nature:
 Bacon: Scientists have power to control
 Tempest: Prospero had the ability to control natural elements of island
- Human Nature: Idols:
 Bacon: Weaknesses (have to do with the nature of human beings)
- Deception:
 Tempest: the whole play
 Form of imprisonment (obstacle) prevented them from knowing the reality
 Bacon: Idols
Hobbes:
- Stress on Power: Ultimately political power is validated by rationality, not by religious factor.
Hobbes’ analysis of the transition from state of nature to civil and society is an analysis that is
based on how individuals come to a reasoning that would make them realize that their best
interest wouldn’t be in staying in state of nature but in many to a civil society. This reasoning is
done also through a discovery of the laws of nature by law of reason
- Nature: Tempest: The Island
- Sovereign Power: Hobbes is Absolute
- Human Nature:
 Hobbes: negative, humans are selfish who mistrust and care about their appetite
 Creation of severity is necessary to put limits on the selfishness of individuals
- War and Conflict:
 Tempest: Details in the lectures
 Machiavelli: Should be able to win wars
- Morality:
 Hobbes: No sense in making common sense of morality in humans because conceptions
of right and wrong/ good and bad depend on each mind.
 In state of nature they don’t know what is right and wrong, its all relative subjective.
Another reason to have a civil state to create a sense of morality. Only way to make
individuals have the morality (just, courageous…) is by the creation of severity. No
morality without severity.
- Idea of transition:
 From the state of nature to state of civil and society.
 The tempest:
 Transition of Prospero from Milan to Island.
 In the end promise to go back to Milan.