Machiavelli's separation of Politics from Ethics:
1.The state was not a mean to an end but an end in itself with its own interests and the ruler is a creator of law as also of morality for moral obligations must ultimately be sustained by law.
2.Public and private standards of conduct are different and the state has no ethics.
3.The safety of the state is a supreme law because it is the highest form of association and had a superior claim to a man's obligation.
4.It is wrong for a private individual to kill but it is not wrong for the state to kill by way of punishment for crime because a citizen acts for himself, the state acts for all.
5.Aristotle distinguished ethics from politics but Machiavelli brought a complete divorce between them.
6.Machiavelli is not immoral but unmoral in his politics, to him, that state is good which serves the interests of the individuals and of the community ans which brings security.
7.Machiavelli may be called the founder of UTILITARIAN ethics.
1.Machiavelli did not believe in a supernatural end for man, to him, the church was department of the state and not independent of it.
2.Machiavelli must be re conked as the last of the great line on medieval secularists who urged the subordination of the church to the state.
3.Machiavelli ism has become a by-word for unscrupulousness but we must note that; He wrote on the preservation of the state. He was not irreligious but non-religious.
4.He had more of the Aristotelian than Platonic about him and believed that Ethics and religion and ethics were social force, working within the state, not over it.
Machiavelli Classification of Government:
1.Unsystematic but liked a mixed constitution with proper checks and balances but the balance he thought was of the economic and social forces not political.
2.Inclined towards republican more than a monarchist because it can maintain it institutions and adapt itself to changing environment better than a sentimental prince.
3.Republican system would lead to universal material prosperity and equality of opportunity, enduring and admits liberty.
4.To him, People collectively show better qualities of prudence and judgment and can select officers of better type.
5.Machiavelli chief care was efficiency and realized different type of governments suited different times and places and believed in the cyclical character of the form of government.