A Comparative Analysis of Different Theories on People in The Meno by Plato and The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

When it comes to being human, Socrates and Machiavelli have two totally opposite opinions. In Plato’s The Meno, he believes being human is something you are born into due to the work of the Goddess Persephone: you are recycled into a new life based on the previous one and everything you know has been learned in your past life. He therefore also strongly disagrees with the idea of man being like a machine. Unlike Socrates, in Machiavelli’s The Prince believes that there is a sharp divide in humans: there are the eaters and the eaten and you have a choice of who you want to be. In other words, Socrates believes that you are who you are because you were born into it while Machiavelli believes that you have a choice of who you want to be in life.

In Machiavelli’s The Prince, and Plato’s The Meno, the discussions of what it is to be human have very different content. Plato describes a vivid depiction on his views of what it is to be human through a story of Persephone. He claims that you are born into a recycled life and that directs you in the current life. Machiavelli on the other hand believes that there is choice in your life and it is not cut and dry like Plato’s definition. Both philosophers offer examples to make sense of their own definition, and in context it makes sense; however neither philosopher can fully answer the question, for they both have valid arguments in the examples they claim.

Plato believe in a life cycle, claiming that, “the soul is immortal and has been born many times and has seen all things both here and in the house of Hades, there is nothing in which it has not learned,” (Meno, 17). In this way, Plato is demonstrating the bulk of his argument of what it is to be human. He describes that there is a soul, and that the soul is what assimilates all things learned. Plato’s idea of a soul in this quote illustrates that nothing is learned, but recollected. This is because the soul has already experienced and learned things in past forms, and in this life the person must recollect all of these things. Socrates then leads the discussion into a concept of fate. He reestablishes that all things have been learned in past life forms and recollection takes place in the current life. Fate works its way into the conversation when he claims that being human in the current life was not by choice. He believes that you must relearn from your past life’s experiences in order to make use of the predetermined life you are currently experiencing.

This is in rebuttal to Meno’s definition that the human is mechanical in nature. Perhaps this would be more convincing to Machiavelli who found some of this pattern to hold true.

Machiavelli best describes two views on human nature when he clarifies two ways of obtaining a principality. He finds that a prince may either acquire his dominion through a bloodline or through obtaining it in some way. He then adds that in the case of the latter, the concept of ‘the eater’ and the ‘eaten’ is present. In other words, the eater represents the prince desiring to control power over others and the eaten represents all of the subjects. This although does not mean that the eaten desire to be command or oppressed, just that they in nature will inevitably meet this treatment. This is found when Machiavelli describes that, “the people desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great, and the great desire to command and oppress the people,” (Machiavelli 38). He is clarifying that the human has individual intention and in the case of the prince, he ‘does’ want to control subjects. On the contrary, the subjects who are the eaten do not wish to be controlled, however their choices lead them to have this happen.

The Prince and The Meno, argue the idea of what it is to be human from two opposite vantage points. Machiavelli finds that there is choice and that humans choose how they want to be treated whether it is by commanding others or obeying commands. Plato describes that humans have a predetermined fate and that all knowledge is recollected. If this were true for Machiavelli, there would be no phenomenon of uprisings and complications regarding the eaten. Plato would find these people to be chosen into a life of humility whereas Machiavelli recognizes that the eaten are people who just do not make the choices to become the eater. The difference in views of the philosophers represents that neither is fully right for they both reinforce their claims with examples.