Lao Tzu and Machiavelli

While I was reading Thoughts from the Tao-te Ching and Quaalities of the Prince I think I may have gotten rather hung up on trying to determine which modern political philosophy each of these would be most similar to. I don’t think I was really able to successfully match either of these philosophies up to one of the political parties in the United States. The closest that I could come to this would be to say that the philosophies proposed by Lao Tzu in Thoughts from the Tao-te Ching have some similarities with some of those that are looking for a smaller government. I noticed that Lao Tzu often said that it is best to avoid intervening in situations, which is somewhat similar to the idea of limited government that is often talked about today. The closet thing I could come up with for Machiavelli was the caricaturized image of republicans that was often seen on shows like The Daily Show during the time that President Bush was in power.

                As far as my thoughts of the philosophies themselves I felt those of Machiavelli to almost be cynical. Cynical may not be the right word exactly, but he seemed to assume that there was going to at least be a small group of people that would ruin one’s ability to seem like the good guy all the time. I personally liked this way of looking at things much more than what Lao Tzu was proposing. From Lao Tzu I got a much more idealist vibe, which while I often like to think of things in the nice clean way to look at things it is usually not a complete enough view on the way that people really operate. Maybe thinking these things makes me somewhat cynical too (though I’m still not sure that’s the right word again).