Machiavelli thinks:
1, the army and the law are the basis of power. In peacetime, the army plays a role in maintaining social order and symbolizes the military strength of the country; During the war, the army became an important force for the monarch to resist foreign aggression and defend national security.
2. Jun mainly monopolizes power, pays attention to strength and is proficient in military affairs.
The monarch should not be bound by any moral code, only consider whether the effect is favorable or not, regardless of whether the means are harmful or not. He can be kind in appearance and treacherous in heart, or he can imitate foxes and lions and be cunning and cruel.
The monarch can be the enemy of the nobility, but not the enemy of the people.
5. The monarch should pay attention to the reality rather than the hollow reputation. Cruelty and kindness, meanness and generosity should all proceed from reality. A wise king would rather be laughed at by meanness than seek a reputation for generosity. His political thoughts were called machiavellianism by later generations.
The most famous language "in order to achieve a noblest goal, you can use the meanest means".
Legalists believe that:
At the end of the Warring States period, Han Fei, the master of Qin Jin's legalist thoughts, integrated "law", "technique" and "potential", absorbed Taoist thoughts and systematized the theory of rule of law. He advocated strengthening the centralization of monarchy, cutting off private forces, "teaching by law", strictly rewarding and punishing, and rewarding farming. Legalists' theory of rule of law played an important role in the feudal reform during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Even Qin Shihuang unified the six countries and established a centralized and autocratic feudal country, which became the ruling ideology of the Qin Dynasty. After the Western Han Dynasty, the independent legalist school gradually disappeared, and its thought of rule of law was absorbed into the Confucian system. The combination of morality and punishment became a powerful tool to maintain the dictatorship of the landlord class. However, the pre-Qin legalists still had some influence on some later materialists and progressive thinkers.