Machiavelli's The Prince has been widely interpreted as representative of violent and deceptive political behavior. As such, the term Machiavellian must be associated with deviousness, cruelty and power politics. The question of whether or not Machiavelli can be considered a Machiavellian himself is difficult to resolve due to the complexity of the arguments he makes in both The Prince and Discourse. While the former's claims focus more on the individual, namely the "prince", those of the latter describe phenomena on a broader spectrum, relating to human nature and society as a whole. Despite the different emphases in these works, Machiavelli's explanations of his theories of politics, nature, and humans in each are both coherent and intelligible. The difficulty in answering this question of whether or not Machiavelli can be considered Machiavellian therefore does not come from a simple inconsistency in his writing. Instead, the real reason this question is difficult to answer is that Machiavelli himself is reframing what it means to be moral. His assertions indeed represent a departure from classical notions of morality, emanating largely from Aristotelian and Christian foundations, thus invalidating – or at least reframing – the issue at hand. Aristotle offers us a moral philosophy that is no longer centered on the private sphere, but rather gravitates toward the public and political spheres. It is partly for this reason that Machiavelli is often misunderstood as unconditionally supporting violent and deceptive acts. The reality is that Machiavelli should rather be seen as a sort of messenger of his times. Through his works, he represents the middle of paper...... Likewise, the future is not dictated by these external forces; the direction of individual human life and the collective well-being of society is dictated exclusively by humans. New crises, events, alerts or social movements are then all considered new developments on a political and historical timeline. His notion of political history then lends itself to his theory of what constitutes a good leader, particularly with regard to what such a leader would do when reacting to such unforeseen developments: a good leader must learn from the past in order to cope with current circumstances. . Machiavelli views this ability of a leader to anticipate and demonstrate foresight as part of a broader prerequisite for becoming a good leader: virtue; “A leader who cannot foresee adverse consequences before they have time to occur is not truly wise; but few have such wisdom” (The Prince 45).