"Means and Ends"

I took particular interest in the reading “Means and Ends” as I feel, my education for the most part has been taught from the perspective of the end. This Machiavellian point of view I now realize is a much more extreme and violent than I realized in the past when I was first introduced to his ideas in high-school. One could go as far to say that before I started taking this class, I believed that “In fact, rarely is war considered bad at all... but that it is a necessary evil or that is acceptable as a means to some other end.” Peoples beliefs are ever changing, and where as the previous quote would have summed up my views towards war in the past, these following words are much more accurate to my current view. “War is never valued as good in itself; war has no intrinsic value.”

This article opened up what I accepted as a way to get certain results, and while I am necessarily a pacifist, parts of this article appeal more to me now than Machiavelli ever did in the past. For example, “All pacifists regard war as immoral by its nature and go beyond.” Now the question of can violence be justified in certain situations it the question I am constantly going back to. Of course one can always set up a fictional situation where violence can be the only way out, but do many of the real life situations people face daily demand violence to get a just end? As these questions are applied to real life situations I realize more and more that Ferdinand Lassalle had it right when he said, “Show us not the aim without the way/ For ends and means on earth are so entangled/ That changing one you change the other too;/ Each different path brings other ends into view.”