The Conflict between Ethics and Politics in the Thoughts of Khajeh-Nasiredin Toosi and Niccolo Machiavelli

The study of the relation between ethics and politics and establishment of some sort of interaction between ethical and political theories, is one important scientific issue in the area of political philosophy. Khajeh-Nasiredin Toosi and Niccolo Machiavelli are among the philosophers and politicians who have discussed the modification of the relation between ethics and politics in their philosophical and political studies. Analyzing the stormy and unorganized era of the both thinkers and comparing their ethical and political theories, this article is to show why and how Khajeh-Nasiredin and Machiavelli present their theories with different extremities; idealistic and focused on Islamic and trans-global society by the former and realistic and focused on Italian and global society of his time by the latter. Moreover, inspired by the general approach of Thomas Spragens as well as the hermeneutics, in understanding the internal logic of texts, this article tries to show how these two philosophers reached to different conclusions in their theories.