In Fortuna's Captivities and in Political Bondages: Niccolò Machiavelli's political anthropology

Abstract

Different forms of conceptualizing human beings together with their respective resulting political conceptions are investigated in the corpus of Niccolò Machiavelli. Humans are depicted in these writings through ambivalent images, since they share pessimistic characteristics as well as possibilities for founding a social order, for love of the country and for personal or collective fulfillments. Among enmities, betrayals, simulations, ingratitude and violence, humans are perceived in the midst of the devastating actions of Fortuna, but also for possessing the proper Virtù, i.e., being capable of strength, ambition, will to glory and political calculation in constant combats against social degenerations and corruptions. Living in constant transformations, in several passions and throughout existential contradictions, humans desire more than they can obtain; from the readings of Titus Livius and the recent history of the Italic lands, this Florentine author argues about the existence of two Umori in society that must be satisfied for obtaining and maintaining order.