Machiavelli and the Political Humanism of the XVth Century

Abstract

This paper proposes a new interpretive approach to the question of Machiavelli’s relationship with the 15th-century humanist political thinking. On the basis of a terminological and conceptual analysis, the author compares their corresponding attitudes towards some of the fundamental nodes of the language and the political thinking of the time -such as the concept of corpus politicum, in the first place, which takes on a meaning in the Florentine author that is radically different from the traditional one. As a result, whereas Humanism creates a framework for political action in a general sense, Machiavelli proposes instead an analysis of the contingent situation which takes into account the continuous change of the political and social conditions.