The enemy in Art of war: Who is the enemy of the Machiavellian militias?
Abstract
In this essay I propose an approach to the content of Machiavelli's The art of war throughout the question of the enemy: Who is the enemy in The art of war? Who is the adversary of the army that Machiavelli seeks to organize in the book? I identify within the secondary literature on the Florentine three types of response to this question, what I call here three different manifestations of the enemy. According to these readings, the enemy of the Machiavellian militia is a) Christianity, the way of life instituted by this religion; b) the unpredictable, the accidents whose occurrence cannot be anticipated, that is, fortuna, and c) the greats, whose desire is to dominate the people.
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