Political conflicts and republican greatness according to a Machiavelli's approach to the Roman republic

Abstract

The comprehension of the idea of republican liberty drafted by Machiavelli presupposes an analysis of the theory of humors, that is, the opposition of desires that mobilize men in acquiring several goals. According to the Florentine secretary, such dissentions are in the basis of political life, that is not restricted to a dialogic exercise of reason made in a public square, but is born and develops in the clash of opposing poles that need to be well managed. In his work Discourses on the first decade of Titus Livius, Machiavelli perceives that social division is consubstantial with the good republic and it is on the proper conduction of this division that lays the political freedom and the territorial expansion. This article examines the insightful and original way Machiavelli approached this paradoxical relationship among conflicts, freedom and territorial expansion, showing to what extent, for this author, such conflicts can be useful to a republic and all of them can be considered positive.