History, fortune and conflict in politics

Considerations on Niccolò Machiavelli’s and Francesco Guicciardini’s republican political theory

Abstract

Thinking of the place of fortune in human affairs and, consequently, reflecting on the relationship between history and fortune was one of the tasks that Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540) and Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) set themselves. Before these two speeches, we shall analyze their points of convergence and divergence in an effort to outline how it is possible to establish the political relations. Thus, the aim of this paper is to examine what is the role of history in politics as well as how the conflict is seen in Machiavelli’s and Guicciardini’s republican political theory.