Renascimento e helenismo, demarcação e encontro: Maquiavel perante Cícero e Lucrécio

Abstract

In this work, starting from the resumption of Hellenism by the Renaissance, we seek to expose a theoretical nexus between Machiavelli and Lucretiusʼ Epicureanism, which becomes evident when we consider Machiavelliʼs demarcation in relation to the theoretical position represented by Cicero. We seek to apprehend the desubstantialization of duties, carried out by the Florentine through his category of “riscontro”, in contrast to the Ciceronian conception, supporting that this Machiavellian operation is equivalent, in the dominion of politics, to the desubstantialization of cosmological type we can observe in Lucretiusʼ poem. Keeping this in view, we analyze, respectively, the theoretical interventions of Lucretius, Cicero and Machiavelli for, finally, in light of the conceptual framework that emerges from this analysis, to indicate the aforementioned nexus and the aforementioned demarcation.