Carlo Illuminati Porcari (University of Calgary)

This paper aims to clarify three key issues of the political praxis, which Machiavelli considers the most difficult and risky human activity: because of both the intellectual capacity to establish an adequate plan for power and the valour required to achieve it. The term that unites the two capacities is virtù, which in ancient Italian retained the sense of the Roman virtus, more suited to military valour than moral virtue. Each of the key themes hinges on a relationship:

1. between political virtue and fortune or chance;
2. between that virtue and the virtues and vices of the ancient and Christian tradition, i.e., between good and evil;
3. between the citizens’ desire for freedom and the existential energy of their republic.