Although repeated attempts have been made over the last half-century to make sense of Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy as an exposition of classical republicanism, such endeavours are bound to fail. After all, Machiavelli rejected the teleology underpinning the discursive republicanism of the ancients, and his understanding of the ends pursued by republics was profoundly at odds with the understanding predominant in ancient Greece and Rome. If he had a classical mentor, it cannot, then, have been Aristotle or Cicero or one (...) of the ancient historians. If he had such a mentor, it was surely Lucretius, the leading Roman critic of ancient political idealism--a figure so important to the Florentine that in the late 1490s he copied by hand in its entirety De rerum natura and that he drew on it throughout his subsequent career. Machiavelli's republicanism is best understood as an appropriation, critique and reworking of ancient Epicureanism. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to understand some aspects of the Machiavelli's republicanism granting attention to his theory of the umori. More specifically, my purpose can be summarized as understanding the nature of the "desire of the people" and its role in the political life. The main hypothesis of this work is that the function that Machiavelli attributes to the people, the guardian of the freedom, demands, for its execution, the active participation of the citizen in the civic tasks, (...) that is, his inscription in the public space as a political agent. That inscription cannot be understood entirely if the desire that characterizes the people lacks of any determination, that is, if it be only taken in a negative perspective.O objetivo do artigo é compreender alguns aspectos do republicanismo de Maquiavel concedendo atenção à sua teoria dos humores. Mais especificamente, trata-se de entender qual a natureza do desejo do povo e seu papel na vida política. A principal hipótese deste trabalho é a de que a função que Maquiavel atribui ao povo, o guardião da liberdade, exige, para seu cumprimento, a participação ativa do cidadão nos afazeres cívicos, isto é, sua inscrição no espaço público como agente político. Essa inscrição não pode ser inteiramente compreendida se o desejo que caracteriza o povo carecer de qualquer determinação, isto é, se for tomado somente em uma perspectiva negativa. (shrink)