MAQUIAVEL E AS COISAS DO MUNDO

O LUGAR DAS PAIXÕES

Abstract

In different texts, Machiavelli refers to the "things of the world" and the effective truth of the thing (verità effettuale della cosa), developing a political thought based on reality. Authors relate Machiavelli's realist philosophy not only to his object of study, politics, but to the relentlessness of his historical time, whose unpredictable events forced the emergence of new analyses and a new way of thinking. The inexorability of contingency on the Florentine secretary's thought justifies the observation that he places experience at the center of his analysis, advocating for a methodological approach to reality. Machiavelli's supposed new method of analysis, however, does not abandon the Ancients: historical examples are indispensable in his thinking. How is it possible to reconcile historical examples from antiquity and the experience of the real lived in the present to predict the future? This text intends to reflect on what Machiavelli understands about the "things of the world" and to understand how it is possible to articulate the experiences recorded and presented by ancient authors with the realistic method of placing these things of the world and the experience of now, of the present, at the center of analysis. We will show that human passions are at the center of Machiavellian analysis and are what allows linking past, present, and future in his political calculation.