The praise of “tumults” in Machiavel’s political theory

Abstract

Among the key issues that structure Machiavelli’s political philosophy observed in the Discourses on the first ten books of Titus Livy, there is, on the one hand, the florentine secretary directly confronting the political reflections raised by the greeks, romans and civic humanists about the value of concord in the political scope. And, on the other hand, in promoting this confrontation in relation to the disseminated idea of concord, presents the defense, right in the first chapters, of a thesis destined to generate a lot of uproar, namely, that “the disunity between the commoners and the senate roman made the Roman republic free and powerful” (Discourses, I, 4). It is one of the most illustrious and original theses of Machiavelli’s but at the same time one of the most controversial within the panorama of the history of political thought. In this sense, Machiavelli disseminates a political theory in which the existence of “tumults” is inscribed as a result of the political form with the greatest capacity to maintain the virtù of the republic. In fact, Machiavelli’s thought praises the political form that causes conflict. Basead on this observation, this article intends to: analyze some aspects of Machiavelli’s political theory, which opposes the notion of civic concord; value the issue of Roman “tumults” and understand how they fit into the orbit of the aforementioned theory.