Prima del “Principe repubblicano”. Machiavelli, principato “civile” e repubblica

Abstract

Before the “Principe repubblicano”. Machiavelli, “Civil” Principality and Republic Beginning with an analysis of the ways in which  Machiavelli discusses the terms of “liberty”, “republic” and “principality” in his political works, this contribution demonstrates how some of the content referable to them later characterized the current of thought that can be traced back to the idea of “republican  principality”. In particular, this essay shows how the reuse of certain themes by late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century authors in many cases conceals a process of transposition of famous Machiavellian vocabulary and expressions into political concepts that sometimes significantly diverge from their original and are revealing of the polysemous use of terms from the general political vocabulary of the time.