This book investigates the influence of Epicurean physics on the
argument developed in Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy. Towards
this end, the full philosophical history and origins of atomist
philosophy are investigated during the first three chapters.
Plato's critique of the atomist philosophy, from his dialogue the
Parmenides, is a part of that investigation. In fact, Plato
provides a refutation of the atomist philosophy in the Parmenides.
A significant amount of scholarship has been accomplished that
demonstrates the currents of Lucretian atomism in Machiavelli's
Florence. Evidence is supplied as to Machiavelli's exposure to the
Lucretian text, and the book then proceeds to investigate the
transformational arguments of the Discourses On Livy itself.
Machiavelli's Discourses are saturated with terminology that is
borrowed from physics: 'materia' (Matter), 'corpo' (body), 'forma'
(form), 'accidente' (accident). English translators have usually
employed some theory as to which tradition of physics Machiavelli
is relying upon, in order to conduct their translations. By
borrowing the terminology of Lucretian physics, Machiavelli becomes
able to conceive of the people in a political society as something
less than human: as 'matter' or materia without form. In my
analysis of Machiavelli's deployment of the concepts from Lucretian
physics, it is attempted to unveil the brutality that is inherent
in Machiavelli's new definitions of the elements of politics, and
the general hostility of his political science to the Aristotelian
concept of the human being as political animal. The classical
physics of Aristotle, which Machiavelli has rejected for a model,
indicates the forward looking momentum of natural beings. For
Aristotle, nature intends human political society as the arena for
human fulfillment. In Aristotelian physics, nature aims at an end
in generation, i.e. at a culmination of the natural being in its
proper condition of excellence. For human beings, this is justice,
the quality of relationships that makes happiness possible. In
Machiavelli, a new politicized physics is revealed. In
Machiavelli's model, the human beings of formed matter are
repeatedly sent, through new institutions and methods of
government, 'back to their beginnings', i.e. to a condition of
isolation, destitution, injury, and pain. The last chapter of the
book concludes with an examination of the particular institutions
and methods that Machiavelli holds out to us for employment, if his
new vision of a republic is to be realized.
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