Founding and maintaining civic order through the fortuna-virtù pair in Niccolò Machiavelli

Abstract

Eminent critical evaluations on Machiavelli's thought discuss the Fortuna-Virtù pair. Even though such terms share well-known origins and traditions throughout Latin literary historiography, especially ancient and medieval receptions during civic humanism, their elusive features persist in Machiavelli´s arguments, enabling numerous academic debates. While the idea of Virtù maintain its ambivalence and ambiguity throughout these relevant and varied textual evidences, continual pursuits for clarification are made throughout the Florentine secretary's corpus, associating the term with other important and central concepts, e.g., desiderio, stato, forza. Political instabilities, forces beyond human control, unpredictability of civil actions are recurring themes in Machiavelli's conceptions of Fortune. In open dialogue with civic humanists who emphasize a crescent political and social participation, blending rational reflections, moral consideration, as well as discussions about different forms of regimes, this author exposes a historiographical conception, reinvigorating ancient traditions, in the creation of a civil order. This demands Virtù, a personal and public commitment in the exaltation of human potentialities and limits. Reinserting the relevance of a parity between Fortuna and Virtù in Machiavelli is a relevant step for avoiding anachronistic readings. Thus, the most significant examples of civic founders and maintainers of civic order are investigated, e.g., Romulo, Numa, Moses, Cesare Borgia, Castruccio Castracani. By studying the images of Fortune, in face of Machiavelli´s political and anthropological conceptions, the argumentative development of some main ideas of this famous political thinker sustains the centrality of the Virtù-Fortuna dyad.