Abstract

In his De Monarchia Dante Alighieri builds the figure of an absolute sovereign, the Emperor. Dante understands the Emperor as the best man. To get to that figure Dante passes before for two moments, each of them is a totality. In the first moment that totality is humanity as a knowing subject; humanity constitutes the figure of the political subject. In the second moment the whole is represented by an institution, the monarchy or empire, a total sovereignty. And in the third moment Dante builds the figure of the Emperor. The Emperor is not an institution, but a person, that is, the visible place of the Monarchical Institution. Dante describes his Emperor as the person in whom total power and a perfect will are concentrated. The Emperor can do everything and always works well, because he lacks passions. Although the problem of passion intensively appears only in the political theory of the Renaissance, in the Middle Ages the passions have a place in political texts. According to Dante, the Emperor is the justest of men, so the passion is totally absent from him and therefore his decisions are absolutely just.