Abstract

Machiavelli and the tyranny of time. By addressing the issue of tyranny in political life, this essay aims to subtract Machiavelli to the traditional reading that has flattened his thought as “Machiavellian” and, at the same time, to overcome the contemporary interpretation of him as a “champion” of republican freedom. In Machiavelli’s thought there is rather something tyrannical: the detection of a temporality of the political life constantly changing the scenario in which we move, not allowing us to trust in the same solutions at all times. The real tyranny is therefore that of a thoroughly modern time, the time of contingency and opportunity that we must learn to use, in order to gain the sovereign space in which “what was not, can be”.