Virtù In Machiavelli’s Discourse On Livy

Although Machiavelli is generally regarded as “the founder of modern political philosophy”,he has different,even opposite,portraits in The Prince and Discourse on Livy,from a Machiavllian disseminating evil to the modern speaker of classical republicanism.During at least last five decades,the School of Cambridge fiercely debates with the School of Strauss on these subjects.Machiavelli’s Discourse on Livy is a reading of the first ten books of Livy’s Ab urbe condita in a creative way,from the foundation of Rome city to the Roman history before 292 BCE.In order to understand Machiavelli’s political view,one of the key points is to grasp the meanings of virtù.As we can see,Discourse on Livy is the core text.Machiavelli overthrows the classical meanings of virtue,i.e.,virtue in ancient Greek and Roman period and in Christianity,just because of his reformation on three aspects:skepticism on human nature,alteration theory of time,and secularism of space.Skepticism on human nature means that the real human nature is a mixture of good and evil and even evil constitutes its main part,therefore Machiavelli rejects the classical view of the goodness of human nature.Alteration theory of time means that time always changes and there is not a fixed goal in our history;human beings must adapt to these changes or they will fail in their career.Secularism of space means that Machiavelli rejects the Christian belief of the Holy See;by contrasting this secular world with the kingdom of heaven,he just loves his Italy in this world and denies the existence and value of the coming world.Against the mirror of the growth of Rome,from a kingdom to a republic,and then to an empire,we can divide the meanings of virtù in Discourse on Livy into two sorts.The one sort is in keeping with its classical definition,including moderation,courage,justice,prudence,tenacity,keeping one’s word,no desire for power or fortune and so on.The other sort can called strategy,i.e.,varying with times,including hypocrisy,harshness to soldiers,cheating in military affairs,eating one’s word.All of these is to serve only one goal: peace in the Roman entity and expansionof its borders.