Poder politico e produção da imagem em Maquiavel: viés interpretativo para uma ética política

Abstract

The present work starts from the classical relation in the philosophy between the ethics and the politics. Our object of analysis will be The Prince of Machiavelli, a work that synthesizes in a specific moment the central point of a critique that already was sketched in previous authors and that is based on the thesis that the policy must be separated from the power of the Church. The problematic is based on the figure of the prince to show how the political action is done amid the immanence of the social body. Our goal is to show that, even if unrelated to traditional morality, politics finds itself with a form of valuation that gives it a kind of responsibility. The figure of the prince is based on the consensual construction between sectors of society, great and people, who evaluate their actions based on effectiveness, such that is referred to by the political theorist as capacity to maintain civilian life. Thus, if politics takes place amid the production of an image that moves away from moral essentialism, it still refers to the terms that dictate the logic of political action. Our intention is justified by the thesis that if, on the one hand, Machiavelli breaks with the moral encoding of previous notions, especially concerning scholasticism, this does not allow us to think of him as a theoretician of villainy, or of the tyrant, but as the one who gives the basis for modern thought as the idea of state reason. For us, it is important to think that Machiavelli lays the foundations for a new way of thinking about the relation of politics, government and the common good, which makes possible the whole tradition of modern contractualism and, moreover, the defense of democracy as an affirmation of dissent once that the antagonistic agents who evaluate the action of the prince are all subject to the government. To support this work we rely on classical Machiavellian interpreters, especially Claude Lefort, but also Norberto Bobbio, Max Weber, Isaiah Berlin and others. Being valid to affirm that there is in Machiavelli a new form of interpretation of ethics in relation to politics, this is only completely outlined in the republican context. The need for institutionalization of virtù, in this way, is linked to history by the necessity of the passage between the monarchy and the republic. From this our conclusion we retain the necessary connection between the two greatest works of the Florentine author, The Prince, directly referred to by us, and the Discorsi.