Machiavelli's Lucreatian view of Free Will

Mario De Caro Machiavelli’s Lucretian view of free will* “Ars simul cum fortuna consentit.” Marsilio Ficino, In dialogum quartum de legibus According to some interpreters, Machiavelli did not offer a consistent treatment of free will, while according to others, he was simply skeptical about that notion. The first interpretation has been defended, notably, by Gennaro Sasso (1987), who has argued that the Secretary did not have sufficient philosophical preparation, and, perhaps, was not even interested in formulating a unitary view of the freedom of the will.1 The second interpretation has been recently proposed, among others, by Vittoria Perrone Compagni (2014), who has given an epistemological twist to it. In her view, Machiavelli thinks we believe in free will only because we cannot understand the infinite series of causes that determine all the events in the world, including our actions (a sort of proto-Spinozian view, then).2 Recently, John Najemy (2014, 1151) has put together these two interpretations, claiming that we do not yet whether Machiavelli held inconsistent ideas regarding human free will or was skeptical altogether about it: It remains an open question whether Machiavelli wrote himself into a contradiction, or whether he intended to show that fortune, as a way of conceptualizing that which cannot be conceptualized, was a dead end, thus preparing the reader for the turn in chapter 26 to redemption governed by historical necessity. However, the thesis that Machiavelli denied free will altogether encounters a big problem, since it is difficult to see how it can be reconciled with several passages in which the Secretary explicitly states that, in determinate conditions, humans enjoy free will. Well-known, in this sense, is a passage in book XXV of The Prince (98): “I judge that it might be true that fortune is arbiter of half of our actions, but also that she leaves the other half, or close to it, for us to govern.”3 In this light, one may be tempted to accept the alternative interpretation – that, regarding free will, Machiavelli was simply confused, and * To be published in V. Prosperi & D. Zucca (eds.), Lucretius Poet and Philosopher. Background and Fortunes of the De Rerum Natura, De Gruyter, Berlin forthcoming. 1 Sasso 1987, II, 119-163, 277-349. Perrone Compagni 2014. 3 “Iudico potere essere vero che la fortuna sia arbitra della metà delle azioni nostre, ma che etiam lei ne lasci governare l’altra metà, o presso, a noi”, Italian original, 162-163. 2 1 could not avoid falling into contradiction. Things are not so easy, however, as we will see. A good way of posing the issue of free will in Machiavelli is to present it as an antinomy. On the one hand, there is the thesis that, in determinate conditions, there are good reasons for thinking that humans have free will. On the other hand, there is the antithesis, according to which free will is not real. In this light, one can wonder whether Machiavelli’s writings present a solution to this antinomy, or if, as many claim, he remained embroiled in an unsolved aporia. In this article, it will be argued that, even if he was sometimes hesitant and ambiguous in some of his formulations, Machiavelli believed that the world is not entirely governed by necessity, and that there are cases in which humans can in fact exercise free will. I. Machiavelli’s antinomy of free will As said, Machiavelli sometimes argued for the reality of free will (for about half of human action), but he often also seems to take the opposite position. In Machiavelli’s writings, the antithesis of the antinomy (i.e., the argument against free will) is presented in several slightly different ways depending on which of the factors that threaten free will is under discussion. Machiavelli considered four such factors: (i) divine providence; (ii) fortune; (iii) astrological influences; (iv) historical-anthropological conditioning. Often, in the history of thought, these factors have been seen as forms of comprehensive determinism in regards to the human world – that is, they have been seen as necessitating all human choices and actions. Let us then see how Machiavelli presented these factors in order to understand if any conceptual space remains for free will. (i) Divine providence. The relationship between divine providence and free will is, notoriously, the focus of one of the most important debates in theology. Patristic and scholastic philosophers (such as Augustine, Boethius, Aquinas, and Duns Scotus) debated endlessly about how God’s prerogatives could be reconciled with the then unquestionable theological truth that God gave us free will as a gift.4 During the humanistic period the issue was presented in new ways5 due to the emphasis given to human dignity, as is most clearly shown by Pico della Mirandola’s De dignitate hominis, with its thesis that man is the miracle of creation since, by using his free will, he can intentionally lower himself to the condition of the beasts, 4 5 Cf. Lettieri 2014; Porro 2104a e 2014b. Cf. Poppi 1988; Ramberti 2014. 2 or raise himself to the height of the angels. In the same period, however, other thinkers delivered aporetic responses to the question of free will, most notably, Lorenzo Valla who, in his De libero arbitrio (1440ca.), a dialogue that remained famous for centuries, suggested the epistemic impossibility for humans to solve the mystery of free will. Finally, other philosophers and theologians denied the same possibility of free will altogether, such as Pietro Pomponazzi, in De fato, de libero arbitrio et de praedestinatione, and Martin Luther in De servo arbitrio, works written in 1520 and 1525 respectively, when Machiavelli was still alive (even if De fato was published posthumously in 1557). In Machiavelli’s writings one can find many references to God’s providential prerogatives. For example, in The Prince (1513, VI, 22), one reads that even though Moses was “a mere executor of things that had been ordered for him by God”;6 and, in chapter XI (45), that ecclesiastical principalities are “exalted and maintained by God”.7 In these passages, and in others, Machiavelli seems to suggest that there are actually interventions of divine providence in the world – and, if so, that human free will would be very limited, if not wiped out altogether. In other passages, God is mentioned as a part of a hendiadys, coupled with the term “fortune” (“Dio o la fortuna”): a not uncommon and very meaningful coupling in the Renaissance. For example, in The Prince, XXV (98), he writes: “It is not unknown to me that many have held and hold the opinion that worldly things are so governed by fortune and by God”,8 while in the Florentine Histories (1520-1525/1988) he claims: “They exercised power for themselves without any hesitation and so conducted themselves that it appeared that God and fortune had given them that city in prey” (VII, 22, 300)9 and “Lorenzo was loved by fortune and by God in highest degree” (VIII, 36, 362).10 (ii) Fortune In Machiavelli’s writings there are many other references to fortune besides the above-mentioned hendiadys with the term ‘God’.11 In particular, two of his early works, both composed in 1506, Ghiribizzi to Soderini (where he writes that “Fortune is fickle, controlling men and keeping them under her yoke”)12 and the short poem Of fortune are dedicated to this theme. Moreover in many other works 6 “Uno mero executore delle cose che gli erano ordinate da Dio”, still he “debbe essere admirato solum per quella grazia che lo facevad degno di parlare con Dio”, Italian original, 161. 7 “[E]xaltati e mantenuti da Dio”, Italian original, 230. 8 “E’ non mi è incognito come molti hanno avuto et hanno opinione che le cose del mondo sieno in modo governate dalla fortuna e da Dio”, Italian original, 72. 9 “La qual potenza senza alcun rispetto esercitavano, ed in modo si governavano, che pareva che Dio e la fortuna avesse data loro quella città in preda”, Italian original, 21. 10 “Fu dalla fortuna e da Dio sommamente amato”, Italian original, 160. 11 On the theme of fortune, seen as a threat to freedom, cf. Wind (1961). 12 “La Fortuna varia et comanda ad li huomini, et tiègli sotto el giogo suo”, Italian original, 137. 3 by Machiavelli the issue of fortune is discussed or mentioned, particularly in The Discourses on Livy (1519), The Ass (1517), The Mandrake (1518), and Florentine Histories (1525). The most important examination of the question of fortune, however, is The Prince and, more specifically, in its most famous chapter (XVIII, 101), where Machiavelli writes that the prince has to take “I conclude, thus, that when fortune varies and men remain obstinate in their modes, men are happy while they are in accord, and as they come into discord, unhappy”.13 One may be tempted to interpret passages like this as if Machiavelli is recommending the prince to favor fortune as long as it is impossible for him to modify its decrees – a kind of amor fati, which one may be tempted to read as an utter denial of the possibility of free will. As we will see, however, this lectio facilior is not the correct one. (iii) Astrological influences In Machiavelli’s writings one can find many references to astrological influences. In the Ghiribizzi (1506/1996, 135), for example, Machiavelli claims that one who could read and favor planetary influxes should be considered master of the stars (as if that person “could control the stars and the Fates”).14 It is interesting to mention here a letter sent by Machiavelli, in his capacity as Secretary of the Florentine Republic, to the astrologer Lattanzio Tedaldi on June 5, 1509, asking him to determine, on the basis of the zodiacal configuration, the best moment for taking possession of Pisa, which had surrendered to Florence. (Tedaldi responded that Pisa had to be taken on the following Thursday, between 7:30AM and 8:30AM).15 Another interesting clue to Machiavelli’s deep involvement in astrology is offered by Luigi Guicciardini, brother of Francesco and a personal friend of Machiavelli, who around 1533 (few years after Machiavelli’s death, then) wrote a philosophical dialogue, in which a character named Niccolò (certainly modeled after Machiavelli) gets involved in a discussion in which he defends the idea of the relevance of astrological conditioning: “I cannot believe that Justice, Chastity, Liberality and many other admirable virtues, which many famous men… have shown, do not depend upon the sky. And the same is true of Pride, Cruelty, Luxury, Avarice and the other shameful vices”.16 There are no serious doubts that Machiavelli was deeply involved in astrology; and, for this reason, Graham Lock has claimed that we should consider Machiavelli to be less modern 13 “Uno animo disposto a volgersi secondo che e’ venti della fortuna e la variazione delle cose li comandano”, Italian original, 15. 14 “[C]omandasse alle stelle e a’ fati”, Italian original, 137. 15 Unger 2011, 172. 16 Quoted in Gilbert 1937, 164. Italian original: “Non mi posso persuadere, come la Justitia, la Castità, la Liberalità et molte altre mirabili virtù, quali in molti famosi huomini… si sono comprese, non dependino dal cielo. Et similmente la Superbia, la Crudeltà, la Luxuria, la Avaritia et li altri vituperosi vitii”, ibid. 4 than Girolamo Savonarola, since the latter had categorically refused astrology (as was done also by Pico della Mirandola).17 At any rate, considering all these elements, it may seem that in Machiavelli’s view astrological influences should seriously threaten free will. (iv) Historical-anthropological conditioning The last form of human conditioning Machiavelli deals with is the result of the intersection of historical and anthropological factors. In particular, he accepts Polybius’s idea of anacyclosis, a cyclical theory of political evolution. To this classic thesis, Machiavelli adds an anthropological claim: human nature is immutable, since the same passions keep moving humans to action across the ages. In the Ghiribizzi (1506/1996), he writes: “because times and affairs often change – both in general and in particular – and because men change neither their imaginations nor their ways of doing things accordingly, it turns out that a man has good fortune at one time and bad fortune at another”.18 Analogously, in the Discourses (I, 12, 36) he asserts: “men are born, live, and die always in one and the same order.”19 From the thesis that the interconnection of historical and anthropological factors is never entirely new, Machiavelli concludes that there are never any real novelties in the world. This is also why princes, or would-be princes, should meditate on the lessons of history, and become aware that the limited opportunities that open in front of them, from time to time, are mere repetitions of the past. In this regard Machiavelli writes in the Discourses (1512, III, 43, 302): Prudent men are accustomed to say, and not by chance or without merit, that whoever wishes to see what has to be considers what has been; for all worldly things in every time have their own counterpart in ancient times. That arises because these are the work of men, who have and always had the same passions, and they must of necessity result in the same effect.20 The anthropological invariants, combined with the constant repetition of the historical context, appear to make it impossible that anything substantially new ever appears. Once again, one may be tempted to conclude that, for Machiavelli, free will is doomed. This conclusion, however, would be 17 Lock 2008. “[M]a perché e tempi e le cose universalmente e particularmente si mutano spesso, e li uomini non mutono le loro fantasie né e loro modi di procedere, accade che uno ha un tempo buona fortuna et uno tempo trista”, Italian original, 137. 19 “Gli uomini… nacquero, vissero e morirono sempre con uno medesimo ordine”, Italian original, 83. 20 “Sogliono dire gli uomini prudenti, e non a caso né immeritamente, che chi vuole vedere quello che ha a essere, consideri quello che è stato: perché tutte le cose del mondo in ogni tempo hanno il proprio riscontro con gli antichi tempi. Il che nasce perché essendo quelle operate dagli uomini, che hanno ed ebbono sempre le medesime passioni, conviene di necessità che sortischino il medesimo effetto”, Italian original, 768. 18 5 wrong both in this and in the previous cases. II. A dissolution of the antinomy Before we delve deeper into these issues, it should be noted that Machiavelli’s hesitation in addressing the theoretical question of the fortune-virtue relation is partially justifiable for two reasons. First, the problem of free will is objectively one of extreme complexity, and, in this respect, we may again mention the aporetical conclusion of the eponymous dialogue of Lorenzo Valla (1440a), which was the main contribution of the early Renaissance to this issue, and which Leibniz still praised as a philosophical masterpiece. Or, going forward in time, we can recall David Hume’s (1748/1975, 95) famous statement that the question of free will is the most complex problem that thought has ever been faced with, or, in our own time, we may think of Thomas Nagel’s disconsolate statement, that the discussion on free will “is a case where nothing believable has (to my knowledge) been proposed by anyone in the extensive public discussion of the subject.”21 Finally, it must be noted that the main focus of Machiavelli’s investigation was not metaphysical but political. What mattered most to him was not the metaphysical issue, but its practical consequences with respect to human choice and action. With all this, it should be noted that Machiavelli was well aware of the unavoidability of the question of free will when investigating the nature of political action. Why should one try to persuade those who aim at succeeding politically that they should act in this or that manner, if there was no possibility for them to choose or to act freely? And why should one endeavor to overcome the obstacles placed in one’s way, if it were impossible to orient our own destiny? This is why, in chapter XXV of The Prince, Machiavelli explicitly maintains that the exercise of free will is possible. His aim is to convince the virtuous prince that it is up to him to undertake the noblest political action described in the next and final chapter of the book: freeing Italy from the “barbarians” and unifying it. However, the consistency of Machiavelli’s conception is not obvious, since one must still prove that the factors that in his theoretical framework are thought to condition human choices and actions are not mortal threats to free will. In short, one has to show that his conception is not contradictory, as many of his interpreters instead believe. The first thing to notice is that, despite appearances, none of the above-mentioned factors represent, in themselves, an insurmountable obstacle for the advocates of free will. As is well known, in the course of history many philosophers (such as the Stoics, most of the Scholastics, Locke, Leibniz, 21 Nagel 1986, 119-20. 6 Hume, and onward, up to Davidson and Dennett)22 have defended the view called “compatibilism”, according to which free will is compatible with determinism – or even requires it. However, as we will see below, the spirit of compatibilism is wholly alien to Machiavelli’s philosophical sensibilities, since he belongs to the so-called “libertarian” tradition for which the exercise of free will requires indeterminism. But, before discussing this component of Machiavelli’s conception, we have to return to his treatment of the above-mentioned factors that threaten free will, in order to understand how he granted them relevance without interpreting them as completely determining human choices and actions. i. Divine providence. Concerning the references to divine providence in Machiavelli’s writings, it is clear that they tend to have a rhetorical or prudential tone. There are few doubts that Machiavelli’s religious ideas were very heterodox (he may have been agnostic, if not atheist).23 In this regard, it suffices to repeat a famous comment by Francesco Guicciardini, in a letter to Machiavelli (1521/2016, 23), about the hypothesis Niccolò, then fifty-two years old, should begin worrying about religious things. Guicciardini wrote: “your honor … would be stained if at this age you started to think about your soul… because, since you have always lived in a contrary belief, it would be attributed rather to senility that to goodness.”24 Machiavelli’s interest in religion was intense, but also quite instrumental in the sense that he saw it as a crucial factor in the formation of civic pride.25 In short, he had a political interest, but there was no sincere spiritual inspiration in him.26 In this light, the problem is how to explain the flood of references to providence that Machiavelli disseminates in his writings. In this regard, it will be enough to recall a convincing claim by Gennaro Sasso: “Should we be surprised that Machiavelli – who was so unwilling to believe in God – was also so able to exploit so well the Christian conception of providence, when that was required by political 22 See Bobzien 1998; De Caro/Mori/Spinelli (eds.) 2014; Kane (ed.) 20112, part IV. According to Bausi 2005, 319-20, and Viroli 2005, Machiavelli was a Christian, albeit unorthodox. However, in the preface to the English edition of his book 2010, xiii-xiv, Viroli considerably (and plausibly) moderates his earlier interpretation. 24 “Perche, avendo sempre vivuto con contraria professione, sarebbe attribuito piutosto al rimbambito che al buono”, Italian original, 371. 25 In this regard we can mention the famous judgment expressed in the Discourses (i, 12), in which the Church is seen as the cause of the failed unification of Italy, as neither strong enough to subdue the whole country nor weak enough to allow others to do so. 26 That the Machiavellian vision is not attributable to Catholicism clearly emerges, for example, from the Discourses (II, 5): albeit with their elliptical defense of Aristotelian thesis of the eternity of the world, they certainly cannot be integrated into Christian theology; cf. Biasiori 2018. On Machiavelli’s “completa irreligiosità”, see also Pedullà 2013, LXX-LXXIV. 23 7 reasons?”27 The reference to God’s providence was an almost inescapable topos in the culture of Machiavelli’s time (and remained so for much longer, as proved by the religious references of thinkers tending to atheism like Hobbes and Hume). That Machiavelli’s references to providence should not be taken literally is also suggested by the fact that, as I have mentioned, he also uses the hendiadys “fortune and God,” in which natural and providentialistic determinism are combined. Taken literally, the pair of concepts would be incongruous because fortune has no providentialistic connotations. The correct interpretation, however, is that, from the semantic point of view, the hendiadys is completely unbalanced on the side of fortune – that is, on the naturalistic side. According to Machiavelli, then, divine providence does not play any real role among the factors affecting human affairs. (ii) Fortune In the context of Machiavelli’s thought, the conditioning put on us by fortune is a much more serious (even if non-conclusive) threat to free will than divine providence. As just said, the term “fortune”, as used by Machiavelli, is to be interpreted in a naturalistic sense. However, it would be wrong to confuse his naturalism with the naturalism of the following century, which was centered on the idea that nature is ubiquitously ruled by the deterministic laws of physics. Machiavelli’s mind, though cutting-edge for his time, was still the mind of a Renaissance man with no idea of the mechanistic world and the deterministic laws of physics. Even so, for Machiavelli often the influence of fortune does not permit the exercise of free will, even for the most virtuous men; sometimes, though, it leaves precious spaces of contingency (the “occasioni”) for whoever is able to grasp them: As one examines their [the founders’ of kingdoms] actions and lives, one does not see that they had anything else from fortune that then opportunity, which gave them the matter enabling them to introduce any form they pleased; without that opportunity their virtue of spirit would have been eliminated, and without that virtue the opportunity would have come in vain. (1513/1998, VI, 23)28 In principle, this could be enough to rescue free will from the threat of the conditioning factors since, in order to defend free will, it is sufficient to show that we are able to exercise it sometimes – 27 Sasso 1987, II, 288. “Ed examinando le azioni, e vita loro, non si vedrà che quelli avessino altro dalla fortuna, che l’occasione, la quale dette loro materia di potervi introdurre quella forma che a lor parse; e senza quella occasione la virtù dell’animo loro si saria spenta, e senza quella virtù l’occasione sarebbe venuta invano”; Italian original, 161-162. 28 8 given that it is obvious that nobody is able to exercise it all the time.29 However, if in this way we may answer the question of whether we have we have free will, another important question is still left unanswered – how exactly fortune can leave room for our exercise of free will. In order to answer this question we have to understand what fortune is for Machiavelli. We know that for him fortune is different from theological providence, stoic fate, and physical determinism. This is because, for Machiavelli, fortune incorporates the influences played on humans by astral and meta-historical factors. Let’s analyze them in turn. (iii) Astrological influences As said, Lock argued that, in accepting astrology, Machiavelli was less modern than Savonarola, who categorically refused it.30 Lock’s remark, however, is deeply wrong for two reasons. In the first place, as is clear in the analogous case of Pomponazzi (1520/2004), in Machiavelli, the reference to astrology is an expression of secularization, as celestial influences are in fact natural influences, since they are not governed by celestial intelligences. Second, while believing in astral influences, Machiavelli does not interpret them in a deterministic sense, which is how people have traditionally thought of astrology as a menace to free will. Rather, Machiavelli is a proponent of the interpretation according to which “astra inclinant non necessitant.” And that view was not uncommon at all in Renaissance Florence: for example, Marsilio Ficino (1477/1999, 97) had written that “The soul will dominate the body, moving it in order to be able to accommodate, but also to reject, the inclination that is impressed in the body by the sky”.31 (iv) Historical-anthropological conditioning The last threat to Machiavellian free will is represented by the constraints put on our choices and actions by nature and history. As is well known, in support of his naturalistic political anthropology Machiavelli used the study of the “effettuale”, i.e. the concrete reality of the human world, which can be understood by reflecting upon the examples offered by history, from the most remote myths of antiquity to the Roman Republic, from the great events of ancient Eastern-Asian history – mediated by Greek historiography – to his own confused times. There he found that the lessons of the past were guaranteed to apply to the present at the meta-historical level, more specifically, in a classic Polybian 29 For a presentation of the issue in contemporary terms, cf. van Inwagen (1994). According to van Inwagen (arguably the world’s foremost authority on the matter), we are able to exercise our free will only very rarely. 30 Lock 2008. 31 On the conceptions of astrology in the Renaissance, cf. Ernst/Giglioni (eds.) 2012. 9 cyclical conception of history revisited with modern eyes. Where Polybius believed in a substantial meta-historical determinism that left no freedom of action to humans, Machiavelli thought that the cyclicity of the forms of government was not tied to a deterministic conception of history, but to a secularized view, in which freedom and the contingencies on which freedom is based play a decisive role. In this way, Machiavelli took up an important theme common in Renaissance culture but not in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, fortune was personified as a “royal figure, dressed and crowned, who holds a wheels to which four men are bound, who are doomed to repeat perennial courses and recourses” – a view that was summarized with the formula regnabo, regno, regnavi, sum sine regno.32 In this regard, fortune produced an inevitable and complete meta-historical determinism not even princes could escape. During the Renaissance a new idea of fortune emerged. Recall the famous emblem of the Rucellai family, which represented fortune as a half-naked woman standing on a boat and supporting the sail inflated by the wind.33 This image suggests that in the Renaissance, the idea of fortune was inextricably linked to that of “occasione” – i.e. the opportunities that were offered to humans for shaping their own destiny out of their free will, without being determined.34 So, it is easy to understand why, according to Machiavelli, man’s virtue can oppose the cyclical and necessitating dynamics of history. This “virtue”, however, has neither the theological nature of Christian free will nor the moral character of Aristotelian areté. It is to be understood, rather, as the ability for human beings to act freely with political purposes. In this context, chapter 25 (98) of The Prince explicitly denies that “wordly things are so governed by fortune and by God, that men cannot correct them with their prudence, indeed that they have no remedy at all”.35 In looking at human affairs, Machiavelli is aware that contingency plays a crucial role, and cannot be eliminated. Because of this, he argues that the role of virtue – that is, the correct use of human freedom in its political valence – is roughly equal to the role played by fortune. Therefore, political action, insofar as it lies within the realm of contingency, is not hetero-determined, but constitutionally autonomous, i.e. it follows rules that can’t be drawn from any other field. And this is the reason why, for Machiavelli, political action can only be investigated iuxta propria principia, without ethical or religious interferences. Thus, we can finally understand the meaning of the famous claim of chapter XXV of the The Prince regarding the equal weight virtue and fortune have in human 32 Nova 1980, 52, fn. 29. In the new iconography of fortune, the lesson of Ficino was influential: see Wind 1961; see also Buttay-Juties 2008. 34 Kiefer 1979, 1-27. 35 “Le cose del mondo sieno governate da la fortuna e da Dio, che li uomini con la prudenza loro non possino correggerle, anzi non vi abbino rimedio alcuno”, Italian original, 161-162. 33 10 affairs. The “ordinata virtù” – historically aware of the laws of political action, so as to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the circumstances – is in fact able to take precedence over fortune and orient the course of events. It is in this sense, then, that one must interpret the infamous saying “fortune is a woman; and it is necessary, if one wants to hold her down, to beat her and strike her down.”36 III. Machiavelli and Lucretius In the preceding, we have seen that Machiavelli subscribes to the libertarian view, according to which free will requires indeterminism. We then noted that, for him, none of the factors that allegedly make indeterminism, and consequently libertarian free will, impossible (divine providence, fortune, astrological influences and historical conditioning) is completely pervasive, or, to say it differently, none of those factors produce a scenario in which all events (including all human actions) are necessitated. From this it follows that in Machiavelli’s world some windows of indeterminism – that is, contingency – are available, in which free will can be exercised. The last question to address is how, according to Machiavelli, these windows of indeterminism are generated. The correct answer to this question, I believe, is that Machiavelli’s treatment of free will is indebted to the Epicurean-Lucretian view in which spaces of contingency open up – thanks to deviations of atoms from their course – and pave the way for the exercise of free will by human beings. It is a recent historiographical acquisition that the themes of the Epicurean-Lucretian tradition had considerable importance in the culture of the Florentine Renaissance, even though they were often left implicit for reasons of opportunity. In particular, with respect to Machiavelli, the first crucial contributions were offered by C.E. Finch (1960) and Sergio Bertelli (1961) (who discovered and studied the full hand-made copy made by Machiavelli of the De rerum natura, with his own marginalia) and by Gennaro Sasso (1987) (who studied the influence of the early atomists on the thought of the Chancellor). The most influential contribution regarding the influence the EpicureanLucretian view had on Machiavelli has, more recently, been offered by Alison Brown, who has explored, with great accuracy, the intellectual framework of the Florentine Chancery in the figures of Bartolomeo Scala, Marcello Adriani, who directed it, and Niccolò Machiavelli, who was its most famous secretary.37 This perspective of study is fruitful because, unlike other figures of the Florentine 36 “[L]a fortuna e donna ed e necessario, volendola tenere sotto, batterla e urtarla”, Italian original, 167. See also Brown 1979; 2001; 2010. Other interpreters who stress the importance of Lucretius for Machiavelli or, more generally, for Florentine humanists are Del Lucchese 2002, Rahe 2007, Morfino 2011, Roecklein 2012, 37 11 Renaissance (from Ficino to Poliziano), the intellectuals centered around the Chancery, since they were not members of the clergy, could have more freedom of expression concerning the galaxy of heterodox, and potentially heretical, themes contained in Lucretius’ masterpiece brought to light by Poggio Bracciolini in 1417. However, the fact that the intellectuals of the Chancery enjoyed greater freedom than their ecclesiastical colleagues does not mean that they could act without caution. The ecclesial and academic orthodoxy, in fact, looked at the Epicurean-Lucretian tradition with a growing suspicion that, in the sixteenth century, turned into open hostility, and not without reason, since it was the most important pre-Christian naturalist tradition. It was interpreted thus by less aligned Renaissance thinkers, who used it in opposition to the neo-Platonic and Aristotelian views, which could be far more easily incorporated into the Catholic Weltanschauung. Machiavelli could read, in Marullo’s version of De Rerum Natura, that the universe is made up of atoms that – through random deviations from their straight motion that break the chain of causes– are sometimes brought together to form worlds and living beings, and ensure that the will of humans can escape natural determination: “libera [...] fatis avulsa voluntas” (De Rer. Nat., ii, 256-257). Moreover, in the context of Epicurean-Lucreatian philosophy, the gods, even if they do exist, are not interested in human affairs. There is no such thing as the survival of the individual soul, and morality has a hedonistic nature. Such ideas were certainly unorthodox, if not utterly heretical, in Renaissance culture. It is not surprising, therefore, that Machiavelli never mentions either Epicurus or Lucretius. And, in confirmation of the idea that such silence should be explained by caution due to the general intellectual atmosphere, recall that in 1513 – the year in which Machiavelli wrote The Prince and started to work on the Discourses – the fifth Lateran Council condemned the denial of the immortality of the individual soul proper to both Averroism and, indeed, Epicureanism. And, if that were not enough, one can also recall that Machiavelli was also facing the problem that the head of that Council was Pope Leo X de’ Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, i.e., the most influential living member of the dynasty whose favor Machiavelli was desperately trying to get back by writing The Prince. As shown by Brown, the intellectuals of the Chancery, and especially Machiavelli, wrote and worked when the Epicurean-Lucretian tradition was perceived as a serious threat to orthodoxy. 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