L' attesa del redentore: il capitolo conclusivo del Principe

Abstract

The paper underlines the political meaning of attesa in the context of prophecy, which is the tone that marks (with a very high rhetoric) the final page of Machiavelli’s Principe. A text that explicitly recalls the model of the Exodus and, implicitly, the figure of Moses; a page crossing a multiple bundle of suggestions, traces of which can be followed along the entire arc of Machiavellian writing, from the earliest testimonies to the great treatises. Ideas and suggestions in which Savonarola and his unfortunate adventure is an ineluctable presence: he tried to transform his word into prophecy, that is, into a political project, aiming to be the construction of a new reality. A long-distance dialogue, that between Machiavelli and the Domenican friar, which while it seems to speak of practical operational issues (the winning action of the ‘armed’ prophet and the unsuccessful action of the ‘disarmed’ prophet) actually proposes a fundamental reflection on the meaning of political action, and on the dramatic relationship between project and realization, between utopia and realism.