Machiavelli e l'amore politico

The choice of vernacular language ("volgare") is part of the conceptual rebellion that Machiavelli launches against Tradition. The language of politics is not neutral, nor it is the policy of language. Thus, in parallel to the emergence of vernacular as a scientific language, suitable to convey topics that are not only literary, Latin loses the ideological hegemony that characterized it in the 15th Century, i.e. the authoritativeness that allowed it to be the language of new politics – just like the humanistic project loses the battle on the ground of Realpolitik on a continental scale. This paper investigates Machiavelli’s new understanding of political action, expressed in vernacular in his works, through the analysis of a particularly relevant case: the issue, typical of traditional political theory, of "amor" and "timor" as opposed relationships between the Leader (“il Principe”) and the People.