Considerazioni su Machiavelli e sulla decisione morale

The paper raises some of the foundamental issues of Machiavelli’s thought, focusing on the
challenge that this thought issued to ethics. Consisting of three parts, the paper starts with an inquiry into the misfortune of Machiavelli: as Sasso argues, this does not depend merely on the effects that Il principe, both illuminating and blinding masterpiece, causes on Machiavelli’s work, but rather on the anti-christian character of Machiavelli’s thought. In the second part, Sasso tries to establish the connection between human wickedness, necessity and decline of states. Last but not least, Sasso deals with moral heteronomy in Machiavelli and asserts the impossibility to guarantee the autonomy of morality.