Machiavelli or the modernity of the phenomenon of power (towards a renaissance philosophy of power)

Abstract

Machiavelli, The Prince's author, initiated an specific modernity in political theory: that which privileged eficacy and efectivity in the conquest and conservation of power, or that which privileged technoscience and not the virtues of ancient philosophy. For this very reason, Machiavelli is already far from Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. He is the writer and thinker of civitas hominis. Machiavelli conceives a new world with its lights and shadows. And, of course, with an specifically secular humanism, even with its own contradictions.