CHRISTIANE CARDOSO FERREIRA

This thesis aims to demonstrate that passions can be considered foundation in Niccolo Machiavelli's republican thought. In fact, frequent mentions of passions can be seen in his texts, which seems to indicate that political action is closely related to its affectivity. Considering his statement that there is more life in republics – where, therefore, one can observe more hatred, more desire for revenge – because freedom or its memory does not allow passions to rest, the scope of this research was limited to the author's republican work, the Discourses on Livy (Discorsi), with special reference to the “treatise on republics” – the first eighteen chapters which, as a whole, presumably establish the premises of Machiavelli's republican thought. The first chapter of this thesis presents that “treatise”, with the main objective of showing how passions appear inseparable from political actions and practices, as well as from the (re)ordering and corruption of a political regime, of its institutions and the citizens’ ways of life. The second chapter of the thesis presents a study on the use and meanings of the term “passion” in the Discorsi, as well as its meaning in political thought, based on the meanings of pathos in Aristotle and Cicero. Finally, the third chapter demonstrates that certain passions are the foundation of the Florentine author's republican thought. In order to do this, it is necessary to stop considering them simply as means to achieve certain political objectives, and then see them as a foundation in two senses: in terms of origin, principle, cause, reason for being; and in the sense of a condition of possibility for the existence of something. For this purpose, it was necessary to demonstrate, based on the notion of event, how passions gain centrality in Machiavelli's republican thought, and then explain how passions, not by themselves, but in a game of passions, constitute the foundation of the political and of republic, as a political regime and vivere civile.