'Machiavellian Democracy' Against Republicanism: in the Light of Machiavelli's Philosophy of Life

Niccolò Machiavelli is the thinker of insecuritas. The philosophy of precariousness that he held was one that is tragic in different, even contradictory, senses. On the one hand, Machiavelli was convinced that all things are in motion and cannot stay steady. So, they must either rise or fall. In this sense, decay is inevitable. At the same time, the vision of the inevitability of decay is paradoxical for if everything is precarious, decay too must be so. We are left with a philosophy of precariousness centered upon decay’s inevitability in which decay itself logically escapes the hammer of precariousness. On these grounds we address and answer the question of whether Machiavelli can be seen as a forerunner of democracy and populism, and whether his thought can be taken as a model for the consolidation of popular government.