The desire not to be dominated and the democratic experience in Machiavelli

Abstract

The conflict between the people and the grandi is central to Machiavelli’s work, as the conflicting dynamics between the desire of the people, not to be dominated, and of the grandi, to dominate, orders the social body through the institution of laws and ordinances. In this disunity, Machiavelli recognizes that the people’s desire is more reliable and in accordance with freedom, since it refuses the domination of the grandi and, therefore, does not allow freedom to be usurped. However, although the Florentine highlights the link between the people's desire and freedom, he does not clarify how the people produce laws and ordinances in favor of free life. Thus, to understand how the action of the people reorders the social body according to their desire, we will investigate the dynamics of this mood in its conflict with the great, in chapters 4 and 5 of the first book of Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, and we will then turn to chapter 40 of the first book of this work, as at this moment Machiavelli discusses a reorganization of Rome that opposed the common people and the nobles to understand the extraordinary action of the people and their desire in its dynamics with the desire of the grandi. Our proposal, therefore, is to show how the people reorder the city towards a democratic experience according to their desire not to be dominated.