Abstract (Le couple « patriotisme/armes propres » : le nœud gordien de la liberté politique chez Machiavel)

The trait that can be seen in almost all the political systems is
that the survival of the state cannot be conceived without the no less
important question of its independence. This would explain why the
ancient Greco-Roman states, in particular, considered the relationship of
the state to freedom with the most precious care. For N. Machiavelli, who
is openly situated in this dynamic quest for luminous prestige and the safe
honor of the State, it is only through the diligent and recursive recourse to
dissuasive weapons that the freedom of the State could acquire in a
sustainable way; which freedom is invested in its political agenda as an
exhortation to patriotism, which takes its solid foundations in the mastery
of so-called clean weapons. In the background, the project that the present

exegesis aims to achieve is to demonstrate that the State can certainly only
enjoy its autonomy, through the mastery of a revolutionary military art of
which the Florentine outlines the framework through the Ordinanza of
1506, a kind of militia essentially made up of patriot soldiers, and aimed at
defending the Italian principalities.
Keywords : Auxiliary weapons – Mercenary weapons – Clean weapons –

War – Political freedom – Patriotism

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