Machiavelli: On Power, Freedom and the Use of Time

Since the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, some philosophical questions connected with modernity have taken centre stage again: these relate to power, sovereignty, freedom and moral responsibility; and above all to the importance of the use of time in public life and health issues, something that is closely connected to political organisation. This article goes back to the birth of modernity to see how problems related to these subjects were dealt with by one of its most important thinkers: Machiavelli. The aim is to go beyond the traditional two-dimensional reading that defines him as a ‘Machiavellian’ friend of tyrants and at the same time overcome the contemporary interpretation that he was a champion of republican freedom. Instead, the article detects the temporality of political life, which constantly changes the setting in which we move – meaning we are unable to always trust the same solutions. Machiavelli allows us to understand this time of contingency and opportunity, which we must learn to use in order to take ownership of the sovereign space in which what was not can be.