LA BIOGRAPHIE EN HISTOIRE DES IDÉES POLITIQUES, UN OUTIL SOUS-ESTIMÉ ? LE CAS EXEMPLAIRE DE MACHIAVEL

Abstract

The biography in the history of political ideas, an underestimated tool? The exemplary case of Machiavelli. Writing a biography of Machiavelli, especially an “intellectual” one, orientated towards the history of philosophical thought, is a challenge due to the extent of the documentation available, collected over the centuries. Nevertheless, any analysis of the origins of the Florentine author’s thought using his letters as local government officer, before he was dismissed and wrote the great texts for which he is famous, takes us back to a larger philosophical problem. Indeed, Machiavelli is a precursor of the modern political expert. Such experts are characterized by their classic academic knowledge drawn as much from Antiquity and from Scholasticism as from the everyday political action in which they got literally caught up. From there came the idea of a new way of writing about politics. Machiavelli is the first one to do so, writing in order to give practical, concrete advice to follow in the real world. We define this new way of regarding Machiavelli’s political writing as a “programme”, which his biography helps us to understand more completely.