Dissertation Defense: Federico Perico
Candidate: Federico Perico
Major: Government
Advisor: Shannon Stimson, Ph.D.
On the Interaction Between Nature and Agency in Niccolò Machiavelli’s View of History
Scholars have long pointed to the presence of naturalistic ideas and images throughout Machiavelli’s writings that seem to suggest an assimilation of human affairs into the dynamics of the natural world. In particular, readers have long wondered about the significance of cyclical theories of unfolding in Machiavelli’s account of history. The result has however been a vastly discordant set of opinions, ranging all the way from those who attribute to Machiavelli a strongly premodern, deterministic outlook to those who see in his ideas instead an instance of a modern valorization of human autonomy in shaping the historical world. In an attempt to escape this impasse, this dissertation argues that in his treatment of history Machiavelli consciously intertwined naturalistic aspects with an emphasis on human agency, stressing natural rhythms while also maintaining a keen awareness of the crucial role played by human beings in steering the course of the events. In order to recover this relationship, I start by reconstructing and analyzing Machiavelli’s conception of historical movement as modeled on the natural rhythm of growth and decay. The dissertation then shows how a proper assessment of this dynamic reveals the ways in which Machiavelli interpreted it as a process in which the type of influence exerted by natural factors—exemplified for instance by the notion of ambition—nonetheless ultimately rests on individuals’ awareness of these factors and our capacity to interact with them. In doing so, this dissertation reflects on the ways in which this reframing also sheds light on Machiavelli’s diagnosis of the political problems and challenges faced by him and his contemporaries.