The article works out the thesis that to the excessive desire of the powerful for the absolute appropriation/domination it is opposed a not less excessive and absolute desire from people in order not to be appropriated/ dominated: two desires of a distinct nature which are neither the desire for the same things nor the desire for different things, but desires in which the act of desiring is different. Taking into account that each desire aims at its absolute effectiveness, each one of them tries to impose itself universally becoming doubly absolute: for one side it is inclined to the absolute domination (the powerful) or to the plain liberty (the people); for the other side, tries to impose itself to the whole political body. Each desire is only sustained by its heterogeneous desire. Each one pursues its own purposes whose realization will be the ruin of all collective life. Good institutions and good laws ensure liberty as long as they are capable to prevent the powerful or the people to consummate its desire or abandon its own desire to assume the other's. However, having inscribed the order of law in the disorder of dissent, Machiavelli discarded the idea of an institutional order as a definitive solution to the disorder of dissent. Consequently, no law or institution is able to definitively resist the risk of corruption. This requires a periodic return to the origins: the experience of the constitutive moment of the original violence which, exposing men to risks, restores the initial reputation and strength of States and institutions.
Machiavelli; Freedom; Conflict; Desires; Law