ABSTRACT
Few concepts in Machiavelli's work are so insistently repeated as the concept of necessità - as well as its correlated terms such as necessario(e), necessitato(i), etc. -, forcing us into the acknowledging in his work a category of special significance. It is undoubtedly a concept that embraces, in his work, a very wide spectrum of diverse senses, which come from the most common up to the most theoretical and political of those senses. The present investigation will try to distinguish such different uses of the term, as used by Machiavelli, particularly in the works "The Prince" and "Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy", preceded by a critical analysis on the way by which tradition has interpreted the meaning of necessità in Machiavelli's work.
Keywords
Machiavelli; Necessity; Freedom; Political Action; Fortune