Abstract
In this brief article we will seek to support the thesis that there is in the thought of Coluccio Salutati, 14th century Florentine chancellor and prominent humanist, a clear republicanism that turns to the issue of the freedom of the republic and the active life of the individuals participating in it. However, in connection with this demonstration, we will also maintain that such republicanism has strong traces of Augustinian influence, mainly in view of the disposition of laws in the political arrangement, as well as the relationship between active life and the search for a human being’s own good. In view of this, we intend to demonstrate that, in general, Salutati’s Renaissance republicanism turns to the defence of the republic, its freedom and its characteristic of the proper scenario for the active life of individuals, however, it still maintains an ethical-political perspective typical of the medieval period, centrally influenced by Augustinian thought.
Highlights
The pertinent discussions on the relationship between ethics and politics, throughout the history of the West since Antiquity, have raised numerous different and even polarized approaches
Salutati is one of the authors that best exemplifies the scenario of tension and confrontation that existed in Italian humanism and in the construction of a Renaissance republicanism, this process is complex and will really become a rupture with medieval ties only in Machiavelli’s thought
It cannot be denied that Renaissance republicanism, typical of Italian humanism, arises as a defence of freedom and the valorization of action, there is still the weight of the formalism of the norms that direct active life, the laws, these having a universal parameter
Summary
The pertinent discussions on the relationship between ethics and politics, throughout the history of the West since Antiquity, have raised numerous different and even polarized approaches. We defend this thesis and start from it to try to understand how Italian humanism, undertakes the resumption of the republican tradition, but, fails to undertake the complete rupture with the Christian-medieval tradition To support this perspective, it is necessary to first demonstrate how the Augustinian tradition breaks with the values of classical antiquity and establishes its own parameter of ethical-political understanding between action and freedom, mainly by political and cultural means. 19): “It was necessary to realize that, yes, the Middle Ages, in no way dark and barbaric, but full of the lights of civilization and the greatness of thought, fed on Antiquity and made it your.” From this perspective, even recognizing that to some extent the classics were present in the Middle Ages, we understand that the confrontation between the reality posed by the demands of active life, political action, in Renaissance society and its cultural construction, placed in doubt the inherited theoretical substrate of the medieval. We will try to demonstrate how, despite undertaking a fertile movement to revive the classic republican tradition, centrally through the revival of the classics, Salutati fails to make a complete rupture with the Christian-medieval tradition and still reflects fundamentals influenced by the Augustinian construction
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