Abstract
Machiavelli’s ongoing reputation as a master thinker in the history of Western political thought owes much to the assumption that he is the first modern realist thinker who faithfully followed the objective logic of reality to finally uncover the truth of politics that remained concealed by the moral and religious rhetoric of the Middle Ages. This study provides a reassessment of this claim through the reconstruction of the historical continuity of realist ideas from the Middle Ages to Machiavelli’s time. It highlights the imagery of the fox and its confrontation with Fortune as a leading metaphor of Machiavelli’s conception of the art of politics, and relates it to a tradition of a similar symbolism that had been used in connection with realist ideas since the late twelfth century in the transalpine countries. On this basis, this study demonstrates that Machiavelli’s ideas should be understood in the context of the continuing realist tradition in Western Europe.
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