Civil disaccordance as „the primary cause” of free life: Machiavelli and the paradoxes of republic

Abstract

As opposed to the republican tradition that insisted on accordance as the condition under which a well organized community exists, Machiavelli brings in disaccordance as „the primary cause” for a republic. That way he not only „attacks” mechanical representations of the relation between the cause and the effect, order and disorder (order is the overcoming of disorder), event and interpretation of the event (interpretation of the event is outside of the event itself), history and order (order is the outcoming of history), arbitrarity and necessity (the order breaks up with the arbitrarities), but he understands the order itself as the institutionalisation of the conflict. Conflict and disagreement are not simply pacified and overcome by the law, but it perpetuates the conflict, it provides the conflict with an institutional frame for an undisturbed manifestation, however, in a way that preserves order from being interrupted by the conflicted points of view and interests. Hence Machiavelli twines two opposed elements, freedom and order, showing that republic is necessarily a paradoxical order where opposed elements act at the same time.