Abstract

The article analyzes Maurizio Viroli's last book "La redenzione dell'Italia. Saggio sul «Principe» di Machiavelli" and the interpretation of "Prince" last Chapter, the XXVIth. A text in which Viroli, aware of the possible and countless criticisms, denies the readings that make Machiavelli an advocate of amoral politics, the end justifies the means and the reason of State, and focusing on Florentine secretary's biography and his use of rhetoric demonstrates, instead, how ethical it is the end that aims all his writings, namely Italy's civil renewal. A message of regeneration that only some few theorists have taken over the centuries and still today, five hundred years after the writing of the Prince, still resounds more than current.