Horkheimer e Machiavelli

This contribution deals with Max Horkheimer’s interpretation of a few social and political theorists and history philosophers. In his youthful writings, the Director of the Frankfurt School studied Machiavelli and the Renaissance. Afterwards in 1530 he published Anfänge der bürgerlichen Geschichtsphilosophie, with a chapter about Machiavelli. According to Horkheimer history is not erudition, but memory of past injustice. He used a Marxist perspective in the study of history and interpreted the past to understand the present. He thought that Machiavelli was a upholder of the bourgeois state. In the opinion of Horkheimer, the Florentine Secretary had understood that the power, not the agreement, is always the constitutive element of the politics, both in the modern age and in the nineteenth century. This is also the foundation of the critical theory of Horkheimer.