Machiavelli’s fortune concept is lived intuition, not metaphysical abstraction

Evidence

For him the concept of fortune , as force of circumstances, which in Machiavelli as in the Renaissance humanists still retains a naturalistic and mechanical character , will become truth and deepened historical perception only in the rational providence of Vico and Hegel. But it is important to point out that such concepts in Machiavelli never have a metaphysical character, as they do in the philosophers proper of humanism, but are simple and profound intuitions (and therefore philosophy!) of life, and are to be understood and explained as symbols of sentiments. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1471

Categorization

• XREF: Gramsci’s insistence that intuitive, non-metaphysical concepts are still philosophy echoes the pragmatist reading of theory from practice; connects to his historicist conception of rationality announced at paragraph 1468.