Niccolò Machiavelli in the context of politics, virtue and liberty

The relationship between politics and virtue has always played a central role in the political theory. And whenever this topic is taken as a subject of investigation Machiavelli always has an permanent place in the one of the first names coming to mind. In this context, the past five hundred years after his death has not decreased the number of discussions about Machiavelli, in contrast the time has led to the diversification and growth of the debates on him. Machiavelli's works appear to be easily comprehended when someone reads them for the first time. But the multitude of different readings and the emerging debates as a result of these readings present us the proof of how sophisticated Machiavelli's philosophical approach actually is. Albeit, this aspect of the thinker also brings along a lot of problems with it. In this context two unsolved fundamental questions on Machiavelli can be identified. The first one is whether there is a link between ethics and politics and if there is, what is the role of Machiavelli on the weakening or detaching of this link. Another question of great importance is whether Machiavelli is adopted completely disconnected and unrelated philosophical approaches in the Prince and the Discourses or not. In this context, in this study, answers will be searched for these two fundamental questions regarding relationship between politics, virtue and freedom by examining the Machiavelli's political philosophy. Keywords: Politics, Liberty, Virtue, Fortune, Necessity, Common Good, Law, Modern Politics, History, The Reason of State, Machiavellism