Debate and consensus in Francesco Guicciardini’s Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze

Abstract

This article analyses the sixteenth’s century Florentine writer
Francesco Guicciardini’s Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze. One argues
that the concept of ragionamento, as it’s presented in Guicciardini’s text,
points both the centrality of the debate’s practice and the search for consensus
as grounds for the formation of a “well-ordered Republic”. One
also sustains that the text’s dialogical form is associated to the production
of persuasion, which is a main concern of the prudent men, responsible
for the definition of the best government possible.