摘要：What a state would be like - strong or weak, solid or prone to collapse - depends on the manner in which it begins. Likewise, once a state is constituted, a periodical return to the beginning seems to be a remedy against the deterioration of an order. For Machiavelli, however, beginning not only isn’t a self-explanatory notion, but has multiple meaning and is, moreover, paradoxical. Considering primarily two Machiavelli’s main works, The Prince and Discourses on Livi, this article tends to point out different beginnings in Machiavelli’s opus (beginning in time and beginning out of time, beginning of history and beginning of writing, beginning of monarchy and beginning of republic), as well as the constitutive instability of the beginning (what or who establishes the beginning: the mind, the ruler, a random event, a foundational gesture or an outcome?).
