Volti della fortuna. Note su un dibattito rinascimentale

This paper offers some thoughts on Renaissance debate about fortune, a topic which expresses a common belief and involves the fundamental philosophical question about human destiny and human actions: fortune is used to describe the relationship between humans and contingency. The aim is to propose examples of how Renaissance philosophy tried to neutralize the impact of ‘Fortuna’: Platonists refusing the wordly values; Machiavelli relying on historical understanding; Pietro Pomponazzi identifying fortune as a particular expression of a cosmic rule.