The text presented contains an interview conducted with Domenico Losurdo about "La lotta di classe. Una storia politica e filosofica" (Laterza: Rome 2016) [Class Struggle: A Political and Philosophical History (Palgrave: New York 2018)] and "La sinistra assente. Crisi, società dello spettacolo, guerra" (Carocci: Rome 2014).

The political debate surrounding the English revolution shows how rich and complex is the scenery of the English liberties before “modern Liberty”. The ancient libertates of the Realm, the religious and commercial liberties, the liberty of the free states, and lastly the just freedom of Levellers and Diggers: all these perspectives intersect and conflict without finding any political or juridical synthesis. On the contrary, the gradual affirmation of the liberty of the moderns is accompanied by instances of political and social (...) equality, with which it has to confront. Starting from the dispute on the “Norman Conquest” up to James Harrington’s Oceana, this contribution aims to highlight the extent to which the debate on liberties before “liberalism” was composite, conflictual and characterized by the persistence of instances of equality. (shrink)

In Paris, Capital of the 19th Century, Benjamin states that the goal of Haussmann’s renovation of Paris was to avert civil war. This essay aims to explore this insight and to investigate it also in relation to the transformations of Barcelona by Cerdá. Relying on observations made by Foucault and Schwarte, the article will show that architecture and urban planning can be understood both as political tools that are deployed to manage conflict, and as elements that shape conflict.

Il saggio esamina il modo in cui nell’Antichità classica è stato pensato il conflitto politico a partire dalla riflessione su “fazioni” e “partiti”. L’analisi prende le mosse da Omero ed Esiodo, per i quali la Giustizia è lo strumento con cui dal caos originario si passa al cosmo ordinato. Si concentra quindi sulla nascita della polis come fattore di mediazione del conflitto fra le “parti” sociali, affrontando il pensiero di Tucidide, Platone e Aristotele, che condividono la stessa critica nei confronti (...) di “parti” interpretate come “fazioni” distruttive dell’ordine politico. Polibio, invece, valorizza le “parti” come elementi costitutivi del “tutto” politico, mentre per Sallustio le “fazioni” sono la causa della decadenza della Repubblica romana. Anche Cicerone rifiuta le “fazioni” in quanto distruttive della “concordia” dello Stato, mentre con l’Impero viene superato l’orizzonte particolaristico delle poleis; sarà Tacito, infine, a riflettere sulla contraddizione di un potere particolare che si legittima come universale. (shrink)

The article analyzes the relationship between the philosophical notion of beauty and the ethical and political life of human beings through the history of Western philosophy, from Plato to contemporary authors.

This article seeks to reflect on the methodological problem that dealing with political concepts with a particular historical and geographical frame entails. After stating how conceptual history, German in its origins, has given rise to different lines of thought throughout the Western World, especially in Europe, we explore how this conceptual approach can be used to address political concepts in Latin America from a philosophical-political perspective.

History, Ethics and Politics in Thucydides - The paper analyses Thucydides’s views on history, ethics and politics trying to highlight how they affect each other. Thucydides has a tragic conception of history, according to which, notwithstanding the presence of some constants, human vicissitudes are open to unpredictability and chance. This view is closely related to Thucydides moral outlook, which is interpreted as a version of moral pluralism that recognises two mutually incompatible families of values: those related with greatness and success, (...) and those stemming from compassion and pity. Coming to politics, it is argued that Thucydides’s most valuable contribution lies in his penetrating analysis of the dynamics of power and in particular in his understanding of the fundamental importance of the dialectic between stabilizing and chaotic factors. Political thought should take account of those factors and that means that historical and empirical considerations should enter political theory no later than moral ideals and normative standards. (shrink)

Wendy Brown’s approach in Politics out of History is characterized by an attempt to analyze the presence of the past which can be read not only under the light of Nietzsche’s legacy, but also through a comparison with Hannah Arendt’s conception of the gap between the past and the future. Like Arendt, Brown aims to look at the present as the site of politics and freedom, even though the former conceives the break with tradition as the unavoidable starting point, while (...) the latter assumes that that break is not fully accomplished because it was not recognized. Rather, it produces Wounded Attachments whose effect is that of limiting the possibility of left criticism. Moving from this parallel, Brown’s analysis is compared to the Italian philosophy of sexual difference, stressing their common interest in thinking freedom beyond a female identity built on a presumed common oppression. (shrink)

Il saggio muove dall’ipotesi che l’affermazione del significato moderno del concetto di emancipazione, avvenuta tra l’Illuminismo e la Rivoluzione francese, abbia coinciso con l’apertura di un campo di tensione che fa della storia del concetto una storia contesa. Questo campo di tensione sarà esaminato in diversi contesti storici e politici e in relazione a specifici soggetti che ne hanno trasformato la semantica. Il concetto sarà indagato dapprima tra la Rivoluzione francese e l’Ottocento, mentre in un secondo momento sarà analizzato in (...) relazione alla critica avanzata dal femminismo della differenza italiano e ad alcune riabilitazioni contemporanee del concetto come quella proposta da Jacques Rancière. (shrink)

Comments on Arendt's views on the link between politics and history, referring to her work on antisemitism and on the "Jewish question" (pp. 44-51). Defines Arendt's historiographical method as non-temporal - she focuses on individualized experiences which express a historical conflict; she prefers biographies, portraits, and chronicles. Arendt's non-temporal approach is expressed in the assertion that the tragedy of the Jews in Europe was rooted in the paradox that the political powers granted them rights and privileges, but excluded them, in (...) differing degrees, from political participation. This fact made the Jews a strange implant in European society. Pp. 84-92 present Arendt's definition of evil, based on her experience in the Eichmann trial. While the Christian philosophical tradition defines evil as a deficiency in character, Arendt considered it to be a banal component of the human personality. The deeds of the Nazis were, consequently, the result of Philistinism and lack of moral judgment. (shrink)