David Ragazzoni

Awarded each year to the best PhD candidate who is a select Instructor of Record (Preceptor), across the various Departments, teaching each of the year-long courses of Columbia's Core Curriculum.
Nominations are made by students; shortlisted finalists are examined by an ad-hoc committee upon observation of a 2-hour class. The award consists of $1,500 and winners are announced at the end-of-the-year CC faculty gala.
"Contemporary Civilization" is the flagship year-long course in the history of political thought (Plato to the early 21st century) in Columbia's Core Curriculum.

The National Scientific Habilitation (ASN) regulation, introduced by art. 16 of Law 240 of December 2010, defines a new procedure for the University Professor position recruitment across Italian universities, based on scientific qualification criteria. Receiving the ASN is a necessary requirement to apply for permanent positions of Full and Associate Professor in Italian Universities. Within each subfield, a national committee of five Full Professors evaluates the candidates' scientific credentials to assess whether they have made a distinctive and significant contribution at the national level in the subfield under consideration. The committee thoroughly reads their publications (including at least one monograph, ten peer-reviewed articles and/or book chapters over the past five years, and the number of articles in top-tier national and/or international journals), considers the dissemination of research through national and/or international conferences and research projects, examines the teaching experience at national and/or international universities and the number of grants/fellowships/awards received, and assesses the candidates' overall research trajectory in terms of quality, quantity, and temporal continuity (throughout the previous ten years).
-- In this specific field, I have received the national qualification as "associate professor" for my publications in the history of XIX- and XX-century European political theory and in contemporary democratic theory, including my monograph on parties and democracy in Weber, Schmitt, and Kelsen (2016).

The National Scientific Habilitation (ASN) regulation, introduced by art. 16 of Law 240 of December 2010, defines a new procedure for the University Professor position recruitment across Italian universities, based on scientific qualification criteria. Receiving the ASN is a necessary requirement to apply for permanent positions of Full and Associate Professor in Italian Universities. Within each subfield, a national committee of five Full Professors evaluates the candidates' scientific credentials to assess whether they have made a distinctive and significant contribution at the national level in the subfield under consideration. The committee thoroughly reads their publications (including at least one monograph, ten peer-reviewed articles and/or book chapters over the past five years, and the number of articles in top-tier national and/or international journals), considers the dissemination of research through national and/or international conferences and research projects, examines the teaching experience at national and/or international universities and the number of grants/fellowships/awards received, and assesses the candidates' overall research trajectory in terms of quality, quantity, and temporal continuity (throughout the previous ten years).
-- In this specific field, I have received the national qualification as "associate professor" for my publications (2006-2018) spanning from the history of Renaissance philosophy (based on first-hand archival research) to the history of XIX- and XX-century European political philosophy, including my monograph on parties and democracy in Weber, Schmitt, and Kelsen (2016).

"The Divided Republic: The Politics of Factions, the Government of Conflict, and the Constitution of Trust in late Medieval and early Renaissance Florence" .
The project explores the ancestry of political parties and the problem of factionalism in the political thought and practice of pre-Medicean Florence (1215-1434). Bringing together political history, the history of political/legal thought, and historical democratic theory, it examines the institutions, procedures, and visions of partisan politics during a crucial chapter in the making of representative government. In doing so, it seeks to unearth the lessons that the Florentine prehistory of parties (before the advent of party government, written Constitutions, and the hegemony of elections over sortition) can offer to present-day debates on representation, office holding, and the ethics of voting.

CHAPTER ABSTRACT: The Italian “civic humanists” who lived and wrote in the century and a half from Petrarch to Machiavelli tended to believe in the regenerative potential of education as the “doorway” to the enlightened exercise of political power. Resonating through their writings was the firm belief that virtue was the staple of true political legitimacy in a world of waning or crumbled legitimacies (above all, those of the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire). They envisioned an ambitious and long-term program of educational, moral, and political renewal, centered on a new kind of rhetorical institutio. Eloquence, in the definition of Francesco Patrizi (c. 1465), was a medicine for both the soul (i.e., an antidote to vice) and public affairs (i.e., a remedy to political corruption). This chapter draws attention to the moral connotations that the humanist study of eloquence acquired, vis-à-vis the ways in which rhetoric was previously studied in law schools as a purely technical skill for writing and arguing. Humanists’ public and private rhetoric had the goal of making rulers and ruled alike want to be virtuous, incentivizing good behavior via praise and blame (rather than via procedural and institutional safeguards).
The chapter also unpacks two crucial implications of this moral reading of eloquence. First, constitutional specifics about regime types were held to be much less important than the intellectual and moral texture of those trained to rule. Second, the humanist program was both meritocratic and profoundly egalitarian. To illustrate these points, the chapter contextualizes and compares three instances of humanist rhetoric: Petrarch’s enthusiastic celebration (first) and disillusioned critique (later) of Cola di Rienzo’s Roman populism in the late 1340s and early 1350s; Leonardo Bruni’s Laudatio Florentinae Urbis (c. 1403-04), celebrating the value of Florentine popular institutions; and Leon Battista Alberti’s call for virtuous oligarchs in De Iciarchia (c. 1470). Finally, the chapter will consider the place of Machiavelli in the rhetorical geography of Renaissance Italy. To what extent does his “rhetoric of rationalization,” privileging deeds over language and thought, break with the “rhetoric of idealization” championed by earlier civic humanists?

CHAPTER ABSTRACT: Much referenced and little read, "Die Staatslehre des Dante Alighieri" was Kelsen’s very first monograph. It was published in 1905, one year before his doctoral graduation and six years before the release of his "Hauptprobleme des Staasrechtslehre" (1911). Driving the young Kelsen towards Dante’s "De Monarchia" (1312-1313) – at the time still widely unknown outside of Italy and removed from the 1564 Papal Index Librorum Prohibitorum only in 1881 – were the lectures of Leo Strisower, with their emphasis on the relationship between philosophical theories and the transformations of legal and political institutions (domestic and international). Against Strisower’s advice, Kelsen deepened his own interest in Dante’s political philosophy to offer a contextual, thorough, at times critical account of Dante’s grandiose utopia: that is, a cosmopolitan government (in the form of a temporal monarchy) capable of bringing order into a world plagued by factionalism, institutional instability, and the competing aspirations of the two universal authorities (the Pope and the Emperor).
My chapter revisits Kelsen’s first monograph to unearth its intellectual and ideological project – namely, a reading of Dante as both the epitome of Medieval political and legal theory and the forerunner of the modern State – as well as its implicit, underlying impetus. As I will demonstrate, Kelsen’s more famous writings will address themes and problems underpinning his early-1900s study of Dante. The concern with unchecked partisanship; the fear of an oligarchic or factional regression of party politics; the emphasis on the legislative as the (only) place for party conflict; the urgency to preserve the judiciary, the administration, and similar State institutions untouched by partisan ambitions; the focus on the tension between ideals and realities, between imagined unity and actual pluralism; and, overall, the study of the nature and sources of the State’s legal order: all these issues are already embryonically present in Kelsen’s erudite study of Dante. It is not by chance that, in the very first chapter, he maps the political geography (international and domestic) of Dante’s times, recalls the implications of the disputes among family cliques and between Guelphs and Ghibellines, and offers a concise political history of Florentine institutions and their institutional and procedural responses to factionalism. At the same time, Dante’s emphasis on universal peace as the cardinal political good of the international order he envisioned captured the mind of the young Kelsen, intrigued by the idea of the emperor as the guardian of a planetary monistic jurisdiction and the embodiment of a global authority capable of bringing political pluralism to legal unity. In his Harvard lectures on "Law and Peace in International Relations" (published in 1942) he would conceptualize law as “an order for the promotion of peace”. Two years later, in his "Peace Through Law", Kelsen will implicitly revisit Dante’s (and Kant’s) project(s). He will call for a Permanent League for the Maintenance of Peace based on the impartial authority of an international court to overcome individual States’ self-interestedness, react to the failure of the Society of Nations, and ensure the conditions for a pacified world and, ideally, a global centralized State.
The tendency to consider Kelsen’s first monograph an eccentric publication driven by a purely antiquarian interest in both Medieval jurisprudence and the related German historiography of the time remains pervasive in the Anglophone literature. Without falling into anachronisms or instrumental readings of Kelsen’s corpus, my contribution suggests a longue durée hermeneutics of his intellectual project across the decades. Doing so means turning to his Dante monograph as a very first canvass of some of his later writings and carefully examining the long-term echoes and transformations of concerns, anxieties, and solutions that would become foundational to his own democratic, State, and international theory.

This project, which I first envisioned, discussed with Prof. Pedullà during his fellowship-in-residence at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study (Spring 2019), and developed together over the following months, is motivated by the 500th anniversary of Machiavelli’s constitutional writings from the early 1520s: Discursus florentinarum rerum (1520/21), Ricordo al cardinale Giulio sulla riforma dello stato in Firenze, and Minuta di provvisione per la riforma dello stato di Firenze (both from 1522).

The book is part of a tentative project in two volumes (to be published separately), on Machiavelli's political thought ("Machiavelli's Renaissance", eds. Ragazzoni - Pedullà) and on the oligarchic responses to Machiavelli in the Renaissance ("The Great Reply: Renaissance Responses to Machiavelli", eds. Pedullà - Ragazzoni).
The two volumes rethink, develop, and expand substantially (in both breadth and depth) the conversations across the panels of the international conference on Machiavelli that I envisioned and organized in the context of APSA 2020.

Confirmed contributors: Prof. James Hankins (Harvard), Prof. Michelle Clarke (Dartmouth), Prof. Ryan Balot (Toronto), Prof. Vickie Sullivan (Tufts), Prof. Gabriele Pedullà (Rome), Prof. Stephen Macedo (Princeton), Prof. Jane Mansbridge (Harvard Kennedy School), Dr. David Ragazzoni (Columbia).

Confirmed contributors: Dr. David Ragazzoni (Columbia), Prof. Matthias Jestaedt (Freiburg), Prof. Peter Langford (Edge Hill), Prof. Sara Lagi (Turin), Prof. Lars Vinx (Cambridge), Prof. Pasquale Pasquino (NYU), Prof. Adam Przeworski (NYU), Prof. Nadia Urbinati (Columbia), Prof. Fabio Wolkenstein (Vienna), Prof. Davd Dyzenhaus (Toronto), Prof. Jan-Werner Muller (Princeton), Prof. Sandrine Baume (Lausanne), Prof. William Scheuerman (Indiana Bloomington), Prof. Carlo Invernizzi Accetti (CUNY), Prof. Peter Niesen (Hamburg)

Confirmed contributors: Prof. Rogers Smith (University of Pennsylvania), Prof. Tom Ginsburg and Prof. Aziz Huq (University of Chicago), Prof. Rosalind Dixon (UNSW Sidney) and Prof. David Landau (Florida State UC), Prof. Ayelet Shachar (University of Toronto), Prof. Ran Hirschl (University of Texas at Austin), Prof. Arthur Applbaum (Harvard Kennedy School).
Introductory essay: Dr. David Ragazzoni (Columbia).

5 original manuscripts examining the thought of the leading political and legal theorist of democratic Italy, Norberto Bobbio (1909-2004), and his life-long work on the foundations, transformations, and challenges of the major political ideologies of his times. The manuscripts also draw attention to the potential and relevance of Bobbio's writings in the context of early 21st-century political ideologies, in the pursuit of two major and related goals: contextualizing/excavating Bobbio's work on political ideologies; thinking through and beyond Bobbio to theorize contemporary political ideologies.

Introductory essay: Dr. David Ragazzoni (Columbia).
Contributors: Prof. Alfio Mastropaolo (Torino), Prof. Piero Ignazi (Bologna), Prof. Damiano Palano (Cattolica, Milano), Prof. Emanuele Rossi e Dr. Luca Gori (Sant'Anna, Pisa), Prof. Andrea Pertici (Pisa).
https://www.rivisteweb.it/issn/1720-2396

http://www.raffaellocortina.it/scheda-libro/nadia-urbinati-david-ragazzoni/la-vera-seconda-repubblica-9788860308108-2306.html
La “Seconda Repubblica”, più che una realtà, è stata finora un’ideologia. Trasversale a tutte le forze politiche, che l’hanno impugnata ciascuna per scopi diversi, è avanzata come una macchina che ha preso velocità nel corso dei decenni: tre le sue componenti – Parlamento, Partiti e Governo – trasfigurate polemicamente in parlamentarismo, partitocrazia e governabilità. La riforma costituzionale del Governo Renzi sembra in procinto di portare a destinazione questa macchina, dopo un trentennio che ha visto Parlamento e Governo sfidarsi per l’attuazione delle riforme istituzionali. Ma il discorso sulla crisi della Repubblica ha radici lontane, che risalgono agli anni immediatamente successivi all’entrata in vigore della Costituzione del 1948. La fisionomia della vera Seconda Repubblica è il risultato del sedimentarsi progressivo di questi dibattiti, prima esterni e poi interni alle istituzioni. Se un tempo era la forza dei partiti a ostacolare le loro velleità riformatrici, oggi è proprio la loro debolezza che consente la nascita di una nuova Repubblica, non più dei partiti ma del partito.

Gli autori

Nadia Urbinati insegna Teoria politica al Department of Political Science della Columbia University e collabora con la Repubblica.

David Ragazzoni è dottorando in Scienza politica presso il Department of Political Science della Columbia University.

Reviewed in the journal "Filosofia Politica" (Il Mulino) both in a single book review and as part of a review essay on recent works on Kelsen (see "Review of my work" section).
ABSTRACT: Dalle celebri pagine di Benjamin Constant e Alexis de Tocqueville sino alle analisi più recenti di Crawford Macpherson e John Keane, la filosofia politica otto-novecentesca e la teoria democratica contemporanea hanno enfatizzato più volte, e da prospettive diverse, il carattere fragile e contraddittorio della ‘libertà dei moderni’. Apparentemente sovrano, l’individuo democratico esercita la sua autodeterminazione politica in forme cursorie, anteponendo il perseguimento di interessi privati alla costruzione di un ethos collettivo e individuando nel voto l'unica modalità di partecipazione alla dimensione pubblica. Questa tendenza, paventata quando la democrazia era ancora un ideale, si è fatta concreta nelle odierne ‘democrazie del pubblico’, al contempo apolitiche e antipolitiche, pervase da un individualismo che annienta l’individualità e segnate da una disaffezione profonda nei confronti delle istituzioni rappresentative – Parlamento e partiti anzitutto. Nei cinque capitoli del libro, David Ragazzoni si confronta con tre protagonisti della filosofia politica europea del primo Novecento spesso invocati, ma altrettanto spesso decontestualizzati, da quanti osservano le trasformazioni delle democrazie odierne – Max Weber, Carl Schmitt e Hans Kelsen – per studiare in chiave critica e comparata il rapporto che essi individuarono fra parlamentarismo, corpi partitici e costruzione/esercizio della leadership agli esordi della politica di massa. Parlamento, partiti e capi – gli interna corporis del ‘Leviatano democratico’ – sono elementi strutturali della politica moderna che, negli autori in esame, acquistano una centralità e una problematicità inedite. Nell’analisi di Ragazzoni, le pagine di Weber, Schmitt e Kelsen dischiudono tre concezioni della democrazia incentrate su tre distinte visioni della politica (rispettivamente agonistica, polemocentrica, e procedurale); al contempo, offrono una grammatica concettuale e un lascito teorico ancora fecondi per riflettere sulla teoria e sulla pratica delle nostre democrazie parlamentari, sempre meno dei partiti e sempre più dei leader, e per ripensare il ruolo dei corpi intermedi sullo sfondo del ‘cefalocentrismo’ (l’ossessione per la leadership) che pervade la politica democratica odierna.

Reviewed in the journal "Rivista di storia della filosofia" (see "Review of my Work" section).
ABSTRACT: Il volume "Il destino della democrazia. Attualità di Tocqueville" si inserisce nel panorama della rinascita dell’interesse per la figura e l’opera di Tocqueville, raccogliendo gli esiti del dibattito più recente e delineando nuove direzioni di ricerca. Il volume riunisce le ricerche di un gruppo di giovani studiosi della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa coordinati da Michele Ciliberto, che è autore della prefazione. La centralità e la modernità dei temi affrontati dalla riflessione tocquevilliana sono messe in risalto, nei vari saggi, sotto molteplici angolazioni – la dimensione socio-politica, il problema religioso, la lettura degli eventi storici sette-ottocenteschi – e a partire da opere maggiori come "La Democrazia in America e L’Antico Regime", ma anche sulla scorta del ricco epistolario del pensatore francese e dei discorsi da lui pronunciati in Parlamento. Uno dei fulcri dell’indagine è rappresentato anche dall’approfondimento del confronto tra Tocqueville e altri filosofi e scrittori, da Marx a Benjamin Constant, con una sezione finale di contributi dedicati al suo rapporto con John Stuart Mill.

Contributors to Roundtable: Rogers Smith, Rosalind Dixon, David Landau, Tom Ginsburg, Aziz Huq, Ran Hirschl, David Ragazzoni, Ayelet Shachar.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ethics-and-international-affairs/article/introduction-new-directions-in-the-study-of-constitutional-democracy/C804EAFD1E4067E6D78B89F097600E16

Full issue: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ethics-and-international-affairs/latest-issue

https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjpi20/current
ABSTRACT: Bobbio’s democratic vision warrants scrutiny not simply as a theory of procedural democracy, but also for its critical study of political ideologies (historical and contemporary) and its ambition to reconcile some of their driving ideals. This article draws the attention of Anglophone scholars to Bobbio’s life-long endeavour to merge the competing agendas of liberalism and socialism and thus develop a democratic theory capable of merging productively the notions of equality, liberty, and justice. Rather than a cross-eyed theory of democracy, Bobbio’s encapsulated a vigorous attempt to alert rival partisans of both the limits and the potential of their respective projects. He urged socialists to appreciate the importance of liberal institutions and procedures vis-à-vis unconditional celebrations of direct democracy; at the same time, he warned liberals about the ‘broken promises’ of representative democracy and the oligarchic involution of parliamentarism. The article pursues three related goals. It situates Bobbio’s project in its historical context, charting the ways in which the political history of 20th-century Italy and Europe forged his “liberalsocialism”. It examines its similarities and differences with previous attempts to cross-fertilize the liberal and the socialist projects across the Atlantic. It explores its constitutive tensions through the lenses of one of its most perceptive interpreters in the Anglophone world – Perry Anderson. By doing so, the article seeks to provide a nuanced study of Bobbio’s democratic vision and shed light on its persistent relevance for thinking through the challenges of representative democracy in our present.

(9200 words + iconographic appendix): chapter for the Renaissance volume (eds. Virginia Cox and Joanne Paul) of the Cultural History of Democracy (6 volumes) - Bloomsbury (scientific project editor: Eugenio Biagini, Cambridge, History) -- 2021
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/cultural-history-of-democracy-9781350042933/

https://tocqueville21.com/focus/parliamentary-thinking/representing-parts-and-parties/
Contributors to the symposium: Prof. Lucia Rubinelli (Cambridge/Yale), Prof. Georgios Varouxakis (Queen Mary), Dr. Arthur Ghins (Brown/Yale), Dr. David Ragazzoni (Columbia).
Responses 'to my readers and critics': Prof. William Selinger (UCL) and Prof. Gregory Conti (Princeton).

In the growing political theory literature on populism, the way in which populism appropriates the theory and practice of partisan politics remains neglected. My paper draws on the work of Norberto Bobbio (1909-2004), the leading political and legal theorist of XX-century Italy, to theorize this overlooked aspect of the populist phenomenon. Through the study of Silvio Berlusconi's populism, this paper excavates Bobbio's attempt to distinguish between parties and factions in the specific context of party democracy. A long-processed and key acquisition of proto-democratic politics, this distinction remains thin in polarized democracies, wherein the charge of factionalism becomes a rhetorical strategy to discredit a priori our political antagonists and their arguments. As Bobbio highlighted, Berlusconi's visions of the state and the party were structurally connected. Having built from scratch first his economic empire and then his own political party, Berlusconi believed that the state and its institutions, too, were at the mercy of his personal interests, as if both the party and the state were an appendix to his public persona. His political populism and his institutional patrimonialism were, as I put it rephrasing Kantorowicz, "the populist leader's two bodies". When contextualized and revisited, Bobbio's considerations on Berlusconi disclose important contributions-historical, conceptual, and normative-within three connected bodies of literature in democratic theory: the study of parties and partisanship; the theorization of populism; and the multiple analyses of the decay of party democracy. Additionally, they can serve as a template to theorize similar transformations of American democracy in the present.

Introductory essay: Dr. David Ragazzoni (Columbia)
Individual essays: Prof. Joshua Cherniss (Georgetown), Prof. Richard Ned Lebow (King's College/Cambridge), Prof. Konstantinos Kostagiannis (Russian Presidential Academy), Prof. Michael Williams (Ottawa).
Response 'to my readers and critics': Prof. Allison McQueen (Stanford).
https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/4921828/h-diplo-roundtable-xxi-7-political-realism-apocalyptic-times

ABSTRACT:
Il presente contributo si propone, a quasi un secolo di distanza dalla prima ricezione della teoria politica di Kelsen in Italia, di rivisitare le argomentazioni del giurista e filosofo austriaco sulla specificità degli ordinamenti democratici e sull’urgenza di riformarne, nel travagliato contesto degli anni Venti e poi dell’immediato secondo dopoguerra, gli assetti parlamentari.
Dopo aver collocato la posizione kelseniana sullo sfondo dei dibattiti tedeschi di inizio Novecento su Stato, parlamentarismo e democrazia, il saggio offre un’ampia ricognizione critica di alcuni nodi problematici al centro delle pagine di "Essenza e valore della democrazia" (1920), "Il problema del parlamentarismo" (1925) e "I fondamenti della democrazia" (1955): il rapporto tra libertà ed eguaglianza come istinti primordiali dell’uomo e la loro necessaria «metamorfosi» nei sistemi democratici; la fictio dello Stato-persona e di una volontà popolare unitaria per preservare l’illusione della libertà; la contrapposizione, sul piano gnoseologico e politico, tra autocrazia e democrazia; la dinamicità del rapporto maggioranza/minoranza e la centralità del compromesso; le torsioni del concetto di rappresentanza politica e la conseguente urgenza di una serie puntuale di riforme della democrazia intra-partitica e delle dinamiche parlamentari.
Tale rilettura consentirà, in conclusione, di evidenziare quella che, a giudizio dell’autore, costituisce per Kelsen la forza maggiore delle democrazie moderne nella loro configurazione parlamentare: il relativismo filosofico di matrice liberale che ne è alla base – l’idea che la verità sia attingibile soltanto attraverso un mutuo e libero scambio di opinioni, tutte egualmente degne di essere rappresentate – conduce a una radicale immanenza degli ordinamenti democratici. Questi ultimi, a differenza delle autocrazie a fondamento teologico-politico, possono quotidianamente ricrearsi proprio attraverso l’eguale rispetto delle procedure e il perpetuo esercizio del giudizio politico da parte dei cittadini.

Abstract: Il presente saggio si sofferma su due tra gli scritti meno studiati, e da poco riediti in italiano da Adelphi, della terza fase nella riflessione filosofico-politica schmittiana, avviatasi a partire dal secondo dopoguerra e incentrata sugli assetti di potere globali nella crisi dello jus publicum Europaeum. Nati dalla rielaborazione di due memoranda scritti da Schmitt stesso durante gli interrogatori subiti a Norimberga nel 1947, il Gespräch über die Macht und den Zugang zum Machthaber e il Gespräch über den neuen Raum nacquero nel 1954 per essere recitati alla radio; al di là della propria forma narrativa e delle necessarie cautele che l’abile Selbstverständnis schmittiana impone, essi contribuiscono a nostro avviso a dischiudere una prospettiva inusuale, e finora trascurata, su temi fondamentali della riflessione più sistematica del filosofo e giurista di Plettenberg. In particolare, nel primo Dialogo egli svela lo strappo che scorge nella trama della modernità politica di matrice hobbesiana: l’idea che il monopolio del potere da parte del potente e della persona sovrano-rappresentativa consenta di addomesticare in via definitiva la Macht, di convertirla in Herrschaft, di azzerarne il «plusvalore» contro l’eccedenza ontologica della potestas, da una parte, e contro l’influenza indiretta di quanti affollano l’«anticamera» del potere, dall’altra.  Nel secondo Dialogo, invece, nel contesto delle nuove sfide che vengono all’umanità postbellica dall’aprirsi di inesplorati spazi e dall’emergere di campi del ‘politico’ non ancora normati (i cieli e gli abissi), Schmitt riflette sul rapporto tra uomo, natura e tecnica, invitando a riconoscere l’illusione di onnipotenza che quest’ultima offre e a riscoprire la centralità della terra, della Muttererde, come fatto normativo e unico destino dell’uomo. Dopo aver ricostruito criticamente i nodi tematici a nostro avviso più rilevanti dei due testi, il saggio mette in luce il comune orizzonte teorico che essi restituiscono: in entrambi la consapevolezza dell’autonomia del potere e della fragilità del potente nell’epoca del dominio della tecnica e del tramonto dello jus publicum Europaeum segna il fallimento del progetto filosofico-politico dei moderni, obbligando a un ripensamento radicale del soggetto sovrano quale protagonista ‘agito’ più che attore dello spazio politico, e del futuro dell’uomo all’interno delle nuove geografie del potere.
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Table of contents:
1. Dialogo sul potere e Dialogo sul nuovo spazio: un dittico estraneo al corpus schmittiano?
2. Autonomia del potere, auto-estraneazione del potente: il progetto fragile della modernità politica, tra Hobbes e Spinoza
3. L'uomo, figlio della terra: geografie del potere e riconfigurazione dello spazio politico nell'era della tecnica
4. Natura del potere, natura dell'uomo, l'uomo tra potere e natura: considerazioni conclusive
8.300 words

Table of contents:
1. Mill e Marx: interpretare il presente del Nuovo Mondo per intravedere il futuro del Vecchio
2. Studiare il carattere delle società:
«schiavitù», «civilizzazione» e «dispotismo» nell’America di Mill
2.1 I fragili assetti della «peculiare istituzione» e la mortificazione del libero arbitrio dei soggetti schiavizzati
2.2 Lo schiavismo degli antichi paragonato a quello dei moderni: la polemica con Carlyle e il confronto con Cairnes
3. La libertà degli eguali e l’illibertà dei diseguali: la «Democrazia (incompleta) in America» di Marx
3.1 Schiavismo: genesi e genealogia di una categoria economico-politica nella riflessione marxiana
3.2 «Sklavenbewegung»,«Sklavenkrieg»,«Sklavenrevolution»: gli schiavi americani, soggetti potenzialmente «rivoluzionari»
3.3 Da «costituzionale» a «rivoluzionario»: il volto bifronte del conflitto e la «santa crociata della proprietà contro il lavoro» tra America ed Europa
4. Considerazioni conclusive

Abstract: Nell’ampia letteratura che, nel corso degli ultimi decenni, ha esplorato a fondo le pieghe degli scritti bobbiani, affiora soltanto a tratti un’indagine sistematica dei rapporti del filosofo torinese con i classici del pensiero filosofico-politico e filosofico-giuridico moderno. Il presente contributo suggerisce l’esigenza di una nuova attenzione in tal senso: in particolare, esso muove da una ricognizione analitica dei sei lavori raccolti nel volume "Da Hobbes a Marx. Saggi di storia della filosofia", nel quale Bobbio raccolse ricerche concepite nell’arco di quindici anni di insegnamento universitario e di cui nel 2015 ricorrerà il cinquantenario. È in quelle pagine, infatti, che il filosofo torinese, in un’Italia appena uscita dal conflitto mondiale e alla ricerca della propria identità politico-culturale dopo l’esperienza del Fascismo, guardò retrospettivamente alle origini contraddittorie della modernità mappandone, proprio come un cartografo, elementi di continuità e rottura – in primo luogo, l’oscillazione tra il primato del diritto naturale, da una parte, e l’egemonia dello jus positum, dall’altra. Proprio questa profonda (e mai appagata) ricerca di senso circa le ragioni della crisi culturale del proprio tempo ispira il confronto di Bobbio con «le due grandi concezioni mondane della storia» – il giusnaturalismo e lo storicismo dialettico – che a suo avviso innervano lo sviluppo tutt’altro che lineare della modernità e che, di riflesso, orientano il suo confronto con il pensiero di Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Hegel e Marx attraverso le acquisizioni della più recente storiografia filosofica italiana e internazionale di quegli anni.

Table of contents:
1. Bobbio e i moderni: testi e contesti
2. Giusnaturalismo e storicismo dialettico: i due volti della modernità
3. Il pensiero giuridico hobbesiano sotto processo: un 'cavallo di Troia' nella cittadella giusnaturalistica?
4. Dal giusnaturalismo impuro di Hobbes a quello pienamente moderno di Locke
5. Da Locke a Kant: la costruzione della libertà dei moderni
6. Dai giusnaturalismi allo storicismo dialettico: la modernità figlia di Hegel e Marx
7. Considerazioni conclusive

Abstract:
Riadattando la celebre sentenza aristotelica in apertura al settimo libro (Z) della Metafisica, si può affermare che la democrazia «si dice» – e si narra – «in molti modi». Il carattere proteiforme della storia e insieme della teoria di una simile «esperienza filosofica e politica» – così il titolo di una recente raccolta di studi curata da Carlo Altini per il Mulino  – risiede per l’appunto nello specifico punto di osservazione dal quale si sceglie di studiarla. All’interno del recente panorama di studi, italiani e non, sulla crisi della democrazia moderna, il presente testo intende soffermarsi su di un contributo che Carlo Galli ha dedicato alla comprensione delle ragioni dell’attuale ‘disagio’ in cui versa  la politica democratica: non la riluttanza ad accettare l’inedito protagonismo delle masse o la volatilità delle sue disposizioni emotive (come per la riflessione otto-novecentesca), bensì un combinato sinora sconosciuto di individualismo, disincanto, egemonia della tecnica, svalutazione dei corpi intermedi e delle forme classiche della rappresentanza è il sentimento che Il disagio della democrazia (Einaudi 2011) vede dilagare nella trama delle odierne democrazie. La persuasione di Galli è che la riflessione sulla politica democratica si configuri come una successione di antinomie le quali, nate in contesti storico-teorici specifici, richiedono oggi di essere ricondotte al proprio locus d’origine. Un’operazione, questa, fondamentale per riflettere sui loro rapporti con le origini della modernità politica e sulle prospettive che, sul piano filosofico, esse lasciano oggi intravedere.

Table of contents:
0. Premessa
1. Demokratía: alle origini di un idolo polemico
2. Dalla «democrazia dagli antichi» a quella «dei moderni»: dal governo alla sovranità, dalle parti al Tutto
3. Chiaro-scuri della democrazia tardo-moderna
4. Dal Moderno al Globale: l’«instabile equilibrio» della democrazia di massa
5. «Tornare a volere la democrazia»: dalle fenomenologie del disagio a un nuovo «umanesimo democratico»

Abstract:
This paper focuses on four recent books that have recently been published in Italy on the concept of political partisanship and the crisis of political parties in contemporary Western democracies – "Partito" by Damiano Palano, "Forza senza legittimità" by Piero Ignazi, "Il vicolo cieco dei partiti" by Marco Revelli and "Antipartiti" by Salvatore Lupo. Despite their different methodological approaches, these books equally emphasize the need to subject the role, limits and potential of parties to fresh examination. At the same time, they pave the way for substantially rethinking the relationship between political partisanship and representative democracy and start filling a gap in the current Italian literature on political parties. As Nancy Rosenblum has recently argued, parties are the darlings of political science and the orphans of political philosophy. This paper critically engages with the work of Palano, Ignazi, Revelli and Lupo in order to suggest why, and how, (Italian) political theorists should make political parties and partisanship the focus of their systematic attention.

Table of contents:
1. Premessa
2. Il partito politico: «promessa non mantenuta» delle democrazie odierne?
3. I partiti: protagonisti della scienza politica, orfani della filosofia politica
4. I partiti (de)costruiscono la democrazia?
5. Processualità e conflitto: i partiti e le loro rappresentazioni della rappresentanza

Table of contents:

1. La democrazia come scelta, la politica come destino: contro l’illusione di una democrazia apolitica/ultrapolitica/iperpolitica
2. Riscoprire il pluralismo, riattivare il conflitto: la democrazia «agonistica» di Chantal Mouffe
3. L’esercizio costante del giudizio politico come antidoto alla spoliticizzazione: la democrazia giudicante, dissenziente e in moto perpetuo di Nadia Urbinati
4. Incrociare le due prospettive contro le opposte morse della democrazia tecnicizzata, populistica e plebiscitaria. Considerazioni conclusive

Abstract:
Muovendo da un’insoddisfazione profonda rispetto alla diagnosi dell’essenza del governo democratico predominante nella teoria politica contemporanea e rivendicando un approccio realistico, "The Eyes of the People. Democracy in Age of Spectatorship" di Jeffrey Edward Green (2010) mette sotto accusa un’ontologia vocale, decisionistica e legicentrica della volontà popolare trasversalmente presente nella filosofia politica degli ultimi centocinquant’anni. A partire da tale premessa, egli elabora una contrapposizione sistematica tra due teoriche (deliberativa e plebiscitaria) – fondate sul primato, rispettivamente, della voce e dello sguardo – del «popolo sovrano», individuandone le divergenze su tre piani: l’oggetto, il canale e l’idea critica che ne guida la pratica. In particolare, individua nel «candor», letteralmente nell’esporsi dei governanti allo sguardo indagatore («gaze») del pubblico senza possibilità di controllo preventivo sulle condizioni di tale esposizione, il tratto specifico della democrazia post-rappresentativa e post-deliberativa del XXI secolo, nonché il presupposto per riconquistare dignità teorica e politica all’etica plebiscitaria. Nelle pagine seguenti sviluppo una lettura critica di tale modello, nella convinzione che la filosofia politica debba delineare una concezione normativa di democrazia che non liquidi, ma anzi arricchisca, integri e rafforzi la nozione di rappresentanza politica.

Table of contents:
1. Contro l’ontologia vocale, decisionistica e legicentrica della sovranità popolare. La premessa di Green
2. Voce vs. sguardo: due diverse teoriche della democrazia moderna. La costruzione dell'hostis
3. «A Machiavellianism for the People»: «gaze» e «candor» quali gambe della democrazia plebiscitaria, post-rappresentativa e post-deliberativa di Green
4. Shakespeare, Weber, Schmitt, Schumpeter: il tentativo storico-genealogico di Green e la costruzione di una modernità politica alternativa
5. Horror vacui: alla ricerca di una diversa legittimità del potere democratico di massa

ABSTRACT:
Ottant’anni fa, in apertura a "Der Begriff des Politischen" (1932), Carl Schmitt scriveva: «Il concetto di Stato presuppone quello di ‘politico’». Questa affermazione lapidaria, che avrebbe costruito la fama controversa di Schmitt quale filosofo politico, esprimeva l’urgenza di ripensare una delle categorie costitutive della modernità politica europea ed eurocentrica alla luce delle metamorfosi delle coeve democrazie liberali di massa.
Recuperando e sviluppando una chiave di lettura ormai consolidata tra gli studiosi schmittiani – il pensiero di Schmitt come pensiero della crisi della filosofia politica moderna –, l’autore esamina la complessa relazione tra Stato, ‘politico’ e destino della modernità illuminando testi scritti dal pensatore di Plettenberg a cavallo tra tardi anni Venti e primi anni Trenta, nella convinzione che essi, letti assieme a "Der Begriff des Politischen", contribuiscano a meglio comprendere questioni destinate a risuonare a lungo nell’officina schmittiana.
Mettendo a fuoco anche temi trasversalmente presenti nella filosofia politica di Schmitt nella seconda decade del secolo – i partiti, la Costituzione, l’etica dello Stato – l’autore perviene alla conclusione che il fallimento del progetto schmittiano di ricreare e preservare l’unità politica statuale contro le costellazioni di interessi sociali organizzati nasca dall’incapacità di pensare il pluralismo nelle emergenti democrazie di massa e, più in generale, di immaginare la politica oltre lo Stato. La categoria «Stato», riplasmata quale katechon della politicità moderna per arrestarne la neutralizzazione, acquista, entro tale contesto, una valenza più mitica che istituzionale, divenendo così il limite (nella duplice valenza di confine e debolezza) della fragile e tragica filosofia schmittiana.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Premessa
2. Pensare la democrazia entro lo Stato: un'impresa (ancora) possibile?
3. Stato, Costituzione e partiti: dove si è persa e dove può ritrovarsi l’etica dello Stato?
4. Dall’acclamazione al disincanto: palinodie schmittiane sulla «moderna democrazia diretta»
5. Lo Stato democratico di massa tra identità e rappresentanza: Schmitt e il frutto avvelenato della modernità fra Tocqueville e Kelsen
6. La crisi come origine e destino dello Stato moderno
7. Politico ‘assassinato’ o politico ‘negato’? Considerazioni conclusive"

"Abstract: The present paper aims at recovering a missed piece in the history of modern justice moving from the chapters that the Flemish jurist Joos de Damhouder (1507-1581) devoted to judicial torture in his Praxis rerum criminalium. The author will first map the historical and conceptual framework of Damhouder’s work: in particular, he will suggest to conceive XVI century European courts as theatres of charging and suffering in which torture was just one step of a broader and complex “play” based on the hyper-technicalized «law of the proof». He will then focus on the seven chapters the Praxis devotes to the queastio sive tortura, unveiling their references to previous legal theorists, the interconnection they establish among different moments of the trial and some blurred territories that remain open to conceptual ambiguities. By elaborating on such elements of "incomplete normativity", the author will finally point at the way a number of XX century legal historians have conceptualized the developments of judicial torture after Damhouder, when full judicial equality started to be conceptualized as a founding pillar of modern democracy.

Table of contents:
1. Premessa
2. L’Europa del «penale egemonico»: lo sfondo storico-dottrinario della Praxis di Damhouder
3. La quaestio tra estrazione della verità e inflizione della pena: il telos della «machina legislatoria» di Damhouder
4. Tracce di normativo incompiuto: questioni insolute nella Praxis di Damhouder all'alba della 'democrazia dei moderni'"

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Premessa
2. Un demos che parla al plurale ma non è pluralista: la costruzione della democrazia identitaria di Schmitt
3. Il parlamentarismo come destino del moderno governo democratico: l’analisi di Kelsen
4. Conclusioni: Dalla democrazia rappresentativa alle rappresentazioni della democrazia"

"Tre recenti lavori, tutti pubblicati da Laterza, hanno tematizzato, da prospettive diverse, la degenerazione in chiave patologica della nostra democrazia politica: "La democrazia dispotica" di Michele Ciliberto, "Poteri selvaggi" di Luigi Ferrajoli e "Liberi e uguali" di Nadia Urbinati. Si tratta di tre ricerche che interrogano il nostro tempo a partire da una legge eterna delle forme di governo (anche di quelle democratiche): qualsiasi organizzazione del potere politico, se slegata da norme sul piano istituzionale e da vincoli su quello etico e sociale, tende a degenerare in forme assolute e dispotiche. È mia persuasione che questi tre testi, scritti rispettivamente da uno storico della filosofia, da un filosofo del diritto e da una filosofa della politica, si illuminino a vicenda quando letti l’uno contro e assieme agli altri. È quanto mi propongo di fare in queste pagine, evidenziando elementi di continuità e di disaccordo fra le tre prospettive, nella convinzione che si tratti di un esercizio utile per analizzare e comprendere la crisi dell'etica pubblica e della partecipazione politica nell’era delle democrazie post-totalitarie (Urbinati),della post-politica di massa (Ciliberto) e delle democrazie decostituenti (Ferrajoli).

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
0. Premessa
1. Rottura dei legami e annientamento del libero arbitrio: la «democrazia dispotica» di Ciliberto da Tocqueville a Gramsci
2.Torsione personalistica della rappresentanza e patrimonialismo populista: la «decostituzionalizzazione» indotta della democrazia italiana secondo Ferrajoli
3. La decostituzionalizzazione riflessa: il demos assopito e assuefatto e la sfera pubblica manomessa
4. Distinguere tra gli individualismi per riscattare la partecipazione ragionata alla vita politica: la proposta di Urbinati
5. Ricostruire i legami: la sfida della filosofia politica contro il «tiranno moderno». Considerazioni conclusive"

"‘Political representation’ is undoubtedly one of the main topics around which Gerhard Leibholz’s philosophical and public law writings are developed, together with the methodological critique against Kelsen and normative Positivism. Beyond historical developments, from the 1920s to the 1960s he devotes several essays and conferences to the evolution of the representatives/represented relation at the turn from the XIX century liberal-parliamentary State to the XX century mass-party State. The weakening of such a dialectic, the loss of autonomy by deputies, the dissolution of Repräsentation back into the pre-modern Vertretung through the imperative mandate and the ties binding elected representatives to political and parliamentary groups: all these elements prove that a ‘structural transformation’ has occurred both in the idea and in the practice of democracy throughout the new century. This is also the main thesis emerging from the 1955 conference Der Gestalwandel der modernen Demokratie, a pivotal piece in Leibholz’s decades-long meditation on democracy, on which the present contribution is specifically focused.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. «Inverare la democrazia»: il problema filosofico-politico di Leibholz
2. Eguaglianza/libertà, democrazia/liberalismo, Stato autoritario/Stato totale: le figure filosofico-politiche del «Leibholz di Weimar» (e oltre)
3. Il riconfigurarsi «strutturale» della rappresentanza politica: quale destino per la «democrazia dei moderni»?"

Il rapporto Mill-Tocqueville ha costituito da sempre una questione aperta e costantemente problematica sul versante degli studi milliani, più che di quelli tocquevilliani, e, più in generale, nei tentativi sistematici di elaborazione di una storia del pensiero liberale. Ancora Bobbio, nei capitoli centrali di Liberalismo e democrazia, individuava nel tema della «tirannia della maggioranza» il punto di convergenza tra le due ali del liberalismo europeo, quella più conservatrice e quella più radicale, rappresentate rispettivamente dallo storico francese e dal filosofo inglese; e precisava che, se «Tocqueville fu prima liberale che democratico», «Mill fu liberale e democratico», considerando «la democrazia, in particolare il governo rappresentativo, come lo sviluppo naturale e conseguente dei principi liberali», [...]

"Enucleando alcuni passi dei capitoli antiluterani sul dibattito de iustificatione, l’autore si propone di mettere a fuoco la specificità dei ritratti di Lutero consegnatici dalle carte manoscritte del "De gratia", evidenziandone analogie e differenze rispetto alla controversistica cattolica (in latino e in volgare) sviluppatasi in ambito pre-preconciliare; esamina il ‘processo’ a Lutero in merito al rapporto «gratia inhaerens»/«iustitia imputativa» e all’«electorum Dei nova innocentia et munditia» (rispettivamente nel quinto e nell’undicesimo capitolo); si interroga sui testi attraverso cui parla il Lutero teofileo, suggerendo l’ipotesi di memorie testuali indirette e campionate (Catarino in particolare) da parte del maestro di Bruno.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Premessa
2. Il Lutero di Teofilo sullo sfondo della teologia controversistica in latino
3. «Gratia inaherens» o «Iustitia imputativa»? Lutero sotto accusa nel capitolo quinto del De Gratia
4. «Electorum Dei nova innocentia et munditia»: Lutero sotto accusa nell'undicesimo capitolo del De Gratia
5. Le fonti testuali del Lutero di Teofilo: un'ipotesi"

Rivolgendosi al popolo italiano nel discorso di fine anno la sera del 31 dicembre 1999, il Presidente Ciampi commentava così le speranze e le responsabilità che l’avvento del nuovo secolo lasciava intravedere, all’Italia e all’Europa:

[…] Tramonta il secolo XX; sta per spuntare l’alba di un nuovo millennio. Domina, su ogni altra sfida del nuovo secolo, l’impegno per il rispetto dei diritti umani, la lotta per un ambiente migliore, la lotta contro il razzismo e l’esclusione sociale, l’opera di volontariato dentro e fuori i nostri confini. Milioni di stranieri ci chiedono di aiutarli: al loro appello dobbiamo saper rispondere, attenti ai bisogni degli altri, sicuri dei nostri valori. Umanesimo e Cristianesimo sono le due grandi forze ispiratrici della nostra civiltà, della civiltà dell’intero mondo occidentale: su questi valori ha da sempre fondamento la nostra cultura democratica. Adesso che la mondializzazione dei mercati, oltre a produrre nuovo
benessere, rischia di mortificare vocazioni produttive, culture di popoli, di acuire disuguaglianze, vogliamo, nel nuovo secolo, continuare ad essere artefici di pace, nel nostro continente e in tutto il mondo, nel solco delle nostre grandi tradizioni di umanità e universalità.

Con queste parole, a soli sette mesi dall’inizio del proprio mandato, il Presidente Ciampi esponeva un progetto che si sarebbe rivelato una delle missioni civili e morali più impegnative del suo settennato: attingere all’eredità culturale dell’Umanesimo, allo sguardo universale che esso seppe lanciare sull’Uomo e sulle civiltà, per promuovere una pax non
soltanto europea ma globale, valida all’interno e all’esterno dei confini della nuova Europa. ‘Un’aspirazione realizzata o delusa?’, possiamo chiederci oggi guardando al settennato appena concluso, all’eredità materiale e morale che esso ha lasciato. [...]

Chair: Dr. David Ragazzoni (Columbia)
Speakers: Prof. Alasia Nuti and Prof. Gabriele Badano (York), Prof. Emilee Chapman (Stanford), Prof. Alexander Kirshner (Duke), Dr. Dongxian Jiang (Stanford).
Discussants: Prof. Lise Herman (Exeter), Prof. Anthoula Malkopoulou (Lunds), Prof. Alfred Moore (York), Dr. David Ragazzoni (Columbia).
https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/PanelDetails/10744

The panel brings together three papers that revisit the work of leading representatives of early-modern and modern republicanism as well as recent debates in contemporary republican thought. In doing so, it places special emphasis on different, at times competing, ideas on the nature and role of political intermediary bodies, the danger of factionalism, rival forms of partisanship and party systems, and the implications of all the above for the theory and practice of popular sovereignty in modern and contemporary republics. The abstracts of the three papers are listed chronologically (i.e., from Machiavelli and Rousseau to Pettit and contemporary republicanism).

The aim of Vlassopoulos’ book is to explore and unveil the continuities and ruptures between ancient and modern political thought and practice; that is, to understand the extent to which the ancient texts on politics have influenced, either theoretically or practically, the political experience of the modern age. As the author explains in the Introduction, the word “modern” is given, in this study, both a wider and a more restricted meaning; it refers to the period from the 16th century onwards (modern vs. ancient) or, more restrictedly, from the 16th to the end of the 18th century (early modern vs. late modern). Therefore, the question at the heart of the book plays a pivotal role for contemporary understanding of how the canons and vocabulary of political thought have emerged and evolved. It is undeniable that the moderns inherited and reshaped terms and expressions of ancient origin: “democracy”, “monarchy”, “oligarchy”, and “tyranny” were coined by the Greeks; “republic”, “liberty”, “empire”, “constitution” and “citizenship” by the Romans. Yet, each of these expressions has come to assume a different meaning throughout the centuries, depending upon the social, political and cultural context in which it was used and, most importantly, the various polemical goals pursued by political theorists and policy makers. As shall be seen, the history of the word “democracy” is paradigmatic for the political hermeneutics that Vlassopoulos suggests decoding. [...]

[...] Ferrajoli individua un nesso biunivoco tra forma rappresentativa e cornice costituzionale della democrazia dei moderni, nonché un rapporto di consanguineità tra le due reciproche crisi nell'Italia della Seconda Repubblica. L'indebolimento strategico dell'elemento legal-costituzionalistico della nostra democrazia a favore della sua voce politica e di un potere rappresentativo che individua nel 'popolo sovrano' e nel voto degli elettori la propria unica, vera fonte di legittimazione, nasconde una deformazione profonda del concetto stesso di rappresentanza. Particolarmente evidente è poi lo sfilacciarsi di elementi fondanti del garantismo giuridico alla base del moderno Stato di diritto: la garanzia, politica, della lealtà dei pubblici poteri e quella, sociale, della vigilanza dei cittadini. Proprio l'assenza di anticorpi culturali e di un adeguato raccordo tra il dentro e il fuori delle istituzioni (in primo luogo, il Parlamento) porta l'autore a richiamare l''esperienza eterna' individuata da Montesquieu nel rapporto tra un popolo e il potere politico che lo governa: ogni potere (anche quello democratico, come ci ricorda Kant), quando lasciato senza limiti e controlli, tende a degenerare in forme assolute, libere da vincoli: a tramutarsi, per l'appunto, in 'poteri selvaggi', nel contesto di un primato del potere sul diritto. [...]

Quali sono i dilemmi che i nuovi scenari europei e internazionali hanno aperto nel dibattito odierno sul concetto di cittadinanza? È ancora possibile, nel mondo globale in cui viviamo, una sua accezione forte e compatta, fondata su criteri etnici, linguistici, culturali e di genere, o si tratta di una categoria destinata a sfilacciarsi sempre più nella direzione di una «cittadinanza multiculturale»? Sono questi gli interrogativi da cui parte The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era di Seyla Benhabib, docente di Scienze Politiche all'Università di Yale e interprete tra le più brillanti della discussione filosofico-politica di questi ultimi anni su multiculturalismo e differenza.

THE AUTHOR
Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) – philosopher, economist, and jurist – is one of the most distinguished voices of the Italian Enlightenment. His classic treatise – "Dei Delitti e Delle Pene" (On Crimes and Punishments) –, which he started writing in 1763 and published in 1764 at the age of 26, soon turned into a bestseller shaping the landscape of modern criminal law and having a significant and long-lasting impact on both sides of the Atlantic. Translated in French in 1766 (the Morellet edition) and in English in 1767 (with a commentary attributed to Voltaire), it immediately mesmerized the French philosophes and it resonated in the thought and action of the American founders. Because of his attempt to study criminal law through a geometric method, he was soon nicknamed “Newtoncino” (Little Newton).
THE WORK
"Dei Delitti e Delle Pene" represents a landmark of modern criminal law and remains one of the most influential texts in the whole history of Western ideas. "Much cited and little read" (Bellamy), it has been usually described as a watershed between profoundly divergent visions of torture, its epistemology as a societal practice, and its legitimacy as a juridical institution.
Anglo-American scholars have usually examined Beccaria within a comparative framework meant to study his treatise as a foundational text in the history of criminal law. Leaving aside the influential essay by Hart on “Bentham and Beccaria” (1964), three important intellectual biographies were published throughout the XX century: Coleman Phillipson’s "Three Criminal Law Reformers: Beccaria, Bentham, Romilly" (1923); Marcello Maestro’s "Voltaire and Beccaria as Reformers of Criminal Law" (1942); Maestro’s "Cesare Beccaria and the Origins of Penal Reform" (1973). Anglo-American academics have also – understandably – enquired into the influence of Beccaria on the political, constitutional, and philosophical thought of the American Founders: two important examples of this specific historiographical approach are Adolph Caso’s "America’s Italian Founding Fathers" (1975, with three
chapters on John Adams’s personal copy of "On Crimes and Punishments" – one of the earliest translations, printed in London in 1775 with the famous commentary by Voltaire and comments at the margins by Adams himself in his own handwriting) and, more recently, John Bessler’s "The Birth of American Law. An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution" (2014).
THE PROBLEM
Despite the unusual combination of historical erudition and theoretical questions that most of such works exhibit, none of them has specifically focused on torture as the key to unlock the door of a relatively, and surprisingly, underexplored part of the history of "On Crimes and Punishment", often mentioned but never thoroughly studied: namely, its genesis.
As Bernard Harcourt recalls in his 2013 paper – “Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments: A Mirror on the History of the Foundations of Modern Criminal Law “– one of the most debated and intriguing questions that developed around Beccaria’s treatise and its unbelievable, immediate success concerned its authorship. Who was the author of "On Crimes and Punishments"? Was it the creation of a single, visionary mind or rather the outcome of a collective intellectual enterprise?
SETTING THE STAGE FOR MY ARGUMENT
We know that Beccaria started writing "On Crimes and Punishments" in March 1763 and that the topic was suggested to him by Pietro Verri, Beccaria’s mentor and friend and founder of the s.c. "Accademia dei Pugni" (Academy of Fists). As Luigi Firpo noted, Verri’s role was not merely that of a faithful copyist. He reorganized the texts, introduced number paragraphs, transposed and/or replaced words or sections, made stylistic amendments, and added some passages – all this with the consent, tacit or otherwise, of Beccaria himself. Pietro Verri was also the author, among many other writings, of a treatise titled “Osservazioni sulla Tortura" (Considerations on Torture), which he wrote and reworked several times throughout his life, starting from 1760 (three years before the publication of "On Crimes and Punishments"), and which was published posthumously in 1804. The letters Pietro exchanged with his brother Alessandro between January 1767 and September 1780 are a precious, and often under-examined, source for  unveiling the kaleidoscope of texts and philosophical and cultural traditions that may have generated, shaped, and/or reshaped the foundational concepts and ideas of the treatise. Including its views on torture. In one of his letters, Pietro wrote: "Cesare's whole theory of torture comes from that manuscript of mine that I later on turned into the history of pestilential anointing (i.e., Osservazioni sulla tortura)” (my translation).
If Beccaria supposedly derived his whole theory of torture from Pietro Verri, what connections - if any - can be detected between chapter XVI of "On Crimes and Punishments" (the only chapter Beccaria devotes to torture) and the sixteen chapters of "Considerations on Torture" (the whole manuscript revolving around the history, theory, and critique of judicial torture)?
MY ARGUMENT
My paper offers a comparative and critical reading of the two texts and the vision of torture they disclose to test the validity of Pietro's claim about his paternity of Beccaria's ideas on judicial torture. More broadly, it draws on a variety of overlooked primary sources - i.e., the letters of Pietro and Alessandro Verri from 1767, 1770, and 1780; their articles on juridical topics in the periodical "Il Caffè" in 1764; their 1765 anonymous reply to Ferdinando Facchinei's critique of "On Crimes and Punishments"; Pietro's 1763 manuscript "Meditazioni sulla felicità" (Considerations on Happiness), his 1763 piece "Orazione panegirica sulla giurisprudenza milanese" (Panegyric Oration on Milanese Jurisprudence"), and his 1773 essay "Discorso sull'indole del piacere e del dolore" (Treatise on the nature of pain and pleasure") - to offer new ideas, based on thorough textual evidence, about themes, authors, and writings that might have inspired Beccaria's masterpiece.

This paper is the very first part of a broader project on the Italian Enlightenment and its political thought that I hope to develop over the next few years. It combines the history of historiography, the history of ideas, and intellectual and conceptual history to set the stage for future work. 
The following pages examine one of the most pressing problems in XVIII-century political theory – that is, the nature, foundations, and implications of luxury in the context of modern commercial societies – through the prism of the Italian Enlightenment(s) and, more specifically, through an under-explored chapter in the intellectual history of the Milanese Enlightenment: Pietro Verri’s reading of David Hume’s "Political Discourses".
Together with his younger brother Alessandro, Pietro (1728-1797) was the co-founder of the Academy of Fists (“Accademia dei Pugni”) – a group of young aristocrats, including Cesare Beccaria, animated by common reformist goals and anonymously fostering public debate through their periodical "Il Caffè" (The Coffehouse, published from 1764). He wrote extensively in a variety of fields (literature, philosophy, history, and law) but made political economy the core of his intellectual project throughout his whole life. Praised by Kant, his writings played a crucial role in both introducing the multiple publics across the peninsula to some of the most influential ideas on commerce debated outside Italy and outlining a syncretic understanding of luxury beyond the traditional juxtaposition of moral and economic categories. However, the towering figure of Beccaria, with his land-marking pamphlet "On Crimes and Punishments" (1764), has almost irreversibly eclipsed the work and thought of Verri over the past two hundred and fifty years, with countless books, volumes, essays, and conferences on the former (Beccaria) and an incomparably less extensive scholarship on the latter (P. Verri). 
The tentative goal of this paper is to press Anglo-American scholars, among which this bias is more evident, to rescue Pietro Verri from his prolonged neglect and to explore his writings as a meaningful contribution to the development of political economy in Italy in the age of the Enlightenment. More specifically, it encourages to excavate the origins and sources of Verri’s economic thought, which dynamically evolved over the years and critically engaged, revisited, and combined at least two different intellectual traditions – the French and the British. While scholars have traditionally examined Verri’s thought through the lens of the former, with a predominant focus on his reading of Melon, they have paid less attention to the latter, though his oeuvre often references the work of Hume and Mandeville (and his private library included copies of Bacon’s "Opera Omnia" and Locke’s economic writings).
The recent publication of Verri’s opera omnia – eight volumes released between 2003 and 2014 by Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura in Rome, offering for the first time, and in the most philologically accurate form, the writings and extensive epistolary of a leading voice of the Milanese and Italian Enlightenment – allows to shed light on the ‘pre-history’ of his systematic writings in political economy. In particular,
the two books of the second volume of the first series ("Scritti di economia, finanza e amministrazione": I-II) enable to scrutinize the multiple intellectual legacies upon which he drew throughout the years and decades.
One source included in the first part of this volume, and  made available to a broader audience for the first time in 2006, deserves closer attention: the notes Pietro Verri took in 1760 when he first had the chance to read Hume’s "Political Discourses". Published as "Estratti da Hume", they do not offer a critical commentary. They are – literally – excerpts from Hume’s most famous, and most widely read, work in XVIII-century Italy (though predominantly through French translations); as such, their value lies not in the interpretation they disclose, but in the kind of reading they suggest. In other words, they help to better understand the influence Hume had in the forging of Verri’s early views on political economy through the textual selection they operate.
My paper tries to shed light on this intriguing, and so far under-explored, chapter in the history of modern European political thought. It also points at the far-reaching implications that a closer scrutiny of P. Verri's reading of Hume through the lens of economic concerns would have on the way Anglo-American scholars usually conceptualize the focus and nature of the Italian Enlightenment(s).

Chair: Nancy Rosenblum. Speakers: Greg Conti; Hugo Drochon; David Ragazzoni; Nadia Urbinati.
Abstract: My paper explores the theme of our panel through the writings of Norberto Bobbio (1909-2004), Italy’s pre-eminent postwar public intellectual and one of the most distinguished Italian political and legal philosophers of the XX century. The paper raises two interconnected questions: does Bobbio have a systematic theory of parties? And does he provide any insight into how it is possible, in the age of democracy, to distinguish between parties and factions – a timeless problem in the theory and practice of politics across the centuries? Both questions have received little to no attention among scholars, although Bobbio is conventionally mentioned as one of the main proponents of a procedural theory of democracy and although the survival of oligarchies and the rejection of parties figure prominently, on his account, among the six “broken promises” of modern democratic politics (Bobbio: 1987). My paper will try to answer both questions by reconnecting four levels of Bobbio’s intellectual trajectory that are usually compartmentalized: his writings in democratic theory; his work on the history of political thought (especially the essays on Hobbes); his publications on the history of ideologies (with a focus on pre-WWI élite Italian theorists – Mosca and Pareto); his writings in legal philosophy.
What keeps these four levels together, and thus gives consistency to his multiple visions of the nature and degenerations of partisanship before and after its substantiation into parties, is an emphasis on equal political liberty – a vision of politics entailing that each ‘part’ sees itself as one among many, without exclusionary temptations of anti- or hyper-partisanship. This theme made its first systematic appearance in Bobbio’s essay "Political Parties in England" (1946) and remained a pressing concern until the end of his life, when the shift from “party democracy” to “audience democracy” (Manin, 1997) induced him to explore the manipulations of partisanship by populist and plebiscitary leaders.

One of the major, and most intriguing, conundrums in Thomas Hobbes’s political theory concerns the contrast between the visibility of women in the state of nature and their invisibility in civil society – or, in Carole Pateman’s words, the relation between the “sexual” and the “social” contract. My paper addresses this tension through the lens of the concept of “family”, one that Hobbes defines in multiple ways throughout his political writings – from Elements of Law (1640) and De Cive (1642) to Leviathan (1651) – and raises the question of the role of women in the state of nature and beyond. I contend that exploring the scattered and inconsistent definitions of “family” in Hobbes’s oeuvre is no mere exercise in the scholarly search for consistencies. By calling for a closer understanding of the various forms of “dominions” in the transition from the state of nature to commonwealths, it has the potential to shed new light on the kind of individualism Hobbes’s political theory ultimately entails.

Both Hobbes’s contemporaries (Robert Filmer, John Bramhall) and later commentators (from Henry Summer Maine to George Gooch and Bertrand de Jouvenel) almost unanimously criticized his rendering of the state of nature as logically counter-intuitive and historically inaccurate, one that presupposes an atomistic way of thinking (methodological individualism) as well as an atomistic view of the human world (anthropological individualism). Though a family-centered approach to Hobbes’s state of nature was already alluded by Robertson (1886), Stephen (1904), Peters (1956), as well as Strauss (1952), it was Gordon Schochet who articulated it in the most systematic way. His work on patriarchalism in the social contract tradition of early modern England (1967; 1975) powerfully argued that families ruled by authoritarian patriarchs, rather than individuals stripped of any societal instinct, ground Hobbes’s theory of sovereignty already in the state of nature.
Since the 1980s, Schochet’s reading has been widely debated among feminist scholars (from Pateman up to Nancy Hirschmann) claiming that his patriarchal stand remains unsatisfactory on a variety of levels, both textual and contextual.

My paper draws on the history and historiography of such dispute to reconsider the role of women, dominions, and families in Hobbes’s state of nature beyond both Schochet and his critics.
While persuasively noticing that in Hobbes’s state of nature women start as equal and free, both mentally and physically, and thus have no reason to subject themselves to men – hence the idea that families, based on the institutionalized subjection of women as “servants”, arise in Commonwealths “by Acquisition”, not “by Institution” –, Schochet’s critics have unfortunately failed to enquire more carefully into the polysemy of the “family” notion in Hobbes’s oeuvre.

Rephrasing the title of a famous book by Crawford B. Macpherson, I contend that “the life and times” of Leviathan – i.e., the way it progressively develops out of the original condition of mankind – entails a threefold meaning (at least) of the term “family”: i) as “paternall dominion”, in which women can be – but not necessarily are – both mothers and mistresses; ii) as societas, in which a man and a woman enter an equal partnership and children are subjected to the sovereignty of either the one or the other; iii) as family in the context of civitas, i.e. based on matrimonial laws once the Commonwealth has been created and encapsulated within it as a sort of “little Monarchy”.

Acknowledging the existence of pre-commonwealth families (i and ii) – I conclude – allows to embrace a broader understanding of individualism, not just methodological or anthropological but ontological, one that makes sovereignty rather than human beings (either individuals or groups) the main concern for Hobbes. According to this reading, the Hobbesian world represents an evolving architecture of sovereignty that gradually comes into existence through multiple forms of interaction (paternal dominions; societates; confederations; families through marriage), equally conceptualized as loci of absolute and indivisible sovereign power. Such emphasis on the ontological unity of sovereignty – one that has to be created, exercised, and taught via “families” at their different stages – is what makes Hobbes’s individualism a consistent theory of politics, based on the moral language of obligation and the political language of authorization.

Paper presented within the panel "Spatiality, Universality, and Exclusion in the Thought of Carl Schmitt" (September 4, 2015, 7.30 a.m.-9 a.m.). Presenters: Eva Odzuck (University of California at Berkeley), David Ragazzoni (Columbia University), Aaron Roberts (Duke University), Samuel Garrett Zeitlin (University of California at Berkeley); Chair and Discussant: Prof. Lars Vinx).

http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/ohf/documents/Lecture_Lists/Trinity_Term_2013/History_of_Political_Thought.pdf

The key institutions of representative democracy – i.e. political parties – have relatively recently come to be accepted as crucial actors in the every-day making of democratic politics. However, antipartyism and antipartisanship have significantly marked the history of political thought, especially in the early 20th century, when the crisis of the intellectual and political project of “liberal democracy” induced a whole generation of German legal and political theorists to regard parties with moral disdain and political hostility: Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) and Gerhard Leibholz (1901-1982) were important voices in such debates underpinning the trajectory of Weimar. While they both agreed on the failure of nineteenth-century liberalism and its ideal of parliamentarism as government by discussion, they developed diverging readings of the advent of mass parties and suggested opposite solutions to their troubled relation with both the State and parliamentary institutions. The paper provides a thorough and comparative analysis of their arguments and shows that, contrary to Schmitt, Leibholz progressively moderated his diffidence towards partisan politics: in the vein of Anglo-American liberalism and Schumpeterian trends, he came to understand parties as fundamental and promising instruments of mass democracy.

The present paper sheds light on a minor piece of writing that Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) authored during the third and final phase of his thought, focused on the re-conceptualization of the global order in the aftermath of World War II. The Gespräch über den neuen Raum (Dialogue on the new space) – a composition so far widely ignored by scholars and never translated into English, unlike Land und Meer (1942), Der Nomos der Erde (1950) and Theorie des Partisanen (1963) –was read on radio in 1954 and then published in Spanish in 1962. It contained the re-elaboration of the memorandum Schmitt had written on 21 April 1947 at Nuremberg when defending himself from the charge of providing “the theoretical basis for Hitler’s doctrine of great spaces”.
Structured as a conversation between Mr. Neumeyer (N.), Mr. Altmann (A.) and the young MacFuture (F.), the text develops around the new challenges posed to post-war humanity by the opening of unexplored spaces and the emergence of previously unthought-of “historical calls”, in the language of Arnold Toynbee. F. invites his older interlocutors to overcome the static opposition between land and sea – a key feature of power balances over the centuries – and to take into account the spatial reconfiguration of the ‘political’ – i.e. the distinction between Friend and Foe – in the context of mid-twentieth- century nuclear Age, the unstoppable development of technique and the bipolar antagonism between East and West. Every power, to remain such, must ensure its hegemony in the concrete space emerging, from time to time, as the locus of existential conflict and clear-cut amity lines. This is the logic transversally dominating the history of geopolitical balances; this is also the way the ‘political’ has been shaping global order, as well as global disorder, throughout the trajectory of the jus publicum Europaeum – from the Westphalian establishment of a Eurocentric landscape based on equal State sovereignties to the rise of American universal claims in the early twentieth century. What is the cradle of political antagonism in the aftermath of World War II: the boundless spaces of the cosmos, as suggested by MacFuture, or the depth of the abysses, as in the reading of Neumeyer?
The answer provided by Altmann/Carl Schmitt falls outside this dichotomy. He reminds Europe, whose geopolitical primacy has been significantly re-dimensioned, as well as Russia and the United States, that every form of power is always at once a matter of order (Ordnung) and localization (Ortung). Even at the dawn of the jus publicum Europaeum, when the “Old World” has been divested of any hegemony and new political geographies have emerged as unexpected geographies of ‘the political’, such a co-implication remains crucial. No conquest or exploration will ever circumvent the centrality of the Muttererde, of land as the normative framework for human existence. Man is, and will always be, a chthonic creature and a child of the land. This, according to Schmitt, is the only way post-war humanity can avoid self-destruction and once again build order out of disorder vis-à-vis spatial revolutions and highly conflicting cartographies of power.

"To be named a Dean's Fellow is the highest honor conferred upon entering PhD students
in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, in recognition of the impressive credentials as well as the promise that the Department identifies in the future development of the Fellow as a scholar, pedagogue, and researcher".

Vice Chancellor's Awards are extremely competitive and are given to the most promising incoming graduate students. Awarded for pursuing doctoral studies in the History of Political Thought (PhD Program, Department of History, ranked #1 in the world among History Departments)

Extremely competitive (selectivity rate: 5-10%): the Award is given to graduate students presenting at either an international conference or a conference within the United States. Awarded for participating as a selected speaker to the Berkeley Graduate Conference in the History of British Political Thought (October 2014)

The unexpected election of Donald Trump as President of the United States and his stands on migration and citizenship have sparked debates on the potential authoritarian tendencies of early 21st-century democracies. It has also led several scholars and commentators to draw, perhaps too quickly, analogies and evoke comparisons with the authoritarian experiences of 20th- century Europe. This roundtable aims to reflect on the controversial, and yet very common, equation between Fascism and populism to encourage a more thorough and dispassionate assessment of what each of the two categories entails. It does so by focusing on the experience of Fascist Italy, in the attempt to dissect its ideology and examine its theories and practices in a few, key spheres. Our speakers will cover the regime's foreign policy and its relationships with international institutions (Prof. Victoria De Grazia, History, Columbia U.); its system of ethnic, religious and gender exclusions (Prof. Ilaria Pavan, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa); the Fascist theory of the State and its relation to mono-partyism (David Ragazzoni, Political Theory, Columbia U.); and the ideological appropriation of past history and the myth of Rome to legitimize the regime (Carlo Arrigoni, Italian Studies, Columbia U.). Prof. Nadia Urbinati (Political Theory, Columbia U.) will chair the roundtable and the following debate. The event has been co-organized by Nadia Urbinati and Carlo Arrigoni.

Panel di "Teoria Politica" nell'ambito del Convegno Annuale della Società Italiana di Scienza Politica (settembre 2019). Panel Conveners: Prof. Damiano Palano, Dr. David Ragazzoni. Il panel in questione è il 2.2 (https://www.sisp.it/sezioni-convegno-sisp-2019#21) e la deadline per inviare gli abstract è il 19 maggio attraverso la specifica procedura indicata nella sezione "Call for papers" al sito https://www.sisp.it/convegno-2019#5. Le proposte saranno vagliate e selezionate dai due Chairs della Sezione Teoria Politica della SISP (Prof. Alessandro Campi, Dr. Antonio Floridia). Ulteriori dettagli disponibili circa il panel nel file qui in allegato.

The recent publication of Carl Schmitt’s Dialogues on power and space (1954–1955), fully translated in English for the first time by Samuel Garrett Zeitlin, and the new edition of Schmitt’s Land and sea (1942), published in a fresh, thoroughly annotated translation by Zeitlin and Russell Berman, offer unexpected and important insights into the thought of one of the most influential, and controversial, political/legal theorists of the twentieth century. Since Schmitt’s death in 1985, Anglo-American scholars have repeatedly turned to his work at pivotal historical junctures, in an attempt to see whether the most (in)famous of Weimar conservative jurists could help decipher ongoing political transformations at national and international levels. Three distinct phases are worth highlighting in the English reception of Schmitt over the past three decades. The publication of The crisis of parliamentary democracy (1985), Political romanticism and Political theology (1986), The Leviathan in the state theory of Thomas Hobbes, Roman Catholicism and political form, and The concept of the political (1996, the last two trans-