Rivista scaricabile gratuitamente fascicolo 3/2017
Storia e politica : rivista quadrimestrale : IX, 3, 2017
Roberta Adelaide Modugno
MERCY OTIS WARREN E LA RIVOLUZIONE AMERICANA. RIFLESSIONI DI UNA OLD REPUBLICAN
(MERCY OTIS WARREN AND AMERICAN REVOLUTION. REFLECTIONS OF AN OLD REPUBLICAN)
Keywords: American Revolution, feminism, anti-federalists, republican motherhood, classical liberalism.
Mercy Otis Warren was a writer and a political thinker. She corresponded to political leaders such as John Adams, George Washington, Elbridge Jerry and others. She wrote several political satires criticizing British tyranny in the 1770s, an important tract opposing the ratification of the American Constitution in 1788, authored a volume of poems and plays in 1790, and in 1805 published one of the earliest histories of the American Revolution. The article focuses on the importance of Mercy Otis Warren both for the American politics and the role of women. She supported the American Revolution with her writings. She was deeply involved in the politics of the pre-revolutionary period and after the Revolution she participated to the debate on the American Constitution as an anti-federalist. With her writings and political participation she contributed to the evolution of women’s role in morals and politics.
Cinzia Recca
DYING IN DEFENCE OF OUR HOMELAND AND LIVING FOR HER LOVE”: NAPLES IN 1799 THROUGH THE PAST OF REVOLUTIONARY WOMEN
Keywords: Neapolitan Revolution, Eighteenth Century, Women’s writing, Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel, Luisa Sanfelice, Helena Maria Williams
The essay analyses an inside female view of the Neapolitan revolution and counter revolution of 1799 and it situates three women’s ideas and lives within multiple historical contexts. Naples, during 1799, was marked by social and political clashes collapsed, and thus preparing the way for the revolution. The myth of the Naples revolution marked a great part of the nineteenth and twentieth century culture. Referring to the peculiar conditions that distinguished the city as well as the population, the paper aims to examine the way in which historical interpretations of this catastrophic struggle were recorded by three distinctive ‘revolutionary’ women who lived through the revolution: Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel and Luisa Sanfelice, revolution martyrs who gave up their lives for freedom, and a British revolutionary novelist, Helen Maria Williams who far from Naples, shared the vocation to transmit the love for liberty.
Serena Mocci
MARGARET FULLER, REPUBBLICANESIMO E FEMMINISMO IN WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
(MARGARET FULLER, REPUBLICANISM AND FEMINISM IN WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY)
Keywords: Margaret Fuller, republicanism, democracy, feminism, women’s rights
Margaret Fuller is mainly known as the first American feminist manifesto’s author, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1845. The article tries to analyze Fuller’s work from different perspectives, discussing her claim to women’s rights as a part of the antebellum debate on American democracy. Using the republican theory of freedom as independence from arbitrary power, Fuller demonstrated that, where domination was primarily social rather than political, the legal recognition of women’s rights would never bring freedom unless there was also a change in the cultural patterns and the defeat of the patriarchal ideology. The paper examines how Fuller challenged nineteenth-century rules and tried, with the publication of her book, to fight women’s social domination, which prevented them from becoming independent, in the republican sense, in order to establish more equal relations between the sexes.
Alessandro Dividus
IL VALORE DELL’AUTOCOSCIENZA NELLA FILOSOFIA POLITICA DI THOMAS HILL GREEN
(THE VALUE OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF THOMAS HILL GREEN)
keywords: nature, self-consciousness, morality, politics, common good
The focus of this article is the eclectic character of T.H. Green’s position. Starting from a critical analysis of empiricism, Green highlighted its relations with the Kantian epistemology. The philosophy of Green is based on two principles: the notion of the self, seen as capable of bettering itself, and the existence of a universal consciousness. The moral character of human actions stems from the principle of self-realization, which aims to reduce the impact of egoism on morality. As a consequence, the Kantian vision of the moral good seems to affirm itself at the cost of the hedonistic explanation of it. Notwithstanding, at the same time, Green rejected what he regarded as the too abstract aspects of the Hegelian view.
Enrico Marino
POPOLO E OPINIONE PUBBLICA NEL LIBERALISMO ELITISTICO- TECNOCRATICO DI WALTER LIPPMANN
(PEOPLE AND PUBLIC OPINION IN THE ELITISTIC-TECNHOCRATIC LIBERALISM OF WALTER LIPPMANN)
Keywords: People, Public Opinion, Invisible Environment, Technocratic élite, Government
The aim of the article is to show that the liberal conception of people and public opinion elaborated by Walter Lippmann, is based on different principles of classic idea of democracy. The presuppositions of Lippmann’s conception are the impossibility of common citizens to know how to lead the public affairs and the consequent necessity to delegate to an organization of experts the function to support the government based on popular consense. Moving from the analysis of the formation of the public opinion, Lippmann observes that the common citizens can’t have a direct knowledge of social reality, because the great part of the events happen out of their vision, so the knowledge of social environment is often indirect and it’s conditioned by few subjects, social and institutional, which control the media. Furthermore a part of public opinion doesn’t have the necessary education to understand the social problems and the consequent political decisions and it’s very difficult that the citizens may devote enough time to the problems of the public life. These are some of the main causes of the formation of a common sense of stereotypes and symbols, which often don’t represent the reality. On these bases Lippmann elaborates a critique to the democratic idea and the purpose of elitist concept of government to defend the public interest and the individual rights.
Giulia Maria Gallotta
SUI CAMBIAMENTI NELL’ ETHOS DELLE MISURE PER L’INCLUSIONE NELL’UE: VERSO UN NUOVO INIZIO O SOLO UNA FALSA RIPARTENZA?
(ON THE CHANGES IN THE ETHOS OF EU SOCIAL INCLUSION POLICY: TOWARDS A FRESH START OR A FALSE RESTART?)
Keywords: European Union, EU pillar of social rights, social inclusion, ethos, socially deprived individuals
The article analyzes the historical evolution of documents from EU institutions in the field of the combat to social exclusion, from documents of the Delors Commission to the recent adoption of the European pillar of social rights up to recent jurisprudence by the ECJ on the subject. It aims to reconstruct the different ethos, which underpin and inspire EU action in the field. If we define “ethos” as shared values and socially accepted norms of an organized community, the article tries to derive this from the evolution in the different categories of individuals which are considered “excluded” in EU documents. This should allow us to detect values and features of subject members of the European society which is promoted at EU level and the degree of solidarity we can get from it.
Note e discussioni/ Notes and Discussions
Leone Melillo
CONSIDERAZIONI SULLA PACE SECONDO PLATONE E LA SUA INTERPRETAZIONE
(CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT PEACE ACCORDING TO PLATO AND HIS INTERPRETATION)
Keywords: Plato, Order, Peace, Justice, Plotin
A reflection, based on studies that have been conducted about peace, according to Plato, outlines a research perspective that has never been fully addressed. A definition of “peace as dimension of the spirit” that rediscovers Plato, “filtered through Plotin’s thought”. So, the evaluation focuses on “Plato of the world of ideas”, on “Plato of transcendence and dualism, mysticism and asceticism”, and out- lines the Greek conception of “order”, the human condition, justice and therefore peace, that is understood as “a great idea” which the interpretative proposition “relates to the idea of order, of universal harmony”.
Interventi/ Remarks
Pina Travagliante
ETICA ED ECONOMIA: DEMOCRAZIA LIQUIDA E CORRUZIONE
(ETHICS AND ECONOMY: LIQUID DEMOCRACY AND CORRUPTION)
Keywords: Democracy, Corruption, State, Health, General interest
In the essay it is shown that corruption, now widespread in every social classes, has as a preliminary condition the decline of participatory democracy and the disappearance of the State as a subject recognized by the citizens and hence the disappearance of the concept of general interest in the consciousness of the people. The effect is the overthrow of special interests and the spread of “amoral familyism”.