Storia e Politica 2/2017

Davide Suin

SOVRANI E SUDDITI: LA RIFLESSIONE DI ALBERICO GENTILI TRA ASSOLUTISMO E COSMOPOLITISMO

(SOVEREIGN AND SUBJECTS: THE REFLECTION OF ALBERICO GENTILI BETWEEN ABSOLUTISM AND COSMOPOLITANISM)

Keywords: Sovereignty, absolutism, monarchy, England, cosmopolitanism

In the essay the author focuses on Alberico Gentili (1552-1608)’s approach to the issue of relation between sovereigns and subjects, a central question in Gentili’s work. Gentili’s juridical and political elaboration is strongly inspired to Bodin’s reflection on sovereignty as to the tradition of stoic cosmopolitanism: these two components are not easy to conciliate, however Gentili offers an efficient synthesis of them and gives a fundamental contribution to the modern doctrine of ius gentium.

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Mauro Ferrante

PRIMUM MOBILE: OSSERVAZIONI SUL POTERE DEL SOVRANO NEGLI ESSAYES DI FRANCIS BACON


(PRIMUM MOBILE: NOTES ON THE SOVEREIGN’S POWER IN THE ESSAYES OF FRANCIS BACON)

Keywords: Francis Bacon, Sovereignty, Tudor, Stuart, Royal Prerogative

This paper focuses on the contribution of the Essayes of Francis Bacon to the history of the concept of sovereign power in 17th century England. The analysis of the different editions of the Essayes points out how Bacon’s perspective on this concept changed between the Elizabethan and the Jacobean age, moving towards a more emphatic praise of the royal prerogative. Specifically, the paper focuses on the use of the aristotelian-ptolemaic image of primum mobile to define the role of the prince among the other political subjects. Beside the analysis of the full text of the es- say entitled Of faction in its 1597 and 1625 version, it is also offered a brief survey of Bacon’s public speeches touching this theme.

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Rosamaria Alibrandi

RIFLESSI DEI LUMI IN SICILIA TRA POLITICA E DIRITTO, FILOSOFIA E MATEMATICA

(THE EFFECTS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN SICILY BETWEEN POLITICS AND LAW, PHILOSOPHY AND MATHEMATICS)

Keywords: Enlightenment, Niccolò Cento, Tommaso Natale, Antonino Barcellona, Mathematics and Science in the XVIII century.

During the Eighteenth century Italian illuministi collaborated with the governments, particularly in Naples. More than ever before, academies and scientific societies dominated institutional science and scientist were often charged with governmental functions, while it also seemed essential that the great advances could be achieved only by teaching science and mathematics systematically and improving the instructional system. In Sicily the mathematician Niccolò Cento became the enlightened master of a generation, and formed young intellectuals such as the jurist Tommaso Natale, who supported political and civil education addressing the reform of the judicial system and criminal codes. He was influenced, through the teaching of Cento, by the doctrine of Leibniz. Another Cento’s pupil, the theologian Antonino Barcellona, moved many critics to the ancient translation of Holy Scriptures; he set down true interpretation according to the Hebrew language, advocating innovative philosophical and theological theories. Their common master, Niccolò Cento, specified concepts of great methodological interest. His work didn’t produce the expected results because Sicilian Enightenment culture was lacking of a deep hinterland, valid to the development of the proposed theoretical project: so it didn’t overcome a narrow space storm, flowing then in the early nineteenth-century conservatism. The brief season of the Enlightenment, despite the theoretical efforts of some Sicilian thinkers, was never able to secure real changes within the future, neither really involved strengths able to remove the legacy of the past.

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Fabio Di Giannatale

IL «CANTORE DELLA RETTITUDINE EVANGELICA E CATTOLICA». GESUITI INTERPRETI DI DANTE NEL RISORGIMENTO

(«CANTORE DELLA RETTITUDINE EVANGELICA E CATTOLICA». JESUIT INTERPRETERS OF DANTE IN THE RISORGIMENTO)

Keywords: Dante Alighieri, Italian Risorgimento, The myth of Dante, Jesuits, Catholic Intransigentism, La Civiltà Cattolica.

The Risorgimental movement considered Dante not only one of the founding figures of the Italian nation, but the archetypal Italian itself. Dante studies began in the first decades of the nineteenth century, particularly thanks to the political exiles, who projected on Dante – an exile himself – their own condition. Subsequently the debate on Dante’s political thought spread across Italy, promoting a sort of “Dante- mania”, which, from the intellectual elite spread to the popular culture. The reactionary political forces – and in particular the Jesuits –, however, criticized the Risorgimental interpretation of the Florentine writer. The members of the Company of Jesus offered instead an image of Dante who was respectful of the Catholic dogmas and of ecclesiastical authority.

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Luigi Mastrangelo

CARLO CATTANEO E LA LETTERATURA CIVILE

(CARLO CATTANEO AND CIVIL LITERATURE)

Keywors: Literature, Politics, Law of Nature, Reason of State, Exile

Literary writings constitute a less traveled path in the multi-faceted production of Carlo Cattaneo. From this analysis, a coherent picture emerges of the overall vision of the political thinker, inclined to a federalism that is both inclusive and constructive. The authors studied, including Dante, Alfieri, Foscolo, in addition to contemporary novelists, are analyzed for civil commitments embadded in their works. For Cattaneo, the determinants in the process of building a national identity do not stifle and repress, but enhance and develop the territorial features.

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Fiorenza Taricone

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE: IL CAPOLAVORO LETTERARIO E POLITICO DI ROMAIN ROLLAND

(JEAN-CHRISTOPHE: THE LITERARY AND POLITICAL MASTERPIECE BY ROMAIN ROLLAND)

Keywords: pacifism, socialism-emancipation of women

The article examines the Romain Rolland’s literary masterpiece, entitled Jean-Cristophe and published in ten volumes from 1904 to 1912. For this writing, he received the Nobel Prize in 1915. However, the novel is also a text of political and prophetic nature, in addition to being a work of literature. In fact, the two protagonists’ biographical events, the German Jean-Christophe and the French Olivier, symbolizes the sympathy that had to bind France and Germany, while the First World War proved where hatred and nationalism took places. The novel is also a proof of Rolland’s pacifist beliefs many years before World War II.

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Francesco Frau

L’APOSTOLA DEGLI APOSTOLI: LA TEOLOGIA FEMMINISTA DELLA LIBERAZIONE NEL XX SECOLO

(THE WOMAN APOSTLE OF THE APOSTLES: FEMINIST LIBERATION THEOLOGY DURING XX CENTURY)

Keywords: Feminist Liberation Theology, Black Liberation Theology, XX century, church history, women’s history

Between XIX and XX century, the Christian community started to bring into question the principles at the basis of their faith. Black and Latin American theologians used the concepts of race and social class to lay claim to equality inside the Church. In order to challenge the paradigm of the middle-class white men’s supremacy, further efforts have been done also by women. The article describes the principal features of the Feminist Liberation Theology across the XX century. By using the concept of diakonía elaborated by Russel (1977), the paper will analyze the role of women inside the Black Theology, and their struggle against androcentrism inside the Church. The article aims to point out the new concept of “liberty” that feminist theologians used as the basis of their vindications.

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Stefania Mazzone

ISTITUZIONI DELL’UCCIDIBILITÀ: INTERPRETAZIONI BIOPOLITICHE DEL NAZISMO

(INSTITUTIONS OF KILLINGNESS: BIOPOLITICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF NAZISM)

Keywords: Nazism, Mith, Enlightenment, Biopolitics, Biocracy

The text seeks to rebuild a historiographical hypothesis of the Nazi phenomenon, starting with its deep Enlightened roots, following the hypothesis of the Frankfurt School. This is to trace an interpretative line that, from the analysis of the Nazi Laboratory to the mythological theological hermeneutics, reveals the biopolitical and biocratic character of that regime. With the tools of historiographical herme- neutics, we will compare interpretations of different authors to find their deep contemporaneity.

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Interventi/ Remarks

Luana Alagna (a cura di)

FORUM DI STUDI SUL SUFFRAGISMO

(FORUM OF STUDIES ON SUFFRAGE)

Keywords: Grimké Sarah Moore, Gender Discrimination, Women’s Suffrage, Women and Religion, Women’s rights.

This forum is a collection of papers that analyses the position of women in the public sphere over the centuries. Thinking women have been confined and treated as if their thought and writings were minor respect the universal masculin knowledge. The authors point out different topics where women emerge and affirme their value: the struggle to the achievement of equal rights, after the French Revolution; the politic and social engagement of women in Italy, where Mozzoni Anna Maria has been an example; the Suffragettes movement in France and in England; the American examples of struggle against misogyny, the country where Sarah Moore Grimkè gave her contribution to the beginning of the end of female oppression.