Giuseppe Tosi

La teoria delle élite, sviluppata da Pareto, Mosca e Michels, è una teoria antidemocratica perché nega il principio fondante della democrazia, cioè la competenza politica dei cittadini. La teoria, tuttavia, ammette diverse letture, tra cui una lettura democratica, che influenzò gli autori liberali e antifascisti italiani come Gobetti, Dorso, Burzio, Einaudi, Croce, Salvemini. Bobbio interpreta questo aspetto democratico dell'elitarismo non come la negazione dell'esistenza di regimi democratici, ma come una visione realistica della "democrazia così com'è", e non idealista di "come dovrebbe essere". Bobbio viene così inserito tra gli autori ispirati alla dottrina dell'elitarismo democratico, come Hans Kelsen e Joseph Schumpeter. Da questa prospettiva, Bobbio analizza l'influenza che l'elitismo ha avuto sulla sinistra socialista e comunista italiana e internazionale, in particolare sul pensiero di Antonio Gramsci. Il presente lavoro discute una possibile lettura "elitaria" del pensiero politico gramsciano, che mostra le critiche e le differenze che lo separano dagli elitisti, ma allo stesso tempo gli elementi di una teoria elitista di Gramsci presenti in alcuni concetti chiave della sua concezione politica: intellettuali, partito, egemonia, blocco storico, avanguardia, relazione massa/intellettuali governanti/ governati.

In the debate on the origin of modern natural rights, the French philosopher Michel Villey became famous for his counter current theses: that the origin of modern subjective rights was a “deformation” or “degeneration” of the ancient and medieval concept of law; that those responsible for this rupture were Ockham and his nominalist disciples, as well as the Scholastics of Salamanca; that these last ones betrayed the thought of Aquinas on the right adhering to the nominalist. These theses serve the purpose of justifying Villey’s radical opposition to the subjective foundations of modern human rights. The reply of the historian of medieval law, the Englishman Brian Tierney, is that Villey’s conception of ancient and medieval law is too restricted; that already in Roman law there was a notion of subjective rights; that the origin of modern subjective rights does not depend only on Ockham’s nominalism, but was already present in the medieval canonists; that the scholastics of Salamanca did not betray the Thomist thought, but they brought it up to the challenges of the new times; and that the idea of ​​subjective natural rights does not depend on a particular ideology, but is compatible with different ideologies and worldviews. In revisiting this debate, our main interest concerns the conclusions that Villey draws from the entire long historical trajectory he has studied, and the criticism that Tierney makes of his radical opposition to human rights. Finally the debate gives rise to some more general considerations about the history of concepts and the distinction between the historical genesis of the ideas and their validity.

Analyzing different works and in particular Habermas' reflection on Kant, the author reconstructs, first, his approach to international law and his political and legal cosmopolitanism. Second, he presents some critical observations on Habermas' cosmopolitanism in the context of his more general discursive theory of law and state. In this perspective, he discusses the problems of peace and of the role of the United Nations, the strategy of protection of human rights, and the question of world citizenship. He argues that Habermas' cosmopolitanism is a radicalization of Kantian tradition based on a centralization of international power and a cosmopolitan law. Finally, he develops realist arguments in favour of a non‐globalistic conception of international law.