RISULTATI RICERCA

In the last decades French public memory has been shattered by the trials of collaborationist civil servants or nazi officers who took part in the deportation of Jews. These trials took place when historiography had already done some decades of considerable research work both on the Pétain regime and the general attitude of the French people, after the war had ended, towards the Vichy regime. The considerable media coverage of these trials has allowed historical research to reach a larger audience with respect to the smaller group of people into this area of study. They stressed the difference of the Pétain laws by comparison to the murderous turning point of nazi anti-semitism. But with respect to the rich European tradition of anti-Semitism, which, also in its German variant, used to ask for norms discriminating against Jews, France was not a case apart. Since the anti-Semite imaginary reveals its wide geographical scope, the use of the same arguments and of the same analytical categories in the different countries, an excessive stress on national specificity would miss the strong internationalism which used to inspire it.

Strength of the nation as opposed to human democracy. In Thomas Mann two types of universalism fight fiercely between themselves. In appearance the first refers to Nietzsche’s philosophy of life, the other to the categorical imperative of Kant. But in reality Mann doesn’t withdraw from Nietzsche’s influence, neither does he convert to Kant. He rather converts Nietzsche himself to democracy. Mann doesn’t change from «Kultur» to «Zivilisation». He rather expands «Kultur» to the point of including «Zivilisation» itself. Mann doesn’t forsake the imperialism of the «will of power» to take on the universal logic of law. Rather he endevours to give a volontary base to the civic religion of democratic humanity. In other words Mann doesn’t relinquish myth to convert to science. Rather he humanizes and enlightens myth enriching it with a pedagogic and formative worth.

The Christian worldview influences the study of international politics at three levels. First, Christianity contains a set of beliefs about the human nature and man’s socio-political behavior. Second, the Christian doctrine is a moral code aiming at guiding human relations in the domestic and the international arena. Finally, Christianity attempts to strike a balance between these two aspects of human behavior in the analysis and explanation of interstate politics. The application of Christian ideas to the interpretation of world politics is far from uniform. Building on similar basic principles, different authors have offered different readings of human relations at each of the three stages mentioned above. Here the author analyzes two versions of Christian International Relations, represented by the work of Reinhold Niebuhr and Herbert Butterfield. The former is the most prominent figure of contemporary «Christian realism», while the latter is among the founders of the «English school» of IR. In addition to pointing out the main differences and similarities between these two leading Christian approaches to IR, the article sheds some light on the broader theoretical and methodological «debate» between realism and the English school.

The traditional philosophical historiography is used to present Karl Jaspers as an «apolitical» scholar with no sense of reality until 1945. Against this image the following paper explains Jaspers’ political thought under the sign of continuity and states that Jaspers’ interest in politics has its deepest origin in the peculiar Jaspers’ idea of philosophy. From the persuasion that philosophy has to be a Lebenspraxis addressed to fulfil the requirement of freedom and dignity that the human nature sets forward, it follows that the relationship between philosophy and politics is necessary and mutual: «There is no great philosophy without political thought». Without overlooking the deep difference between Jaspers’ political meditation before 1933 and the one after 1945, the following essay shows that Jaspers’ interest in politics dates back to the time of the First World War. In 1917 Karl Jaspers gave a lecture at a meeting of a political club, of which he was member, formed in Heidelberg during the First World War: Politische Stimmungen. This is the first Jaspers’ political writing, remained nearly unknown until it was transcribed and published for the first time in 1999 in Germany. The heavy influence of Max Weber is clearly recognizable both in the use of ideal type system and in Jaspers’ approach to political world, that is possible to call as realistic. The same approach appears in the essay Die geistige Situation der Zeit (1931). But the intellectual categories of the Existenzphilosphie and in particular the ontological antinomy between Dasein and Existenz taint Jaspers’ political analysis and prevent it from being efficacious and persuasive. The realistic paradigm still remains abstract and unable to make out the concrete happenings and dangers of reality. The Second World War and the horror of National Socialist dictatorship will bring to full maturity the philosophical attitude showed by Karl Jaspers toward the human being and all the aspects of his existence, from medicine up to politics.

Departed twenty years ago, Alessandro Passerin d’Entrèves considered natural law as a sort of natural defence against any form of state’s extreme power and against its degenerations. In the theologian and ideologist Richard Hooker, d’Entreves, author of many works on the political philosophy which links up the Middle Ages and Modernity, saw an harbinger of the modern conception of the state and, for this very reason, a precursor of J. Locke. Hooker appears to him as the forerunner of the British constitutional model, built on individual freedom and independence, from which d’Entreves got inspiration for his civil commitment in the fascist Italy which suffered from the lack of freedom.

The European Union and the International Criminal Court are two of the most original and interesting elements of the contemporary international situation. Both of them are the result of a delicate balance between ethical issues and political interests and, consequently, institute a complex relationship with the States sovereignty. Their common ground of values has brought the European Union to sustain the International Criminal Court since its preparatory works. Through the analysis of the most significant documents and the ways of the cooperation between these two organisms, this essay focuses on the problems that face the international justice and the possible means of its affirmation. It seems to be drawn a new aspect of international relations, far from the traditional power politics and underpinned by the consent that international organisms can gain among the public opinion through their policy consistence with justice and peace values.

The last decade of the twentieth century witnessed the establishment of a variety of new international tribunals, including the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. These developments gave momentum to the project for creation of the International Criminal Court, which has jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. There is also a provision in the ICC-Statute for eventual jurisdiction over the crime of aggression (on the model of the Nuremberg and Tokio tribunals following the Second World War); but the Statute requires that a consistent definition of the crime of aggression be adopted before the Court could exercise this form of jurisdiction. The essay explores evolution, legitimacy and functions of the international criminal justice system, highlighting the contrast between the normative framework and the harsh reality of politics and the context of negotiating historical injustices in a world of expanding jurisdiction over international humanitarian law. A broad consensus seems to have emerged that completion of the current international jurisdictional system is necessary. Since states are not prepared naturally to comply with international criminal law, normative suggestions include the need to shape the courts’ abilities more convincingly, to induce states to participate in court proceedings and to comply with courts’ judgements. But the conservative force of the doctrine of state sovereignty remains the biggest impediment to the creation of strong institutions of international justice.

In recent times, «luck egalitarianism» the claim that neutralizing the effects of brute luck is the main aim of egalitarian justice has been the object of serious criticism, both on normative and on metaphysical grounds. Objections of the first kind do indeed prove well-grounded. Luck egalitarianism misleadingly focuses on the distribution of resources; egalitarianism, though, should be understood as primarily concerned with social and political standing. It can be shown, however, that the core of luck egalitarian views the argument from the «natural lottery» can be dissociated from the project of a fully-fledged conception of equality; and that it does indeed provide a powerful, indispensable insight supporting egalitarianism. The argument from the natural lottery looks, however, vulnerable to serious metaphysical difficulties. Specifically, who is the Self to whom properties are attributed through the (metaphorical) natural lottery? Devising a suitable conception of the Self, capable of supporting the «natural lottery» insight, while in itself plausible, is no easy task.

This article analyses the concept of consequential responsibility recently made use of by Ronald Dworkin in his book Sovereign Virtue. The aim of the article is twofold. First, to distinguish the arguments that Dworkin puts forward in support of consequential responsibility and of the distributive consequences that must be derived from it. Second, to criticize those arguments. The main conclusion of the article is that Dworkin’s arguments do not work and that, contrary to his intentions, his concept of responsibility is not employed by him to generate a certain distribution of resources. Dworkin’s concept of consequential responsibility should rather be understood as the consequence of a just distribution of resources. If this conclusion follows, then it is not the case that Dworkin’s theory of equality of resources uses the concept of responsibility as a distributive criterion, despite the widespread assumption that this is the case.