Libertà, liberalismo, costituzionalismo

Taking up some conclusions reached in M. Barberis, "Libertà", il Mulino, Bologna 1999, the author distinguishes between two ideas of freedom often confused: the stricly liberal one, by which the individual is free to do what he wants and he can oppose his freedom even to the state and its laws, and the pre-liberal one, typical of the doctrine of natural law and the republican and constitutional strands of thought, by which the individual is free to do only what he ought to, and he can oppose his freedom only to other individuals, not to the state or its laws. In the first part of this article, two historical examples of these conceptions are offered, represented respectively by Benjamin Constant and Montesquieu. In the second part the partition between liberal and pre-liberal conceptions is used to redefine the very concept of liberalism; while in the third part preliberal and liberal forms of constitutionalism are shown, suggesting that the last one requires the moral neutralization of law typical of present (methodological) positivism of law.;

Mauro Barberis, Libertà, liberalismo, costituzionalismo in "TEORIA POLITICA" 3/2000, pp , DOI: