Archivi categoria: Politica

Il patto con il Leviatano: la politica di Hobbes
tra caos e ordine

 

 

 

Thomas Hobbes, ritenendo la politica non mera gestione degli affari pubblici, la reputa, invece, quale fondamentale risposta alla natura intrinsecamente violenta e caotica dell’essere umano. A differenza delle teorie politiche a lui precedenti, che sovente consideravano la società come un riflesso dell’ordine naturale o divino, rompe con questa tradizione, proponendo una visione radicalmente nuova: l’uomo, nello stato di natura, è in perenne conflitto, una “guerra di tutti contro tutti”. Per uscire da questo stato di anarchia, gli individui scelgono di stipulare un patto sociale, un accordo collettivo in cui rinunciano a parte della loro libertà in cambio di protezione e ordine. In tale contesto, pertanto, la politica diventa l’arte di costruire e mantenere uno Stato forte e centrale, un Leviatano, capace di esercitare un potere assoluto. Questo potere, concentrato nelle mani di un sovrano, è l’unico baluardo in grado di garantire ordine, stabilità e sicurezza, prevenendo il ritorno al caos primordiale e alla violenza.

 

 

 

 

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Machiavelli: Il fondatore della moderna scienza politica
e la rottura del legame tra Verità e Diritto

 

 

 

Niccolò Machiavelli, teorizzando la necessità per il principe di essere “golpe” oltre che “lione”, ovvero affermando l’indispensabilità (e, per questo, la legittimità) del ricorso alla menzogna e all’inganno finalizzati al superiore interesse della costruzione dello Stato, spezzò il legame etico-razionale della Verità con il Diritto e assestò alla “scientia juris” un colpo mortale. Ecco perché, al di là di tutte le implicazioni, anche morali, il fiorentino può e deve essere considerato il padre della moderna scienza politica.

 

 

 

 

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Geopolitics: a Philosophical Approach

 

 

 

These my brand-new reflections on geopolitics present it as a philosophical field, emphasizing the influence of geography on political strategies and the impact of geopolitical actions on collective identities and human conditions. It integrates classical philosophical thoughts on power and State acts, aiming to deepen the understanding of nations’ strategic behaviours and ethical considerations. This reflective approach seeks to enhance insights into global interactions and the shaping of geopolitical landscapes.

 

The Geo-Philosophy

Part IV

 

 

Geophilosophy, in itself and in relation to what produces it, is therefore, first of all, a thought of the outside. This is because it has in the “outside” the only philosophical ground from which to draw its start; such a “start” is “unique” because any other ground would be, and is in fact, precluded to it, from the exclusion from which it comes: the almost nothing of heterogeneous existence and provincial thoughtfulness. In trying to reach a certain understanding of its theoretical consistency and its cultural role, geophilosophy thus comes to think of the place of its Herkunft, which means both belonging and provenance, as the fruit of a meiotic activity within a space of immanence. The mechanisms of exclusion and removal proper to meiotic activity destine a part of being to rejection: it is meiosis that produces that secluded region that constitutes, within the totality of things seen, organized, transmissible, and sensible, a Mërtvogo doma, a dead house, a closed region of the heterogeneous that resembles nothing, with its own laws, its own customs, with a life that does not exist anywhere else, where one can suppose that there is no crime that does not have its representative there, where the existing forces, there cohabiting under duress, are put to work under the threat of the stick, but without such employment having any purpose, its only purpose being instead to deceive the wait. A house where one can therefore learn patience in anticipation of being either enabled to join the bright world beyond, or at least pointed out by it as a mere moral reminder. A dwelling in every way similar to that prison of which Dostoevsky not only sculpted the figures, but also the dynamics, the chemical reactions, the vital functions, and the global dysfunction—the Other, for geophilosophy, is not high (Evola), but low (Nietzsche). The zero degree of exclusion corresponds, however, to the groundlessness of the world and the sense and organization of collective life are directly in function of the degree of exclusion. In this way, the crisis of desynthesis of the West comes to express, in addition to what has already been said, the weakening of the mechanisms of self-recognition on the part of the homogeneous world, which indeed used the inside/outside relationship to determine the sense of the positive, of the good, and of the superior in relation to the negative, the bad, and the inferior. The positive and the homogeneous are the ‘inside,’ the heterogeneous, the negative, and the transcendent are the ‘outside’; the ‘inside’ is a free, evasive region, the ‘outside’ is a closed and secluded region; the inside is the part of sense, of reason, of man and of being, the outside is the part of insignificance, of being, of god, and of the beast; the inside is the organized, serviced, and productive urban space, the outside is “the consistency of a vague ensemble that opposes the law (or Polis) as a hinterland, a mountainside, or the vague expanse around the city.” The desynthesis of the West therefore corresponds to an increase in the disorganization of the world, and thus also to an increase in its insignificance. The degree of insignificance to which the world bends corresponds, however, to the degree of liberation of flows of uncoded thought.
In the face of theology as the perfection of philosophical thinking, geophilosophy, one might say, unfolds—in the sense that it hoists, as sails are hoisted—the imperfection of an absolute anthropology. This, unlike subjective anthropology, which assumed the earth as that sector of being that constitutes the subordinate complement of the sphere of transcendence, assumes the earth as the conclusive, extreme horizon, as an “absolute,” within which the terrestrial and the transcendent, being and being, the human and the divine, the ἱδιότηϛ and the πoλίτης exchange incessantly, in a regime of unlimited reversibility.

In the second place, geophilosophy is a “minor” thought. Being excluded from thought does not mean not being able to learn its features, but rather: not being able to utter a philosophically legitimate sentence unless overcoming within oneself the stammering of the ἱδιότηϛ. “Minor,” in the sense of professional and homogeneous philosophy, is that use of the mind that stammers in thought, that use of the mind that is without past and without future, where, precisely, only what has a past, and therefore a future, and therefore a History, is philosophically relevant. Stammering in thought, without past or future, is indeed the almost nothing of provincial thoughtfulness. Taken in the “geo-” sense, this “minority” is therefore, to use a Deleuzian image, the autonomy of the stammerer insofar as he has conquered the right to stammer.
Finally, geophilosophy is a provincial thought, in the sense that it operates starting from the almost nothing of provincial thoughtfulness and unfolds like a path through the fields.
It is not easy to say whether Heidegger’s famous Feldweg also has this sense, but it is certain that if a path through the fields is mentioned here, it is meant to allude to a path that winds far from the road network of professional philosophy, to a path whose destination is not known with precision nor whether it leads anywhere, and thus to a path that must be attempted before it can be mapped. The path through the fields is therefore first of all a “trial path” (Holzweg), then a relationship of orientation with space, with the landscape and places (Wegmarken)—and not with the history of homogeneous thought, at least not primarily—, then a journey delivered to the horizontal development of the earth’s surface; the spirit does not invert, is not something that rises and falls, but rather, as is clear in the preludes of the dream, it rather spreads “over the broad surfaces of the earth, itself mountain and field and earth…”. Why the sky makes sense writes Cesare Pavese, who is perhaps the greatest poet of the landscape and earthliness of our twentieth century you must sink well black roots into the dark and if light flows right into the earth, like a shock, then even the peasants have a sense and cover the hills, immobile as if they were centuries, with green, with fruit and with houses and every plant at dawn would be a life.
The spirit spreads and covers the surfaces, the timeless hills, within a “closed” that we might say, delimits the absolute terrestrial; not therefore “celestial earth,” as has also been said, but rather, on the contrary, terrestrial sky, in the sense that it is the earth that has a sky, and not vice versa.
Finally, this image of the path, refers to a dialectic between ‘locality’ and ‘dislocation’, between rooting and deterritorialization. In the very near future, every thought begins. The landscape determines our first meditations. Our thoughtfulness is initially perhaps nourished by nothing but landscape. In the landscape and in the mother tongue, our ancestral sensibility is preserved and transmitted. The earth, not as a unifying symbol, but as this concrete relationship with a particular place-territory, gathers and preserves what, eluding manipulability, is free from technique: the faces of the ancestors inscribed in the folds of the landscape, the small cemetery up on the coast, where the ancestors insist and things that last forever. But without a dialectic between rooting and deterritorialization, between remembrance and flight, between the Langhe and Turin or the southern seas (to remain with Pavese), the call to the earth is useless rhetoric. Provincial thought unfolds this dialectic. But this dialectic does not reconstruct the universal, does not restore the eternal, does not provide global solutions, does not console, does not expand knowledge, and does not legitimize political choices. It might be said that it, very imperfectly, articulates local truths and transient facts within a concrete morality, also constantly in transit, aimed at clearing the path for the journey of a restricted community, in search of autonomy and “property” in the drift of the West, in search of a possibility of coexistence in the continuum of conflict, in search of a right and a victimizing responsibility in the deflecting system of laws and universalistic ties, and, finally, perhaps, in search of a terrestrial religion in the decline of Transcendence.
Geophilosophy is thus not, strictly speaking, either a new theoretical proposal or political, even if it has its own theoretical consistency and politics to be carried out, but rather a way of giving itself to thought “from the lucid fury that smolders in the somber thoughtfulness of peripheral recesses.” As such, it is but a transitory and lateral phenomenon, exactly as brigandage was caught between the decline of the ancien régime and the advent of the new political organ, the liberal State.

 

 

 

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Geopolitics: a Philosophical Approach

 

 

 

These my brand-new reflections on geopolitics present it as a philosophical field, emphasizing the influence of geography on political strategies and the impact of geopolitical actions on collective identities and human conditions. It integrates classical philosophical thoughts on power and State acts, aiming to deepen the understanding of nations’ strategic behaviours and ethical considerations. This reflective approach seeks to enhance insights into global interactions and the shaping of geopolitical landscapes.

 

The Geo-Philosophy

Part III

 

 

Geophilosophy means first and foremost what its name suggests: geo-philosophy, philosophy of the earth. However, the sense of the genitive, which, as is well known, can be understood in a dual sense, remains unprejudiced. In a subjective sense, the expression “philosophy of the earth” is philosophically banal, as it refers to cosmology if by “earth” we mean the orb, or to natural philosophy or Physics if by “earth” we mean the phýsei onta, the beings that come from Phýsis and that are therefore determined by kínesis, or “motility,” or even to anthropology if by “earth” we mean that sector of being that constitutes the subordinate complement of the sphere of transcendence: ethics as the determination of the good, aesthetics as the determination of the beautiful, law as the determination of the just, and politics as the determination of the good life.
In an objective sense, “philosophy of the earth” can still mean two things:
the earth of philosophy, in an emphatic sense, that is, the homeland, or, as is said today under the influence of a great and controversial master like Heidegger, the Heimat, the native place or womb from which thought is placed or re-placed in the world;
or the being delivered (of thought) to the earth, the absolute terrestriality of thought, its prison, to put it with Nietzsche—if we rightly understand his appeal to fidelity to the earth—, and thus again anthropology, but in a very different sense from the one previously mentioned.
Taken in the objective sense, the expression “philosophy of the earth” can thus mean either a reference to the transcendence of being, which would be the true homeland-motherland of thought (thought is of being, it belongs to it, it is it that places it in the world), or a reference to a plane of “absolute immanence,” on which the human and the historical find consistency but where there is no longer any trace of Man or of History, in which the celestial is contemplated, but only as a possible dimension of an absolute terrestrial, the theological problem is admitted but only as a problem internal to the horizon of an absolute anthropological. Such a thought more than ascertains the fall of man into a closed system; it expresses it, is, so to speak, the symptomatic manifestation of it.
Taken in the objective sense, the expression “philosophy of the earth” thus refers to two irreconcilable things, of which only one is geophilosophy in the sense mentioned above, that is, a thought of local instances, a “Lutheran” use of the mind, and a thought of immanence. Every other meaning of the term refers instead, always anew, to the philosophical primacy of theology.


In general, philosophy is precisely the attempt to assume the earth in the cone of light of an “elevated” and “eternal” gaze capable of embracing everything with a single glance (Plato: synoptikós), or of thinking the whole or the conditions of possibility of the whole (Kant) and thus reflecting its elements and articulations in relation to God or its secularized substitute, the subject, who of God, as Deleuze wrote, conserves precisely the essential: the place. The metric of philosophizing therefore admits, as its only dimension, the verticality; its presupposition is that the whole is transparent in all senses; its perfection is theology; its movement a movement of seesawing between up and down: 1. elevatory perspective, aimed at comprehending all differences and their relationships; 2. descensio ordinatoria, tending to organize and distribute as much meaning as possible.
To make this step, to discover this path between the cracks and in the dysfunction of the Western project, is not, however, professional philosophy, but rather the instances that were traditionally excluded: feminine domestic thoughtfulness, the somber provincial disposition to obsessive fantasies. These instances, emancipated by the expansive movement of the West (urbanized, technologized, acculturated, deprovincialized), suddenly restored as much to the freedom of thought as to the truth of their origins, suffer here an essential shock: faced with the discovery of being nothing other than the silent reserve of the homogeneous world, of the legal and thought community, seized at the edges of historical existence, the primary gesture with which they make their entrance onto the undifferentiated plane of the human is a gesture of refusal or, to be more precise, of withdrawal, of flight toward the thicket. Such “withdrawal” is akin to what Jünger called “passing into the woods,” but it is also an ascent toward the dawn of civilization, toward the prehistoric point at which separation and exclusion have not yet occurred, toward that zero degree of the West in which thought, springing forth, can be founded only on the absence of authority and is therefore, to put it with Bataille, a sovereign gesture, toward the point at which events, occurring, show their radical gratuitousness and in which the state is present rather as pure and simple par-oikía, a system of neighborhood, a form of condominium: neither peace nor war it might be said, mere coexistence—after all, it must be considered that peace is a pure fiction, as it can occur only as the nullification of conflict, brutal subjugation, or annihilation of the enemy as enemy. Such “withdrawal” expresses the refusal to assimilate to the productive homogeneity of the philosophy of the State and the estrangement with respect to its system of legitimation, the derision of its pedagogical function, and the horror for its professionalism. It is for this reason that geophilosophy, at the exact point where it flows, presents itself with the features of a wild thought, not conforming to the educational standards of public philosophy and thus as an uneducated, non-orthopedicized, implausible thought, to which, by definition, the consent of the scientific community cannot go—and therefore also a thought “false” or a false thought and, finally, as an illegal thought, disrespectful of the protocols and legality of scientific practices. Its methodological approach will appear rather as brigandage—this is the meaning to be attributed to the expression “Lutheranism of the mind,” at least from the perspective of homogeneous philosophy: it involves the exercise of something like a “free examination” conducted on texts that the philosophical church transmits, in a sacralizing manner, within a consolidated magisterium; free examination that, in the most extreme situations, may also appear as wild textualism or a sort of methodological vampirism.
Geophilosophy as such arises from a withdrawal of thought, from a wilding, from an attempt to gain not an elevated point of view, but a point of departure as external, lateral, and foreign to the procedures of homogeneous thought as possible. This at least is its public image, its cultural image. From the “geo-” perspective, what here appears as an ensemble of implausible forms presents itself instead now as a fight against culture, now as a revolt against politics, now as a movement of secretion, disappearance, and impulse to autonomy, now as a victimizing philosophy (the assumption of the viewpoint of the victim and the criminal instead of that of the community and the state—the geophilosophy indicates, moreover, an absolute victim, a paradigm of victim: the ἱδιότηϛ, the excluded from common thought, but also the being that stands alone, the private, the domestic, the paysan, the woman, the excluded from the political community and finally the excluded from the historical community, that is, the being without past and future).

 

 

 

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Geopolitics: a Philosophical Approach

 

 

 

These my brand-new reflections on geopolitics present it as a philosophical field, emphasizing the influence of geography on political strategies and the impact of geopolitical actions on collective identities and human conditions. It integrates classical philosophical thoughts on power and State acts, aiming to deepen the understanding of nations’ strategic behaviours and ethical considerations. This reflective approach seeks to enhance insights into global interactions and the shaping of geopolitical landscapes.

 

The Geo-Philosophy

Part II

 

 

The phase of the maintenance of our form of civilization unfolds between two apparently opposite and incompatible moments: synthesis and desynthesis. However, the “expansion” of the system has ultimately led to an irreversible crisis. The “crisis” of the West is not due to the incursion of an allotropic element, but to the simple fact that, through expansion, the political grinds down all that is non-political, the metropolis relentlessly grinds down the provincial and the peripheral, urbanism swallows the countryside, the forest, the mountain…, the philosophical absorbs all that is non-philosophical (literature, art, cinema, television, the dream, madness…)—philosophy even amuses itself by producing its own deconstruction; while History grinds down all that is extra-historical, from peoples without history to the history of that which, not unfolding “in public,” would strictly be without history. Now, this expansion has resulted in what Baudrillard calls “implosion,” that is, the “chemical” suspension of all classic opposition in a solution of reversibility or random aggregation, or anyway, according to laws not reducible to any known reference. Such a suspended state is what I call “desynthesis.”
Desynthesis should be understood not as a sort of reflux, but as a movement of drift, like the expression “galactic drift” in the Big Bang theory. The mutual distancing of nebulae here corresponds to the mutual distancing of State, History, and Philosophy and their internal parts from each other; it involves the disarray of the Western system or, more specifically, the breakdown of the system of legitimation of the Western use of the mind, and thus also the dysfunction of the project that refers to that use.


That there is desynthesis can be inferred indirectly from what we might call the Doppler effect of Western civilization, a sort of “redshift” of the “light” emanating from various formations of the objective spirit in which State, History, and Philosophy are variously intertwined.
The Doppler effect we are discussing consists, for example, of the recording of the decline of the universalistic model of the European nation-state and, more specifically, in the shift of political and legal investments to the local and territorial, such that statehood seems to produce more as a multiplicity of subversive pushes than as a totalization of collective existence in the ethno-political universality of the nation. To biopolitics as the perfection of Western statehood (the subsumption of life as a biological fact under a power that acts with aesthetic nonchalance) is substituted a sort of geopolitics of territorial instances (the dissemination of the political in the folds of the concrete territoriality and domesticity of existence). Thus, philosophy no longer produces itself as a national educational project, but as a sort of concrete morality that articulates local truths and transient facts for the use of restricted communities. To the university philosophy, which untangled universal teachings for a community without particularistic divisions within it, and thus an ethnically, legally, and politically homogeneous community—which guaranteed the universality of education through a system of public degrees and certificates—is juxtaposed something like a thought that speaks without legitimation, without authority, without certifications, and therefore a thought ‘gone wild,’ or better said, ‘uncivilized,’ which moves from a retreat to territorial belonging rather than from an imperial investiture. To hermeneutics as the perfection of the public philosophy of the late twentieth century is substituted a thought of local instances, a geo-philosophy; to the image of the state professor, the meticulous philologist, the pedagogue, the jealous guardian of orthodoxy, and the accumulator of glosses is juxtaposed, precisely in the sense that it slips to the side, to the right, that of the corsair thinker or, better yet, pirate, vampyr, one who sucks the soul (the juice, the sap of a thought) introducing into bodies (his public image) a spirit that does not correspond (Wild textualism)—to the productivity and commensurability of philosophical work, typical moreover of every homogeneous formation, is substituted a sort of heterogeneous dissemination of the thinking function, a shift in the register of thought from accumulation to expenditure, from education to conspiracy, from capital to treasure, from universal power to transitory munificence. On this basis is forming another economy of thought that alongside the global governance of the mind affixes something like a liberalism or an anarchism of its use, to the catholicism of thought (revelation + tradition + magisterium) juxtaposes a mind unaware of the revelativity of philosophy, disacknowledging the magisterium of clerics and exercising a sort of free examination of tradition: Lutheranism of the mind.
(Finally, the same can be said for historicity. This no longer produces itself as the unisignificance of the world and facts. To the homogeneous and transferable spiritual heritage of nations is substituted the experience of discontinuity and rupture, to universal history the incommensurability of the historical experiences of concrete local communities.)

 

 

 

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Geopolitics: a Philosophical Approach

 

 

 

These my brand-new reflections on geopolitics present it as a philosophical field, emphasizing the influence of geography on political strategies and the impact of geopolitical actions on collective identities and human conditions. It integrates classical philosophical thoughts on power and State acts, aiming to deepen the understanding of nations’ strategic behaviours and ethical considerations. This reflective approach seeks to enhance insights into global interactions and the shaping of geopolitical landscapes.

 

The Geo-Philosophy

Part I

 

 

Philosophy no longer makes individuals wiser nor does it impart wisdom; it neither aids in making beneficial life decisions nor does it bring happiness. However, it certainly does not leave everything unchanged—it is not a futile endeavour. This can be demonstrated through indirect reasoning, for instance by examining how political power has repeatedly striven to seize it or control its discourse.
Yet, the issue is more intricate and simultaneously more straightforward than it appears. First, because philosophy is not merely prey to the political; and second, because the relationship among philosophy, politics, and history is highly complex. It is only through the interplay of this complexity, resembling the ever-changing patterns of a kaleidoscope, that we can glean insights into the characteristics of our way of life, our culture, traditionally referred to as the “West.”
It is thus possible to begin with the observation that philosophy is a fundamental and essential aspect of the “Western project.”
The need to define this term (“Western project”) necessitates first clarifying what “project” implies here. If by project we mean looking forward, the foresight of what will be done, and the structured plan of a construction, then it can be defined as the plan that allows us to foresee everything that needs to be done to then tackle a specific construction.
In general, the blueprint upon which our way of life was developed and built includes three constructive orders: the organization of coexistence, the continuity of events, and the certification of beliefs. The West is an ongoing construction whose unfolding is articulated as a combination of these three problem-solving constructs. On the plane of coexistence, the Western project unfolds as a state organization; on that of eventuality and its impermanence, it unfolds as History; and on that of belief and its uncertainty, it unfolds as Philosophy. The State organizes the community, History retains events, Philosophy transforms faith into truth.


One might wonder in what sense philosophy certifies belief, and the answer is that philosophy arises and establishes itself in opposition to myth. The struggle between philosophy and myth is authoritatively attested by Plato. This struggle is primarily a battle for control over the education system (Paideia) and unfolds in three ways: 1. the exclusion of poets, that is, the wise producers of myths, from the Polis; 2. the repositioning of mythical wisdom in a subordinate role to philosophical knowledge; 3. an unequivocal condemnation of the sophist, that is, the practitioner of a private and thus particularistic Paideia, and moreover in exchange for money.
Philosophy firstly rejects the mere faith-based nature of myth (that which is strongly believed is true) and its inability to establish itself as an exclusive sphere, thereby preemptively invalidating the emergence of other myths, and thus of different and conflicting truths. Philosophy counters the particular knowledge of myth and sophistry with the idea of a universal and incontrovertible knowledge. Now, the philosopher’s certainty of possessing absolutely certain knowledge is based on the acquisition of two notions: 1. truth as unveiling (Alétheia); 2. Being as totality (En-pan). By invoking these two notions, philosophy asserts itself as a total, exclusive faith: philosophy is the eternal and ubiquitous knowledge of the unveiled, that is, of that which, remaining unchangeably in the philosopher’s gaze, is always and everywhere true.
The extent to which this conviction is in turn a belief is something that, following the break from Hegelianism, will be categorically highlighted. Philosophy is no more a certain knowledge than myth was, with the difference that this myth, which is philosophy, has found in the coordination with the State and with History the means to suppress, disqualify, or annihilate any different use of the mind.
State, History, and philosophy are not independent magnitudes. Together, they constitute the response to the problems of the incompatibility of coexistence, the impermanence of events, and the uncertainty of belief, whose kaleidoscopic interplay forms the ever-changing, yet always unified, shape of Western civilization. It could be said that each of these magnitudes presupposes and inevitably refers back to the other two, and that none of the three would have the meaning they do outside of their mutual and triadic relationship, nor could they be separated from this relationship without compromising the entire system’s structure, thereby somehow causing its breakdown. This is a system of transparent planes, each bearing a design; their overlapping, in multiple combinations, gives us the complete design of Western Kultur. What allows the reading of the three planes as a civilization project is thus their very transparency. This system of complex overlays could be termed the Western synthesis, namely the union, the joint capacity for promotion, and the mobile connection of State, History, and Philosophy, along with the transparency of each plane relative to the others.
For instance, knowledge that sought certainty outside the constraints imposed by historical existence would be nothing more than the myth against which Plato fought to establish philosophy as the foundation of all public education. Moreover, if there were no centralized and singular control over the education system, if the Paideia presented itself as a multiplicity of conflicting and irreducible proposals, then there would not be a State, i.e., there would not be a single system of publicity and therefore not even a single system of meaning, there would not be that Einsinningkeit, that unisignificance of facts that is the foundation of the Western mind. In its place, we would have something like a plurality of private meanings and disparate images, and thus the possibility, always given, of their irreconcilable conflict; we would have something powerful, tyrannical, and at the same time inert, flaccid, treacherous, something both superstitious and simultaneously dazzling like a foggy lunar night, like a charming creature yet veiled in damp mists, dim, feverish, internally corrupt and contradictory like Madame Chaucaht.
Thus, the West is primarily a State, that is, the opening of a public space measured by Man, whose measure is Man but only insofar as he is philosophically educated—thus: Homo philosophicus and not “man” simply. The West, following the metaphors of the Magic Mountain, is the “clear day,” the “daylight” where things appear in their incontrovertible objectivity, and “cold,” that is, rational, and finally “glassy,” that is, transparent, unambiguous. This public space, rational, objective, and unambiguous is the realm of manifestation of meaningful events. The meaning of such events, for the philosophically educated being, is univocal, that is, universally comprehensible and transmissible. Such events are thus, so to speak, “eternal facts,” which precisely means: transmissible according to a single meaning. For this reason, they are said to belong to History. History is not the space of facts that simply happen and to which “man” simply conforms, but the realm of the happening of “eternal facts,” which are “facts” only for the Homo politico-philosophicus.

 

 

 

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America Latina: democrazia, populismo e criminalità

di Giorgio Malfatti di Monte Tretto

 

 

Recensione di Riccardo Piroddi

 

 

 

America Latina: democrazia, populismo e criminalità, di Giorgio Malfatti di Monte Tretto (Eurilink University Press, 2024), ambasciatore e docente universitario, presenta una panoramica esaustiva delle dinamiche politiche, sociali ed economiche dell’America Latina. Il libro si distingue per un’approfondita analisi storica e contemporanea della regione, ponendo l’accento su temi cruciali quali, appunto, la democrazia, il populismo e la criminalità.
Il volume è diviso in due parti principali: la prima si concentra sull’analisi generale dell’America Latina, mentre la seconda consegna una sintesi dettagliata dei singoli Paesi della regione.
L’Autore principia dalla composizione etnica dell’America Latina, evidenziando la complessità e la diversità delle sue popolazioni. Viene tracciata una linea temporale che parte dalle origini indigene, passando per la colonizzazione europea, fino ad arrivare all’attuale combinazione etnica variegata.
Sono poi descritti il passaggio dal colonialismo all’indipendenza, le guerre di indipendenza e le figure chiave come Simón Bolívar e José de San Martín. Viene altresì evidenziato come la transizione abbia lasciato in eredità strutture sociali ed economiche fragili e disuguaglianze persistenti, anche a causa del ruolo predominante dei militari nelle politiche post-indipendenza, un fenomeno che ha contribuito all’instabilità generalizzata e alla formazione di governi autoritari. Viene anche mostrata l’influenza della Chiesa Cattolica nella storia della regione, dalla colonizzazione fino ai tempi moderni, sottolineando il suo ruolo nel mantenimento dell’ordine sociale e nella politica. L’Autore dipinge un quadro dell’America Latina contemporanea discutendo le problematiche attuali, come la disuguaglianza, la corruzione e la violenza, e fornendo una panoramica delle principali organizzazioni criminali che operano nella regione, il loro impatto sulla società e l’economia e le strategie di contrasto adottate dai governi locali.
La seconda parte del libro, invece, si concentra sull’indagine approfondita dei singoli Paesi, con l’esame della loro storia, della politica, dell’economia e le specifiche sfide che ciascuno deve affrontare. Tra i Paesi trattati vi sono Messico, America Centrale (inclusi Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, e Panama), i Caraibi (Cuba, Haiti, Repubblica Dominicana, Giamaica, e i territori d’oltremare della Francia), Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Perù, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brasile, Argentina, Uruguay e Cile.
Il volume fornisce una dettagliata analisi storica e contemporanea dell’America Latina. L’Autore, infatti, collega gli eventi passati con le condizioni politiche, sociali ed economiche attuali, offrendo una prospettiva di lungo periodo sulle dinamiche che hanno plasmato l’America Latina.
Dovuta attenzione è data anche alle dinamiche politiche correnti, con un particolare focus sui temi della democrazia e del populismo. Malfatti analizza come questi fenomeni siano evoluti nel tempo, influenzando i sistemi di governo e la stabilità politica dei vari Paesi.
Scopo precipuo del libro è indagare il fenomeno del populismo in America Latina. L’Autore dimostra come questo sia emerso quale risposta alle disuguaglianze sociali e alle crisi economiche e come abbia condizionato la politica regionale. Vengono presentati i casi di vari leader populisti e i loro impatti sulle società latinoamericane.
Un altro obiettivo del volume è lo studio della criminalità organizzata nella regione. Vi è infatti esposta una panoramica delle principali organizzazioni criminali, i loro modus operandi e il loro impatto sulla stabilità sociale ed economica. Viene altresì analizzato il legame tra criminalità organizzata e politica e come questo influisca sullo sviluppo della regione.
Ampio risalto è dato anche all’analisi delle relazioni internazionali dell’America Latina, con un particolare focus sul rapporto con gli Stati Uniti e come questo abbia influenzato le dinamiche politiche ed economiche locali. L’Autore mostra pure il ruolo di altre potenze globali e le loro interazioni con i Paesi latinoamericani.
Anche le questioni socio-economiche che affliggono l’America Latina, come la povertà, le disuguaglianze sociali e la distribuzione del reddito, sono vagliate, in particolare, l’impatto delle politiche economiche neoliberiste e assistenzialiste e come queste abbiano influenzato il benessere delle popolazioni locali.
L’opera si distingue per il suo approccio esaustivo e critico, offrendo ai lettori una visione completa e informata delle problematiche storiche e contemporanee della regione. È un testo fondamentale per chiunque desideri comprendere le complesse dinamiche che caratterizzano l’America Latina perché, con la sua ricchezza di dettagli storici e analisi approfondite, consegna una visione completa e critica delle problematiche attuali della regione.

 

 

 

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Matilde di Canossa

Regina senza corona, donna straordinaria
in un mondo dominato dagli uomini

 

 

 

Nel cuore dell’Italia medievale, un’epoca di castelli, cavalieri e guerre, ecco la breve storia di una delle figure più affascinanti del Medioevo: Matilde di Canossa, una donna che seppe imporsi in un mondo dominato dagli uomini.
Nata nel 1046, Matilde apparteneva a una delle famiglie più potenti del suo tempo. Era l’erede di vasti territori, che si estendevano dall’Emilia fino alla Toscana. Ma non era solo una ricca signora feudale: era una stratega, una diplomatica e una guerriera.
Le vicende di Matilde si concentrano su un evento particolare, che ha segnato la storia d’Europa: l’episodio di Canossa, nel 1077. Ma, prima, chi era davvero Matilde? Figlia del marchese Bonifacio di Canossa e di Beatrice di Lorena, crebbe in un ambiente di potere e politica, imparando l’arte della diplomazia fin da giovane. All’età di soli 9 anni, dopo l’assassinio del padre e la morte prematura del fratello maggiore, ereditò un vasto patrimonio. Da quel momento, sotto la guida della madre, iniziò a gestire i suoi possedimenti con astuzia e determinazione.
Nel 1076, l’Europa era scossa da una lotta di potere epocale tra il Papato e l’Impero. Da un lato, papa Gregorio VII cercava di affermare l’indipendenza della Chiesa dal potere secolare; dall’altro, l’imperatore Enrico IV era deciso a mantenere il controllo sui vescovi e le loro terre. Matilde, fervente sostenitrice della riforma gregoriana, si trovò nel mezzo di questa disputa.

Dopo essere stato scomunicato dal papa, Enrico IV era in una situazione disperata. Decise, quindi, di intraprendere un pellegrinaggio penitenziale per chiedere perdono al pontefice. Nel gennaio del 1077, giunse al castello di Canossa, residenza di Matilde, dove papa Gregorio VII aveva trovato rifugio. Era un inverno rigido e l’imperatore, con abiti da penitente e piedi nudi, attese tre giorni e tre notti fuori dal castello, nel freddo gelido, prima di essere ricevuto.
Finalmente, il 28 gennaio, Enrico fu ammesso alla presenza del papa e ottenne il perdono. Gregorio VII gli revocò la scomunica, permettendogli di rientrare in grazia della Chiesa. Questo evento, noto come l’umiliazione di Canossa, dimostrò il potere della Chiesa sulla politica europea e segnò un punto di svolta nelle relazioni tra impero e papato.
Matilde continuò a governare i suoi territori con saggezza e forza, sostenendo il papa nelle sue lotte contro l’impero e promuovendo la riforma della Chiesa. La sua capacità di navigare tra le complesse dinamiche politiche del suo tempo la rese una delle figure più importanti del Medioevo.
Matilde morì nel 1115, ma la sua leggenda vive ancora. La sua abilità nel combinare diplomazia e forza la rende, tuttora, un’icona di leadership e determinazione. Una vera e propria regina senza corona, che ha lasciato un’impronta indelebile nella storia d’Italia e d’Europa.

 

 

 

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De Cive di Thomas Hobbes

Stato di natura, stato civile, contratto sociale, “Leviatano”

 

 

 

De Cive (Il Cittadino), pubblicato originariamente in latino, nel 1642 e, successivamente, in inglese, nel 1651, si colloca cronologicamente tra le due grandi opere di Thomas Hobbes, Leviatano (1651) e De Corpore (Il Corpo, 1655). Il contesto storico di De Cive è cruciale per comprenderne le tematiche. Hobbes scrive durante un periodo di instabilità in Inghilterra, caratterizzato dalla guerra civile (1642-1651). Il conflitto tra la monarchia di Carlo I e il Parlamento costituisce un retroscena di caos e incertezza, che influenza profondamente il pensiero di Hobbes. La sua speculazione filosofica è una risposta diretta al disordine e alla paura di anarchia che percepisce attorno a sé, cercando di trovare soluzioni teoriche per la pace e la stabilità sociale.
L’Autore sviluppa in quest’opera una visione del mondo radicalmente nuova e meccanicistica. L’uomo è visto come un corpo in movimento, guidato da appetiti e avversioni, le cui interazioni determinano la struttura della società. Nel trattare gli aspetti antropologici, Hobbes dipinge un ritratto dell’uomo mosso primariamente dall’istinto di autoconservazione. Questa concezione pessimistica dell’essere umano, essenzialmente egoista e trasportato dal desiderio di potere, è fondamentale per comprendere il suo appello a un’autorità assoluta.
Il filosofo introduce il concetto di stato di natura, in cui gli uomini sono liberi e uguali. Tale libertà, però, conduce inevitabilmente al conflitto. Da qui, l’esigenza di un potere sovrano che imponga l’ordine e garantisca la pace, attraverso il contratto sociale: gli individui cedono i loro diritti al sovrano in cambio di protezione, un’idea che avrebbe influenzato profondamente il pensiero politico successivo.
Hobbes approfondisce in modo significativo la distinzione tra lo stato di natura e lo stato civile, concetti fondamentali per la comprensione del suo pensiero politico e filosofico. Questi servono a fondare la sua rappresentazione del contratto sociale e a delineare la transizione necessaria dalla natura alla società, per garantire sicurezza e ordine civile.
Secondo Hobbes, lo stato di natura è una condizione ipotetica, in cui gli esseri umani vivono senza una struttura politico-legale superiore che regoli le loro interazioni. In De Cive, così come nel più celebre Leviatano, il filosofo descrive lo stato di natura con la famosa frase homo homini lupus (l’uomo è lupo per l’uomo). Non vi esistono leggi oltre ai desideri e alle paure individuali; è un ambiente in cui vigono il sospetto perpetuo e la paura della morte violenta. Tutti gli uomini sono uguali, nel senso che chiunque può uccidere chiunque altro, sia per proteggersi sia per prevenire potenziali danni. Di conseguenza, lo stato di natura è caratterizzato da una guerra di tutti contro tutti (bellum omnium contra omnes), la vita è “solitaria, povera, brutale, brutta e breve”, come scriverà poi in Leviatano.


La transizione dallo stato di natura allo stato civile avviene mediante il contratto sociale, un’idea che Hobbes sviluppa per spiegare come gli individui possano uscire dallo stato di natura. Sostiene, infatti, che questi, mossi dalla razionale paura della morte violenta e dal desiderio di una vita più sicura e produttiva, decidano di istituire un’autorità sovrana a cui cedere il proprio diritto naturale di governarsi autonomamente. Questo sovrano, o “Leviatano”, è autorizzato a detenere il potere assoluto per imporre l’ordine; non è parte del contratto sociale e, quindi, non è soggetto alle leggi che impone. La sua autorità deriva dalla consapevolezza collettiva che senza un tale potere la società regredirebbe allo stato di natura. Gli individui accettano di vivere sotto un’autorità assoluta per evitare il caos e la violenza che altrimenti prevarrebbero.
La contrapposizione tra stato di natura e stato civile ha profonde implicazioni filosofiche e politiche. Hobbes sfida le nozioni precedenti di società governata dalla morale o dal diritto naturale, sostituendo questo modello con la necessità di un potere sovrano e indiscutibile per mantenere l’ordine. La visione hobbesiana del contratto sociale ha influenzato profondamente la teoria politica moderna, anticipando questioni di consenso, diritti individuali e natura del potere politico. La sua analisi rimane pertinente per le discussioni contemporanee sui fondamenti della legittimità del governo e sui diritti degli individui rispetto al potere statale. La dicotomia tra stato di natura e stato civile, in definitiva, costituisce anche una riflessione profonda sulla condizione umana e sulla società.
In De Cive, Hobbes articola una visione del mondo e una filosofia politica che riflettono le sue profonde preoccupazioni riguardo alla natura umana e alla necessità di ordine. In un’epoca di grandi turbamenti propone una soluzione radicale al problema della coesistenza umana, ponendo le basi per la moderna teoria politica. L’opera, quindi, non solo riflette il tumulto del suo tempo, ma offre anche spunti di riflessione ancora attuali sulla natura del potere e sulla condizione umana.

 

 

 

 

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Geopolitics: a Philosophical Approach

 

 

 

These my brand-new reflections on geopolitics present it as a philosophical field, emphasizing the influence of geography on political strategies and the impact of geopolitical actions on collective identities and human conditions. It integrates classical philosophical thoughts on power and State acts, aiming to deepen the understanding of nations’ strategic behaviours and ethical considerations. This reflective approach seeks to enhance insights into global interactions and the shaping of geopolitical landscapes.

 

Geopolitics and Philosophy

Part III

 

There is no History without a State; there is no State without self-consciousness; there is no self-consciousness without History. Geopolitics describes self-consciousness as awareness of what one is by virtue of what one has been. In other terms, it is the consciousness of one’s community identity deriving from factors such as belonging to a territory, a certain ethnicity, religion, but above all from the historical depth of its origin. This awareness is what allows the community to remain united and to deduce objectives and possible future trajectories. In philosophy, self-consciousness is a central theme, both in the individual and collective sense. It is a dynamic concept that starts from the intuition of one’s identity, passes through opposition with multiplicity and its loss, and then returns to itself as a completed identity, aware of itself and that the world before it is its own production. If knowledge is power, and therefore every Philo-Sophia is intimately a Krato-Sophia, self-consciousness is the first representation of this power. This is expressed in the solidity of one’s identity and the awareness of being able to determine the object before oneself.
To understand how much strength there is in the knowledge of self-consciousness, one need only observe the weakness of those who believe they can do without it. A prime example is the European Union. A subject that is in truth an object, since it has not emerged from the people but was constructed above them. Based on interest, not identity. An object without self-consciousness because it is populated by a multitude of unlinked self-consciousnesses. Laws and regulations, a common market, and elections are of no use. If there is no identity that comes from below, aware of itself, the object will always remain an object, namely a pure abstraction. An artifact. Its irrelevance on the global stage is the clearest demonstration of what has just been asserted. The European Union is a sin of pride that violates the ontological grammar that wants the concept to adhere to the object. A concept that thinks the object as if it were a subject is an abstraction that can never be realized. The presumption lies in believing that one can determine subjects (different from oneself) rather than objects.


The idea that the subject produces the object; that self-consciousness is founded on the identity of opposites; that in short, reality is an extension of the subject itself and that self-consciousness can be reached when it is understood that externality does not exist as such but simply as my production; this conception, fascinating and powerful, however, conceals within its folds a huge risk. On one hand, it explains the creative force of man, the evolution of collective (as well as individual) consciousness, and the ability of a community to impose itself on others coveting glory; on the other, it predisposes to the error of extending one’s subjectivity (individual and collective) beyond its proper limits. Philosophy has the great merit of explaining how will rises above necessity. At the same time, however, once this process is completed, it exchanges the potency of the will for the will to omnipotence, reversing the relationship between necessity and will and thus contradicting the initial premises. As if, once completed, that subjectivity could divest itself of what it was to freely decide what will be. As if its path had not the simple objective of being completed, but of freeing itself from the necessity that brought it to be what it is. Thus, as if it were an unfortunate fate, as soon as self-consciousness is achieved, given the sense of power it confers, one is instantly driven to surpass the boundaries of one’s being. A sin of pride detectable whenever a community confuses cause and effect in observing itself and the world. When it places its creations (moral laws, ideologies) as primary causes, engines of historical becoming, and not mere effects deriving from much more substantial (and necessary) elements. A flaw to which man is unable to escape, leading to interpretations such as those according to which the ideological and institutional framework of a country is what determines its international posture, and not merely a costume that a community wears as a tool to justify and pursue its ambitions, which precede and determine the attire to be worn. On this, geopolitics has made progress, adjusting the aim of philosophy and reminding ourselves that, however intoxicated one may be in handling the tools of reason, omnipotence remains a limit beyond which one cannot escape.
In conclusion, having observed the interconnection of the two disciplines and how much one can offer the other, we hope that philosophy, discovering how useful it is (despite itself) in understanding the present, will finally overcome the taboos of the past and return to dealing with what is proper to it.

 

 

 

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