LIBRI DI RAFFAELLA SAU

Muovendo dal tema degli Statuti trecenteschi del Comune di Sassari, i saggi raccolti nel volume riflettono su aspetti specifici e generali della produzione statutaria delle città comunali e delle città inserite nel quadro monarchico dell’Italia tardomedievale. Con un’analisi comparativa, storici, giuristi, filologi e archeologi esplorano in chiave interdisciplinare le origini di Sassari, il suo sviluppo urbano, le peculiarità dell’esperienza comunale e il percorso nello spazio politico catalano-aragonese.

Un’analisi dei problemi di identità e appartenenza, implicati dalla concettualizzazione della patria e della nazione in età moderna e contemporanea. Il volume offre un ampio quadro tematico, articolato in talune analitiche contestualizzazioni delle categorie di patria e nazione in singoli pensatori spagnoli, tedeschi e italiani, e un’approfondita panoramica della storia del concetto di nazione, che mette a fuoco gli snodi fondamentali di tale sviluppo concettuale sin dalle origini medioevali.

Neorepublican Civil Society in the Light of Democratic Change - Neo-republicanism view civil society as a set of (individual and collective) actors in symmetric relationships within the same sphere of action as that in which the State operates, for the protection of shared values and common interests, and on the basis of virtuous practices in both individual behaviour and the political process. The aim of the essay is to assess whether this outlook is compatible with the claims of pluralistic societies, characterized by an increasing lack of cultural homogeneity. In this sense, a problem is the neo-republican emphasis on belonging to the community, an aspect that can hardly go along with the conditions of contemporary societies. The major reason behind this is that the contemporary version of republicanism is based on the idea of preserving a shared form of ethos, i.e., a type of protection and conservation of a cultural and axiological homogeneity considered as a condition for social integration.

Should we talk about a change of paradigm in the theory of democracy? Two conceptions in particular deliberative democracy and neo-constitutional democracy may be considered new models. Deliberative theories enphasize the role of consensual decisions which aim at overcoming majority rule and at revitalizing the principle of popular sovereignty. Neoconstitutionalist theories argue instead that rights are the only remedy against majoritarian power, i.e. against the old fear of the tiranny of the majority. Those who criticize these theories stress their inconsistency with respect to the link they introduce between procedures and fundamental principles. This may well be their failure, but some suggest that it is precisely from this inconsistency that we can draw some ideas about a future strategy: it is in fact starting from a good mix of rules and ideals that a democracy for the future may be built.

Within the recent political-philosophical debate, the republican conception of freedom is defined as a tertium genus with respect to the liberal and democratic ones, different from the idea of lack of interference or from that of power on oneself. But is it really a third kind of freedom? In this essay the author assumes that freedom is an action defined with respect to external ties and which, from an axiological point of view, is an instrumental value. On the basis of this assumption, the theory republican freedom worked out Philip Pettit is discussed, concluding that it is not a conception of freedom separated from both negative and positive ones.