BOOKS BY ANGELO D'ORSI

Nato in seno alla comunità di «Historia Magistra», questo volume vuole esprimere la gratitudine per il contributo che Gian Mario Bravo – mancato il 29 aprile 2020 – ha dato alla Rivista, fin dalla sua fondazione, nel 2009: i suoi testi qui raccolti lo testimoniano, anche se soltanto in parte. Membro del Consiglio di Direzione della Rivista, Bravo è stato un esempio di rigore, di correttezza e di umanità, e la sua presenza è stata un lievito fecondo per questa testata che si ispira alla “storia critica”.

Despite the constant presence of the "Revolution" through the ages, the word "Revolution" didn’t find a conclusive definition. Passing from astronomical scope to the religious one and vice versa, the "Revolution" appears in the political lexicon only in the fourteenth century. The meaning was obviously negative: it was an unacceptable overturning of the established order. In later centuries, the term became a metaphorical use, for different fields, from science to art. The word "Revolution", has not been archived as ideal instance, as political practice, as social aspiration. The trivialization of the word was not enough to eliminate it from the lexicon nor political, nor commercial. Therefore, we have an incredible glut of "revolutions": from the detergent that revolutionizes the white, to the "Digital Earth" and so on; in the political sphere, we have the so-called "colored revolutions" to the generic Mediterranean "revolutions". Quite often, these "revolutions" reveal their opposite, but they keep alive the ghost of the Revolution, which go on haunting the world, even after the "end of history".