Equality and Vulnerability in The Context of Italian Political Philosophy Italian Efficacy 1st Edition Gianfrancesco Zanetti
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Volume 26
Series Editors
Mortimer Sellers
University of Baltimore, Baltimore, MD, USA
Georges Martyn
Law Faculty, University of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium
Editorial Board
Antó nio Pedro Barbas Homem
Faculty of Law, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
Emmanuele Conte
Facolta di Giurisprudenza, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Roma, Italy
William Ewald
University of Pennsylvania Law School, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Igor Filippov
Faculty of History, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
Amalia Kessler
Stanford Law School Crown Quad, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Mia Korpiola
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Helsinki, Finland
Aniceto Masferrer
Faculty of Law, Universidad de Valencia, Valencia, Spain
Yasutomo Morigiwa
Nagoya University Graduate School of Law, Tokyo, Japan
Ulrike Mü ßig
Universität Passau, Passau, Germany
Sylvain Soleil
Faculté de Droit et de Science Politique, Université de Rennes, Rennes,
France
James Q. Whitman
Yale Law School, New Haven, CT, USA
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively
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Contents
1 Introduction:Teaching Under Unusal Circumstances
1.1 Equalities
1.2 Vulnerability
1.3 Equality as a Practice
References
2 Dante Alighieri, Hans Kelsen, and the Principium Unitatis
2.1 Kelsen on Dante
2.2 The Power of the Principium Unitatis
2.3 Borders and Limits
References
3 Niccolò Machiavelli and Efficacy
3.1 The Prince’s Ruin
3.2 Contingency and Vulnerability
3.3 Normative Systems and Efficacy
References
4 Gerolamo Cardano and Italian “Realism”
4.1 Locks and Poisons
4.2 “et licet vulpinari cum alia vulpe”
4.3 Efficacy and Virtue
References
5 Efficacy in the Italian Tradition:From Giovanni Della Casa to
Giovanni Nevizzano
5.1 Efficacy at Work
5.2 Nevizzano’s Rule
5.3 Efficay Bubbles and Vulnerability Problems
References
6 Paradoxes of Equality:Giambattista Vico
6.1 The Philosopher of Marriage
6.2 Basic Equality vs.Equality as a Goal
6.2.1 Basic Inequalities
6.3 Patricians, Plebeians, and Heroic Truths
6.4 The Fight for Equality
6.5 Efficacy Phenomena and Vulnerability
References
7 Cesare Beccaria and the Narrative of Neutral Equality
7.1 It Is About Individuals
7.2 On Families and Power Asymmetries
7.3 “A Firm and Constant Voice of the Law”
7.4 Efficacy and Pluralism
References
8 Equality and Vulnerability in The Duties of Man: Giuseppe
Mazzini
8.1 An Idiosyncratic Reading
8.2 God as a Self-Defeating Concept
8.3 Normative Vulnerability
8.3.1 Situated Vulnerabilities
References
9 Social Pluralism, Efficacy and Equality: Rethinking The Legal
Order by Santi Romano
9.1 An InstitutionalistNarrative
9.2 The Legal Order
9.3 The Risks of Selective Equality
References
10 From Emilio Salgari to Cesare Lombroso – Racism and Law in
Italy:Situated Vulnerability
10.1 Books for Italian Children
10.2 Lombroso and Racism
10.3 Italian Racisms
10.4 Arguments and Motivations
References
11 The Limits of Law and Arturo Carlo Jemolo’s Islands
11.1 Italian Conscientious Objection
11.2 “So Far As The Law Is Concerned”
11.3 Borders and Limits of the Law
11.4 Incompatible Narratives
11.5 Rocks Among the Waves
References
12 The Italian “Braibanti Affaire”:A Tale of Two Vulnerabilities
12.1 A Landmark Case
12.2 A Tale of Two Vulnerabilities
12.3 Vulnerability and Equality Practices
References
13 We, the People:Of Poets and Priests.Pasolini’s Very Hard Poem
13.1 Pasolini’s Poem
13.2 Law ad Morality
13.3 Two Notions of Vulnerability, Again
13.4 Vulnerable Positions
References
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
G. Zanetti, Equality and Vulnerability in the Context of Italian Political Philosophy, Studies in the History of Law and Justice 26
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35553-0_1
An old science-fiction story by Frederick Pohl, “The Gold at the Starbow’s End,” starts out with a fictional
experiment. Some children are in a room cluttered with stuff, and they are told to reach another room down
the corridor, as fast as they can, without touching the floor with their feet—a task they manage to carry to
completion by tying to their feet some long wooden boards they find in the room, and then sliding their way
to their assigned destination. In a second phase of the experiment, only one board is left in the room: the
children promptly tie the very same rope to one end of that wooden board and hop lightly while pulling the
rope. This latter device significantly improves their performance: they succeed in reaching the second room
in a shorter time. The problem, the obstacle, was the second board. Too much of a good thing, as they say.1
When I was appointed to the Chair of Italian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, I found
myself in a similar predicament. I had to plan my Ph.D. classes in the middle of the health emergency
brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and that meant, apart from other quite unhelpful circumstances, no
access to any library. I had to rely on my own tiny personal library at home, and on my memory (and, well,
the Internet). For some reason, however, I felt less clever than Pohl’s fictional children. It was challenging
and somewhat distressing. The subject I had agreed to lecture on was “Equality and Vulnerability in the
Context of Italian Political Philosophy”.
Since it was of course mandatory to teach online, but it was almost verboten to do so remotely—that is,
from outside the mainland US—I had to happily hop a flight to San Francisco.
Because of a quarantine, and of the other COVID-19 restrictions, I would spend most of my time in the
city secluded in a comfortable basement (my personal library had shrunk to a suitcase) reading over and
again (and then again) some famous pages written by Cardano and Machiavelli, poetry by Campanella and
by Vico, legal musings by Santi Romano and Arturo Carlo Jemolo. The lack of time constraints made it
possible to settle into an unusual frame of mind for my studying routine.
My students, on the other hand, were exceptionally gifted and supportive. I could never quite understand
how they could follow my classes in such an easy, almost relaxed way (despite all the inconvenience of the
pandemic environment, and despite my cute Italian accent, as one student described it). Their questions
were challenging and focused. We had the time to go back to the original text any time we felt the need, or
the whim, to do so. They could evidently read both Italian and Latin. One of the students was Brenda Rosado,
who like me was a Townsend fellow.2 Our chair was the indefatigable Timothy Hampton, and every Tuesday
it was one fellow’s turn to discuss a paper chosen (and posted online) by one in our number, on a subject
that most of the time, most of us were completely unfamiliar with (it fell to me to comment on a remarkable
paper by Bob Sharf on a Buddhist sect’s notion of time: it did prove to be a busy week, that one). It was more
than interesting to be exposed to so many different stimuli, to get the benefit of engagement with a group of
fellows intellectually so diverse, to converse with colleagues who did not share my outlook and were not
privy to my academic jargon, to face a gentle and yet challenging and sharp audience. And it was, of course,
fun.
The confluence of such unusual circumstances was perhaps responsible for my idiosyncratic approach to
the subject of the course. Thus Hans Kelsen, the father of modern Continental jurisprudence,3 is mentioned
mostly as a Dante scholar; Gerolamo Cardano comes up as a favorite author of Marcello Dell’Utri, a political
ally of (former libertine Italian prime minister) Silvio Berlusconi who served time in prison because of his
alleged connections with the Sicilian mafia, Cosa Nostra; the work of Giuseppe Mazzini is discussed, among
other reasons, because of the bold parallel he drew between three vulnerable groups: women, black slaves
in the American South, and republican Italians.
The idea, in working these angles and pursuing these tangential trains of thought, was to see if in some
key texts in the tradition of Italian political philosophy there could be detected a realistic notion of efficacy,
and this was the first problem I had in mind. The subtext all through the course—and the second problem
addressed in prodding and canvassing these key texts—was that of equality and vulnerability, the idea here
being to see if this problem could be tackled without invoking a specific notion of, say, natural law: to this
end it was enough to rely on a bare notion of efficacy, and one that was not even deliberately articulated with
any special theoretical awareness.
To make a long story short, on a notion of efficacy of this kind, normative horizons within which legal
and political decisions can, and do, flourish are self-originating phenomena (a notion I introduce by a
cursory reading of a lesser-known author like Nevizzano). These phenomena nevertheless offer their own
legitimizing narrative. Such a narrative, to this end, must present itself in a certain guise, as grounded in
universal values, for example, or as a having a theoretical and genetic prius with respect to the phenomena
themselves. Efficacy phenomena, however, do not really need to function according to the narrative they
historically radiate; on the other hand, it is almost impossible to conceptualize these phenomena except
through that very narrative (or through some other narrative), that is, except by endorsing or criticizing,
validating or debunking that specific narrative.
Efficacy is the notion I use in canvassing Machiavelli’s texts, where these problems can first be somehow
detected. When Gerolamo Cardano tries to find a name for this special factor, he actually calls it, very much
en passant, efficacy, efficacia (quae maximum est).4
Such efficacy is not going to create nicely shaped systems endowed with unity: we actually have only
efficacy phenomena, more or less arbitrarily subsumed under a system by a narrative that radiates from the
phenomena themselves. The narrative is precisely what allows the observer to perceive them as such, that is,
as efficacy phenomena, coexisting with a narrative, no matter how crude, that is not just a noetic condition
for understanding them but is also an alethic condition for their existence. The narrative, on the other hand,
exists because of them, and has no status or function other than that of making those phenomena intelligible
and existing as efficacy phenomena.
This respect for efficacy phenomena gives to some Italian authors a specific (and well-known) flavor of
hard realism, a pragmatic gusto, which is even stronger when it does not sound theoretically deliberate or
intentionally provocative—and therein, of course, and quite often, lies part of their charm.
Most of these authors were directly engaged in contemporary politics: they held office and were often
responsible for making legal, political, or military decisions. They had to struggle and fight: some of them
(Machiavelli, Lottini, Campanella) were physically tortured; others (Dante, Mazzini) spent part of their lives
in exile; one (Pasolini) ended up being killed; Cardano and Braibanti served time in prison. Only few of them,
like the Marquis Beccaria or Vico, were lucky enough to have had sources of distress that, for the most part,
were only private (Beccaria had issues with his father, Vico with his son); Santi Romano, after a stellar
professional life, happened to die before his old age could be disturbed by the political and legal
consequences of his allegiance to Mussolini and Fascism. This is a peculiar gang of fellows, and I picked them
mostly because I find them intriguing, and because I thought my Berkeley students would enjoy reading
them. Apparently, they did.5
Needless to say, the idea is not that Italian authors deliberately carry on a special tradition, but rather
that specific themes run through different texts, resurfacing here and there, while different motivating
factors urge the different authors to touch those theoretical points.
There is a resemblance with these scholars’ intertextuality. Most of them were avid readers of Latin
authors, and they sometimes mention them and sometimes just quote them taking for granted that their
readers can recognize the sources. So, for example, to read Matteo Palmieri without being acquainted with
Cicero and Sallust is almost to read a different author. The point, nevertheless, is that there is not a Latin
philosophical doctrinal tradition that is upheld by these scholars: there are themes, catchwords, famous
passages which it feels good to quote, and which seem to support a specific mode of critical thought, and
there is also a way of dealing with some concrete contemporary problems.
There is therefore no Italian political-philosophical agenda, nor, certainly, is there any shared awareness
of such a specific thread: but the thread is there, and though it takes the form of a patchwork of
afterthoughts and hints dropped in the margins, it is nevertheless interesting (at least I hope it is), and it
sheds some indirect light on a few intriguing corners of this tradition. One of such dark corner is the notion
of equality as a practice.
1.1 Equalities
In the chapter on Vico, the only one previously published as a freestanding paper,6 a distinction is drawn
between two kinds of equality. The notion according to which human beings are equal in some fundamental
and compelling sense (basic equality) is distinguished from equality as a policy aim (normative equality).
There can be little doubt that we need a notion of basic equality to advance our egalitarian aims, and that
while much has been written about equality, modern literature deals far less with the background idea that
humans are, fundamentally, one another’s equals.7 This is, of course, the grand scheme to be found, for
instance, in Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Equality first, then, and it is a basic equality—
human beings are (created) equal: unalienable rights will imply some kind of normative equality.
The problem is that, as I would argue, notions of basic equality can be conceived as cultural
constructions (albeit of the most valuable kind): they can be the outcome of normative equality practices.
If, for example, I believe in the basic equality of all human beings, I will likely be ready to fight for the civil
rights of subjugated minorities, just as Giambattista Vico’s famuli (plebeians) seem ready to fight for their
equal rights while realizing that the patricians “did not come from heaven,” after all. But that is not yet a
complete description of Vico’s philosophy of equality. The famuli fought, first and foremost, because, as it
happens, they must have grown weary (se ne dovettero attediare) of being oppressed and subjugated.8 At the
end of the day, no special philosophical argument was required. They wanted equality, period. In fighting
and by fighting they became equal, because they changed the normative horizon within which both they and
the patricians dwelled.
In other words, the idea is that some kind of inequality and discrimination is eventually perceived as
such, and that these painful circumstances trigger a practice of normative equality that in turn will create a
new set of shared beliefs, a new world of meanings, and a new (more inclusive) kind of basic equality. This
perceived injustice does not need to be exhaustively deduced, as such, from any set of moral absolutes, from
any metaphysically grounded anthropology, from any notion of natural law; and, conversely, the practice
does not need to be justified in absolute theoretical terms. This is the residual legacy of the background
notion of efficacy: it shows itself in self-originating phenomena. Needless to say, equality practices will
themselves secrete some kind of narrative, some (normative) arguments for equality.
This path from equality practices to basic equality does not seem intuitively consistent with a religiously
inspired tradition of natural law. While it is intuitive that, if we are all children of the same God, we probably
enjoy some kind of basic equality, the counterintuitive idea of a basic equality that is not found, but rather
forged, achieved, obtained, or seized, feels puzzling and somehow troubling. Indeed, the first time we were
urged to reach equality (rather than acknowledge it), to create some equality where there is none, the plea
came from the Serpent itself: Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum ac malem,9 the words beloved by Goethe’s
Mephistopheles,10 and it did not end up well.
This means that it is possible to conceptualize basic equality as an effect, a posterius, a result, an
outcome, a point of arrival, while a practice of normative equality can be deemed as the starting point, the
input, the cause, the prius, the necessary pragmatic assumption. This, of course, means that we need to ask
what can be the motivating factors of normative equality practices—the “reasons” for such practices.
It should be noted that there is no logical contradiction between the two alternative conceptual paths,
from basic equality to equality as an aim, and from equality as an aim to basic equality; Vico was well aware
of the former path. Even so, the very possibility of the counterintuitive path from equality as a goal to basic
equality, next to the traditional path moving in the opposite direction, dramatically alters the overall
argumentative meaning of the standard (liberal) notion of equality. Unfortunately, domination and
oppression can and do make groups of humans basically unequal, as both Vico and Giuseppe Mazzini found
out. This is specifically cruel, like trying to breed human beings destined to submission and oppression.
Inequalities, in the plural, are often hidden in plain sight, just like the purloined letter imagined by Poe.11
Yes, Vico’s famuli fight for universal equality: that is achieved only when full citizenship rights are granted to
everybody within the boundaries of the Empire. The only fly in the ointment is that, well, women—roughly
half the population—are left out. It is not so much that the answer to the question “Which men (i.e., which
males) deserve to be citizens, to be ‘equal’?” can change. It is that the relevant question itself can change
when one can step outside the circle of those shared beliefs that crystallize within a given institutional and
normative horizon.
Most famously, those inequalities that are the outcome of a given (contingent) institutional horizon
usually conceptualize themselves as eminently natural: aliquid monstri aliter, mumbles the patrician who
suspects that his pregnant wife had lain with a slave;12 growing in that womb is a chimera, a monster with
two different natures. The republican Italian “apostle,” Giuseppe Mazzini, would bitterly mention that old
biased argument: Italians are not apt, not ready, for political autonomy and freedom.
1.2 Vulnerability
Inequalities come in a variety of flavors. Equalities, in the plural, are those political and legal practices, not
necessarily peaceful, that challenge a given and perceived inequality. From this point of view there is no
(capital E) Equality—a perfect state of affairs, a “value” that can be fully grasped and described; there are
only equality practices. While Equality must each time claim to be universal, it can never achieve that status.
Especially aware of this open texture of equality practices is Mazzini, who particularly stresses this point.
All that we are left with are therefore situated equalities. There is no such thing as universal equality:
there are only practices of normative equality that, in different circumstances, once different kinds of
inequality and discrimination have been detected, reshape the notion of basic equality implied by different
norms, institutions, and practices. A different normative horizon, one that conceptualizes itself as more
inclusive, then emerges from within those norms, institutions, and practices.
Equality is a therapy—actually, a diverse condominium of therapies—for quite different kinds of
diseases: it is not a state of good health. Equality is an aequalitas aequans, never an aequalitas aequata.
Against every normative equality practice there can be levied the charge of having forgotten about those
who in one way or another are left out, and there is always somebody who is left out. There is always a
specifically relevant issue, a situated, hot-button problem—sometimes smoldering in silence, sometimes
burning and blasting.
The very possibility of challenging a given allocation of wealth or status, a contingent normative horizon,
is quite meaningful. From this point of view, any legal and political order comes with those limits built into
the possibility of such a challenge. Such limits are not conceived as “boundaries”: they rather dwell in those
interstitial gaps that lie in the overlap of different narratives. Jemolo would speak of “islands” that the law
can only lap but never submerge, islands like the family, an institution that for the Catholic lawyer was
supported by different and powerful narratives that were alternative to the legal narrative, and potentially
incompatible with it (though narrative is a word that, ca va sans dire, Jemolo would never have used): family
is thus a kosmion of primal instincts and of religion, incendiary stuff that can put up a good fight against the
disciplinarian power of abstract legal systems.
This, however, is a critical point. Uncomfortable though this may make us feel, there is no need to
conceive a normative horizon as a monad sealed out from competing and overlapping narratives. Legal
systems are no exception. It is of course quite tempting to fashion normative horizons into nicely shaped,
mutually exclusive entities. Normative phenomena, however, do not need to adapt to any intellectual or
doctrinal comfort zone.
Even when a legal system conceives of itself as absolute, one could argue, its limits will lie not around it,
like boundaries, but within it. Even the Enlightenment and enlightened thinker Cesare Beccaria eventually
had to admit as much when he faced the normative reality of that special encompassing group of gentlemen
who would feel duty-bound to break the law by entering into a duel to protect their honor—a notion at odds
with some tenets of the legal system, but which nevertheless had to be housed within it. Nothing prevents
other normative systems from dwelling within the same normative horizon. We do not have to conjure up
the challenges of postmodern multicultural phenomena to shed light on the softly unsettling reality of
normative pluralism. Such pluralism famously becomes one of the main tenets in the thought of Santi
Romano, who more than a century ago, and even before embracing Fascism and Italian racism, challenged
Kelsenian normativism and offered his bold, almost outrageous, version of a plural institutionalism.
Such a pluralism, if conceived as a constitutive, inescapable feature of legal and political systems,
provides a useful background assumption for the notion at play of “equality practices”: normative
arguments, one could argue, will radiate from the minority, encompassing groups whose shared and
alternative beliefs can challenge the mainstream narrative. Normative arguments can pierce through the
bubble-like sphere of those shared beliefs that contingently can turn into an efficacy point, a point which
narrates itself as a justified normative horizon, and which can discriminate and displace, hurt and
intimidate: it can create and make some kind of (basic) “inequality,” that is, a specific vulnerable group.
Discrimination, oppression, or displacement can take quite different forms: coming in handy at this stage
of the discussion is the notion of vulnerable groups.
Rather than focusing on an essentialist notion of human vulnerability—something I am not ruling out in
the least: that is actually a promising research avenue—it is here more interesting to lay emphasis on
heterogeneous, contingent, “situated” forms of vulnerability. There is no need for any notion of human
nature (no need to reject the possibility, or the potential usefulness, of such a notion, either).
Any institution implies some kind of potential exclusion, framing a specific inequality in the very
normative horizon it identifies itself with: Dante’s most powerful attempt to conjure up a universal
institution—using up, in the process, all the power of the principium unitatis—ends up giving us a world:
what it gives us, therefore, is rich with exclusions (but it must nonetheless claim it harbors none). As was
previously mentioned, it is very rarely that these inequalities and exclusions can be clearly perceived as
such, because they are embedded in the very horizon from which a critical argument should radiate (the
work of Cesare Beccaria played a role in the obliteration of situated vulnerabilities, an obliteration which, it
may be argued, lies at the core of Western liberal democracies). The process by which an equality argument
arises out of a given normative horizon, questioning and challenging that inequality, is the same process by
which a form of situated vulnerability starts to be perceived as such.
Situated vulnerabilities, however, are not like colors or musical notes: they do not have to share any
common feature or logic. Situated vulnerabilities are bound up with the contingent scenarios that originate
together with a dotlike bubble of normative efficacy, which is why their emergence cannot be easily
predicted or their logic shared by those who, by choice or by lot, dwell within the “limits” of that given set of
institutions—the perceivable side of the efficacy bubble, the graspable narrative radiating from that given
normative horizon.
Italian racism was (and is) more multifaceted (and probably quite worse) than it looks at first sight: the
one and the same Italian Jewish scholar (Lombroso) could elicit scorn from racists because of their racism
and from others because they thought he was racist. The one and the same Italian author of children’s books
(Salgari) had no qualms about glamorizing what elsewhere would have been labeled as miscegenation—
love between Caucasians and Asians—while indulging in some most racist remarks about other Asians. The
one and the same Italian subgroup (the Etruscans) could be held up as a noble race that enriched the Italian
bloodline, while also being dismissed as a temporary, and ultimately negligible, stain on the genetic makeup
of the Italian Aryan race (and in fact both positions could be found in the same racist journal). Racism is a
motivating factor that can give rise to cruel efficacy phenomena; such phenomena radiate arguments that
should rationalize the motivating factor, but that do not need to be consistent with one another.
Finally, the perceived vulnerability of the institutions themselves, of the contingent scenario, is just a
special case of situated vulnerability—one that can sometimes trigger the most extreme reactions.
Exemplifying the severe, cruel interaction of different kinds of vulnerabilities is the dark tale of the infamous
“Braibanti affair”, where the overlapping, intersectional vulnerability implicit in membership in different
outside-the-mainstream minorities violently clashed with the perceived fragility of the same normative
horizon that needed to marginalize and displace such figures of vulnerability—and therefore needed to
crush the life of Braibanti himself.
Equality arguments are therefore both an answer to and a symptom of a perceived situated vulnerability,
if and when normative horizons are conceived as mere efficacy phenomena understood through the
narrative they radiate. In the Italian tradition of political and legal philosophy there is this theme that
occasionally crops up here and there without any clear line of development.
There is a constant going back to some harsh, painful political reality, a disdain for utopian dreams, a down-
to-earth attitude, and a cold realism. There is a sanguine acknowledgment of the power asymmetries behind
normative horizons: and a red thread connects Vico’s merciless description of a heroic aristocracy to Santi
Romano’s dry remark that institutions are not meant to necessarily embody any equality. One must resist
the temptation to call it a pars destruens. It would be such, a pars destruens, if it could be set in contrast to a
pars construens. But that is not the case: it is only about negotiating the fine line between the logic of efficacy
phenomena and the kind of equality practice one feels motivated to instantiate.
One last, and most important, caveat. This red thread is certainly not the key to understanding Italian
political thought. There are, I am sure, far more important aspects, critical problems, and fundamental
questions. The idea was just to elaborate on a cluster of problems that seem to crop up here and there as we
read some Italian authors—a reading exercise that could shed light on some corners of their trains of
thoughts, leaving some vaster areas in the dark. This is just a way of allowing some of their texts to react to
such a deliberately non-neutral reading. In other words, no (new) interpretation of Italian political thought
is offered here: just some Discorsi on some problematic aspects in the thought of a few Italian authors.
They had not originally been thought as chapters of a book. I made no attempt to edit them and polish
them—they are still the texts of my Berkeley classes, that I would post on line for my students after the
Wednesday afternoon class. These “lectures” make use of different methodological approaches: for example,
Dante is explored through a single reading of his work (by Hans Kelsen); Machiavelli is mostly approached
through a “mechanical” text analysis; The Duties of Man by Giuseppe Mazzini is read as a text almost
independent from the historical contingencies that motivated its creation; and so on.
My biggest debt is with Thomas Casadei; his support was always generous, intelligent, and
compassionate. Mariano Croce, Tommaso Greco, Antonio Merlino, Giorgio E.M. Scichilone, Elio Tavilla have
all read and commented parts of this book. Their comments and wise advice were invaluable. Special thanks
go to Rosaria Pirosa for reviewing the entire work with great care and expertise; and for helping me to deal
with some thorny theoretical issues. I shall miss our conversations at the CRID (Research Center on
Discriminations and Vulnerabilities, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) in the summer of 2022.
I am grateful to Albert Russell Ascoli, Timothy Hampton, Brenda Rosado, Mortimer Sellers, Barbara
Spackman, and Kendall Thomas for their encouragement and support. Mia Fuller, chair of the Department of
Italian Studies, was a most gracious, generous, and intelligent host. The rettore of the University of Modena
and Reggio Emilia, Carlo Adolfo Porro shielded me from many bureaucratic poisons that could have
prevented me from enjoying my UC Berkeley adventure. The Berkeley students who attended my course
were the Menschen every instructor would like to teach to and engage with—and to them are owed my final
and most heartfelt thanks.
References
Cardano G (1630) Proxeneta, seu De Prudentia. Paulus Marceau, Genoa. Italian edition: Cardano G (2001) Il Prosseneta ovvero della
politica (trans: Cigada P). Mondadori, Milan
Foscolo U [1807] (2015) Of the Graves. Trans. Bianchi V. In: Bianchi V, Rediscovering Foscolo: a Translation of the ‘Sepolcri’ and of t
https://www.academia.edu/22334674/REDISCOVERING_FOSCOLO_A_TRANSLATION_OF_THE_SEPOLCRI_AND_OF_
2015
Goethe W [1808] Faust. English Edition: Goethe W (1843) Goethe’s Faust (trans. Lefevre G, M.D.) Charles Juge, Frankfurt o.M
Poe E-A [1844] The Purloined Letter. Poe E A (1945) The Portable Poe. In: Van Doren Stern P (ed) Viking, New York, pp 439–462
Pohl F (1972) The gold at the Starbow’s end. Condé Nast, New York
Publius Terentius Afer, Andria, 250, quoted by Vico G, [1744] Scienza Nuova. Italian edition: Vico G (1990) Opere (ed: Battistini A)
pp 688, 740. 743
Vico G [1744] Scienza Nuova. Italian edition: Vico G (1990) Opere. In: Battistini A (ed) Mondadori, Milan
Vico G [1744] Scienza Nuova. English edition: Vico G (1999) The New Science (trans: Marsh D) Penguin, London
Waldron J (2002) God, locke, and equality. Christian foundations in locke’s political thought. Cambridge University Press, Cambrid
[Crossref]
Zanetti GF (2011) Vico on equality and marriage. Ratio Juris Int J Jurisprud Philos Law 24(4):461–470
Footnotes
1 “ Pohl (1972). See also the extended version: Pohl (1982).
2 Doreen (2020–21).
3 The Austrian legal philosopher and jurist, incidentally, taught at UC Berkeley. See Losano (2008).
8 Vico [1744] (1990) edited by Andrea Battistini (Mondadori), p. 696. See also Vico [1744] (1999) in the English translation by
David Marsh (Penguin).
9 Gen 3:5. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
10 Wofgang Goethe, Faust, Act I, Scene IV. “This Serpent’s adage round your memory twine,/You’ll one day fear your human face
divine”: Goethe’s Faust [1808] (1843) translated by George Lefevre, M.D. (Charles Jugel) p. 78. The wise words that advise not to
get involved in an equality practice are those addressed by Abdiel to Satan in Milton (Paradise Lost VI, 174–181):
.
12 Publius Terentius Afer, Andria, 250, quoted by Vico (1990); cp. pp. 688, 740. 743.
13 Foscolo [1807] (2015), pp. 156–158.; “Of the Graves” in “Rediscovering Foscolo: a Translation of the ‘Sepolcri’ and of three
sonnets”, translated by Valentina Bianchi.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
G. Zanetti, Equality and Vulnerability in the Context of Italian Political Philosophy,
Studies in the History of Law and Justice 26
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35553-0_2
References
Arendt H (1965) Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the Banality of Evil. Viking
Press, New York
Ascoli A-R (2008) Dante and the making of a modern author. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge
[Crossref]
Cau M (2004) Hans Kelsen et la théorie de l’Etat chez Dante. Laboratoire italien.
Politique et societé. Droit et literature 5:125–150. https://doi.org/10.4000/
laboratoireitalien.431
[Crossref]
Dante [1312–1313] De Monarchia. English edition: Dante (1996) In: Shaw P (ed)
Monarchy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Eisenberg L (1986) Rudolf Virchow: the physician as politician. Med War 2(4):243–
250
[Crossref]
Kelsen H (1905) Die Staatslehre des Dante Alighieri. Leipzig, Wien. Italian edition:
Kelsen H (2017) Lo stato in Dante. Una teologia politica per l’impero (Preface by
Monateri P-G and Afterword by Frosini T-E). Mimesis (Fuochi Blu Series), Milan
Kelsen H [1945] (2005) General Theory of Law and State (1945). Taylor & Francis
Ltd, New York
Solmi A, Kelsen H (1907) Die Staatlehre des Dante Alighieri. Bullettino della Società
Dantesca Italiana 13:98–111
Steinberg J (2013) Dante and the limits of the law. The University of Chicago Press,
Chicago-London. Italian Edition: Steinberg J (2013) Dante e il confine del diritto
(trans: Sara Menzinger). Viella, Rome
Footnotes
1 See Steinberg (2013).
3 Kelsen (1960), p. 201. In other words: “To be sure, the law is no longer presupposed
as an eternal and absolute category; its content is recognized as subject to historical
change, and the law itself, as positive law, is recognized as a phenomenon
conditioned by temporal and spatial factors”. Kelsen (1992), p. 21.
4 Virchow was an amazing figure. See for instance Eisenberg (1986), pp. 243–250.
5 Romano (2017), p. 1. See in this volume, Social Pluralism, Efficacy & Equality.
Rethinking The Legal Order by Santi Romano, section 9.
7 Arrigo Solmi wrote a critical note with a nationalist flavor. See Solmi and Kelsen
(1907), pp. 98–111.
8 Kelsen (1905); Kelsen (2017), namely Lo stato in Dante. Una teologia politica per
l’impero, with a Preface by Giuseppe Monateri and Afterword by Tommaso Edoardo
Frosini (Mimesis).
11 Dante (1112–1113); Dante (2015) edited by Quaglioni, pp. 150, 440. I found the
contribution by Quaglioni invaluable.
13 Aristotle, Politics, I: 2.
14 Aristotle, Pol. VII: 8.
22 While all the mistakes are exclusively mine, I am deeply in debt with Albert
Ascoli, for the many on-line enlightening conversations on Dante and other authors
of the Italian cultural and political tradition. See Ascoli (2008).
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
G. Zanetti, Equality and Vulnerability in the Context of Italian Political Philosophy,
Studies in the History of Law and Justice 26
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35553-0_3
All states and dominions that have had and continue to have
power over men were and still are either republics or
principalities.28
Machiavelli was a learned man. He must have been perfectly aware that
he was not informed about all the regimes of the world (the world was
yet far from having been fully explored, though learned Europeans
already knew that there were far-away lands of which little was
known), let alone of the ancient times, from Egypt to far away Asia. A
statement like that, therefore, for the very reason that it was not and
could have not been supported by adequate empirical evidence, is a
blunt rhetorical position of impressive intensity. In the light of such an
intensity, all the general rules stated by Machiavelli seem not so much
the theorems of a treatise, or the maxims of a political handbook, but
the literary attempt to create a narrative where political wisdom in
general, and therefore Niccolò’s personal political wisdom (potentially
useful to the Medici family) in particular, becomes a graspable,
understandable notion.
Against a shape-shifting and basically ungraspable world,
Machiavelli conjures up an alternative vision of homogeneity and the
substantial equality of all possible scenarios. Not to take a position in
the fight between two neighbors is “always” dangerous. It is always the
same. It is better to be feared rather than to be loved. It is always the
same. This is, of course, his basic attitude. Just a few examples: “This is
the result another natural and basic inevitability […]”29; “men who
manage to acquire are always applauded”.30 They key chapter, is of
course, Chapter Fourteen, Of a Prince’s Duties Concerning the Military.
Here Machiavelli states a geographic homogeneity. The Prince, studying
his own territory, is actually studying all territories, because at the end
of the day they are all more or less the same:
This is about the exercise of the body. The reason I indulged in such a
lengthy quote is that I find remarkable the rhetoric pressure
Machiavelli is exercising: “any hill, valley, river, plain, or marsh […]”. The
summing up of the second sentence makes sure the reader “gets it”. The
physical world does not change—spatial distance it is not an issue. And
most famously, time distance is not an issue either:
As for the exercise of the mind, a prince must read histories and
study the actions of great men so he can see how they conducted
themselves in war and examine the reasons for their victories
and defeats, in order to imitate the former and avoid the latter.32