Suchergebnisse

Through the critical & interpretative analysis of a wide group of essays & texts, which, especially during the last decade, have been dedicated to Europe & to the complex shaping & development of the European Union, the Author borrows an original image, suggested by Jose Ortega y Gasset since 1949 -- "Europe is like a swarm: lots of bees & one single flight" -- in order to point out how the unification is still a "work in progress," still open to different, or even alternative, solutions. As a matter of fact, someone -- like Jeremy Rikfin, for example -- privileges the role of the so-called "European dream," while someone, instead, blames with increasing concern "the eclipse of Europe," even identifying it as a "crisis & decadence of a civilization" phenomenon. But there is also someone who, even though worried for the incapacity, or impossibility, of present Europe to be a real "power" -- beside the five presently operating powers in the world: United States, China, Russia, India & Japan -- insists on the need, & urgency, to establish a "strong Europe," like Christian Saint-Etienne requires, as finally geared with a real federal-style supranational political system. Therefore, the issue is the re-launch of the brave project-program, which, already during the first part of the Forties in the XX century, had defined the Ernesto Rossi & Altiero Spinelli's "free & unite Europe manifesto" (better known as "Ventotene manifesto"), now recovered also by Guy Verhofstadt, just marking a "new Europe," doomed to form the "United States of Europe." Of course, the recent "widening," which required the transit from the Europe of 15 to the Europe of 25 & then of 27 (with even wider enlargement hypothesis, as requested, for example, by Turkey) presents again the eventuality -- or better still the opportunity, according to some thinkers -- of committing one selves to the "bedrock research" of Europe -- like Karl Lamers claims -- which means setting against the present, & frail, "intergovernmental Europe," the strategy of a "variable geometry" Europe, also indicated as a "two-speed" Europe. Adapted from the source document.

Filippo Burzio was a unique representative of intellectual & cultural life in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Linked to Gobetti & the "liberal revolutionary" group from the days of his youth, he was an ideal pupil of Mosca & Pareto, & he always supported the need for the leadership -- the elite, the political class -- to contribute to the process of development. This he saw as indispensable in contemporary mass societies, which he termed "bee-hive & ant-hill static societies." Hence -- as the author argues in this essay -- the originality of Burzio's theory of the "demiurge" -- a figure who represents the exact opposite of Nietzsche's "superman," possessing a complex of personal talents (emotive & "magic" forms of rationality) that allow him to "plan" new forms of political & social orders (forms that contrast with the negative "materialist" experiences of the totalitarisms of Nazism & Stalinism) & to "guide" the masses without risk of demagogy or unfreedom. Within this perspective, particularly in the aftermath of the Second World War, Burzio developed a unique model of liberalism, which could be summed up by the formula "making each man a king." This model of liberalism aimed to bring together the liberties of classical liberalism & the principles of a democratic system, founded on the equality of all citizens & on popular sovereignty. Only in this way unlike in the case of the "prophets of crisis" who, like Spengler, foresaw the "decline of the West" -- Burzio held that it was possible to resolve the crisis (seen as a crisis of values rather than a crisis of institutions), in which so much of the West had found itself. Adapted from the source document.