Croce, Gramsci, Bobbio and the Italian Political Tradition

ISBN-13: 9781907301995 / Angielski / Miękka / 2013 / 340 str.

Richard Bellamy

Opis

This book gathers together fifteen classic essays by leading scholar Richard Bellamy, tracing the history of Italian political thought from Beccaria to Bobbio. Written over the past 25 years, they constitute the first account in English of the modern Italian political tradition. The author pays special attention to the different ways Italian theorists have linked politics and ethics, and their various conceptions of the state and of democracy. The resulting variations on Machiavellian themes gave rise to distinctively Italian understandings of Liberalism, Marxism, Fascism and Socialism, which were all associated with a peculiarly realist account of democracy. Among the thinkers discussed are Cesare Beccaria, Antonio Genovesi, Giuseppe Mazzini, Benedetto Croce, Giovanni Gentile, Antonio Gramsci, Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca and Norberto Bobbio.

This book collects 15 essays exploring the Italian political tradition from Beccaria to Bobbio. Particular attention is paid to the ways these theorists linked social with political theory on the one hand, and politics with ethics on the other, and to the influence of these links on their differing conceptions of the state and democracy. All shared a neo-Machiavellian concern with the divide separating their political ideals and the realities of everyday politics, and devised diverse strategies for bridging the gap between them. As a result, they developed distinctively Italian understandings of liberalism, Marxism and socialism, shaped by a realist approach to politics. Among the thinkers discussed are Cesare Beccaria, Antonio Genovesi, Benedetto Croce, Guido de Ruggiero, Antonio Gramsci, Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca and Norberto Bobbio.