This essay reconstructs the main lines of Ferdinand Tönnies’ critical approach to the thought of Hobbes and Spinoza. Specifically it shows the role played by the two philosophers in developing the categories of community and society. From the stand point of political thought, the essay reveals how Tönnies’ on going interpretation of Hobbes focuses more and more on the constitutive moment of the modern form of State. In this area it draws on Spinoza’s reflections on democracy as an absolutum omnino (...) imperium. Tönnies is thus able to distinguish conceptually between the Hobbesian State, as a “society” that absorbs all natural law, and its natural law origin, where we find a “common” element that can never be entirely neutralized by the State. (shrink)

Il saggio esamina il modo in cui nell’Antichità classica è stato pensato il conflitto politico a partire dalla riflessione su “fazioni” e “partiti”. L’analisi prende le mosse da Omero ed Esiodo, per i quali la Giustizia è lo strumento con cui dal caos originario si passa al cosmo ordinato. Si concentra quindi sulla nascita della polis come fattore di mediazione del conflitto fra le “parti” sociali, affrontando il pensiero di Tucidide, Platone e Aristotele, che condividono la stessa critica nei confronti (...) di “parti” interpretate come “fazioni” distruttive dell’ordine politico. Polibio, invece, valorizza le “parti” come elementi costitutivi del “tutto” politico, mentre per Sallustio le “fazioni” sono la causa della decadenza della Repubblica romana. Anche Cicerone rifiuta le “fazioni” in quanto distruttive della “concordia” dello Stato, mentre con l’Impero viene superato l’orizzonte particolaristico delle poleis; sarà Tacito, infine, a riflettere sulla contraddizione di un potere particolare che si legittima come universale. (shrink)

The essay identifies and analyses the main similarities between Weber’s and Foucault’s work. They concern the three main areas of their reflection: knowledge, power and the subject. These thematic axes are always firmly intertwined in their work. With regard to knowledge, both authors practice a form of historical knowledge in which both the “subject” of knowledge and the “object” known are radically called into question. Regarding power, they abandon the model of the state and sovereignty in order to analyse the (...) relations of power and domination that run through the entire social body and that “govern” the conduct of individuals. As for the subject, both elaborate ethical forms of subjectivity and “care of the self” that take on an ascetic significance. For Weber, however, it is a question of making objectivity itself a “vocation” for the subject, while Foucault proposes a resistance and a struggle for a new subjectivity. (shrink)

On the 100th anniversary of the death of Max Weber, we dedicate the monographic section of this issue to his political thought through a series of international contributions which investigate its multiple economic, religious, cultural and social perspectives.