Abstract

The essay deals with the debate between neo-republicans and liberals. It discusses particularly the positions of Quentin Skinner, Philip Pettit and Maurizio Viroli. While not operating an exhaustive critical examination of the positions of these three thinkers, it focusses an aspect they have in common: the idea that the republican tradition stays in an irreducible conflict with the liberal tradition and with a certain conception of democracy. The essay analizes briefly the three main concepts of republicanism also in order to point out to some historical and theoretical problems. It further compares the position of republican thinkers with the position of the liberal-democratic tradition which is their main target of their critics. In this context the essay introduces a further position which the neo-republicans quite curiously leave aside: constitutionalism.