Etica e politica nel pensiero di Italo Mancini

Abstract

The article analyzes one of Italo Mancini's main contributions to the philosophicalpolitical debate, consolidating in the re-proposal of the connection between ethics and politics. This re-proposal is by no means a given for two specific reasons: a) in a moment, like the current one, in which the political sphere is largely depreciated and enormously misunderstood, it represents a contribution to reflect on with great attention; b) Mancini approaches the theme according to a very original interpretative perspective. In fact, for Mancini, the relationship between ethics and politics is not extrinsic but foundational and is based on the theme – Aristotelian but also Hegelian – of ethos, that is, the dynamic intertwining between the concrete data of customs and the subjective capacity of proairesis, of “purpose”, i.e. the presence of the government of reason on the substratum of habit. Mancini reads this dynamic intertwining of “objective” and “subjective” as something that has “ontological” significance, in the sense that the ethical dimension is something that dwells within the reality of juridical-political life, even if it is not always successful to emerge in the historical experience of the West.