Ricerc@Sapienza

Left and right are viewed as social constructs that serve to orient and to bind people to political choices over the last two centuries mostly within established Western liberal democracies. Their contents and functions, however, have not been invariant across polities but were largely shaped in accordance with the distinctive characteristics of societies and of political systems in which they operated. Thus, one can't avoid addressing left and right under an historical perspective to make sense of their different expressions and to better appreciate their functions.

The present paper concerns the topics of prejudice and stereotype and the scientific and reflective attitude as a useful strategy for their reduction. The topic is particularly important because it is closely related to the issue of social inclusion and respect for minorities: in fact, prejudice and stereotypes are phenomena underlying discrimination attitudes and social exclusion processes.

The main subject of this chapter is an eminent economist, John Stuart Mill (JSM), who, we dare say, our former supervisor, colleague and friend Alessandro Roncaglia, perhaps too hastily, somewhat overlooked throughout his long and successful career as an economist and historian of economic thought.

The present work aims to analyse the current perception that European citizens have of Western democracies due to an extensive empirical study. The comprehension of the way people perceive and consider their democratic institutions is a key issue in the sociological and socio-political perspectives. Having a clear understanding of this macro-issue is a fundamental stage to approach the final goal of improving social and political stability.

In the last few years, the study of populism has become one of the most important lines of development of socio-political reflection on the dilemmas of contemporary democracy. Moving from the main results achieved by the international research group on «global populism» founded by Carlos de la Torre, this paper proposes an interdisciplinary dialogue on the main theoretical and methodological issues raised by recent research on this key phenomenon of contemporary politics.

Western liberal democracies are nowadays
experiencing the decline of “middle-class constitutionalism”. A
growing economic inequality is threatening the contemporary
constitutional state and its political stability, eroding social
homogeneity considered by Hermann Heller to be a necessary feature
for a sound democracy. This process has significant democratic
backlashes and political implications. Looking in historical and
comparative perspectives at the dynamic balance between economic

Science and democracy are founded on the same values. In contemporary society, this common genesis relates with social organization founded on universal suffrage. One of the challenges of the modern knowledge society is the development of more appropriate forms of democratic participation to incorporate scientific innovation and technology through an expansion of citizenship rights.

To speak the truth is a fundamental duty of democratic politics, being required for ensuring mutual trust between representatives and citizens. When it is ostensibly neglected by the former, and the public even loses sight of its value, democracy is deeply eroded from within. There is ground for assuming that this is the case in contemporary democracies.

The Pure Theory of Law means the guarantee of a science, which is neutral with respect to subjective values and the elaboration of a scientific analysis of law. The principle that no values should prevail over others means primarily that all of them must be afforded the same opportunities to enter into comparison and competition with each other. Each value thus has a dignity that is equal to all others, because here value-freedom means relativism. Relativism, therefore, does not mean an indifference to values, but an alternative to the two extremes of dogmatism and scepticism.

In the paper I examine Rorty’s argument elaborated in Philosophy and Social Hope where he places himself within the liberal democratic tradition stemming from Mill and Dewey. Rorty argues that this tradition does not need to be revised, it only needs to be supplemented by what we have learnt from contemporary post-modern critics such as Foucault. I argue on the contrary that Rorty’s project of freeing liberal democracy from foundations – a task which he places within the private concerns of the liberal ironist – requires him to revise the tradition.