Ricerc@Sapienza

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.

Relations between Italy and Hungary have been constant and complex over time and of particular importance in the interwar period. The Treaty of Trianon represented an epoch-making moment for Hungarian history, a trauma with long and dangerous consequences, which characterized the country’s choices in the following two decades. An analysis of Italian foreign policy in the transition period from Liberalism to Fascism can show whether and how elements of continuity were present in the definition of Italian foreign policy towards Hungary.

Relations between Italy and Hungary have been constant and complex over time and of particular importance in the interwar period. The Treaty of Trianon represented an epoch-making moment for Hungarian history, a trauma with long and dangerous consequences, which characterized the country’s choices in the following two decades. An analysis of Italian foreign policy in the transition period from Liberalism to Fascism can show whether and how elements of continuity were present in the definition of Italian foreign policy towards Hungary.

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.

Despite he did not write any full-fledge and comprehensive treatise of the kind Thomas Jefferson, Walter Lippman, or John Rawls did, William James is among the great American liberal philosophers. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson before him, and John Dewey and Richard Rorty after him, James was in fact highly skeptical of the opportunity of theorizing upon such matter – and much else –, mostly because of his wider distrust of top-down, idealized approaches in philosophical and political matters alike.

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.

Emanuela Ceva's remarkable amendment to political liberalism ushers in more tenable notions of value and conflict. Yet, in this note I claim that they could be reinforced. In particular, I contend that values are manifestations of a deeper interplay of belief and practice. Based on this, I advance a more radical view of conflicts as productive of politica! identities. The text concludes by explaining why this integration to the notions of value and conflict might benefit Ceva's theoretical project.