LUISELLA BATTAGLIA

Sociologia e politica in Luigi Sturzo. L'autonomia delle forme sociali  

N. 2/1985

Summary — The Sturzian theory of social forms is examined laying stress on the modern critical awareness by which it is sustained and its opening to the debate with trends — like formalism —that have contributed to the formation of the contemporary sociological thought. On the score of a mediation between an "interpretative" approach and realistic tradition, Sturzo utilizes the notion of form — meant as one of the guiding concepts of sociology — in an innovative way both as regards the traditional metaphysic and the classical theory of "forms". Through the confluence and the meditation of such cultural experiences, he attains a conception of the social dynamics that, in its positive and systematic aspect, could be defined "organic relationism", meaning by such expression a conception that, basing itself on the assumption that human life is a net of relations, sees in society "the co-existence of individuals consciously co-operating towards a common aim" and emphasizes the organic character of such co-operation.

The Sturzian sociological doctrine —which intends placing itself as correction and overcoming of associationism, on one side, of organicism, on the other, — corresponds therefore functionally to the vision of a society not repressed within a prefigured structure, but open to the planning of always new social forms and meant to guarantee their free game. If the study of primary and secondary forms of sociality, of their characters and their mutual relations answers to the solicitation to account for society in its concretizing, the exploitation of every initiative intended to set up organisms answering to the numerous needs of the collectivity becomes part of the project to correct the monistical tendencies of the centralizing State and to create an "organic" life of society.

From the political point of view Sturzo’s theoretical design that finds its controversial reference points in the classical liberalism and in traditionalism, and its radical opponent in totalitarianism – consist in a sort of christianization (of the liberal-democratic theory capable of safeguarding the guarantystic contents and the man’s emancipation from the will and the privilege of power, avoiding at the same time the relativistic and nihilistic potentialities of which the totalitarian regimes had given a dramatic evidence during the first post-war period. Thus, Sturzo has offered to the Catholic world a new social and political doctrine where the liberal criticism of democracy is not disjointed from the democratic criticism of liberalism and where, both, at the same time, find only in Christianity a secure ground for foundation.