ANNA FUSTINONI

Metodologia e ricerca nell'opera di Vittorio Beonio-Brocchieri

N. 157

Summary — Purpose of this essay is to reconstruct the peculiar method discovered by Vittorio Beonio-Brocchieri for the History of political doctrines, not only from a theoretical point of view so as to prove by evidence the intrinsic relation placed by him between faithfulness to the historical data and the interpretation of the philosophical essence, but also from a historical point of view in order to comprehend his work as a scholar.

Thus the criteria adopted by him in order to stress the four cultural moments characterizing his Storia delle dottrine politiche have proved to be sharp individualizations of key concepts involving entire societies with all their vitality. The civic idea of the Greeks, the universalistic idea of the Romans, the idea of the Hebrew social justice, the idea of the redeeming mutuality of Christianity, are moreover categories of the Struttura dialettica nella storia delle dottrine politiche. The reflection on the State moment of juridical order, but also sovereign subject in competition with the others, that made itself known in the Renaissance, gets in such problematic and leads, as always in our Author, from a careful study on particular data to more general considerations. The conflict, the war, the " fatal competition " that history shows not only on State level get in ever more centrally in Beonio’s interpretations and in his methodological search.

The setting up of the method finds in the synthetical formula of 1938, " the ambivalence of the moral co-ordinates as value of reaction and as value of concordance ", the explanation of every collective behaviour: all relations and human values, therefore ethics and politics, altogether give rise to two types of behaviour, conflict or accord apparently irreconcilable. From them derive "two colossal developments in the contrast of which is deduced all the dialectic of the existence": from the positions of the conflict derive all ethical political structures which the a. defines "of reaction type"; from those of the accord descend all the systems that he defines "of concordance type". It has been endeavoured to point out that the two contrasting values in their alternative development give rise to contradictions, which at the same time are the logical explanation of reality and an intrinsic necessity to the positive development of the historical process and of the political thought. The theory of the ambivalence, the dualism of harmony and struggle of the more ripe meditation of the scholar are then methodological problem and theoretical reflection together.