ARTURO COLOMBO

Filippo Burzio, il demiurgo e l'Occidente in crisi

209

Maggio-Agosto 2005

Anno LXX    n. 2

Summary. — Filippo Burzio was a unique representative of intellectual and cultural life in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Linked to Gobetti and the « li­beral revolutionary » group from the days of his youth, he was an ideal pupil of Mosca and Pareto, and he always supported the need for the leadership — the elite, the political class — to contribute to the process of development. This he saw as indispensable in contemporary mass so­cieties, which he termed «bee-hive and ant-hill  static societies ». Hence — as the author argues in this essay – the originality of Burzio’s theory of the  “demiurge” - a figure who represents the exact opposite of Nietzsche’s « superman », possesing a complex of personal talents (emotive and «magic» forms of rationality) that allow him to «plan» new forms of political and social orders (forms that contrast with the negative « materialist » experiences of the totalitarisms of Nazism and Stalinism) and to « guide » the masses  without risk of demagogy or unfreedom. Within this perspective, particularly  in the aftermath of the Second World War, Burzio developed a unique model of liberalìsm, which could be summed up by the formula « making each man a king ». This model of liberalìsm aimed to bring together the liberties of classical liberalì­sm and the principles of a democratic system, founded on the equality of all citizens and on popular sovereignty. Only in this way — unlike in the case of the « prophets of crisis » who, like Spengler, foresaw the « declìne of the West » — Burzio held that it was possibile to resolve the crisis (seen as a crisis of values rather than a crisis of ìnstitutions), in whi­ch so much of the West had found itself.