Abstract
Autore:
Bassani Luigi Marco
Titolo:
"Il repubblicanesimo: una "nuova tradizione" fra storiografia e ideologia"
The most important revisionist movement in the past forty years among historians of the American Revolution is associated with so-called classical or civic republicanism. This school s basic contention is that the ideas of Aristotle, Livy, and Tacitus, and a bunch of other classical writers somewhat modernized via Machiavelli and Harrington, had a much greater impact on the revolutionary generation than Locke´s thought. Thus, the American Revolution is seen as the product of classical republicanism, twing little or nothing to natural law and natural rights traditions. This article is a critique of such an interpretation, unearthing the ideological traits of the republican school and its patent connection with communitarianism. Republicanism’s most important assumption is that the supreme political end is the pursuit of the "public good" , while freedom is essentially "civic participation". The cardinal category of the republican school is "virtue", the sacrifice of the self (especially of self-interest) in order to perfect the individual as he participates in the ongoing life of the republic. This is clearly at odds with classical liberalism that guarantees full moral and political legitimacy to the pursuit of purely private interests. The article also illustrates that by now the republican school can no longer claim preeminence on the scholarship on the American founding. After the works of Huyler, Zuckert, Dworetz, Diggins, and a number of others, it will be much more difficult to dispute the diffusion, utilization, and relevance of Lockean moral philosophy in the colonies and the early republic
