Stefano Visentin, Potere del nome e potenza del linguaggio, Il Discorso sulla servitù volontaria di Etienne de La Boétie 18/3/07©
The article takes into account the exceptionality of Etienne de La Boétie's Discours sur la servitude volontaire within its historical context, when compared to ohter anti-tyrannical essays in sixteenth century France. The Discours can be considered neither a pamphlet against tyrants, nor just a defence of medieval liberties and privileges; it can be better read as a “criticism in advance” of the modern theory of sovereignity. In fact La Boétie connects the birth of a tyrannical power with the existence in every man of a desire to submit to slavery, the origin of which has to be found in a kind of enchantment produced by “the name of the one”. By means of this name the individuals imagine themselves as part of a collective identity, to which they sacrifice their own singularities. To face this risk of self-alienation within the political society, the Discours emphasizes the power of human language to build a net of co-operation among men, capable of breaking any close and static identity. Therefore every individual appears to be a field where opposite forces and desires perpetually conflict, keeping open and undefined the “discourse” of politics.

Nicola Marcucci, Costruzione della società e crisi del politico, Immaginazione e politica nella Francia d’Ancien Régime: François de La Rochefoucauld, 24/1/07©
In this paper I suggest how the thought of the French moralist La Rochefoucauld is particularly interesting if we put it into the historical passage of the construction of the concept of society during the early modern age. The main argument is divided in three different parts. First I want to show how, the biographical and moral production of the author concerning the representation of Self and self-interest, changes during his life and transforms consequently, his conception of social recognition. Second I argue how this particular statement of self-interest and recognition partially contradict classical history of the recognition concept for which recognition and selfinterest are basically opposed each other. Third my aim is to show the utility to insert this analysis into a larger history of the concept of society during early modern age suggesting how it is broadly linked to the crises of political imagination in French absolutist period.

Enrica Fabbri, Immaginazione, religione e politica in Thomas Hobbes 23/12/2006 ©This article aims at analysing the role of religious aspects and theological topoi in Hobbes’s political philosophy. By taking into consideration Hobbes’s political reflections from a secular perspective, my first objective is to show that the interest in theological issues responds to the need to neutralise the revolutionary power of religion and to eliminate the disobedience founded on religion, in order to protect the unity, the indivisibility and the absoluteness of sovereign power and enable politics to keep the conflict under control. My second objective is to show that, by purifying the Christian message of the false doctrines invented by the Church in order to justify her political aspirations, a change in religious aspects is possible and it can lead to the achievement of a specific goal, that is the constitution of a peaceful republic based on the fear of death.

Fabio Frosini, Leopardi politico, 4/9/2006©
This article aims at analysing the role of religious aspects and theological topoi in Hobbes’s political philosophy. By taking into consideration Hobbes’s political reflections from a secular perspective, my first objective is to show that the interest in theological issues responds to the need to neutralise the revolutionary power of religion and to eliminate the disobedience founded on religion, in order to protect the unity, the indivisibility and the absoluteness of sovereign power and enable politics to keep the conflict under control. My second objective is to show that, by purifying the Christian message of the false doctrines invented by the Church in order to justify her political aspirations, a change in religious aspects is possible and it can lead to the achievement of a specific goal, that is the constitution of a peaceful republic based on the fear of death.

Luca Basso, Inquietudine e politica in Leibniz, 8/4/2006©
The aim of my paper is to emphasize the importance of the uneasiness’ concept to understand Leibniz’political philosophy. The matter of the coimplication between “individual” and
“common” is, in particular, very relevant as to that. The uneasiness is strictly linked to the individuation of unexpressed potentialities that could come to light, and progress dynamically: the notion of republic is an attempt to translate this ontological tension into political terms.

Fabio Raimondi, Impossibile confine, Immaginazione e politica nel Leviatano, 13/10/2005 ©
Covenant’s aporias remove the distinction between war and peace, that is the distinction between nature and State. In this way, Hobbes discovers that the modern intention to build a
political autonomous, totally human, organization, without references to God or to Nature, goes towards an impossible boundary. This failure shows up the imaginative nature of hobbesian thought. But imagination is more real than anything else and it is the root of science and politics at the same time. Moreover, imagination is the peculiar skill of rebels and for this reason the sovereign is, in short, the paradigm of rebel: that is to say that order and disorder are both functions of the same political practice. So, the aporias sanction, simultaneously, the impossible foundation of an artificial political order and the foundation of this impossibility. From here we have to start if we want to think peace again.