Politica (o del governo della comunità)

In this chapter we address the main debates in contemporary political philosophy, on the background of the traditional contrast between realism and utopianism in politics. This conceptual framework helps to situate and clarify also the approaches that do not sit at the extreme poles of this dichotomy so sharply construed, like Rawls's "realistic utopianism", or those that exceed it, like critical theory and Habermas's discourse theory. In the first part of the chapter we discuss different models of democratic legitimacy, focusing especially on the relation between legitimacy and facticity and on the debate between realist, Schumpeterian and aggregative approaches on one hand, and deliberative, discursive and normative approaches on the other (Held, Benhabib, Dryzek). In this context we also discuss the issue of consensus and dissent within public opinion, and the tension between pluralism (Young, Tully, Mouffe) and the search for a shared ethos, which is especially relevant for the genesis and validity of political obligations. The next part of the chapter further explores the bond between individuals and their community by focusing on issues of recognition; these will be discussed both as issues of political ontology (Searle), and as sociological facts, relating to the crisis of the multicultural model and of the so called "identity politics" (Taylor, Habermas, Kymlicka). The analysis of misrecognition (Honneth, Fraser, Margalit) is an essential element of the critique of oppressive power (reification, racism, sexism, colonialism). In this context this part of the chapter also includes a section on "body politics", exploring the way in which nature - both as human nature and as the environment - is becoming a central political problem (Gilligan, Tronto, Nussbaum), as the recognition of individual life by political power is increasingly subject to bio-political processes of reification (Foucault, Agamben). Some writers have objected to the exclusive focus on recognition, among other things, because it detracts from issues of socio-economic justice (see the Fraser-Honneth exchange). In the third part of the chapter we reconstruct the revival of the debate on redistribution in recent years, and the main traditional themes within such debate: the "measure" of equality (Sen), responsibility and desert (Dworkin, Anderson, Young), intergenerational justice and the just rate of savings (Rawls, Daniels). We seek to enlighten the obvious relations of these academic debates with the reshaping and transformations of the welfare system and the market in Western countries. Economic and distributive issues are also at the core of the debate on global and international justice that has developed in the last fifteen years (Rawls, Nagel, Miller, Pogge, Beitz, Caney, Tan), along with the role, justification and content of human rights (Shue, Nickel, Beitz, Sen, Bell), the normative theory of migration policies (Benhabib, Walzer, Habermas, Miller). We do not seek to explore all these themes in detail, but to account for the main approaches that are guiding political philosophers in addressing them. The dichotomy between realism and idealism in politics set out at the beginning of the chapter will be especially useful in this relation, as well as the Fraser's notion of "framing" as a central issue of political justice arising in the international context.