L'itinerario di Norberto Bobbio: dalla teoria generale del diritto alla teoria della democrazia

Thanks to his double competence Bobbio was able to link two disciplines which, just after World War II, completely ignored each other. This, Ferrajoli argues, is one of the main reasons of the originality of Bobbio’s thought. It is from this point that Bobbio’s journey from general theory of law to the theory of democracy starts. And it takes two directions: the first is the one which leads him to distinguish the different approaches, the second is the epistemological re-building of law science. Bobbio was then able to use a whole range of conceptual tools to criticize the absence of law in the philosophical-political culture on the marxian left, whose merit was anyway to teach us to look at history from the oppressed point of view. Bobbio’s journey teaches us that engagement and scientific rigour can, and perhaps should, coexist with civil passion.;

Luigi Ferrajoli, L'itinerario di Norberto Bobbio: dalla teoria generale del diritto alla teoria della democrazia in "TEORIA POLITICA" 3/2004, pp , DOI: