Research

This paper examines the tension between political events and institutional form in Sheldon Wolin’s theory of fugitive democracy, arguing that Wolin progressively privileges the episodic, transgressive, and anti-institutional character of democratic action at the expense of the constitutional structures required to preserve freedom over time. Through an analysis of Fugitive Democracy, Norm and Form, and Democracy Incorporated, the paper reconstructs the continuity between Wolin’s critique of constitutional democracy and his later diagnosis of managed democracy and inverted totalitarianism. While acknowledging the enduring force of Wolin’s account of neoliberal depoliticization, corporate power, and democratic passivity, it is maintained that his appeal to localism and popular action remains institutionally underdeveloped. Engaging with the interpretations of Lucy Cane and Nicholas Xenos, as well as the criticisms advanced by George Kateb and James Wiley, it is maintained that fugitive democracy risks becoming a politics of disruption without a corresponding theory of institution. Against this limitation, Hannah Arendt’s reflections on revolution, constitutional foundation, Roman political experience, and the council system provide an alternative model in which action and institution, freedom and authority, event and form remain productively interconnected. The paper concludes that democratic renewal cannot consist solely in resisting constituted power but must also create durable institutions capable of preserving and repeatedly reactivating popular freedom.

This article examines Hannah Arendt’s reflections on law by placing them in dialogue with Alessandro Passerin d’Entrèves. It argues that both thinkers reject the reduction of law to command and coercion and instead understand it as a directive framework that orients political action without determining it from above. In Arendt, this account rests on an anti-sovereign, an-archic ontology of politics: power arises between plural actors who act in concert, while law stabilizes the fragile space opened by promises, agreements, and shared commitments. Through the contrast between Greek nomos and Roman lex, Arendt presents law as both the boundary that gives politics a worldly place and the relational tie that sustains a common world. Passerin d’Entrèves reinforces this view by distinguishing imperative from directive law, yet he also exposes a difficulty in Arendt’s position. His critique of legal pluralism and of Santi Romano’s institutionalism shows the danger that multiple autonomous ‘games’ may fragment the common world or allow new monopolizations of power. It is therefore maintained that the encounter between Arendt and Passerin d’Entrèves clarifies the tension between the an-archic origin of politics and the problem of institutional endurance. In its threefold aspect, law is the ground of politics in terms of the set of rules and conditions through which plural action is oriented, limited, and kept open to renewal.

This paper traces the development of Hannah Arendt’s council system from her engagement with Jewish political thought in the 1940s to its later reformulation in response to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Against readings that derive Arendt’s political theory exclusively from German philosophical tradition, we argue that her reflections on the Jewish homeland were central to her understanding of plurality and participatory democracy. More specifically, we maintain that it was a Jewish-diasporic political tradition that shaped her radical federalism as an alternative to the nation-state and underpinned her formulation of “the right to have rights,” thereby breaking the link between citizenship and national belonging and securing plurality – that is, equality and distinction. Plurality, understood as the very principle of the political, ultimately redefines power in non-sovereign terms, envisioning decentralized institutions of self-government. A theory which found concrete political expression in the Hungarian Revolution. By tracing this arc from Jerusalem to Budapest, which operates as the historical matrix of plurality, we show that Arendt’s accounts of the council system and revolution develop across and between these two radical political experiences.

This article examines the political trajectory of the 6000Sardines movement in Italy through Hannah Arendt’s conception of action and Adriana Cavarero’s recent account of democracy as a surging, plural, and anti-institutional phenomenon. Beginning with the movement’s emergence in Bologna in November 2019 as a spontaneous, collective, and anti-fascist public gathering, the article interprets the Sardines as a paradigmatic instance of an Arendtian politics grounded in plurality, bodily presence, and the experience of public happiness. At the same time, it argues that the movement’s democratic potential remained incomplete. Its refusal to organize its spontaneity into durable political forms ultimately led to the dissipation of its initiative and transformative force. Through a phenomenological analysis of the movement and its aftermath, the article contends that democracy cannot survive as pure spontaneity alone. Taking seriously Arendt’s Roman notion of authority and the problem of political foundation, it concludes that democratic politics must be understood as an irreducible tension between the open-ended power of collective action and the institutional bonds required to preserve and stabilize freedom over time.

Hannah Arendt scrive questo testo, uscito nella seconda edizione americana di Le origini del totalitarismo e mai pubblicato nella sua versione integrale in italiano, nel 1958. Sono passati due anni dalla rivoluzione ungherese, repressa dall’intervento dell’Armata Rossa. Arendt analizza come in dodici anni l’Ungheria abbia vissuto sotto il totalitarismo sovietico, per poi ribellarsi nel 1956 per dodici giorni che hanno fatto storia. La rivoluzione colse tutti di sorpresa, fu spontanea, non aveva leader, non era organizzata o diretta da qualcuno, era mossa solo dal desiderio di libertà. Non ne derivò una guerra civile, né caos o anarchia, ma l'improvvisa nascita dei consigli rivoluzionari che, tuttavia, vennero immediatamente soppressi dalla soverchiante forza dell'URSS. Le ultime parole che giunsero dall’Ungheria libera furono pronunciate da Radio Kossuth: “Oggi tocca a noi, domani o dopodomani sarà un altro paese, perché l’imperialismo di Mosca non conosce limiti e sta solo cercando di prendere tempo”.

Georg W. F. Hegel and Martin Heidegger argued that Romanitas worked as a conceptual negation that abruptly severed the authentic thread that firmly connected German thought to the Greek origin of philosophy. By considering Hegel’s and Heidegger’s systematic and unifying philosophies of history as a hegemonic paradigm that emptied the experience of Latin culture, I will present Hannah Arendt’s requalifying interpretation of the idea of auctoritas as a critical position that rehabilitates Romanness into a political narrative characterized by a plurality of beginnings and by the ever-growing foundation of a common history.

Focusing on the work of Luciano Parinetto, this paper presents the identity of the witch both as the basis of capitalist exploitation and as a remedy that gives to different kinds of subjectivities an antidote to the toxic alienation of their desires. Parinetto’s idea of a utopia of witches acts as a perpetual imaginary revolution against all mechanisms of subjugation that seek to prevent the inevitable “hexification” (streghizzazione) initiated in the name of a diverse and horizontal community that is always disturbed and animated by the restless presence of the uncanny body of a new diabolic plurality. Nevertheless, without a process of self-identification, the very existence of witches will not fully ensure that the full possession and vital complexity of their own “devilish” impulses have the concrete power to rebel against the capitalist exploitation of these new and liberated desires.

This article reconsiders Hannah Arendt’s political thought by shifting attention from the Greek paradigm of action to the Roman problem of foundation. Against interpretations that reduce Arendt to a thinker of spontaneous praxis and participatory emergence, it argues that her reflection on politics also depends decisively on a Roman legacy centered on law, authority, and the durable institution of freedom. Through a reading of Cicero, Virgil, and Arendt’s late works, the article shows that freedom and foundation are not opposed terms, but exist in a productive tension: political action is an-archic and eventful, yet it requires forms capable of preserving and augmenting its principles without suppressing novelty. Roman political thought thus offers Arendt a model of foundation that is neither absolute nor metaphysical, but historical, contingent, and narrative. In this light, the article suggests that Arendt’s Roman lesson provides a valuable resource for rethinking contemporary democratic crises, especially the relation between plurality, institution, and the enduring possibility of new beginnings.

This article reconsiders Hannah Arendt’s thought on community by arguing that the communal event cannot be understood solely in terms of spontaneous action, plurality, and participatory emergence. Against contemporary readings that emphasize only the “surging” and fleeting character of democratic action, it contends that Arendt’s political ontology also includes a Roman dimension centered on authority, foundation, and institutional durability. Through a reconstruction of Arendt’s dialogue with Cicero and Virgil, the article shows that community is not exhausted by the event of acting in concert, but must also be grasped as a constituted political form capable of preserving and orienting freedom over time. Roman political thought thus provides Arendt with a model for thinking the relation between libertas, auctoritas, and potestas, as well as the narrative character of foundation itself: the political beginning is never absolute or metaphysical, but historical, contingent, and continuously renewed through memory and transmission. In this light, the article argues that the tension between event and institution finds its most promising modern expression in the council republics, where the emergence of plurality can be joined to a durable, non-sovereign political form. Arendt’s Roman lesson therefore offers a valuable resource for rethinking democratic community beyond both static institutionalism and purely fugitive models of politics.