Mediazione o superamento?

Risposta a Maffettone

Mediation or overcoming?

Maffettone's essay approaches an old problem – ultimately going back to Fichte – in a new way. That is, how can we sustain the infinite merit of the individual and, at the same time, achieve free adhesion to a set of constitutional rules restricting his will precisely in order to permit anyone to be worthy of such merit? In order to solve the problem, Maffettone introduces morals to politics. He endeavours to defend the existence of a hierarchy of goods and, hence, the plausibility of a solidaristic ethics able to single out the so-called 'pricelesss goods' (i.e. ecology, bioethics, aid to underdeveloped countries etc.). His argument, however, fails to clarify why these contexts, and not others, should be ethically binding. In order to avoid 'totalitarian' conceptions, the individual must be allowed to be 'upright' with a certain leeway: he must be left what is commonly referred to as his private sphere. If Maffettone is searching for something more – some sort of transformation of man's very mentality – then we must no longer talk of mediation but of the overcoming of the liberal-socialist conception.