The genesis of Bobbio’s liberalism (1939-1955): between classics old and new

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay aims to reconstruct the ‘genetic’ phase of Norberto Bobbio’s research on liberalism, through the theoretical confrontation he developed with some reference liberal authors, which we usually call ‘classics’. The paper reconstructs, first of all, the path of Bobbio from the years of his liberal formation, which took place in the sign of the works of Benedetto Croce, to the first gradual departure from the Crocian concept of freedom during the years of the Resistance. After the end of the Second World War, also thanks to the encounter with Karl Popper’s work, Bobbio’s arrival to the methodological individualism took place as well as the definitive departure from the idealistic and Croce's conception of freedom. The systematic criticism Bobbio addressed to his idea of liberalism, was developed in the volume Politics and culture, a crucial work to understand what the philosophical foundations of liberalism are according to Bobbio. The interpretation he gave of Benjamin Constant’s thought is important for two different reasons: firstly, starting from Constant, Bobbio anticipated as early as 1954 the famous Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between negative and positive liberty; secondly, this interpretation is fundamental to highlight the particularity and the anomaly of Bobbio’s liberalism.