04/2021 – Gianfranco Miglio (1918-2001): la passione del realismo

Abstracts

Damiano Palano, The «Regularities» of War. Gianfranco Miglio and the Study of International Politics

This article reconstructs the main lines of Gianfranco Miglio’s research on international politics. In particular, it examines the different stages of the Italian scholar’s path of investigation regarding the «regularities» of the war phenomenon. First of all, it considers the youth project on Humana Respublica: a project that aimed to reconstruct the history of the various attempts to limit, through international law, the use of war. Secondly, it shows how the encounter with the category of the ‘political’, which had been elaborated by Carl Schmitt, caused a clear reversal: from that moment, Miglio landed on political realism and, at the same time, abandoned the project of Humana Respublica. The «Copernican discovery» of the opposition between amicus and hostis was however received by Miglio in a specific way, because he ‘incorporated’ that hypothesis into a theory relating to the «polarizing» function of war: this theory became one of the constant elements of Miglio’s explanation of political phenomenon. When he returned to studying international politics, in the 1980s, he in fact placed this element at the basis of a general theory of international politics.

Matteo Bozzon – Giovanni Comazzetto, In the Shadow of the State? The Constitution of the ‘Politics’ in Miglio and Schmitt

The critical engagement that Gianfranco Miglio entertained with the hypotheses on the ‘political’ elaborated by Carl Schmitt represents a crucial aspect not only for the evolution in the thought of the Lombard scholar, but also for questioning the meaning and possibilities of politics beyond the state, challenging us also in today’s debate. In the scientific reception of Schmitt’s work, Miglio’s ambition corresponds likewise to going beyond Schmitt. The present paper focuses on the intellectual dialogue between the two authors, in particular in the light of the in so far unpublished integral transcription of the audio recording of the speech that Gianfranco Miglio gave on the occasion of the Paduan conference Politics beyond the state: the Carl Schmitt problem in 1980. The paper intends to underline some innovations that mark Miglio’s detachment from the theories of the German jurist in order to overcome his nostalgia for the linearity of the State-form and the crystalline categories of jus publicum europaeum. At the same time, the paper discusses some unresolved issues of Miglio’s attempt to think politics ‘beyond the State’, related to the themes of temporality inherent in the distinction between political obligation and private contract, and of federalism in its political dimension.

Michele Gimondo, The Big-Game. The Origin of Politics in the Reflection of Gianfranco Miglio

When does politics begin? The answer that Gianfranco Miglio gives to this question appears to be directly connected to a more general theory of political phenomena. Deepening this reading key, the essay retraces the reflection of the Italian political scientist comparing it with that of Carl Schmitt and Elias Canetti, authors apparently very different from each other. In the final part of the contribution, some problematic nodes of Miglio’s thought are highlighted, in particular the relationship between political unity and conflict.