Perpetual peace: relationships between Kant’s · 1 Perpetual peace: relationships between...
Transcript of Perpetual peace: relationships between Kant’s · 1 Perpetual peace: relationships between...
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Perpetual peace: relationships between Kant’s
political thought and the Italian political context in the
Nineteenth Century
1. A utopian project?
When the essay For perpetual peace was published for the first time, the
success with the public was rapid and widespread. The first copies were soon
out of stock, and this allowed an immediate reprinting and a further edition in
which appeared the famous “secret article”. In the very next years the book was
translated and distributed in France and Great Britain, while in homeland it
received expressions of approval. In his famous review, Fichte expressed his
admiration for the Kantian project, sharing the assumption that an authentic
idea of peace can only be founded on a legal base, and that it must relate
necessarily to international relationships.
The appreciation of the readers for that brief essay didn’t mean, however,
that they trusted its contents; in the Europe of the late Eighteenth Century,
upset from war against France, the prospect of a stable and durable peace
seemed decisely uncertain. Moreover, the main objective of the work, that is
the description of a new international political order based on a federation of
republican states, found for sure very bad conditions for its realization on the
continent, ruled by the paradigm of the absolut and despotic state. The
following events met the exacerbation of such conditions; the republican
France on which Kant had directed his hopes had already turned its war of
resistance in an expansion war, and its process of “republicanizations” of the
Italian peninsula absolutely didn’t reflect what Kant expected in the second
definitive article of For perpetual peace. Because of these reasons the
reviewers of the opera found in it only an interesting philosophical project and
some morally sharable hopes, but nothing more. The gap between the rational
value of the project and the political context it was addressed to seemed
unbridgeable. By using the Kantian terminology, what seemed to be impossible
to reconcile was the distance between theory and practice. But it’s right here
that the sense of the opera is hidden, it’s right here that the Kantian
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argumentation shows larger prospects, that goes beyond the circumstances of
the European scene of the end of the century.
No doubts that the practice can’t reduce or nullify in any way the
effectiveness of the theory, as the philosopher declares in his essay On the old
saw: that may be right in theory, but it won’t work in practice, and that is not
absolutely rejected in For perpetual peace. Peace is a duty imposed by reason,
the republican constitution is the only one capable of achieving this goal, and
the global federation is the transposition of these aims on the international
context. Surely this level is much more complex than the individual one, where
the commands of reason can impose an immediate authority. Kant shows the
obstacles that opposes the fullfilment of rational peace precisely in the famous
and controversial second definitive article. Among them, the most important is
that concept of absolute sovereignity that characterized the European idea of
power.
Kant denounces the wickedness of this idea, but he doesn’t overstep it.
For the philosopher, the sovereignity of a state is in any case irresistible, and it
couldn’t admit the obligation of a superior juridical order, as it would happen
within a federation. However, Kant doesn’t intend to elude the principles of
criticism, and for this reason in the conclusive passages he affirms anyway that
«for states viewed in relation to each other, there is no other way, according to
reason, on emerging from that lawless codition but to condescend to public
coercive laws and to found in this way a state of peoples»1. The unsteadiness of
Kant regarding this point is today still subject matter, and many other
interpretations have been proposed to solve the seeming contradiction. But this
is not the place where I’ll discuss on the coherence of the Kantian solution of
the second definitive article. All that must emerge here is, as said before, the
sense of the Kantian proposal of peace, that can’t be anything but
transcendental. There is no other way to ensure international peace but the
foundation of a federation of republican states. This is what is valid according
to reason. And we all know that reason can allow a gradual fulfillment of its
commands, but never a dispensation. The transcendental meaning of the
Kantian project maybe was misunderstood by many of them who considered it
utopian, but it represents the true innovation in the field of international peace
1 VIII, 357.
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theories, because it doesn’t exclude the possibility of a perpetual peace only
because of the difficulties of the moment. Another strong point of he Kantian
project is the assumption that the objective of perpetual peace is the final aim
of the doctrine of right, and it must be achieved through a juridical procedure,
and not by the the arbitrary (and unlikely) initiative of a king. In this way, by
excluding the possibility of an immediate change of the international political
system, Kant addresses his project to history. The Nineteenth Century will get
this inheritance, and it will see the comparison between the principles of
Kantian theories and the renovated political, cultural and social conditions.
2. Peace, federalism and republicanism
With the beginning of the Congress of Vienna, the biggest concern was,
for sure, to create a new international order, able to establish a steady solution
due to twenty years of wars and to facilitate the interests of the various powers
involved. The challenge was surely arduous. The rallying cry was
“legitimacy”: everything which would have been established, had to be
according to the Christian and absolutist tradition of the European monarchies
and in respect of the king’s role as emissaries of Providence.
However, the most careful and clear headed protagonists of the Concert
of Europe were already aware that something new had penetrated in the
conscience of the European people. First of all, the divine origin of power had
been questioned by the Napoleon’s self coronation. Althought the ceremony
summoned the ancient forms of divine legitimacy of imperial power, no
superior authority had put the crown on the French leader’s and his wife’s
head. A man had become emperor without boasting noble ancestries or being
subordinate to the papal authority, which caused distress to a tradition that
lived for a thousand years. Another bitter observation, as result of past wars,
was that secular dominations could be erased and replaced by democratic
governments, and not only by other despotic powers. This is what happened in
Italy with the foundation of pro-French republics; although is out of question
that their institution was in any case a result of a conquest war, nevertheless
their birth received the approval and the militant support of many intellectuals
and Italian political thinkers. This republican experience, forced and imperfect,
had only an ephemeral existence, but caused effects that will avoid the
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following repressions which accompanied the return of the old dispotic powers.
It will no longer be forgotten, and it will constitute the starting point for
formidable events that will upset the peninsula for the successive fifty years.
Only a few, among the protagonists of the Concert of Europe, realised
that something had changed so as to make not possible a return to the
principles of ancien régime. What had suddenly become fragile was not the
balance of forces between states, or the diplomatic relations between the
European courts, but the concept of absolutist power. Kant, although not
intending to overstep it, was one of the responsible of its fall. The power of his
thought put at the core of attention the man and the right, it redefined the
freedom as the faculty of obey only to the law that is possible to accept as our
own. Althought he admitted the absoluteness of kingship, he accused the rulers
of his time of raising their authority only on the number of men ready to fight
for their wars. War of kings. Personal conflicts. Moreover, Kant firmly denied
the right to resistance, but he however divided the field of political act from the
moral one, so in this way he denied to the European rulers the prerogative of
being judges of the subject’s conscience too. All this led to precise
conclusions: no monarch can have his subjects as instruments, no divine calling
can legitimate any political authority, that under no circumstances is limitless
and prerogative of a single man. The Kantian political reflection, which
develops across all his writings, laid down the circumstances for the
improvement of the concepts of sovereignty, as for state and for international
relationships. These concepts were recognised and interpreted by the political
debate of the Nineteenth Century; a debate that was liberal, revolutionary,
progressive. The more the concept of absolutism showed its inadequacy, the
more that debate became increasingly richer and burning. The aim to establish
and guarantee peace was strictly connected to these arguments, an intent which
the absolutist governments missed repeatedly and disastrously. It required
therefore radically different premises.
The necessity of a decisive transformation of the European civil and
political culture became soon widespread, nourishing itself with theories and
proposals coming from representatives of different social extractions. This
necessity was not any more connected neither to the activity of individual
intellectual associations, nor relegated in the pages of few writings published
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by isolated personalities. It was a pervasive experience. The various currents of
thought that opposed the plans of the Concert of Europe shared the awareness
that political life of governments had to be participated, and it had necessarily
to model itself on the will of the people. In addition, it had to be expressed by a
system of delegation, and no longer interpreted (or ignored) by the monarch.
Whole works had to lead to a deep redefinition of the idea of state, its
organisation, and its involvement in international affairs. The suggestions were
various. Many of them tried to find the meaning of the unity of the state in the
idea of nation, in other words a cultural and ideological heritage which
develops the identity of a community and precedes consequently any political
power. Others considered the theoretical construct of federalism as the
overcoming of the monarchical centralism, which based its authority on the
supremacy over dissimilar people.
The two biggest currents of thought of the Nineteenth Century acted
under similar premises which agreed on many dimensions, but this didn’t lead
beyond the common aversion to the old dispotic regimes, the unanimous
necessity of a patriotism connected to a concrete national identity, and an
initial democratic inspiration of their plans. They were only general analogies.
It’s important to highight that the terms “nationalism” and “federalism”
themselves were almost unknown at the time, and often included projects
widely different from each other, therefore not easy to associate to precise
assiological characteristics. However these characteristics clearly emerged
precisely from the comparison between the two prospects, a comparison that
often took the form of a declared clash. While nationalism focused on the
consolidation of a political, geographical and cultural unity of the state,
federalism aimed to preserve local realities. While nationalism established the
idea of a strong centralising government as an indispensable requirement to
support unity, federalism denounced the risks and the excessive affinity of this
system for the regimes of the past. While, in conclusion, nationalism exalted
the rhetoric of the strong and independent state, federalism didn’t forget that
the struggle for indipendence doesn’t necessarily mean, in hegelian meaning, to
fight for its affirmation on the international context. These differences are
intended for getting worse as the nationalistic model imposes itself as
dominant, leading to the inevitable result of a permanent condition of
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antagonism among states that will have serious consequences for the rights of
the citizens of every government. Federalism will preserve its democratic
orientation, its predilection for the republican constitution and, above all, its
cosmopolitan sense. Nationalism will gradually leave behind the firts two, and
won’t ever truly embrace the third one.
As said before, the federalist model gathered a variety of theories, which
this doesn’t prevent to say that it was in any case connected to the necessity of
perpetual peace and to the idea of a form of government that had to be
necessarily representative. When the three principles of federalist structure, of
peace, of delegation have made their appearance into opportune social and
political contexts, they always seemed to get involved with each other. The
legacy of Kantian philosophy can’t be ignored: what man, who is able to
express a judgment on formidable initiatives as the beginning of a conflict,
would ever decide to self-inflict the pain of a war?
One of the first Nineteenth Century projects for perpetual peace has the
signature of C. H. de Saint-Simon. It was presented in the famous essay on the
reorganisation of European society developed and published in the critical
months of the Congress of Vienna. The work’s cornerstones, that was destined
to an initial success and then to fall into oblivion for over a Century, inserted
themselves into the best philosophical tradition on the theme of war and peace.
The peaceful international coexistence must arise from a juridical order that
has to be superior to the jurisdiction of every single state, which has to accept
its authority as a result of a joint participated decision, whose effectiveness is
in any case irresistible and super partes. In this field, that is the concept of a
juridical order that has to be instituted with assent, but above individual
interests, Saint-Simon discloses to be in debt with Kant and Russeau. The same
thing is for the decision of underlining the importance of public opinion in the
determination of the general will of nations; here the author interprets the new
democratic conscience that was arising inside of every European society, and
that would have never stopped to grow. In the essay appear also signs about the
political structure that every state should guarantee to make real the possibility
of an international understanding, a structure that should base itself on a
representative government. The close interdependence between intranational
and international politics was an assumption that appeared also in the theories
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of Saint-Simon’s predecessors, and this will constitute a considerable landmark
for the following studies on the topic. But at this point, the French philosopher
becomes vague, and he postpones the discussion about the best form of
government for every state. In the essay of 1814 it’s possible to find some
references to a generic national parliamentary system that must take into
account the representatives of population, but that can also take the form of a
monarchy. Focusing on the organization of the European parliament, that is the
main object of the discussion, the author explicitly point out that a king must
lead the new European society, and that this office has to be inherited.
According to the principle of the interdependence between intranational and
international politics, the same conditions could be expected for the individual
states. Therefore, the republican model, that is fundamental in Kant, is not
considered.
It wasn’t easy, for the theorists of perpetual peace in the first years of the
Nineteenth Century, to leave behind the system of absolutism. For many of
them, it was an idea ahead of its times. Its principles, that are republicanism
and federalism, were already at the center of a debate that was getting wider,
but that wasn’t able to get away from simple abstract formulations. We have to
remember that such theories considered a gradual realisation of their goals,
which seemed there appeared to exist the premises. However, this process still
seemed to be strictly connected to the arbitrary initiative of the monarchs of
every single state. To ensure the future realisation of the goal of the perpetual
peace, Kant evoked the unconditionality of the authority of reason, while Saint-
Simon called into question history as an inevitable and irreversible sequence of
aggressive and peaceful societies; but none of them were able to go beyond the
concept of absolut sovereignity.
As a consequence, federalism of the beginning needed to distance itself
from the field of abstract speculation and to venture into the examination of
concrete social and political conditions within the European context. The
perspective of a radical turning point had to build on more solid basis than the
Enlightenment trust in a natural transformation of the political traditions of the
European continent. The transcedental setting of the Kant’s project had
allowed the idea of perpetual peace to resist to the test of history, avoiding to
be overshadowed completely by the dramatic events that marked the beginning
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of the Nineteenth Century.. Such idea was not only survived, but it also
inspired a new generation of political thinkers. It was time to confront with
reality crystallising thinking into concrete measures.
During decades following the Congress of Vienna, the European
continent will become an arena of political ideologies. There will be no
government in which the clash between the immovable reactionary institutions
and the new revolutionary fringes won’t degenerate into a bloody succession of
revolts and repressions. Almost never the battle will have among only two
factions; when a government toppled to the pressure of an insurrection and its
king was forced to flee, the concept of power became suddenly prey to the
most various interpretations. In this context, Italy represented an exceptional
scene because of the variety of alliances involved and the harshness of the
struggle between the rulers and the ruled; in other words between the heirs of a
world in decline and the protagonists of a new, dynamic, multiform cultural
awareness. In particular, the debate upon federalism, republicanism and peace
was enriched by intense ideas and experiences despite the adverse
circumstances, and it continued even when the unification of the peninsula had
assumed formulas, myths and language of nationalism. The events of Italian
republicanism are usually associated to the figure of Giuseppe Mazzini,
pursuant to the European relevance of his theories. Yet, other political thinkers
and activists were able to understand the federalist and cosmopolitan sense of
the revolutionary events in Italy, demonstrating a consistency that Mazzini
often missed. One of the most illustrious was Giuseppe Ferrari, who met
Mazzini and shared with him, at least at the beginning, the hope to see realised
in Italy a republican future. These relationships, however, were irremediably
interrupted when Mazzini’s propaganda assumed nationalistic tones and goals.
3. The Italian scene
During his life, Ferrari was ever aware of the fundamental phases of the
dialectic between revolution and reaction in Italy. He was born in Milan in
1811, the city that had been the capital of Italian Republic established by
Napoleon until 1805, and of the Kingdom of Italy until 1814. The following
year Milan became the capital of the new Lombardo-Veneto Kingdom, whose
borders were drawn by the Austrian Empire during the agreements of Vienna.
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The post-Congress Italy was divided into seven kingdoms, which essentially
restored the map previous the Napoleon’s campaign. The ancient dynasties of
the Italian states preceding the French domination regained the palaces that
were abandoned almost twenty years before. Everywhere, the return to the
status quo was marked by the abrogation of the Napoleonic Code, or rather of
everything that still remained of the just ended republican parenthesis. The
aspiration of the Concert of Europe of reviving the stable political, religious,
cultural and economic traditions of the past was pursued with particular zeal in
the peninsula, because every reactionary government could count on the
military support of the Asburgic Empire and on the spiritual legitimisation of
the pope, that had reconquered his dominions and his authority. Under the
military control of the Empire and the spiritual tutelage of Church, the mosaic
of states that formed Italy of the time seemed the safest ground where to build
the majesty of monarchic absolutism.
Therefore, Milan suffered the strange fate of being the core of the
republican experience in the peninsula, althought under the aegis of
revolutionary France, before representing the outpost of the military and
political influence in Italy of the Asburgic Empire, or rather of the Concert of
Europe. This fate was substantially shared by all the Italian cities, which saw
the alternating of representative governments and absolutist regimes in the
time-frame of only twenty years. All this, it’s essential to notice, on account of
the intervention of foreign powers. Was it still possible for the Italian peoples
to develop an independent common conscience? Was it still possible to recover
the experience of medieval communes, which represented the emblem of a
representative government able to emancipate from both imperial and papal
authority? And whenever possible, under what form was supposed to reappear
this experience? The peninsula wasn’t neither autonomous, conscious, nor
Italian in its courts, which were supported by the Austrian troops and the
blessing of Holy See; but there was someone that imagined it might, someone
who believed that an Italian country could concretely exist.
It was in those formidable years that Ferrari brings to completion his
maturation. By spending time with cultural associations in Milan, he met the
philosopher and jurist Gian Domenico Romagnosi, who was the catalyst of a
circle of intellectuals that, despite the Austrian censorship, bravely debated and
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spreaded ideas taken from French culture. Among them there was also Carlo
Cattaneo, that was one of the greatest spokespeople of the republican and
federalist culture in Italy, and also a Ferrari’s close friend. In Milan, as in other
Italian cities, Saint-Simon’s theories were well known and they were often
subject matter in the circle of Romagnosi. Focusing on the Frech philosopher,
Ferrari will enhance his cosmopolitic point of view of the political, economic
and social studies. The studies on the philosopher Giambattista Vico instead,
on which he will apply also after his transfer in France, will educate him about
a consideration of history as an evolution path of peoples and of their
consciousness. According to Vico’s doctrine, the historical process is uniquely
the result of the human endeavour, and it has to be interpreted analyzing
minutely the social and political dynamics of the states and of their mutual
relationships. Therefore, history turns into science. Nothing determines it but
human action, there is no trascendental principle that indicates its destination,
and there is no mythical origin that can favour a people over another one.
Ferrari’s thought was being formed as an adversary either of every metaphysic
of man and history, and of every nationalism. The first one leads inevitably to a
concept of truth as revealed, that naturally can only be imposed to conscience,
causing serious and well known political repercussions. The second one leads
to a misunderstanding of the sense of progress, because it drags the conscience
in the past and makes impossible its confrontation with other realities. So, the
first one implicates the dogma, the second one the exaltation. Not a
coincidence that Kant, with his critical philosophy, intended to lash out against
both.
The evidence that Kant and Ferrari’s theories have had considerable
polemic targets in common shows a lot about the peculiar relationship that the
Italian philosopher established with criticism, a relationship made by important
recognitions and strong critics. The German philosopher is a significant point
of reference, even if not the only one, that frequently appears within Ferrari’s
works written during his stay in France. An emblematic example is the essay
De l’erreur, published in 1840, in which Ferrari reviews all the history of
occidental thought, that is history of the search for truth. His intention is to
prove that such history has to deal with an undeniable characteristic of human
progress: the fallibility. The mistake, Ferrari says, is intrinsic to the search of
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truth, as all the greatest philosophers have proved since the classic age. No
matter if we consider it as an obstacle, a limit, a simple probability, or an
ineradicable fact; above all, it is something that have to admonish man about
the prospect of thinking a truth that is eternal and infallible, since it will be
always bound to the world of phenomena. So, it’s always potentially illusory.
As we know, in each of his wiritings, Kant pleads for the cause of a truth that
has never to be intended as a possession, but only as a constant research that
has to be conducted in community. The critic of reason itself is a method, not a
predetermined direction. The philosopher’s aversion to those who believe they
can boast an exclusive access to the truth turns into direct polemic in some of
his major works; his targets are, within the essay What is orientation in
thinking?, the Schwärmer, or the philosophers of intuition, and the dogmatists
within the first Critique. These writings are plentiful of considerations on the
risks of a dogmatic reason and its arrogant pretensions, which leads it to
generate conflict. If in Kant this discourse originates in the theoretical field and
then, quite late, get into the political one, in Ferrari such fields are always in
close contact. So, dogmatists turn into Italian reactionaries and neoguelfs,
Schwärmer turn into nationalists and zealots of an idea of homeland that only
very few enlightened people can understand and realise.
So far, the echo of criticism is clear. The esteem for Kant is great, Ferrari
doesn’t hide it. The scepticism to which gradually arrives has many of the
premises of the skeptical method of Kantian critique. The conclusions,
however, will be decisively different, and so it will be the context to which this
scepticism will be addressed. Right in those years the Italian question was
exploding with all its criticality, and it was involving all the major intellectuals
of the period. At an early stage such question concerned that need felt strongly
troughout the continent, which the institutions of reaction seek to whittle away
in whatever way. The concept of power and its exercise had to be redefined in
the light of events of the last twenty years. The dialectic between nationalism
and federalism was kindled also in Italy, and gave birth to a new debate that
extended its bounds to the whole peninsula. The nationalist theory saw
obviously the future of Italy in the overcoming of its geographical division and
in the foundation of a strong unitary state. In this sense, the first obstaclethat
had to be overcome was the Austrian oppression. Those peculiarities
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guaranteed to the idea of a united and nationalist Italy a growing success,
supported by the rethoric of the fight against the foreign domination and of the
defense of a common cultural identity. The federalist Ferrari couldn’t avoid to
denounce the inconsistency of this common identity. The situation was far
different, the one he described in his article De la littérature populaire in Italie
published in two parts between 1839 and 1840. It was, in summary, the
situation of a plurality of peoples and cultures. Presuming to obtain a unity
from such plurality meant evidently erasing a part of this richness, refusing, in
other words, that patriotic tradition which nationalism intended to exalt. Such
unity, furthermore, had to find a political center, capable of fusing together the
existing states. During those years had been printed Le speranze d’Italia of
Cesare Balbo, and Sul primato morale e civile degli italiani of Vincenzo
Gioberti, two essays that will make the history of Risorgimento. In the first
work the success of national unification was indicated in the resistance against
the Asburgic Empire and in the leadership that Kingdom of Sardinia had to
assume; in the second one the fundamental base of the rejoining of the Italian
peoples was founded in their common catholic conscience, of which the pope
had to become the spiritual and political guide. Ferrari immediately came into
conflict with both concepts. In them he saw appearing again the same
contradictions which had belonged to metaphysic in the theoretical field. The
research of a unitary principle that is superior to reality always implicates an
alienation from the experience, and this happens both in the field of knowledge
and the field of politics. So, the risk that this principle reduces itself only to a
rational construction without fundament is considerable. Such principle,
furthermore, always constitutes under itself a system that legitimates it, and
such system is usually within the reach of few, which are the chosen ones that
have to diffond and spread it. The idea of an Italian nation was already
snatched to the understanding of people that had to built it. That idea was
already entrusted to the hands of a king or a pope. It was clear that many of the
formulas of the absolutist logic that was necessary to fight with the war against
Austrian Empire, were appearing again in homeland in disguise.
Returning to the post-Congress Italian scene, in the tenth volume of The
New Cambridge Modern History, in chapter eighth, it’s written: «Italy’s
liberals and patriots were perhaps the most hard-headed to be found anywhere
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in Europe during those difficult years of revolution and counter-revolution»2.
Such obstinacy was perhaps the result of the rapid succession of despotisms
and democratic governments in the same territories, and in a too short time-
frame. The conscience of the Italian people could not remain forever passive
and indifferent while the internal organization of each state, its borders, its
institutions changed abruptly. One day all were citizens, the next day were
subjects. For these reasons the building of the Concert of Europe, which in
Italy should have to be more stable, began very early to show evident cracks.
While the European powers met in Vienna, in Italy the resistance to
foreign domination and to the return of absolutism was already alive, and it
strenghtened thanks to the activity of secret associations. Sectarianism took on
the peninsula various forms, names and rituals. The plans of the lodges were
similar to each other, but also independent. Their secret propaganda was
directed mostly to the military and bureaucratic circles, and the objectives to be
achieved were broadly similar, despite of the variety of movements: the
establishment of representative and constitutional governments, sovereignty
and national independence, civil rights such as freedom of press and
association. Only a few were aimed to the establishment of republican
governments. Their work led to the uprisings of 1820-21, which involved the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Kingdom of Sardinia, with minor impacts
on other states. The dynamics of those initiatives followed common stages: an
insurgency led by the military, limited to a few cities, and moved with the
intention of persuading the king to grant a number of important reforms. The
insurgent’s motto was emblematic: “Long live the King and the Constitution!”.
The consequences, unfortunately, were the same everywhere. King Ferdinando
I of the Two Sicilies immediately gave in to pressure, and signed a constitution
on the Spanish model of 1812, and so did Carlo Alberto, who had became
regent while the King of Sardinia, Carlo Felice was busy elsewhere. Shortly
after, both constitutions were suppressed by the decision of those same kings
who were unable to oppose the revolutionaries, and in both cases with the
essential military intervention of the Austrian troops. Once the order was
2 BURY, J. P. T., The New Cambridge Modern History – Vol. X The Zenit of European Power
(1830-1870), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1960, p. 201 (Online), available from:
https://archive.org/stream/iB_CMH/10#page/n0/mode/2up (accessed 7th August 2016).
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restored, processes and dramatically executions marked the return to the status
quo. It was not different the fate of the 1830-31 riots, which swept in perhaps
the most reactionary state of all Europe, that is within the confines of the papal
government. Once again the operations were organized and managed by the
secret associations, not without an initial success. Once again, the
revolutionary forces were quickly isolated, unable to cope with the new descent
of the imperial troops. The sentences were harsh, police controls and
censorship became more and more rigid. But during the next fifteen years, this
only served to make the Italian situation more explosive; and so other revolts
broke out and went out in the 40s.
As we said, the revolutionaries and liberals of the peninsula were perhaps
the most willful and passionate, but similar events were taking place across all
the continent. It was evident that the concept of absolutist power that had long
been in crisis, was no longer able to hold the field. But it was also evident the
continuous failure of the riots, especially in Italy, where the reolutionary
attempts were numerous and widespread in every state. Certainly it was on the
peninsula that the control of the guarantors of the Concert of Europe was more
cast-iron, but the causes of so many dramatic endings were also others.
Ferrari, with the lucidity and the polemical tone typical of his writings,
was able to identitìfy them with great precision. The opening of the first
chapter of La federazione repubblicana, published in 1851, is a good example
of his style. Here, the author denounces: «we persists in believing that the
intrigues of a court, or of a secret society, or the successful ending of an
expedition, could be enough to free Italy and improvise a nationality»3. The
first error, then, is to have confided in the success of a single event, and in the
action of a few men, in order to proclaim the birth of an entire nation. The
activities of the secret associations could be capillar, but not organic. The
uprisings were orchestrated in secret, driven by a handful of men chosen
mostly among army officers, with the claim that all this could be enough to
form and lead a nation of millions of people. Many of these were concluded
without any popular participation. The harsh criticism of Ferrari is directed
especially against Mazzini, one of the leading protagonists of those years of
3 FERRARI, G., La federazione repubblicana, in GHIBAUDI, S. R., Scritti politici, Torino, Utet, 1973, p. 274.
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tensions. His strategy has failed since it claimed to found the idea of a united
nation, without admitting that this could arise from the full consciousness of
the Italian people. In the essay of 1851 Ferrari writes: «He is a leader, so he is a
dictator; he conspires, so he constitutes an authority without discussion; he is at
the head of a secret society, so his propaganda is secret itself; it has to free the
population suddenly and give it an unexpected homeland»4. So, even a plot
aimed to upset a despotic power risked to become despotic itself, when it
entrusted the success of its objectives on the leadership of a single man and
unrelated to the participation of a community wider than a few hundred men.
As mentioned before, it was hard to leave behind the absolutist logic of
power, even in the context of the struggle against absolutism itself. The fate of
peoples not only from Italy, but of all Europe, wasn’t able to escape this logic,
based on a paternalistic concept of power in which a few, or even just one, has
the task of being the interpreter and the guardian of general will. It’s not
surprising, then, that revolutions in Italy made a second fatal error, which is to
wait until a constitution was granted from above, with the consent and under
the patronage of the monarchical or papal authority. In this, the distance
between Ferrari and Kant becomes broader. The Italian philosopher had
esteemed the German philosopher regarding the idea of republic and the
necessity of instituting it with the consent and the participation of its members,
but he couldn’t stop, as he did, in the face of the concept of absolute
sovereignity. Kant affirmed, in the famous letter on the meaning of
Enlightenment, the necessity for the human being to come out of the condition
of minority in which others think in his place. But he suspended this process in
the face of the authority of the monarch. We need to consider that the concept
of sovereignity had taken in Italy peculiar characteristics, since each of the
states of the peninsula was ruled by several degrees of authority. The majesty
of each king was flanked by the authority of the Emperor of Austria, and often
the last one overstepped the first one. They were also supported by the moral
patronage of the Church, which exercised an influence on the consciousness of
Italians no less strong. Let’s compare the Kantian political theory with the
scenario offered by Italy in the Nineteenth Century. The great fear of Kant,
namely that a revolution must necessarily be followed by a state of anarchy, it
4 FERRARI, G., La federazione repubblicana, p. 342.
16
would not have been valid for the Italian context: each government overthrown
by a revolution had been immediately restored by a higher power. His great
hope, namely that of a transformation process of each order by the sovereign
initiative, would have been equally unfounded: each constitution that was
granted, under pressure, by a king, had been later suppressed by the will of the
powers of the Holy Alliance.
As we know, Kant's theory was transcendental, and reposed trust in a
spontaneous and gradual transformation of the concept of power. This theory,
called to the comparison with the Nineteenth Century, had had to take note of
the crisis that the idea of absolute sovereignty was going through. As
transcendental, the conclusions of that theory remained still valid; and indeed,
everywhere in Europe peoples claimed the right to be citizens and to participate
to the domestic and foreign political life of the state. However, it was
impossible to expect any longer that this right was granted from above. The
theory of Ferrari, instead, was closely bound to the social and political
circumstances, even if it was not limited in these. This allowed him to overstep
Kant, and to argue that what should have been made spontaneously, should
have follow other paths. The liberation from the logic of absolutism could not
be guaranteed by those who had more interest to maintain it, but by the will of
those that had suffered it longer. And this couldn’t have happened but through
a revolution.
Despite all, the mistakes of 1820-21 were not overstepped. The tension in
the peninsula pwas expanding, which should have to increase the distance
between subjects and kings. Instead, all that happened was an ambiguous
convergence of intents, in which the rallying cry were “independence” and
“national unity”. The fight for freedom which had to burn up in every city in
order to upset every single dispotic government, turned instead into a
unification war of the peninsula against Austrian domination. In other words, a
war of kings. We finally get closer to 1848, the year of the great passions and
bitter disappointments.
The sign of change, against all odds, came from the core of Habsburg
Empire. In March, the streets of Vienna were invaded by a large crowd that
demanded the ratification of the Constitution and the recognition of the
autonomy of the various nationalities on which the Empire extended its rule,
17
including the Lombardo-Veneto. In the weeks before, throughout Italy were
gathered constituent assemblies under the pressure of a new wave of
revolutionary movements. Even the Papal States, led by the liberal Pius IX, had
to give up. The conditions to break down once and for all the building of the
ancien régime were taking place everywhere, and with a simultaneity that no
secret society could have ensured. The core of the Concert of Europe
threatened to fall apart under the pressure of separatists and constitutional
movements that were flaring up in various regions of the Empire. This call to
territorial autonomy and to participation of the people to the government had
necessarily to find echo among the Italian democratic and liberal forces.
No surprise that the keystone was still Milan. Austrian troops stationed in
and around the city were on high alert for weeks, but the worsening of the
situation in Austria had put also the army in crisis. This time, it was not only a
few hundred men poured into the squares and streets, but an entire population.
Artisans, students and bourgeois fought side by side on the barricades with
liberal aristocrats and progressive priests. Cattaneo took the leadership of the
insurrection together with other republicans. In a series of articles on the fateful
"Five Days of Milan", he will place great attention on the details of life, social
and professional extraction of those who took part on it, often sacrificing
themself. The fight for freedom had finally become popular, it was no longer a
matter of a few chosen ones to be conducted in secret. In the same days it had
been arose Venice, with a sudden, massive uprising, and without bloodshed. A
few days later it was proclaimed the Republic of San Marco, while in Milan a
provisionally military committee took office, waiting to determine which
direction would have taken on the new free government of Lombardy and
Veneto. In April, Sicily declared its autonomy and assumed the Italian tricolour
as flag, with the traditional symbol of Trinacria in the middle. It was a way of
saying that autonomy did not mean indifference to the fate of the other peoples
of Italy, to which Sicily claimed to be still tied.
Italy’s redemption had taken yet the revolutionary road, and by this way
it was going to leave behind all the rhetoric of the nationalism, all the idols
inherited from the absolutist tradition. Ferrari writes in his La federazione
repubblicana: «unity melt various states in one, revolution is the work of every
single state; unity imposed itself, abstracting from the principles, and it can be
18
imperial or papal, monarchical or republican; revolution comes directly from
the principles, stops itself when all the states are free and let them separated»5.
In april of 1848 Milan was free, Venice was autonomous and republican, Sicily
was independent and ruled by a Constitution. In their fight for freedom, all of
them had hoisted the tricolour. We are certainly far from the thought of Kant,
according to which it is not possible to consider resistance to established power
as legitimate; yet, the design of a federation of republican states, which had
been the ultimate goal of the essay For perpetual peace, was gradually and
spontaneously realizing throughout the peninsula. Italy was about to get out of
its minority status.
However, once again, attempting to get out of the logic of absolutism
proved to be a too arduous challenge. The Kingdom of Sardinia, under the
leadership of King Carlo Alberto, had already mobilized the army to take
advantage of the situation and declare war on Austria. He proposed to drive the
insurgents and to stand up in defense of the Italian nation, relying on successful
rhetoric of the struggle against foreign domination. The Piedmontese liberals
welcomed him as a liberator, and at that point the war that had been
revolutionary became unequivocally royal. The other Italian sovereigns, driven
by the aversion to Austria, or by the fear of a Piedmontese hegemony on the
peninsula, lined up together in what has gone down in history as the First
Italian War of Independence. The revolutionary spirit that had freed Milan,
Venice, Sicily, died soon to make way to renewed confidence in the king and
the pope. Mazzini himself, back to Milan in April, refrained from revolutionary
propaganda in order to accept the plan of Carlo Alberto, provided that the
unification of Italy succeded. To no avail the meeting that Cattaneo and Ferrari
took with Mazzini to convince him to take the leadership of the revolutionary
party, and to take a stronger stance against Carlo Alberto. With the suffocation
of the impetus of the revolution, faded also all republicans projects, all
prospects of an Italy Federal. «In one word», Ferrari says, «the King imposes
himself in place of the Emperor, his armies take the places of the Radetzky’s
ones; the King advances where the Emperor retreats; and where the Empire
advances, the King backs down»6.
5 FERRARI, G., La federazione repubblicana, p. 336. 6 FERRARI, G., La federazione repubblicana, p. 306.
19
Military failures caused the first defections among the Italian armies.
Pope Pius IX retreated after only a month, the troops of the Kingdom of the
Two Sicilies were recalled shortly after. Soon the war was lost, and Carlo
Alberto was forced to come to terms with the Austrian. The idea shaped in the
hands of kings, but snatched to the people, turned out to be a fictitious
construction. Cattaneo wrote about: «it had to be done a revolution, it had to be
made war with the past; and at the head of the venture was an aristocracy
adorer of all the past things, with an absolute king and a pope»7. The subjects
of the King Carlo Alberto had at least the good fortune to preserve the
Constitution granted a few months before, while on the rest of the peninsula the
paradigm of absolute power was again restored. Between the end of 1848 and
the first months of 1849, we can say that all of Europe had now left behind
every republican and federative project. This wasn’t however enough to ensure
stability within each state, since the arising of movements and insurrections to
force the sovereigns to grant a constitution continued unabated throughout the
rest of the century. But these movements had now assumed the logic and
language of nationalism, which fits gradually as the dominant perspective in
the whole continent.
Federalism maintained its role as an alternative to nationalism, but ended
up abandoning the scene of regional autonomy. The federalist debate in Italy
never ceased, but had no longer the prestige it had with Ferrari and Cattaneo,
and in France it remained tied mostly to the name of Proudhon. But in the field
of international relations, and of prospects for peace between states, its work
continued with renewed vigor. Just on to end of the century the first leagues
and associations for the promotion of international peace arose on the
continent, with the contribution of the greatest intellectuals of the time. Many
of these initiatives took explicitly inspiration from the theories of Kant, as the
International League of Peace and Freedom led by Charles Lemonnier, which
in September 1867 organized in Geneva his first Congress. The Kantian
project, therefore, continued to be a landmark in the renewed debate on
7CATTANEO, C., Dell’insurrezione di Milano nel 1848 e della successiva guerra, Lugano,
Tipografia della Svizzera italiana, 1849, p. 12 (Online), available from:
http://www.150anni.it/webi/_file/documenti/risorgimento/movimentivalorilibri/libri/libri_m
odifiche/Dell_insurrezione_di_Milano_nel_1848_e_d.pdf (accessed 27th July 2016).
20
international relations, which just from the end of the Nineteenth Century was
enriched by the contribution of scholars from various fields of knowledge. On
the intranational level and in particular on the evolution of republicanism, that
project had been close to be realized across the continent, even though he had
suffered a temporary setback with the prevailing of the nationalist ideology. In
Europe will therefore continue the debate about republicanism, federalism,
perpetual peace, and the will be enriched by contributions from new fields of
investigation, even when the events between Nineteenth and Twentieth
Century will lead mankind in the opposite direction. It will once again be the
transcendental essence of the issues raised by Kant's theory to allow this debate
to survive the history. Man had now become aware of the need to make the
political life of the state and of international relations public and shared, and
can no longer ignore this assumption.
21
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Classical texts
LEMONNIER, C., Un giudizio sulla pace perpetua, in Per la pace
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1883.
FERRARI, G., La federazione repubblicana, in Scritti politici, edited by
GHIBAUDI, S. R., Totino, Utet, 1973.
FERRARI, G., Filosofia della rivoluzione, in Scritti politici, edited by
GHIBAUDI, S. R., Torino, Utet, 1973.
FERRARI, G., IL governo a Firenze, in Scritti politici, edited by GHIBAUDI, S.
R., Torino, Utet, 1973.
FERRARI, G., Machiavelli giudice delle rivoluzioni dei nostri tempi, in Scritti
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Other texts
LOVETT, C. M., Giuseppe Ferrari and the Italian Revolution, Chapel Hill,
The University of North Carolina Press, 1979.
BOBBIO, N., Il terzo assente, Milano, Edizioni Sonda, 1989.
ALBERTINI, M., Il federalism, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1993.
BONANATE, L., Guerra e pace, Milano, FrancoAngeli, 1994.
SCHIATTONE, Alle origini del federalismo italiano, Bari, Edizioni
Dedalo, 1996.
BOBBIO, N., Il problema della Guerra e le vie della pace, Bologna, Il
Mulino, 1997.
VILLARI, L., Bella e perduta. L’Italia del Risorgimento, Bari, Laterza &
Figli, 2009.
22
SOLARI, G., VIDARI, G., Introduzione a KANT, I., Scritti politici, cura di
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ANGELINI, G., Nazione democrazia e pace, Milano, FrancoAngeli, 2012.
Online sources
CATTANEO, C., Dell’insurrezione di Milano nel 1848 e della successiva
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from:
http://www.150anni.it/webi/_file/documenti/risorgimento/movimentivaloril
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SPOLTORE, F., Charles Lemonnier, 2003, Il Federalista, XLV, 2, p. 114.
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