Equality and Vulnerability in the Context of Italian Political Philosophy by Gianfrancesco Zanetti

Author:Gianfrancesco Zanetti
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783031355530
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

6.5 Efficacy Phenomena and Vulnerability

The traditional conceptual itinerary from basic equality to equality as an aim (normative equality: equality as a practice, as an actual fight for equality) was certainly at work. The serfs began to acknowledge that they were not that different from the Fathers, and they used this notion as a powerful argument to fight for their rights.

However, the alternative conceptual itinerary was quite possibly also at work in Vico: While fighting for equality, the plebeians gave shape to another institutional reality within which they were basically equals. Plebeians can realize that they are basically equal not by some theoretical train of thought, or pondering some hidden philosophical truth which has been skillfully kept secret by ruthless patricians; they can do so only while struggling for concrete issues, fighting for an agrarian law, and finally for the right to solemn nuptials.

They do not necessarily fight because they have suddenly understood their basic equality; in Vico it is possible to read quite a different motivating factor, which is coldly stated in the XCV Axiom: “At first, people desire to throw off oppression and seek equality: witness the plebeians living in aristocracies, which eventually become democracies”.24 This desire does not need any notion of basic equality, any justifying argument; a motivation factor is enough. The family servants “must have grown weary” of their oppression, se ne dovettero attediare, and they therefore started to fight against it. Efficacy phenomena radiate a narrative of some kind, but they are not originated by it.25

The motivation horizon and the argumentation horizon are of course linked, but they do enjoy a specific autonomy. It is a desire rooted in basic human emotions, conceived as more than consistent with human rationality in New Science. In democracies, the nature of human beings has changed, because it is a nature created or “fatta” by human beliefs and narratives.

It is interesting that the philosopher of marriage, the one philosopher who affirms so outstanding a role for the institution of marriage per se, framed the problem of marriage not on any oversized notion of nature or natural law, nor on blind respect for immemorial traditional mores, but on the political fight for the right to marry.26 It is also interesting that he linked the right to marry to the dynamics of human equality, and to a notion of human nature shaped by belief-dependent institutions, which challenges us to question, as Vico’s famuli did, any received “heroic” truth, or institution, grounded on inequality and discrimination. Equality as a practice is possible because such truth and such institutions revolve around shared beliefs, they just falsis debentur, and can be therefore challenged from within. While such truth and such institutions are not challenged, efficacy phenomena will keep a given group in a painfully vulnerable position.

References

Costa (1996) Vico e l’Europa. Contro la “boria delle nazioni”. Guerini e Associati, Milan

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