2 Comments
author

https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-sul-diritto-di-resistenza

I will try to share with you some thoughts on the resistance and the civil war. I am not reminding you that a right of resistance already exists in the ancient world, which has a tradition of praising tyrannicide, and in the Middle Ages. Thomas summarized the position of scholastic theology in the principle that the tyrannical regime, insofar as it substitutes a partisan interest for the common good, cannot be iustum . The resistance - Thomas says the perturbatio - against this regime is therefore not a seditio .

It goes without saying that the matter necessarily entails a degree of ambiguity as regards the definition of the tyrannical character of a given regime, as evidenced by the caution of Bartolo, who in his Treatise on Guelphs and Ghibellinesdistinguishes a tyrant a ex defectu tituli from a tyrant ex parte exercitii , but then has difficulty in identifying a iusta causa resistendi .

This ambiguity reappears in the discussions of 1947 on the inclusion of a right of resistance in the Italian constitution. Dossetti had proposed, as you know, that the text included an article that read: "Individual and collective resistance to acts of public power that violate fundamental freedoms and the rights guaranteed by this constitution is a right and a duty of citizens."

Expand full comment