Costituzionalismo ed europeismo nella visuale utopica di William Penn

Abstract

William Penn’s place in the history of political philosophy is both unique and peculiar. His works raised the interest of contemporary thinkers such as Voltaire and Montesquieu, who also praised his practical contribution as legislator for the British colony of Pennsylvania as well as peacemaker with the Native people of North America. After falling into relative oblivion over the course of the Nineteenth Century, Penn’s figure attracted renewed scholarly interest in the 1920s and ‘30s, at the height of totalitarianism, when he was newly appreciated as an early prophet of pacifism, Europeanism, and cosmopolitanism. In 1979, almost three centuries after the publication of his project for European peace, Penn’s ideas were at least in part realized with the first direct election of the European Parliament. Today, his works are still worth considering, particularly for his thoughtful reflections on the aristocracy of merit or virtue, a subject at the very core of his thinking.