Giuseppe Antonio Borgese. Wisdom and Power: From the Moral Nation to the World Republic

Abstract

G.A. Borgese develops throughout his intellectual journey – from his national-liberal youth to his American exile – a conception of power founded on wisdom as an ethical and civic principle. In his early Italian writings, culture appears as the moral authority of the nation; in the works of exile, it becomes a universal criterion of political legitimacy. Exile thus transforms the crisis of power into a spiritual quest: the «moral nation» turns into a «world republic», and the Italian humanistic tradition finds its fulfilment in the federalist and spiritual vision of intellectual authority.