Let’s forget the ‘post’ game. I believe that any individual with common sense ought to have had enough of that one. Someone once said that anyone who believes that politics and religion can be abstractly separated understands nothing of either politics or religion. There is a certain liberalism which is uniquely ‘special’ in understanding nothing of religion (just as the Enlightenment understood nothing of it), but it ought to understand something of politics… And there was no need to wait for latest developments – the insurgency of Islamic fundamentalism, and so on and so forth – for it to become obvious that, without waiting on the permission of who-knows-what authority, religions, in all their organisational dimensions, demand to be fully recognised equally as ‘social protagonists’.

Not only the liberal State, but the State as a structure tout court is an integral part of the general ‘destiny’ of secularisation. In no way, therefore, can it put forward the pretext of founding and constituting a hierarchy or absolute order of Values. Its laws can only ever have a positive and relative value. Which does not, however, imply an indifferent relativism – the relativity of values can become the foundation of an ethos of comparison, of dialogue and of reciprocal recognition. Only in this way can the intrinsic fragility of the liberal State transform itself into positive energy. I would further add – and this is the fundamental philosophical lesson of Tocqueville – that the State can do much to ‘educate’ towards amicable relationships between these same values that come face-to-face in the socio-political sphere. It can do this through the organisation of the school system, by encouraging social mobility, and by supporting research in all fields.

There can be no doubt: if the future Democratic Party is unable to make a clear distinction between the sphere of non-negotiable Values – those, for example, which belong to the Christian as individual – and those relative values which are expressed in the positive nature of rights and laws, then its structure is destined to explode in the bat of an eyelid. And there can be no doubt, either, that the common foundation of the members of the hoped-for future party must adopt the idea of ‘freedom as responsibility’. With respect to this issue, too, there are few ‘posts’ to evoke. Max Weber is enough.

Massimo Cacciari, since 2002 dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University “Life and Health San Raffaele” in Milan, he is currently mayor of Venice, a position he also held in 1993 and 2000. Along with the most prestigious names in philosophical research and of Italian critiques, he was a founder and director of some of the magazines which have marked the cultural and political debate: from “Angelus Novus” (1964-1972) to “Contropiano” (1968-1972); from “Laboratorio politico” (1980-1983) to “Il Centaur” (1981-1986), to “Paradosso” (1999-2001). Amongst his volumes, may of which have been translated in all the main European languages, and some in Japanese: Krisis (Milan 1976); Pensiero negative e razionalizzazione (Negative thought and rationalisation) (Venice-Padua 1977); Dallo Steinhof (Milan 1980); Icone della Legge (Icons of the law) (Milan 1985); L’Angelo necessario (The necessary angel) (Milan 1986); Dell’Inizio, (About the beginning) (Milan 1990); Geofilosofia dell’Europa (Geophilosophy of Europe) (Milan 1994); L’Arcipelago (The Archipelago) (Milan 1997); Della cosa ultima (The last thing) (Milan 2004).

This article was published in Reset, Number 101.

Translation by Liz Longden