Norberto Bobbio - A Tradição Europeia da Liberdade

Arnaldo Gonçalves aims in this book to draw the profile of the Italian author, philosopher and jurist that has had an enormous influence in the Italian intellectual panorama for more than four decades, being also a philosopher respected in the Anglo-Saxon world by his works on Kant, Hobbes, Marx and Kelsen. The author considers Bobbio one the founding fathers of the European ideal of democracy in the compass of a representative government coming from elections and guided by the will of the people. Arnaldo Gonçalves considers Bobbio a very special liberal that had the talent to reach a workable compromise between the values of liberty and equality without endangering one at the expenses of the other. Being pleasant to the ideal of socialism, as the mainstream of the Second World War intellectuals, Bobbio was cautious not to embark in the melody disseminated by the Soviet Union as the model for Europe. Never rejecting Marx as a theorist, Bobbio was scrupulous to criticize the totalitarian endeavor hidden by the Soviet regime and the failures coming from its model of State building.