Razionalità e dialettica in Luigi Sturzo

In his more significant works, Luigi Sturzo expressed with verve the requirement thathuman social sciences, in particular sociology, should take account of the entirety ofhistorical experience and the overall processuality of human action. In this perspec-tive, for Sturzo there are two fundamental conditions in the synthetic study of histo-ry and society. The first is the positive affirmation of the value of liberty and the freewill of human beings concerning their achievements as a whole. The second is the refusal of determinist reductionism in some tendencies, especially in immanentistmonism of an idealistic cast and in scientific positivism. Naturally, Sturzo does notdisown the objective data and the value of conditioning, of whatever imprint theymay have, present in historical experience. He is keen, however, on keeping thesphere of conditioning highly distinct from that of free acting. The subject, who isfree by nature and not by condition, cannot avoid metaphysical, physical, moral, social and cultural limitation, but does not submit himself to the point of being assimilated to any concomitant cause. The original operation of Sturzo consists in enablingthe rational principle implicit in the articulation of dialectics to emerge, isolating itfrom ontological and nihilistic premises of the Hegelian doctrine. His criticism extends also to the Hegelian exegesis (Croce, Gentile and part of 20th century Catholicthinking) which has not reckoned radically with the outcomes of immanentism, justifying, sometimes in good faith, the self-referentiality and circularity of the historicalforms of the spirit. His is a pragmatic and realistic conception of history as a playingfield of forces that oppose and overcome each other, but never closed in itself. Thecommencement of dialectics is the concrete and, in particular, the concrete, free and responsible individual, unyielding to the systems and structures of society, the bearer of authentic needs, endowed with rationality and a natural ability of openness to sociality and transcendence.