The main contention of this essay is that sciences can be seen as belonging to two broad categories: a) demonstrative; b) interpretative. Demonstrative, or «tough», sciences are «natural» sciences; interpretative sciences are philosophy, history, all the social sciences, different as thy are (for in…

In a situation in which the market economy is regarded as so important and decisive as to induce the emergence of a market society, the notion of the «sacred» becomes essential. The market is perfectly legitimate as a forum of negotiations, but it has a purely instrumental value. A market society is…

The author contends that any contestation or countercultural movement, no matter how generous, is bound to failure unless it develops as a rational project. Violence, as such, might help visibility, but, in the last analysis, it amounts to nothing more than self-gratifying narcissism, incapable to p…

In July 1973, at the age of 78, Max Horkheimer passed away In the Swiss town of Montagnola. If not the founder, he has at least the most important director of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt, from which the famous name “Frankfurt School” is derived. Actually, if we ca…

A curious paradox must be faced at the very outset: nothing is perhaps more culturally inclined than the various counter-culture movements. In other words, writing and working against the prevailing culture amount to an essentially cultural enterprise. Culture seems to be inescapable. A supposedly d…

If it were possible, just for an instant, to forget the sufferings and worries of the everyday, if, in other words, it were possible to distance ourselves and somehow see ourselves from outside, I think we should have to agree with Goethe’s confession: «I have the great advantage of being born in an…

If one conceives of modern society as a society that strives to free itself from the hand of tradition and conventional wisdom, then it seems difficult to overestimate the role of the intellectuals. Undoubtedly, the concept of the intellectual. It’s an am…

The main contention of this article is the following: sociology, like all the modern sciences, was born out of philosophy. But, ungratefully enough and perhaps because of a deepseated inferiority complex vis-à-vis the older well established sciences, sociology tends to forget or at least to blurr it…

At the basis of the lasting, even growing, fascination of Max Weber as man and thinker there are probably two reasons. First, there is an essential reason: Weber tackles a central theme, still today at the heart of our concerns, and to which he returns in all his works, more or less directly - the n…

The concept and the term “industrial revolution” are far from being universally accepted. Historians and economists with a conservative inclination tend to criticize them more or less severely. My general theses is that the “industrial revolution” has been, in the first place, a true revolution, tha…

The main contention of this article is the following: sociology, like all the modern sciences, was born out of philosophy. But, ungratefully enough and perhaps because of a deepseated inferiority complex vis-à-vis the older well established sciences, sociology tends to forget or at least to blurr it…

The aim of the paper is try to make a dynamic picture of the modern (or post-modern) Italian identity, from a political, social and cultural point of view. The status of this country is in the balance, between a fast industrialization without an analogous industrial culture and a lumbering memory wh…