3 MEDITAZIONI SUL PASSATO E SULL’AVVENIRE

Christianity, War, Democracy. Three immense blocks of events and ideas that have accompanied us through history, particularly that of the last two centuries, laying the foundations of our societies. Three conversations to try above all to focus to problems, to raise questions and open perspectives, with the help of reading famous texts. In a long ride that will lead from the past to the present. Because it all, of course, began a long time ago: it can be said that the very identity of Europe would be unthinkable, in fact, without the three elements that give the title to these meetings. A long time ago, I said, although it is around them that the thread that leads from the French Revolution to today in particular unravels.

Christianity shaped the concept of good and evil that to a very large extent is still ours today, it was the premise for the totally rational image of nature and the world that led to the overwhelming scientific development we know, but together it was also the premise for the idea of equality among all human beings and between man and woman that makes our culture so peculiar and different from from so many others today.

Without war, on the other hand, without the friend-enemy polarity, how to think about politics, this authentic beating heart of our history from 2500 years? The dimension of war has meant the organization of the state, the decisive attributions of power and at the same time the essential test of its legitimacy, its ability to gain consensus. Just as after '89 the bearing of arms represented to long the prime condition for the ownership of the political rights necessary for full citizenship, and precisely for this reason the reason for the exclusion of women from the one and the other. Not to mention the essential role that war has played in ensuring Europe's absolute supremacy over the rest of the planet for at least three centuries.

from last democracy. to apart from which the whole landscape of our life is less and less thinkable, although never before has it seemed to us that many of its knots have come to a head. What meaning in our historical situation can and should we attribute to it? What problems in its operation have time revealed? What promises of it are still realistic?

Ernesto Galli della Loggia