Norberto Bobbio 1909 – 2004
Norberto Bobbio was an Italian legal and political philosopher and one of the principal voices of postwar Italian liberal democracy. After clandestine resistance to Fascism in his youth, he held the chair of philosophy of law and later of political philosophy at Turin for nearly five decades and was appointed senator for life in 1984. His Future of Democracy, Right and Left, and The Age of Rights articulated an analytical approach to political philosophy that defended constitutional democracy, human rights, and the rule of law against both fascist and Communist temptations. He shaped a generation of Italian scholarship on legal positivism and the theory of norms.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Italian
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Political
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Norberto Bobbio:
“Democracy is government by discussion under conditions of equality.”
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Attributed to Norberto Bobbio:
“The rights of the citizen are the brakes upon the power of the state.”
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Attributed to Norberto Bobbio:
“Right and left remain meaningful so long as inequality remains.”
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Attributed to Norberto Bobbio:
“Tolerance is the respect that liberty owes to its own conditions.”
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Attributed to Norberto Bobbio:
“A theory of democracy is also a theory of its imperfections.”