If the logic of force supplants the logic of justice
In the time of exaggerated individualism, the dimension of 'we' must be recovered
3' min read
3' min read
The weakened welfare state, poor and precarious work, the real economy backed into a corner. These three problems are enough to understand why subsidiarity is more necessary than ever today: both to respond to the crisis brought about by neo-liberalism and, therefore, for the resilience of democratic systems.
Sentence 192/2024 of the Constitutional Court offers us an effective and topical synthesis of the principle of subsidiarity, identifying it as that 'distribution of powers on the basis of the sole criterion of the common good' that is realised through 'cooperation between institutions and social realities'.
In this perspective, the value of each individual person, their relationality and constructive capacity is emphasised.
The signs of a serious crisis of democracy had already been grasped by observers such as David Riesman who, in his 1950 book, 'The Lonely Crowd', described the figure - in some ways even tragic - of the 'mass man' who had grown up in the West: hetero-directed, dependent on the ambiguous influence of the mass media, educated in the school of conformism, crushed by the need for approval and success, inhabiting a world governed by appearances, stripped of his own individuality, alone and disarmed in the solitude that crowds around him.
How can one respond to a 'mass man' and a 'lonely crowd'?
