🇺🇸 Courtesy of Monsieur monthly newsstand these days, we publish excerpts from the article by Stefano DAnna Italian American Dream, dedicated to the Declaration of Independence of the United States (July 4, 1776). America is celebrating its 237 th birthday, but the American dream showing signs of age and the failure of too many betrayals. (...) On July 4, America stops to celebrate itself. (...) Its the Independence Day commemorating the historic Unanimous Declaration of Independence made, precisely, July 4, 1776 from 13 states, true act Born in the USA. In it, like a jewel in a casket, is contained in the Declaration of Human Rights which enshrines the right to life, liberty, and for the first time in human history, the right to pursue happiness. (...) But the grandiose element, for which we will forever be grateful to the United States is the affirmation of the right to the pursuit of happiness never before enshrined in the Charter or any statement. Who is the father? The Declaration of Independence has a Neapolitan father. In October 1999, he was my guest in the house of Monte San Quirico, in the beautiful green hills of Lucca, an American friend, a sociologist at Oxford. (.. He gave me, ed) great news for me and completely new: the Declaration had had a previous draft at that crucial point read: Man has the right to life, liberty and property. The inclusion of this right (as my friend said) was born to a proposal by John Locke, however, was not convinced Benjamin Franklin, the father of the American Revolution. They then did something extraordinary. He sent a delegation of two ambassadors in Italy, with the draft of the Declaration, the birth of the new nation, and the mission of those who would have been able to meet its completion. I was fascinated by the unexpected developments of that conversation. I was going back along the track that could lead to the origin of the idea that would transform the happiness visionary, chimerical by suction and wishful thinking, to natural law, inalienable and inviolable human and reason. (...) I was driving along the Nile in search of its mythological sources. I wanted to know the names of those two ambassadors and especially those who had come to meet in Italy, who according to their president would have the historic task of replacing the expression of Locke. (...). In a few weeks, in December 1999, I had to go to Naples for activities related to the creation of a new campus and the project of establishing a Faculty of Economics and Humanities in collaboration with the Institute of Philosophical Studies. On that occasion I visited the Palazzo Serra di Cassano, home of the Institute, which hosted the exhibition for the Bicentenary of the Neapolitan Revolution. What was once called the revolution of the philosophers and that was to lead to an entire class intellectual martyrdom among the most educated and enlightened Europe. (...). I learned that the building had been closed for 200 years, from the day that his young son, scion of the ancient and noble family Serra, a fervent follower of the Republican ideas, he fell a martyr of the repression. In those spacious rooms beautifully decorated echeggiassero still seemed to me that the words of Gaetano Filangieri, the Plato of Naples, and the republican ideals that infervorarono those men and women who had sworn to want to live free or die. Among the works on display impressed me one of the paintings that represented a condemned by the noble face, his eyes dreamy and, behind him, the Executioner. Without the detail of the halter in the hands of the latter would have appeared a pair of lovers. In that one work seemed enclosed the fate of the martyrs, the visionaries of all time, the eternal struggle between the individual and the crowd, and the emblem of the end of the dream of freedom that cut off the flower of the Neapolitan and European culture. I felt a vertigo of thought. It was then that I met Gerardo Marotta, the lawyer-philosopher who along with other Neapolitan intellectuals had founded the institute 25 years ago. He received me in his treasures: Islands, archipelagos of books in larger rooms formed the walls of the inextricable mazes where I was wandering around following him and listening to one hundred projects that had for his institute. Discussed with him the idea of founding a faculty together for economists-philosophers who were at the helm of companies in the future. When I told him of my interest in the philosophical roots of the U.S. Constitution, he made me a gift of a little book, just published, the final publication of the Institute: a tribute to Gaetano Filangieri and his work The science of legislation. That same evening he devoured the contents. I could not believe it. In those pages there was the information I was looking for. From the archives of the Museum Filangieri, armored held up to that point, it was found that Franklin had sent the text of the Constitution of the United States to Gaetano Filangieri using two intermediaries suggestive symbolic value: Luigi Pio, Neapolitan diplomat in Paris, a supporter of Robespierre, and Abbot Leonardo Panzini who joined the Republic and was a representative in the directory. Wonderfully, the tiles of the mosaic were finding their place. At the expiry of the exact two centuries, the Palazzo Serra di Cassano, it was revealed to me that precious secret. In those rooms were echoed the ideas that now found myself in those pages. The two fragments of history that have been separated for hundreds of years, as the two pieces of an amulet, now met by projecting a light beam. Now I knew that the idea of the right to happiness was born from the passion and intelligence of civil Filangieri, one of the items highest in the European consciousness. He was the inspirer, the philosopher-legislator, the father of the Revolution that he did not see because of his untimely death. Benjamin Franklin had received it from him and set like a jewel, along with the right to life and liberty, in the unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America. Between man has a right to happiness, coined by Filangieri, inserted in the text of the Declaration and man has the right to property, proposed by Locke, spend eternity. The rise of the U.S. among the nations of the earth will know, the ability to assimilate men of every nation, attracted by the freedom, have their origin in the grain of immortality. From here you can develop the economy and the power of the United States. The Right to freedom becomes more American flag stars and stripes and the highest expression of the principles and mission of that country. Filangieri, idealistic and brilliant jurist, died in 1788, at age 35. His six-volume work The Science of legislation immediately translated into German, then in most European languages and Russian, threw a beam of light on the dark end of the century of oppression. It was the manifesto and lit the fuse of the revolution of 99. When, as a result of this, the wife with her two children was forced to flee to Paris was received by Napoleon, who showed her the place of honor that The Science of legislation dealt with on his work table. The passion civil Filangieri had led him to believe that the happiness of the people were reached through the change of laws, republic, democracy, liberalization of the political institutions and civil. In fact, happiness can not be taken, transmitted, taught. It is an achievement intimate, individual. It can only happen here and now. We can not be happy yesterday, we can not be happy in a month or a year. Happiness is a conscious decision to this moment ... infinite, unrepeatable. I conclude with a story that made me think. The Institute of Gerardo Marotta, honorary diploma of the European Parliament, defined by UNESCO in 1993, without equal in the world, closed its doors last August due to lack of funds. He had to abandon the Palace of Serra Cassano for arrears and its 200 thousand volumes have ended up in a shed. Sic transit gloria mundi. Stefano DAnna Michael CarmaCowboy Sweeney Garlton DeWayne Carter Sarah McLellan Paul Roark Matthew Dunivan Eric Edison
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 23:58:22 +0000
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