Luigi Einaudi’s Federalist Vision

Luigi Einaudi’s Federalist Vision

Paolo Silvestri, Professor of Philosophy of Law, University of Catania

Paolo Silvestri’s presentation will examine Luigi Einaudi’s federalist thought and his vision of a “United States of Europe”. Far from reducing federalism to a technical scheme of economic integration, Einaudi conceived it as part of a broader reflection on the foundations of a liberal good society. In Silvestri’s reading, his thought is structured by two central tensions: between the economic and the institutional, and between the global and the local. Federalism appears here as an attempt to mediate these tensions by linking supranational cooperation, local autonomy, and civic pluralism. The talk will also highlight Einaudi’s critique of absolute sovereignty, his awareness of the limits of purely functional integration, and his insistence on the symbolic foundations of political unity, including the emergence of a European civic consciousness.