¿Qué conceptos políticos para Europa?

Abstract

This paper aims to face up the problem of the method in connection with the political concepts which are necessaries to think about Europa. That involves a philosophical- political reflection and a table of historical- conceptual orientation. Becomes also necessary the reference to an extensive critical work about modern political concepts, which raises questions about their supposed universality, but that manages at the same time to discuss with the thought of a long tradition which has in the Greek world her origin. It seems not possible to face up and to understand the problems which come up from the process that leads to the European Union with the concepts that have resulted in the State doctrine and that are the backbone of modern constitutions. These concepts are born in the heart of the doctrines of social contract and natural right and they are useful to a political form which has as inseparables poles the rights of individuals and the sovereignty of the political corps. Europe, because indeed of the plurality of the members which make her up, requires on the one hand the superseding of the concept of sovereignty of the States but on the other hand should not think about herself as a new sovereignty, or as a new and wider state magnitude. The superseding of the political conceptuality which is condensed in the sovereignty involves at the same time the fact of rethinking about those concepts —such as individual, equality, liberty— that, in the way in which have been thought starting from the modern iusnaturalism, appear as the logical foundations of sovereignty.