L’ invenzione della complementarità del pensiero federalista di Kant e Hamilton in Italia

The ‘invention’ of the ‘complementarity’ of Kant’s and Hamilton’s federalist thought is the result of Mario Albertini’s philosophical elaboration. His idea of this ‘complementarity’ is bound to join together in one theoretical unit the value of the ‘perpetual peace’ among nation-states with the constitutional concept of the liberal right in the international (and particularly European) frame. Albertini says this is possible, like both Kant and Hamilton demonstrated in theirs federalist essays (Zum ewigen Frieden and The Federalist), through the theory of the federal state. Therefore Kant’s and Hamilton’s political discourses are, in the opinion of Albertini and of his students, ‘complementary’ and constitute a homogeneous nucleus. Nevertheless Albertini’s theory appears as a rhetorical ‘invention’, that is a rhetorical procedure and argument to elaborate a convincing federalist ideology, not a result of scientific proceedings and discovery.