Contra Schmitt? Patterns of Otherness for living together

Abstract

The essay is devoted to an attempt of legitimizing the civic virtue of living together, trying an alternative path to the classical dialectic friend/enemy (Freund/Feind) articulated by Schmitt (§ 1). Such an alternative – which it is believed most consonant to the intercultural destiny of our societies – implies a rethinking of the boundaries between the spheres of politics and its most obvious denial: terrorism, that makes extreme the attempt of affirmation of difference and otherness, up to foreseeing the annulment of the other (§ 2).The theoretical proposal here presented, therefore, articulates three models of otherness, devoted to proposing a twofold redefinition of the identity’s concept often invoked in that problematic context (§ 3). The outcome of this discussion would justify a different way of thinking the “being-in-common”, committed to bring the initial dialectic into a more comprehensive “public sphere” and to the discussion oriented to a (potentially) democratic living together (§ 4).