Global, Universal, Common: Three Notions for a socio-cultural Renewal

Global, universal, common, are the notions semantically clarified in this chapter. Widely used in contemporary discourse on public affairs, each of these terms is carrier – perhaps unwittingly – of influential anthropological, social and political conceptions. Facing the crisis requires the criticism to the identification of global and universal, because the general “globe” of technologies is not at all equal to the universal “world” of the human, the world of identities and relations. The essential issues of a renewal therefore concern the relation between technocracy and democracy, the need for community, the authentic nature of being in common, the concrete universality of the community, commons and common good.