Nota sul concetto di "massa"

The essay examines the question of the increasing role played by the “mass” as an historical subject. Starting at least from the nineteenth century, the presence of more and more wide popular masses raised many sociological and legal issues: in particular, the pressure exercised by new social actors (political parties, trade unions, etc.) was aimed at obtain a political, legal and institutional endorsement of the popular claims. From a philosophical-legal perspective it justifies the multiple models of interpretation of the “mass” developed between the nineteenth and the twentieth century: the idea of “nation” (or State-nation), the horizon of community (or State-community), the Marxian concept of “class”, the so-called Welfare State and, finally, the systemic model elaborated by Niklas Luhmann. The wide diffusion of the notion of “mass-society” is the final triumph of the mass within the contemporary western scenarios and, at the same time, the crisis of the categories underlying some of its recent theoretical and historical interpretations.