Il dovere del pessimismo. Sulle tracce del realismo "illuminista" di Norberto Bobbio

This article examines the relationship between Norberto Bobbio's thought and the so-called “political realism”. In particular, the text highlights the characteristics of the 'reformist' realism of the Italian thinker and considers the differences of this conception with respect to the conservative perspective of many realism thinkers and to the "revolutionary" realism that refers to Marx. The article also examines Bobbio's interest in "political science". In fact, Bobbio contributed, with his own intellectual authority, to the rehabilitation of Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto. Moreover, following Schumpeter, he grounded the 'realistic' perspective within a procedural conception of democracy. To counteract the anti-scientism rooted in "Italian ideology", Bobbio however adopted a vision of political science aligned with the principles of behavioralism of the 1950s and 1960s. The support for this vision paradoxically favored the progressive expulsion of the theoretical dimension from the "empirical" science of political phenomena.