CONTRIBUTI / 8 / Fabio Corigliano /
Leibniz in Ventotene
In this paper, I propose a reading of the Ventotene Manifesto by taking into account the influence of Leibniz’s doctrine of sovereignty on Eugenio Colorni, by giving special attention to the federal structure of the United States of Europe. Within the context of the political and legal doctrines of his century, Leibniz develops an original theory of the structure of sovereignty. Following Leibniz’s perspectivism (i.e., each substance expresses the world from its particular point of view), one can conclude that reality is constituted by a multitude of points of view: plurality is the fundamental characteristic of the real, and the order of reality is given by harmony among points of view. These Leibnizian ideas, I contend, provided Eugenio Colorni with conceptual tools to overcome idealism not only at an epistemological or metaphysical level, but also at a political level, since these ideas need to question the classical structure of modern sovereignty: this is the meaning of Colorni’s Europeanism.
