Balducci analysed
religions in relation to their capacity to be or not to be sources of a historic salvation. A salvation that does not remain in the alienating extra-historic and existential level. The most modern themes of the
Protestant theology come together in this reflection, from
Karl Barth to
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, with their intention of dividing
religion and
faith and overturning the point of view focused on
God for showing up the
human, instead. In Balducci's view, the religions are the millenary legacy of cultural particularisms, as ideological, political, cultural and spiritual
cohesion tools for cultural
monads that, however, have lost their individuality. By facing up to the apocalyptic threats of modern
war, now religions have two possible functions. Either a regressive function of protective recall to particular identities, or a prophetic ferment function for the transaction to the "planetary era". A ferment in deeper affinity with their very founding intuitions. According to Balducci, the reclamation of religious identities has to be based on a
lay approach to the peace question in order to bring into play each of the various memories of mankind. All this without abandoning certain universal achievements of the Western culture, like the principle of the preeminence of
conscience with respect to any law, the correlative principle of the State of Right and the
scientific method. The synthesis of the "Planetary Human" aims to involve disparate subjects in the name of a fundamental
subjectivity that identifies itself with the
species. The crisis of
modernity drives Balducci to define the terms of a newly-grounded
social contract of the
world community. The
reason, stripped of the Western people's "hyperbolic subjectivity", plays a fundamental role, so far. By taking the suggestions of
Ernesto de Martino, Balducci believes that the long "prehistory" of narrow communication among cultural "islands", in which the fear of the different has been a reflex that has cemented the
tribe, is over. Even the
aggressiveness against the other groups made sense as long as there were not the unifying frameworks of the planet. But the menaces to the survival of the
human species unify the destiny of everyone. The mankind, from the "homination phase", goes on to the planetarization (
globalization) phase. Balducci observes that
Anthropology - originally based on the
ontology of the "difference" (the others and us, peoples of
culture and peoples of
nature,
civilized and
primitives) - then discovered the possibility of different ways to be humans in the time and the space. By repudiating its own earlier assumptions, Anthropology recognizes the longing of each peculiar human expression towards a universal rule that joins humans, and them with nature. This is the sense that Balducci catches in various cultural itineraries: the
structuralism of
Claude Lévi-Strauss, the "ecology of mind" of
Gregory Bateson, the
generative grammar of
Noam Chomsky. Balducci bases his thought on such yearning towards the
universal. Many of its symbolizations are about the
dialectic between particular and universal dimensions of the human. He borrows from
Ernst Bloch the
dialectic between the "cultured human" (
homo editus) and the "hidden human" (
homo absconditus), a dialectic between the
being and the
being able to of the human, an aspiration that is a
transcendence without transcending, a «
transcendence in the
immanence» The Balducci crossing appears to be a sort of anthropologic
teleology which represents an
evolutionary trend that the human being can support or disclaim in its path. The
reason, as said by Balducci, finds a brand-new
categorical imperative: «Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that the human species would find the reasons and the guarantees of its survival» (in
La terra del tramonto). Balducci recognized in the declining freedom of action of states and in the growth of the
cosmopolitan right an element deeply rooted in the evolutionary laws of human species. The
faith in Man (a
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin concept), the consideration that our species has always creatively got over many severe and extreme challenges, the chance of the "planetary human": all this things make sense to Balducci if the sense of belonging with a supranational community will generate a planetary political project. A project that matches the
world community, an entity arising «on the strength of the evolutionary laws of the
species, the same laws that lead from the
tribe to the
city, from the city to the
nation-state.» In order to decipher the momentum towards the establishment of a
world community, Balducci recalls two categories of the
natural law: the
pactum unionis and the
pactum subjectionis. The former momentum is identified in view of the anthropologic
pacifism, which horizon is a
society that is made compact by relationships of spontaneous reciprocity and by the preferential option for
non-violence. The second momentum relies on the perspective of the political
realism, oriented to extend to the entire planet the process of unification relying upon the
monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. The
dialectic between these two momentums has to give birth to the «new child» of the new era, the world community. Novelty depends upon the womb of necessity. No wonder if there is the darkness on the intermediate stages of its birth. As Ernst Bloch wrote, "at the foot of the lighthouse, there is not light". (in
La terra del tramonto) == Publications ==