He was a professor of Political Philosophy, very active in the Italian social, cultural and editorial life. Of progressive ideas, he was the bearer of a certain Ambrosian reformism
Salvatore Veca, who passed away at 77, had graduated in 1966 with Enzo Paci e Ludovico Geymonat, two of the great masters of philosophy that the University of Milan boasted at the time. As a young assistant, Veca occupied himself for a decade with theoretical studies and reflections on Marx and became co-editor of the magazine Aut Aut with Enzo Paci and Pier Aldo Rovatti.
After a short passage in Bologna, becoming a lecturer in Political Science in Milan, he discovered did just the thought of John Rawls. In A theory of justice of 1971, which Veca had Feltrinelli translate in 1982, the Harvard philosopher had updated the contractualism of Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau. Politics was not to aspire to an abstract common good, but to seek procedures to make institutions more just and goods equally distributed. The just took over the good and the result was an egalitarian liberalism, in which economic advantages were admissible only if the less fortunate benefited from them. the idea of justice as fairness.
Veca, who from 1990 to 2006 was a professor of Political Philosophy in Pavia (where he held the position of principal), brought this reflection to Italy by declining it, as well as in studies and teaching, in an incessant activity of participation in social, cultural and editorial life, which made him one of the best known progressive intellectuals.
Even if today, in the season of disintermediation, profiles like hers no longer ignite young people, Veca never retired from active life. Starting from the scientific direction of the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation, hired in 1974, the philosopher tirelessly promoted the development of a Center for Political Science, the Annals of the Foundation and a broad activity of research, documentation, debates and publications in the field of political and social theory.
Non-fiction consultant also to the Saggiatore, of which he had directed (with Marco Mondadori) the Theoria series, Veca, person willing to listen, he joined countless scientific committees and magazines such as the Italian review of sociology, political theory, library of freedom , Politeia, European Journal of Philosophy, Reset, Quaderni di Scienza politico, Il Politico, Journal of philosophy, Italianieuropei and others.
He had also been part of the National Council of the Italian Philosophical Society, had been a member of the National Council of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, a collaborator of the Corriere della Sera Foundation and, since 2005, a member of the General Prizes Committee of the Balzan Foundation.
With generosity he also promoted musical activities, such as the birth of the chamber ensemble The soloists of Pavia, presented art exhibitions (including contemporary), had been the guarantor for the Italian ambient background, member of scientific institutes and academies such as those of Bologna and Turin and close to the Anpi.
This broad activity, which made him famous especially in Milan, where he was president of the Casa della Cultura and the bearer of an Ambrosian reformism and also intervened in debates on the choices of the mayors, almost distracts from a reference to his books. The volumes most linked to Rawls and a normative theory are The right society e Matters of justice (declined in informative form in Altruism and morals with Francesco Alberoni).
The subsequent developments of his thought, centered on the defense of pluralism as a value for democratic society and on citizenship, are found in Freedom and equality or disclosed in Eighty-nine project written with Alberto Martinelli and Michele Salvati. In 1997, with Sebastiano Maffettone, he published the anthology The idea of justice from Plato to Rawls a little in contrast to The open society and its enemies (1945; Armando 1973-74) by Karl R. Popper, whose first volume is entitled Totalitarian Plato.
Veca was a figure that, in the seventies, young people would have defined master think. If those who mourn for it today are cultural institutions and politics, perhaps because those equal opportunities for egalitarian and meritocratic access to all the roles of the country supported by Veca have not established themselves.
The funeral home and the funeral
Salvatore Veca’s funeral home will be set up on 8 October from 11 to 19 at the Casa della Cultura in Milan, in via Borgogna. The funeral will take place on Saturday 9 October morning at 11 in the Church of the Guardian Angels, in via Pietro Colletta, in Milan.
October 7, 2021 (change October 7, 2021 | 21:29)
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