Sergio Cotta

Sergio Cotta (6 October 1920 – 3 May 2007) was an Italian philosopher, jurist and university professor.[1] He was considered a specialist on the political thought of the Enlightenment.[2] Cotta, along with André Masson and Robert Shackleton, was considered the most important interpreter of Montesquieu during the 20th century.[3]

Sergio Cotta
Professor Sergio Cotta
Born(1920-10-06)6 October 1920
Florence, Italy
Died3 May 2007(2007-05-03) (aged 86)
Florence, Italy
CitizenshipItalian
EducationUniversity of Florence
Scientific career
FieldsPhilosophy of law
Existentialism
Phenomenology
Law of Italy
InstitutionsUniversity of Florence

Cotta was educated in Florence, attending the La Querce Barnabiti Institute and the University of Florence. During the Second World War, he was a resistance fighter against German occupation. He was the commander of a partisans Brigade of the VII Divisione Autonoma Monferrato and was decorated with the Italian bronze medal.[4] His academic career took him to a variety of institutions, but he was primarily based at the Sapienza University of Rome from 1966 to 1990.

Biography

Sergio Cotta was born to Alberto Cotta, who was a scholar of forestry sciences, and Mary Nicolis di Robilant, of the aristocratic Robilant family. A direct descendant of the mathematician Leonhard Euler, he studied in Florence at the La Querce Barnabiti Institute and then enrolled at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Florence where he graduated in 1945.

On 8 September 1943, in Friuli, he was called to arms with the rank of Lieutenant, after the signing of the Italian armistice. With the German army losing, he sailed along the Adriatic to reach unoccupied Italy. After catching malaria, he reached Piedmont, where he was posted to a partisan brigade, the 7th Autonomous Division "Monferrato", as the commander of the 2nd Brigade. He was among the first to enter Turin on the days of liberation. For his participation in the Italian resistance movement, on 24 September 1951, he was awarded the Bronze Medal of Military Valor and on 31 March 1952, the War Cross.

In 1945 he married Brozolo Elisabetta Radicati of Brozolo. The couple went on to have three children: Irene, Maurizio, and Gabriella.

Academic career

He started his career at the University of Turin as assistant to Norberto Bobbio. He was promoted to ordinary professor, going on to teach at the University of Perugia, University of Trieste, University of Trento, University of Florence and finally in Rome. He was one of the promoters of the Faculty of Law of the D'Annunzio University in Teramo, where he taught philosophy of law. He held a position at the Sapienza University of Rome from 1966 to 1990, becoming the Chair of the philosophy of law and, for some years, was also the director of the homonymous Institute Giorgio Del Vecchio. Retiring in 1995, he became a professor emeritus.

He was a corresponding member of the Turin Academy of Sciences (from 1965) and the 1995 national member of the Accademia dei Lincei. He was a corresponding member of the Institut de France and the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences of Argentina. He was twice president of the Sorbonne International Center of Applied Political Philosophy (French: Institut international de philosophie politique).

He held the position of President of the Union of Italian Catholic Jurists and of the International Union of Catholic Jurists. He was among the members of the Promoter Committee of the 1974 Referendum of the Divorce Act.

His students included Francesco D'Agostino, Bruno Montanari, Gaetano Carcaterra, Bruno Romano, Domenico Fisichella and the singer Antonello Venditti.

Research

After studying the political thought of the Enlightenment, Cotta's interests focused on the philosophy of law, which he was able to blend with elements of the phenomenological tradition. From the 1950s he published many articles and monographs on the political vision of Montesquieu, Gaetano Filangieri, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, devoting himself to theoretical reflections on law and politics. He was the director of the International Magazine of Philosophy of Law. His works have been translated into French, Greek, English, Portuguese and Spanish.[5]

Honours
Gold Medal of the Italian Order of Merit for Culture and Art, Rome 5 September 1995

Publications
  • Montesquieu and the Science of Society (Italian: Montesquieu e la scienza della società), 1953
  • Gaetano Filangieri and the law problem (Italian: Gaetano Filangieri e il problema della legge), Torino, Giappichelli, 1954
  • The concept of law in the Summa Theologiae of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Italian: Il concetto di legge nella Summa Theologiae di San Tommaso d'Aquino), Turin, Giappichelli, 1955
  • The Political City of St. Augustine (Italian: La città politica di S. Agostino), 1960
  • Philosophy and Politics in Rousseau’s Work (Italian: Filosofia e politica nell'opera di Rousseau), 1964
  • The technological challenge (Italian: La sfida tecnologica), 1968
  • Ptolemaic man (Italian: Luomo tolemaico), 1975
  • What resistance? (Italian: Quale Resistenza?), 1977
  • The Ptolemaic Man (Spanish: El hombre tolemaico), Ediciones RIALP, Madrid 1977
  • Why violence (Italian: Perché la violenza), 1978
  • Justification and Obligation of the Standards (Italian: Giustificazione e obbligatorietà delle norme), 1981
  • The Right to Existence. Legal
  • On Phenomenology Lines (Italian: Il diritto nell'esistenza. Linee di ontofenomenologia giuridica), 1985
  • Why violence? A philosophical interpretation (Italian: Why violence ? A philosophical interpretation), University of Florida Press, Gainesville, 1985
  • From War to Peace (Italian: Dalla guerra alla pace), 1989
  • Law, Person, Human World (Italian: Diritto, persona, mondo umano), 1989
  • The Right to Existence (Italian: Il diritto nell'esistenza, edizione ampliata), Extended Edition, 1991
  • The political thought of Montesquieu (Italian: Il pensiero politico di Montesquieu), Bari, Laterza, 1995
  • The right to exist (French: Le droit dans l'existence), Editions Bière, Bordeaux, 1996
  • Human subject, legal entity (Italian: Soggetto umano, soggetto giuridico), 1997
  • The Limits of Politics (Italian: I limiti della politica), 2002
  • The Right as a Value System (Italian: Il diritto come sistema di valori), 2004
  • Ontology of phenomena juridique (Italian: Ontologie du phénomène juridique), Paris, Dalloz, 2015
  • Because Law (new ed.) (Italian: Perché il diritto, nuova ed.), Brescia, La Scuola, 2017

References
  1. "Cotta, Sergio". Trecanni (in Italian). Italian Encyclopedia Institute. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  2. George Feaver; Frederick Rosen (18 June 1987). Lives, Liberties and the Public Good: Essays on Political Philosophers and Their Work. Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 8. ISBN 978-1-349-08006-9. Retrieved 18 August 2017.
  3. Felice, Domenico; Casadei, Thomas. LA ILUSTRACIÓN Y SUS HERENCIAS - Por una filosofía del límite: Sergio Cotta, intérprete de Montesquieu (PDF). University of Seville. p. 24. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  4. Antiseri, Dario; Tagliagambe, Silvano (15 December 2014). History of Philosophy -: Italian Philosophers of the Twentieth Century Italian: Storia della filosofia -: Filosofi italiani del Novecento. Giunti. p. 468. ISBN 978-88-587-6240-0. Retrieved 2 September 2017.
  5. D'Agostino, Francesco (27 May 2007). "I remember Sergio Cotta [Ricordo di Sergio Cotta]". L'Occidentale. Western. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
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