Thomas Jefferson: un repubblicanesimo "generazionale"

This essay is focused on Thomas Jefferson as a political and constitutional theorist. More precisely, his thought is contextualized in the light ofthe recent Italian historiography on the constituent power and framed within the US federalist experience. As one of the most emblematic intellectualsof his time, Jefferson’s reflections deal not only with the strengths of democratic institutions in their process of consolidation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but also with their shortcomings.Jefferson combinedrepublican faith and trust in generationalautonomy, with the aim to emancipate hishistorical present from both the past and the future.Jeffersonwill weave an intense epistolary dialogue with Madison, examiningthe constant threat of a “people in action” and how to face the risk that concentration of power maygenerate a legislative tyrant.He was convinced that solelythe periodic amendment of the Constitution (including the federal one) could have coped withsuch threat.Generational renewalis the real weapon against a temporal duration made up of injustice and abuse. An unprecedented way of framing the well-known Jeffersonian radicality.