Cosmopoli. L’Europa che non c’è, il popolo che manca

This essay discusses the theme of human rights, beginning from the perspective developed by Hannah Arendt in The origin of Totalitarianism and addressed in the works by Balibar, Agamben, Ranciére and Žižek. The analytical question focuses upon the universality of the idea of 'human’ and researches its implications on the political-cultural crisis suffered by the European Union project, in particular, looking at the issues raised by the refugee figure. The method adopted presents both deconstructionist and constructivist instances. The essay criticises the current forms of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, and introduces the necessity of building a new European project, different from the transnational institution currently suffering a full crisis of legitimacy as much as of representativeness. The product of this new institutional setting would be a different idea of ‘humanity’.