Persona, libertà, storia. Studio su Lord Acton

On the background of the philosophical, political and religious debates typical of the Victorian age, Sir John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834-1902) emerges as a major figure, but not easy to interpret.This volume is an attempt to describe in a unitary way his human and intellectual identity. In the first part the book analyzes his education and his Catholic liberalism. In the second part the book considers the theoretical core of his thought and his remarks on history and on historical knowledge, considering in particular notions such as individual, power and freedom, tradition and authority, society and state, nationality and nationalism. These notions are rooted in a reflection on conscience, understood as the manifestation of the objectivity of truth and goodness in the human subject o and thus as the primary factor in building society and history.