Dal governo della città al governo del mondo? Il rapporto tra Aristotele e Alessandro negli studi di H. Kelsen e V. Ehrenberg

Poddighe E.

2025-01-01

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Abstract

The essays by Hans Kelsen and Victor Ehrenberg mark a decisive stage in the modern debate on the problem of the relationship between Aristotle and Alexander. It is a confrontation in which, in the 1930s, they argued different theses on the extent of Aristotle's intellectual involvement in relation to the novelty of the political achievements of the Macedonian monarchy in a scenario of great transformations such as the construction of hegemony in Greece first and Alexander's empire later. Their studies have decisively conditioned later scholarship. Subsequent discussions of the problem have tended to retain the integral content of Ehrenberg's treatment of Kelsen's critique. However, there are remarkable aspects of Kelsen's treatment that Ehrenberg was too quick to dismiss, and his failure to discuss relevant points of Kelsen's treatment resulted in fixing the terms of the debate in Ehrenberg's form, according to which Kelsen would have tried to trace in Aristotle's reflection the proof of a theoretical design that ideologically founded both the idea of the unification of the Greek cities and that of a unified government of the world by Alexander.