Norberto Bobbio

Norberto Bobbio (1909 to 2004) was an Italian philosopher of law and political science and a historian of political thought, who also wrote regularly for the Turin daily La Stampa. A social liberal in the tradition of Piero Gobetti, Carlo Rosselli, Guido Calogero and Aldo Capitini, he was strongly influenced by Hans Kelsen and Vilfredo Pareto and is considered one of the greatest Italian intellectuals of the twentieth century. Under the Fascist regime he joined the illegal Partito d'Azione in 1942 and was imprisoned in 1943 and 1944; after standing unsuccessfully in the 1946 Constituent Assembly elections he left electoral politics for academia, and he became one of the leading exponents of the distinction between left and right.