Abbozzo per una fisiologia della politica. Paolo Mantegazza tra barricate e parlamento

Abstract

Despite its intangible meaning, a recurring term in Paolo Mantegazza’s research and popular work is physiology. Since his 1854 thesis on the Fisiologia del piacere, there have been many attempts to construct an ideal system in which the feelings expressed by the spiritual functioning of the body are regulated, or at least traced back to broader systems in the mechanistic field. Mantegazza, a parliamentarian from 1865 to 1876, does not expressly deal with a physiology of politics, however, in his parliamentary writings and speeches, it is possible to identify attempts to reconstruct the political system as a physiological moment, where the abstract reflections of the parliamentary hall become concrete actions in the social sphere.