The Itinerary Themes

The itinerary aims to focus the reflection on Aldo Moro’s “project”, that is, the existence of a conscious “plan” that he had on the development of Italian democracy, on Europe and on the governance of international relations – a plan that presumably guided his action throughout his political career. If such a design did exist, then it can certainly be considered an interrupted project, stunted in its development by his political murder.

Three elements can be highlighted in this regard.

The first is the constant tendency for inclusion that Moro showed throughout his political life. With great awareness and determination, he always tried to involve everyone in the democratisation and development processes, thereby avoiding the creation of fences or boundaries, and he always tried to open negotiation channels when these fences or boundaries were set up by others. Strong traces of this particular attitude towards inclusion is also found in Moro’s action in foreign policy (above all, as regards processes of détente between East and West, of international cooperation and of North-South relations, and of European unification).

A second element that appears to characterise Moro’s “project” is social pluralism, which he considered as a manifestation of the multiplicity and vastness of the forms of social life. Moro did not see in social pluralism, per se, any factor of division or source of conflict. The problem was, if anything, that of searching for and maintaining a convergence between the demands and meanings of every cultural, religious or political family on the basis of a common “human value”, of an “elementary idea of man” in which everyone could identify and on which to base civil coexistence.

A third element revolves around the idea of “achieving democracy”, wich manifests itself in the Moro’s preoccupation with activating and sustaining over time a process for stabilising the political system in order to enable the introduction, even in Italy, of a real democracy of alternating governments.

Presentation Note