East/West Relations: Toward a New Definition of a Dialogue

Abstract

The pleasure of being in Rome is greatly enhanced by honor of addressing this most renowned forum, where so many distin guished persons have presented papers in past thirty years. My sense of honor at appear ing before this forum grew as I paged report on activities of this society since 1947, and I saw there photographs of many whose writings and international works and diplomacy have shaped contemporary mind and contemporary world: Alcide de Gasperi, Paul Henry Spaak, Joseph Luns, Cardinal Casarolli, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, to name just a few. It is a privilege to participate in this distinguished lecture series. It's also a marvelous pleasure to be in Rome in spring. For me, Rome is a pleasure of a very special sort. It is kind of pleasure which Samuel Johnson called the wine of life and of which St. Augustine wrote it rejoices soul. For me, truly, significance of this city lies less in undoubted beauty of its fountains and its squares, less in richness of its museums and its galleries, or majesty of its great public buildings, less in its dazzling sun and its Mediterranean visage than in its place in our shared history. It takes only a bit of poetic license to see Rome as heart of West ern Civilization?our civilization. Capital of antiquity, capital of Christendom, home of Renaissance and modern mind; Rome has for more than two thousand years reflected essential aspects of Western style of civili zation?the rule of law, mixed constitution, idea of constitutionalism itself. These and other key elements of mod ern liberal democratic tradition are explicated in Italy's rich contributions to modern political philosophy. Certain of these elements seem to me especially crucial to contemporary scene. When I think of Italian tradition in political philosophy and its contributions to world, I think of contribution of Marsiglio, whom many consider very beginning of modern tradition in political philosophy. Marsiglio gave us first modern version of a doctrine of social