MIEDO E INSEGURIDAD

Abstract

The author starts from recognition of fear as a constant element in the history of man to show how the mechanisms to reduce fear have created the human being. Among them, the political system, and in particular the modern state, have shown themselves to be the most efficient instruments for the reduction of fear and the guarantee of security. In this sense, the welfare state has been the highest level reached in the west by a political system in its attempt to regulate and reduce fear, to reduce the risks for the human being that come from the working of the market economy. However, the article shows how the crisis of the welfare state in the context of globalisation has caused, among other things, a drastic step from the conception of security understood as recognition of individual identity and participation in social life to a conception of security understood simply as defence of the individual from possible acts of aggression and repression and severe punishment of anti-social behaviour, that is, a step from the welfare state to the penal state. Finally, the author defends the necessity, especially for left wing thought, of recovering the positive sense both of security and liberty, assuming that security and liberty cannot survive outside political structures that fail at the same time to maintain both individual autonomy and social solidarity.