Caratteri nazionali: storie di un’idea. Introduzione

Ideas about national character recur frequently in everyday discourse. In dealing with them, it is good to keep a critical eye on them and to maintain an appropriate distance from the falsifications of denigrating propaganda, which also makes use of such concepts. Building on Max Weber, Jaspers made it clear that the national char- acter never identifies a species, but a «type». Types are theoretical constructs with no real referents, but which can nonetheless capture a significant aspect of reality, from which a theoretical or literary discourse can be constructed. We are therefore not surprised by the relative persistence of this theme, which offers the historian of ideas a wealth of material for reflection, with a view to renewing the discipline and enabling it to capture the dynamism, rather than the fixity, of ideas in the history of thought and culture.