La lotta alla corruzione come recupero dell’etica pubblica

Abstract

Corruption has never spared any system, materializing, since ancient times, in conduct contrasting with the idem sentire de repubblica, or, in more current terms, with “public ethics”, that is to say with that variegated complex of social values translated in as many constitutional principles from today’s pluralistic democracies. Public ethics, due to its greater breadth (both in content and in recipients), is distinguished from all other possible ethics, individual or collective, particular or specialist, including “institutional ethics”. In fact, while the latter is exhausted in the rules that concern the correct behavior of those entrusted with public functions, the other, involving everyone, also and above all concerns the consciences and conduct of private citizens, the ways in which they relate to each other and with the government apparatus. However, given the “multi-offensive” character of corruption, which is capable to compromise several cornerstones of public ethics at the same time, an effective fight against it must be understood as an overall recovery of ethics itself. In other words, it is not a sectorial but a transversal battle, which does not exclude anyone’s contribution and relies, rather than on particular economic interests, on more general cultural aspects.