What is the role of social utility in the Italian Constitution? Starting from an analysis of the Constituent debate and its cultural roots, which find an essential reference in the concept of utility elaborated in the moral philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment (David Hume, Adam Smith), the book shows how the Constitution draws a complex relationship between economy and politics which has at its centre a project of individual development which is not reducible to the achievement of the material well-being of the community only. In the intentions of the constituents, social utility, the real cornerstone of the economic constitution, is constitutively linked to the protection of health, work and the right to rest as a space for cultivating oneself and one’s emotional and friendship relationships. This horizon of meaning seems to have been lost in more recent times, when social utility is identified with the protection of competition and consumer rights.
