Abstract

The essay addresses the relation between community and equality through a critical-reconstructive approach. Starting from the distinction static equality-dynamic equality, and in the light of Max Weber's concept of community as a "sense dimension", the nexus community-equality is analyzed with regard to some Western communitarian ideal types: the "rooted" community dating back to the Greek polis, the Christian (or "spiritual") community, the modern (or "imagined") community and the contemporary "virtual" (or "uprooted", immaterial) community. The multiple refractions of the idea of equality involved by these models show both the complex relation community-law and the problematic emergence of equality within the communitarian sphere, especially as regards to the ongoing and radical transformation of the sociological-legal scenarios.