Introduction

To dedicate an issue to the theme of institution does not mean to offer an assertive or definitive answer to the question “What is institution?”. One has to face the fact, itself in need of explanation, that diverse phenomena, which are very difficult to connect to a common essence, are collected together under the same term. It is not necessary to solve complex problems of classification, or to produce a complete ordering based on rigid categorical partitions: a many-voiced exploration that allows to detect connections, areas of indiscernibility, and family resemblances is more productive. It's by attending to such border areas and trans-disciplinary procedures – which is precisely what is done in all the essays in this collection – that a research oriented in this direction can derive more benefits. In conclusion, choosing institution as a theme means more than one thing. First, it means to identify an “object” that, for the changes involved, in law, in society and in history, requires an openness to treading new paths, without forgetting the vast historical background of its origin; second, to indicate some critical lines along which some traditional conceptual oppositions – such as history/ nature, law/justice, social/political – take on a new, and more complex, articulation; third, to offer grounds for resisting those research programmes that limit themselves to addressing one side of the problem, subscribing to forms of rationalism and scientism that advance a claim to self-sufficiency from which Husserl already resolutely distanced himself, and to show the heuristic value of a thought or way of doing Philosophy capable of more agile and less rigid strategies.