A review of contradictory interpretations of Giuseppe Mazziniʼs political thought on the Balkans : Mazzini between national democracies, imperialism and anti-imperialism

This paper will try to provide, in a concise form, the synthesis of new and past knowledge about the phenomenon of messianism, one of the pillars of the political philosophy of Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872). This paper analyzes the origins, the influence and the power of the irredentist ideas for the naissance of Italian imperialism, and their conditionality with Mazzini's political and theological thought. Mazzini's writings abound with many allusions, quotes, metaphors, and affirmative messages that were deliberately misinterpreted or misused by some of the devotees of his work. For example, it is believed that the "sacralization of the political" and "laicisation of religion",-in this case of Christianity are the two important elements of the Mazzini's philosophy of reincarnation. The issue of the esoteric character of Mazzini's metaphysics represents also a neglected and overlooked aspect of his whole thought. Messianism and the inclination to deist interpretation of historical events led a number of Italian and world intellectuals to recognize in Mazzini an authoritarian thinker