A civil sociology of the supernatural. Rationality, historicity and transcendence in the thought of Luigi Sturzo

“Retracing the route travelled between two important sociological frameworks, of the forms and of the syntheses, we shall reveal how every passage from the individual to social groups and vice versa is non other than a process of transcendence” . In this excerpt from 1949, which is certainly “audacious” for secular knowledge , the effort carried out by Luigi Sturzo throughout his varied production is well defined: to rethink, with refined sociological sensibility, the complex relationship between the individual and society on the one hand, and between rationality and transcendence on the other. This effort was set in a historicist perspective, with the aim to innovate social sciences themselves under an ethical and civil profile. The purpose of these notes is to retrace this complex relation, mainly referring to the work 'The True Life. Sociology of the Supernatural' (1943), with a focus on the original traits of Sturzo’s pluralist vision, still today very inspiring, that goes in the direction of a “civil sociology of the supernatural”.