Conoscenza, comparazione e problemi di comparazione diacronica: a vent’anni dai Fondamenti del diritto europeo

This paper focuses on a method of legal research trough which to study the Foundations of European Law, that is that of diachronic comparison, which well captures the peculiarity of the subject under examination, consisting in a continuous dialectic between past and present. This approach does not claim to exhaust all the problems that, in terms of scientific research, are posed by the Foundations of European Law, and therefore constitutes one of the methodological approaches conceivable. Having focused on the concepts of juridical knowledge and legal comparison, this contribution also explains the differences between the historical-comparatist and the pure comparatist and investigates the peculiar characteristics of the diachronic comparison especially as regards the directionality of the research and the type of understanding that can be achieved.