ABSTRACT
The antinuclear movement is the movement par excellence of modernity in that its whole internal dynamic revolves, covertly or overtly, around the conflict of the only values of modernity that are universal: freedom and life. The process of universalization, the end result of which is the exclusive position of the values of freedom and life, has several constituents. The universalizing process taking place from the early eighteenth century onward, and covering the whole period of the Enlightenment, always had recourse to natural right theory, and it sometimes stressed freedom, and at other times life, as primary universal values. The simultaneous ascendancy of life and freedom to the rank of universal values does not mean that conflicts and collisions between them—in a theoretical or practical form—are inconceivable. The unity of freedom and life as universal values, as common measures of the level of humanity of our civilization, must be maintained, or else the democratic Left would have resigned its historical mission.
