Benedetto Croce and the problem of Enlightenment, in « History of European Ideas», vol. 36, 2010, p. 101-111 (original) (raw)
Related papers
History as Contemporary History in the Thinking of Benedetto Croce
Conati, N. (2015). History as Contemporary History in the Thinking of Benedetto Croce. Open Journal of Philosophy, 5, 54-61., 2015
In this brief consideration of mine, trying to remain as faithful as possible to the texts taken into exam, I will first try to introduce the concept of history as contemporary history in the thinking of Benedetto Croce, whereas the second part of the reasoning will point toward proving and meditating on how such concept crosses the whole philosophical system of the Italian intellectual. What does contemporary history mean according to Benedetto Croce? Why is the spirit of the historian fundamental in the description of this concept? What kind of connection exists between story and contemporary history? What does pathology of history mean? How does the concept of contemporary history relate to that of awareness, of finished and thinking? These are but a few of the questions to which I tried to find an answer with this essay.
Croce e la cultura giuridica italiana degli anni venti del novecento
Italian Review of Legal History, 2017
The Twenties of the past century is a period of strong debate on the part of Benedetto Croce either with the politics of fascism (from which he gradually took the distance up to an open disapproval and to the undersigning of the anti-fascist intellectuals Declaration), or with legal science and with its demand to offer an autonomous perspective of knowledge. This second field of intervention is particularly characterized by the controversy with the doctrine of natural law of the philosopher Giorgio Del Vecchio and with the one of the Romanist Pietro Bonfante. In this second one particularly, the vision of the Law under Benedetto Croce point of view, i.e. the objection to the same autonomy of the legal speech, raised up in all its intensity. The distance from the politics of fascism and from the attacks brought to the legal science allowed Benedetto Croce to develop a deep and significant thought on some very general and basic topics, as the one on the origin of freedom, in the contrast between its individual and institutional dimension. Different effects we can find in the comparison between the historicism of Benedetto Croce and the tendencies of the jurists of the third decade of the twentieth century. A first, not secondary (and presumably unwilled) result of the position assumed by Croce toward the legal science was paradoxically to encourage the assumption, within the second, of a neo idealism interpretation of the law. In the attempt to affirm the supremacy of neo idealism philosophy, a sort of incorporation of the latter in the method used by the jurists in the formulation of their science took place. A second field where such comparison took place was for sure the issue about the qualification of the Law, a dogmatic ground where the progressive evolution of the relationship between individual and social moment of the Italian legal experience, in the direction of the definition in a totalitarian way of the behavior rules designed for founding the parameters of the activity of individuals, took place.
A Modernist Interpreter: Benedetto Croce and the Politics of Italian Culture
The European Legacy, 2000
This article uses the example of Benedetto Croce to challenge one feature of Zygmunt Bauman's famous distinction between modern legislators and post-modern interpreters — the missing figure of the “modern” interpreter. If Bauman grants that most interpreters are to some degree legislators, he overlooks the whole Hegelian tradition’s attempt at an interpretative defense of modernity that revealed its intrinsic rationality. These modern interpreters prefigured much of the postmodern critique of the Enlightenment’s supposed abstract universalism, but proposed to put in its place not the mere historical contingency of the postmodernist but a concrete universalism that located the rational within the real. As such, they claimed to avoid the legislator’s insensitivity to cultural differences and particular circumstances without falling into the equally problematic historicist relativism of the postmodern interpreter.
A. Moulakis (ed), The Promise of History, (Walter de Gruyter, 1985), 1985
Croce was neither a political philosopher nor a practising politician per se and, in spite of being frequently drawn into the political limelight, always stressed that he was a scholar and thinker above all. Yet he saw his scholarship as a civic duty 'political in its own way within its proper sphere.' The political role of his philosophy has, however, given rise to a variety of interpretations, being seen in the different guises of the philosophic defence of the Giolittian era, the originator of fascist doctrine, the guiding spirit of liberty under Mussolini and the midwife of Italian communism.3 More recently, the historicist form he gave his thought, stemming as it does from Hegelian idealism, has come to be regarded as the very antithesis of the liberalism that he espoused. A better understanding of Croce's conception of philosophy and its relation to politics would therefore seem to be called for if some sense is to be made of these discordant images of his role in the ideological debates of modern Italy.
Claudia Di Fonzo. Dante tra diritto, teologia ed esegesi antica. Napoli: Edises, 2012. Pp. 188. ISBN 9788879597449. € 15.* In her new volume (Dante between jurisprudence, theology and ancient exegesis) Claudia Di Fonzo-who in 2008 edited the L'ultima forma dell'Ottimo commento -discusses the legacy of the Supreme Poet with an innovative approach. Di Fonzo analyzes some important traits of Alighieri's work by inserting it in a context in which she intends to reconstruct the connections between jurisprudence, eschatology, hermeneutics and poetry in Dante's political-theological conception. The author re-reads Dante's texts not only in function of some new results in philological investigations, but also in an attempt to reveal new ways in Dante's interpretation. As Di Fonzo sustains, the Comedy and Dante's treatises are special synthesis of certain "roving concepts" ("motivi vaganti") of the European Middle Ages, reformulated by the poetic power of the man who is considered by Eliot as the greatest among the poets of modern languages (p.4).
We publish the second part of the interview of our councillor Davide Bondì with Michele Maggi, on the presence of Benedetto Croce in the contemporary cultural and political debate. Maggi, a passionate and acute interpreter of twentieth-century culture, was full professor of the history of political philosophy in Florence. Link ENG: https://www.gramsciforthehumanities.org/en/the-presence-of-croce-in-the-contemporary-cultural-and-political-debate/ Pubblichiamo la seconda parte dell’intervista del nostro consigliere Davide Bondì a Michele Maggi, sulla presenza di Benedetto Croce nel dibattito culturale e politico contemporaneo. Maggi, interprete appassionato e acuto della cultura novecentesca, è stato professore ordinario di storia della filosofia politica a Firenze. Link ITA: https://www.gramsciforthehumanities.org/la-presenza-di-croce-nel-dibattito-culturale-e-politico-contemporaneo/