INTRODUCTION Kundera, Milan. Encounter. New York: Harper Collins, 2010. Print. Italian Philosophy Through The War Years Lanaro, Silvio. Storia della repubblica italiana. Venezia: Marsilio, 1992. Print. La Rovere, Luca. L’eredità del fascismo. Gli intellettuali, i giovani e …ché di ciascuna posizione obiettiva, la transizione al postfascismo. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2008. come di ciascun limite ideale, noi Print. avvertiamo la relatività, la complessa Patriarca, Silvana. Italian Vices: Nation and Character from the Risor- connessione di interdipendenza in un gimento to the Republic. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge sistema in continua evoluzione University Press, 2010. Print. Pavone, Claudio. Alle origini della Repubblica. Scritti su fascismo, Antonio Banfi, Vita dell’Arte 29 antifascismo e continuità dello stato. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1995. 1. Introduction ———. Una guerra civile. Saggio storico sulla moralità della Re- sistenza. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1991. A world-shaping event such as World War Two constitutes a locus Ward, David. Antifascisms: Cultural Politics in Italy, 1943-46. crucial to sociohistorical periodization, marking a watershed in the Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996. Print. collective lives of peoples that can then inform critical comparisons Zunino, Piergiorgio. La Repubblica e il suo passato. Bologna: il Mu- and perhaps historical rethinking. Many things must be borne in lino, 2003. Print. mind when considering the impact the war had on Italian society, including foremost the fall of Fascism and the monarchy, emergence of several political parties that shaped public discourse for the rest of the twentieth century, a constitution, and representative democracy. We must of course not forget the cost in lives lost, maimed, destroyed, disrupted, with consequences for decades to come. Although there is no dearth of official documents (government, bureacratic, military, etc.) to reconstruct what took place and what were the contrasting positions in the field, not to speak of the critical and creative production of hundreds and thousands of people who, in their different ways, have intervened in their historical present to rebuke or valorize, critique or justify, a truly chaotic reality—especially after September 8, 1943— very little in recent cultural studies has been dedicated to what one particular class of citizens was doing during those years, namely the philosophers. In this brief sketch I would like to reflect on what I feel were some truly remarkable critical thoughts on the question of the role and task of the philosopher, how to reframe the relationship between metaphysics and knowledge, which new concepts were deemed to be in need of further exploration as fundamental beliefs and habits of xx 1 mind, and which were being challenged or actually crumbling down. the human condition even against all odds, attempt to come up with Though some did throw themselves in the struggle for liberation, some different perspective, the classic search for a “new beginning” and after the war participated actively in shaping the new social and even as the “end” was knocking on the door. In this context, the political configuration of the country, in general philosophers tend to questions are of growing and profound urgency: What is the status, look at the big picture, or interpret their immediate reality in terms of the the role, and social function of philosophy in this atmosphere? What is medium and long range period. In my recent work, I have focused on its relation to knowledge, to understanding social facts, and to history? the relationship between theorizing, methods of acquiring knowledge, Have the existing dominant theories prevented us from seeing certain and their translation into an effective discursive practice that bears phenomena, from reading certain artifacts, and from exploring given directly on how individuals perceive and interpret themselves and domains? Are new methods and new notions of praxis needed? their world.1 In this article, I will focus on the years leading up to the It is well known that the dominant currents of philosophical liberation, when present and future were so uncertain, and the only thought at the time—with ramifications in other areas of intellectual materials to work with were essentially from the past, a past that was research, and signally in education and politics—were Croce’s idealism unraveling. I will use one privileged source, one beacon among many and Gentile’s actualism. Often, however, not enough importance is other possible ones represented by one journal, to scan the panorama.2 accorded to the contemporaneous presence of large though often less vocal currents of spiritualism, mysticism, neoscholasticism, 2. Philosophy at the Center of Human Experience personalism as well as minor currents of neokantians and neohegelians.5 It is not that philosophers and critics were forbidden access to what In April of 1940 Antonio Banfi launchedStudi filosofici in Milan.3 The was going on beyond the Alps or the Atlantic, as traditional scholarly opening words signal, much more than a program, an intention: books in the humanities were reviewed regularly, especially if written in German. But to dare to propose a new or alternative philosophy or Philosophy cannot be indifferent to the grave moment that Europe way of doing critique meant risking being shot down from the pages is going through: if philosophy is a human activity, and in fact tends of Croce’s La Critica or Gentile’s Giornale Critico della Filosofia to be the center of human experience, it cannot remain indifferent Italiana. There was, of course, also the Rivista di Filosofia,6 which to human culture, understood as any historical happening of featured many anti-idealist interventions; nevertheless it is not a spiritual import: it must assume a responsibility and take a stand. gross generalization to claim that La Critica and the Giornale served (SF 1.1: 1)4 as intellectual filters for many years, unofficial censors (the former more than the latter) to the introduction of some of the challenging The main concern throughout the life of the quarterly is the status of ideas that were circulating already in large parts of Europe and the philosophical thinking at a juncture where in the culture at large, and Americas. To gauge the relevance in Italian intellectual history of within academic and intellectual circles in particular, there was at first Banfi’s undertaking one must briefly recall some of the premises of the a feeling of stasis, coupled to a sense that the “bufera” was not long two dominant philosophical schools on the eve of the greatest human in coming, then the chaos and sense of disorientation when there were conflict ever recorded.7 In brief, we recall the conception of immanent two invaders physically in the territory and three governments vying Spirit, eternist in Croce, rooted in the all-encompassing Act for Gentile. for authority and control, and finally the complex post-war debates Categories of the spirit could not be affected by everyday events or by that led to the toppling of the monarchy and the birth of the republic. social upheavals, unless they spoke to or embodied the unchanging Actions and events of such enormity cannot but force a thinker to character of Spirit. Both had clipped the wings of Hegel’s dialectics, question everything and, where there is enough courage and trust in as consciousness did not “develop” through time but maintained its 2 3 status of closure. There was no idea of “progress” possible in the banned science, politics, economics, and technology from this acceptation of this concept common since the Enlightenment,8 and the branch of research insofar as they did not participate in, save as mere empirical dimension was conceived as merely mechanistic adaptation accidents, or were not constitutive of the life of the Spirit. History to survive, as serving technique, not thought. Both systems aimed at was conceived of as a verbal art focused on the personality of the confirming a higher order, agnostic in one, religious-mystical in the historian who sought to explain the struggle to grasp spirit, of which other. A close reading of the foundations of idealism and actualism freedom was an essential component. But, as we will see, this notion reveals the theoretical impossibility for these two modes of thought of freedom was very vague. The second issue was the consciousness to give ontological valence to, and therefore properly to understand, of actuality. This may appear a positive point, as Banfi himself in science, art, or the social struggle.9 Above all, the inability to see the some later articles speaks of the necessity to be constantly focused connection between method—understood as praxis first, in Marxist on the present and real moment. But the prevailing outlook was that terms, applicatio later, in hermeneutic parlance, but strong of the use of philosophy was concerned with generalities, and with practical and inference and process—and the status of the object being investigated, pedagogical concerns whose ultimate end is to confirm the truth of and to valorize the process of how knowledge is constructed and the immanent spirit. The third point is a revaluation of the critical obtained, made them strongly dogmatic, rigid, Olympic.10 However, consciousness itself, which Banfi believed ought to go beyond the rather than analyzing the basic tenets of these two schools, which useless old debates between realism and idealism, and focus on the would require a separate study in view of their specific differences analysis of the dogmatism that pervaded the field. An inquiry into how and different ways in which they effectively influenced society and knowledge is formed reveals how each dogmatic position still bears in legitimated the fascist state—one indirectly, the other by identifying its bosom a “problematicità”—a word-concept that recurs in Banfi’s with it—we will follow Banfi and the authors he published to see thought—and a dialectic that are the principles of its theoretical how they perceive and critique idealism and actualism, and more development (SF 1.1: 8).