High and dramatic is the tone of the two letters which, in October 1924, put an end to the almost thirty-year intellectual association between Benedetto Croce e Giovanni Gentile. He asks his old friend for “two frank and clear words”, coming “from the bottom of his heart”, to clarify whether he has decided to break up “for moral reasons”. AND Croce, without sinking the blow, he recalls the “mental disagreement” to which “another of a practical and political nature has now been added”, so that “the first has been converted into the second; and this is harsher.”
Benedetto Croce’s lesson, 70 years later
by Roberto Esposito
Beyond the hope that “many bitternesses will clear themselves up”, he knows well that the rupture is inevitable. It’s not just the thread of deep affection between two great intellectuals that breaks. It is the history of Italy, which collapsed into a crevasse from which only twenty years later it will slowly manage to rise again. But Gentile, killed the April 15, 1944 on the doorstep of a group of partisans, he will never utter the words that “dear Benedetto” hoped to hear: “You were right”.
These two easier close the last volume of Correspondence between the two philosophers, just published by the publisher Aragno to complete a very important editorial undertaking, edited by Cinzia Cassani and Cecilia Castellani, for the Benedetto Croce Library Foundation and the Giovanni Gentile Foundation.
This is the publication of all the letters that the two philosophers exchanged between 1896 and 1924. Already available to scholars in separate volumes, edited respectively by Alda Croce and Simona Giannantoni, the letters are now brought together in a single edition in five volumes, enriched with essential documents and information, introduced by a valuable essay by Gennaro Sasso.
In addition to giving us the story of a friendship made up of domestic exchanges and confidences, the Correspondence constitutes an extraordinary chapter of Italian thought in the first half of the twentieth century. Started when Gentile, student of the Scuola Normale, is addressed to Crocethirty years old and already surrounded by esteem and respect, the correspondence continues, between harmonies and disagreements, which grew over time until it resulted in the open disagreement, made public by Croce in 1913. Then, on the eve of the war, when Gentile declared himself interventionist and Croce neutralist, the philosophical divergence begins to take on political significance. Until, with the advent of fascism, embraced by Gentile and opposed by Croce, the rupture becomes irreparable.
Yet even then the two friends, now adversaries, are perceived as the two poles of a single pairing, united by the seriousness of a commitment that is not afraid of putting life itself at stake. What united Croce and Gentile were the great philosophical themes that they both derived from their authors – Kant and Hegel, through Spaventa, for Gentile, Vico e De Sanctis for Cross.
Benedetto Croce Award, in the running Di Pietrantonio, Armeni and Scego
edited by the Culture editorial team
What brought them together was the quality of philosophical research worthy of the great European reflection, the absolute dedication to research, the ability to create an organic system of ideas – more rigorous and technically elaborate in Gentile, more airy and open to other languages in Croce . In this regard, Sasso acutely observes that, far from separating them, this lexical dissimilarity contributed to bringing them closer together, as happens when diversity attracts more than similarity because it allows each to know the other better and, through him, also himself. In this sense, Croce’s brilliant restlessness was the other side of Gentile’s conceptual decisiveness.
Then, over time, as their philosophical systems mature, affinity begins to give way to divergence. Of course, the problems they continue to grapple with are the same: the interpretation of Hegel and Marx, the nature and role ofaesthetics, the relationship between history and philosophy. But the differences already stand out in them. If Cross tends to close the historical materialism within the confines of economics, Gentile introduces it into the philosophy of praxis.
Then, with the publication of the first great works – theAesthetics (1902), the Logic as a science of pure concept and the Philosophy of practice (1909) by Croce, The act of thinking as a pure act (1912) and the Tgeneral theory of the spirit as a pure act (1916) by Gentile — the hiatus widens. At issue is the relationship, always decisive in philosophy, between One and multiple.
Croce affirms the distinction between the moments of the Spirit, Gentile the unity of the pure Act, understood as an identity that burns all the differences, starting from that between thought and action. Upon closer inspection, it is precisely this philosophically extreme option of Gentile’s, in which Croce glimpses a touch of mysticism, that determines the break. Once every distance between thought and action dissolves, there is no room for any mediation: the political choice must immediately translate thought into living praxis and vice versa. Therefore Gentile’s adherence to fascism is not something external, or instrumental, which is added to his philosophy, but the profound essence of him. From that moment he always remains faithful to himself, pursuing to the end what appears to him to be both a destiny and a supreme act of freedom.
And it is there that the relationship with Croce finally breaks down, when he chooses with equal determination to oppose the regime. There political rupture it is as definitive as the philosophical one, and indeed because it is philosophical. The two old friends are too serious thinkers not to follow their own path to the end, even if it inevitably leads them to collision. While continuing to publish on the Criticism di Croce, before founding his own magazine, il Critical journal of Italian philosophy, Gentile is now far away, ready to follow Mussolini on a road of no return. After an initial hesitation, Croce takes the opposite direction, becoming the moral leader of anti-fascism.
Today, when we have the entire collection of letters, we must not give in to the temptation to nuance the radical nature of that clash. Two more anniversaries are approaching. That of Gentile’s death, on 15 April, which will be commemorated in the Senate, and that of the centenary of the release of the two Manifestos, recently republished, edited by Alessandra Tarquini and Giovanni Scirocco, from Fuori Scena – the fascist one written by Gentile and the anti-fascist one, written by Croce.
Returning, as is necessary, to these events, there is a double risk that must be avoided: the first is to deny, or reduce, Gentile’s philosophy based on his political choice. The second is to nuance this choice, declassifying it to right-wing liberalism. It would be a serious mistake and even an affront. Gentile was one of the greatest European philosophers and bravely faced death. But he was radically fascist. Croce, for this reason, became his staunchest opponent. The two Manifestos – the fascist one and the anti-fascist one – are not equivalent, as some are starting to say. Gentile’s defended that regime which would suffocate freedom for twenty years, leading Italy to material and moral ruin. Croce’s defended our freedom at all costs with the strength of principles and the courage of ideas.
The book
Correspondence by Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile (Aragno, edited by C. Cassani and C. Castellani, 990 pages, 60 euros. In two volumes)
With this fifth volume of the Correspondence (from 1915 to 1924), which is presented today in Rome, at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, at 3 pm, the publication of the Croce-Gentile correspondence concludes
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– 2024-03-28 22:58:48
