Table Of ContentRecto Running Head i
HISTORICISM AND FASCISM IN MODERN ITALY
During the early decades of the twentieth century, Italy produced
distinctive innovations in both the intellectual and political realms.
On the one hand, Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) and Giovanni
Gentile (1875–1944) spearheaded a radical rethinking of historicism
and philosophical idealism that significantly reoriented Italian culture.
On the other hand, the period witnessed the first rumblings of
fascism. Assuming opposite sides, Gentile became the semi-official
philosopher of fascism while Croce argued for a renewed liberalism
based on ‘absolute’ historicism.
InHistoricism and Fascism in Modern Italy, David D. Roberts uses the
ideological conflict between Croce and Gentile as a basis for a wider
discussion of the interplay between politics and ideas in Italy in the
twentieth century. Roberts examines the connection between fascism
and the modern Italian intellectual tradition, arguing that the rela-
tionship not only deepens our understanding of generic fascism and
liberalism but also illuminates ongoing dangers and possibilities in the
wider Western world. This set of twelve essays by one of the leading
scholars in the field represents an authoritative view of the modern
Italian intellectual tradition, its relationship with fascism, and its
enduring implications for history, politics, and culture in Italy and
beyond.
(Toronto Italian Studies)
david d. robertsis Albert Berry Saye Professor of History at the
University of Georgia.
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Recto Running Head iii
Historicism and Fascism
in Modern Italy
David D. Roberts
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
iv Verso Running Head
www.utppublishing.com
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2007
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 978-0-8020-9308-0 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8020-9494-0 (paper)
Printed on acid-free paper
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Roberts, David D. (David Dion), 1943–
Historicism and fascism in Modern Italy / David D. Roberts.
(Toronto Italian Studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8020-9308-0 (bound) ISBN 978-0-8020-9494-0 (pbk.)
1. Fascism – Italy – History – 20th century. 2. Italy – Intellectual life – 20th
century. 3. Croce, Benedetto, 1866–1952. 4. Gentile, Giovanni, 1875–1944.
5. Historicism. 6. Italy – History – 20th century. I. Title. II. Series.
DG571.R63 2007 945.09 C2007-901489-5
The University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its
publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the
Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
Recto Running Head v
Contents
Introduction: Historicism, Fascism, and the Wider Significance
of the Modern Italian Experience 3
1 An Indirect Italian Angle on a Few Big Historical Questions 35
2 Franchini’s Disillusionment: Rereading the Intervista su Croce
from Abroad 54
3 The Revolt against Croce in Post–Second World War Italian
Culture 68
4 Croce in America: Influence, Misunderstanding, and Neglect
(with a supplement on the fortunes of Giovanni Gentile in the
United States and Canada) 81
5 Historicism, Liberalism, Fascism: Rethinking the Croce-Gentile
Schism 114
6 Maggi’s Croce, Sasso’s Gentile, and the Riddles of Twentieth-
Century Italian Intellectual History 143
7 How Not to Think about Fascism and Ideology, Intellectual
Antecedents and Historical Meaning 173
8 Croce, Crocean Historicism, and Contemporary History after
Fascism 201
9 Crocean Historicism and Post-Totalitarian Thought 211
10 What Is Living and What Is Dead? Ginzburg’s Microhistory,
Croce’s Historicism, and the Search for a Postmodern
Historiography 221
vi Contents
11 The Stakes of Misreading: Hayden White, Carlo Ginzburg, and the
Crocean Legacy 237
12 Postmodernism and History: An Unfinished Agenda 265
Notes 289
Index 361
Recto Running Head 1
HISTORICISM AND FASCISM IN MODERN ITALY
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Introduction 3
Introduction: Historicism, Fascism,
and the Wider Significance of the
Modern Italian Experience
Seeking Connections
I am grateful to those colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic who have
suggested that I publish a selection of my essays on modern Italian
topics. Doing so enables me to bring together a set of pieces, most pre-
viously published, but several as yet unpublished, that explore inter-
locking themes from a variety of angles. I thought it might be useful to
make even those already published more readily available, especially
because their publication has been in disparate venues, some hard to
find in North America or the anglophone world. A few have been pub-
lished only in Italian. But I also believed the combination, in the same
volume, of this particular set of essays to be potentially illuminating, as
the intersections among my areas of interest may not be apparent at
first glance. So I welcome this chance to connect my somewhat dis-
parate angles and to reflect a bit upon their intersection.
Broadly speaking, I have been concerned with two different topics as
I have explored, on the one hand, fascism and totalitarianism and, on
the other, historicism and issues in contemporary historical culture.
What has most obviously bridged the two areas has been my longstand-
ing interest in the modern Italian intellectual tradition centring upon
Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile. Together, these two thinkers
wrought something approaching a cultural revolution in Italy as they
came to exercise a leading position in Italian intellectual life during the
first decades of the twentieth century. Although it was fundamentally
anti-positivist, the distinctive tradition to which they were central has
always been hard to characterize: idealist? neo-Hegelian? historicist? or
perhaps historicist-idealist, whatever that might mean? That even such
