Foreword

Abstract

This volume, published on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the death of Benedetto Croce, doesn't intend to be a mere celebration or a commemoration of his figure. Croce himself didn't like celebrations and anniversaries, rather preferring the everyday engagement in his work.

We are certainly far from the cultural climate of the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century, when some prejudices and stereotypes about the philosophy of Croce were still largely predominant: the old debates appeared outdated only at the beginning of the eighties, when it began to talk about a “return of Croce” in the Italian culture.

 One can wonder if there has been an effective “return of Croce” in the last thirty years. In fact, although the philosophy of Benedetto Croce has never been a dominant trend in the Italian culture, the publishing house Adelphi has restarted to print his works, and the publisher Bibliopolis has notably increased the issues of the “Edizione Nazionale delle opere di Benedetto Croce”. Furthermore, several congresses and scientific initiatives have increasingly arisen again his figure, in Italy and abroad. Thus, while in some foreign countries - such as the United States - the interest in the work of Benedetto Croce has progressively aroused, in Italy the attention for his philosophy has coincided with a renewed interest in the philosophical tradition of our country.

It would be really difficult to reconstruct the alternating fortunes of the philosophy of Croce in the last thirty years: that would entail an in-depth survey in the fields of the history of ideas, the history of culture, the philosophical historiography, the idealistic and historicist traditions, as well as their reciprocal theoretical implications. The aim of this volume is rather bringing up to date problems and perspectives of his philosophy, in the firm belief that a classic author never belongs only to the past, but he always has something to tell for the future time: that’s why we have entitled this issue of the Bollettino Filosofico “Croce in Between Past and Future” (“Croce tra passato e futuro”).

It’s furthermore important to highlight that many essays present in the volume deal with questions of the philosophy of Croce, which in the past were unjustly considered “minor” with respect to the questions of historicism and idealism: in particular, the question of “vitality”, the problematic relation between existence and history, the interest for the problems of the religious life, and so on.