Augusto Del Noce
| Augusto Del Noce | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
11 August 1910 Pistoia, Italy |
| Died | 30 December 1989 (aged 79) Rome, Italy |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Continental philosophy |
| Institutions | Sapienza University of Rome |
Augusto Del Noce (11 August 1910 – 30 December 1989) was an Italian philosopher and political thinker.
Del Noce was born in Tuscany but he grew up and studied in Turin, which between the two World Wars was one of the main centers of secular and anti-Fascist culture in Italy. He completed his degree in Philosophy in 1932 at the University of Turin, with a dissertation on Malebranche under the direction of Adolfo Faggi. Between 1934 and 1943 he published a series of essays on early modern philosophy that established his reputation as a specialist in the field, not only in Italy but also in France where his work was praised by well-known scholars such as Étienne Gilson and Henri Gouhier. His studies of modern rationalism reflected a broader interest in the relationship between Catholic thought and secular culture that he had developed during years in Turin. After having been one of the first Italian readers of French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, and a thoughtful anti-Fascist, Del Noce turned after the war to the question of the relationship between Christianity and Communism. In 1946 he published two essays on Marx which included an extended discussion of the place of atheism in Marx’s philosophy. His works on Marx were part of a lifelong interest in the role of atheism in the history of modern philosophy, which culminated in 1964 in his magnum opus The Problem of Atheism. In 1965 he also published a large monographic work Catholic Reformation and Modern Philosophy, Vol. 1: Descartes. In 1966 Del Noce was appointed Professor of History of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Trieste, but in 1970 he transferred to the University of Rome "La Sapienza," where he was appointed Professor of History of Political Doctrines and later Professor of Political Philosophy. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Del Noce's focus shifted to the theme of secularization and contemporary history. Some of his essays from this period were published in the 1971 volume The Age of Secularization. Later in that decade Del Noce returned to the question of the relationship between Catholics and Marxists and wrote two new books, The Catholic Communist and one of his most famous and controversial works, The Suicide of the Revolution, in which he argued that the process of dissolution of Marxism into neo-bourgeois nihilism is already at work in the thought of Antonio Gramsci. In his final years Del Noce became very much a “public intellectual,” writing numerous articles in newspapers and weekly magazines, and becoming involved in the Italian political debate to the point of serving a term as a senator. His final philosophical work was an extensive monograph on the philosophy of Giovanni Gentile and on his relationship with Fascism. Del Noce died suddenly on December 30, 1989, a few months after the end of the Soviet Union had marked symbolically the final disintegration of the Marxist revolution, which he had predicted many years earlier on philosophical grounds. In his native Italy Del Noce is widely regarded as one of the pre-eminent philosophers and political thinkers of the second half of the 20th century. Although he was a distinguished scholar of early modern philosophy, he is especially remembered for his penetrating exegesis of the philosophy of Marx, for his innovative interpretation of Fascism and for his critique of the progressive-technocratic culture that became gradually dominant in Europe after World War II.
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