The crisis of modernity / Augusto Del Noce ; edited and translated by Carlo Lancellotti.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Del Noce, Augusto, 1910-1989.

Contributor:

Lancellotti, Carlo, 1965- editor, translator.

Series:

McGill-Queen's studies in the history of ideas ; 64.

McGill-Queen's studies in the history of ideas ; 64

Standardized Title:

Essays. Selections. English

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Civilization, Modern.

Secularization.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 312 pages ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Montreal & Kingston : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014.

Summary:

In his native Italy Augusto Del Noce is regarded as one of the preeminent political thinkers and philosophers of the period after the Second World War. The Crisis of Modernity makes available for the first time in English a selection of Del Noce's essays and lectures on the cultural history of the twentieth century. Del Noce maintained that twentieth-century history must be understood specifically as a philosophical history, because Western culture was profoundly affected by the major philosophies of the previous century such as idealism, Marxism, and positivism. Such philosophies became the secular, neo-gnostic surrogate of Christianity for the European educated classes after the French Revolution, and the twentieth century put them to the practical test, bringing to light their ultimate and necessary consequences. One of the first thinkers to recognize the failure of Marxism, Del Noce posited that this failure set the stage for a new secular, technocratic society that had taken up Marx's historical materialism and atheism while rejecting his revolutionary doctrine. Displaying Del Noce's rare ability to reconstruct intellectual genealogies and to expose the deep metaphysical premises of social and political movements, The Crisis of Modernity presents an original reading of secularization, scientism, the sexual revolution, and the history of modern Western culture. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part 1 Modernity, Revolution, Secularization

1 The Idea of Modernity 3

2 Violence and Modern Gnosticism 19

3 Revolution, Risorgimento, Tradition 49

4 The Latent Metaphysics within Contemporary Politics 59

5 Secularization and the Crisis of Modernity 73

Part 2 The Advent of the Technocratic Society

6 Toward a New Totalitarianism 87

7 The Shadow of Tomorrow 92

8 The Death of the Sacred 118

9 The Roots of the Crisis 137

10 The Ascendance of Eroticism 157

Part 3 The Predicament of the West

11 Authority versus Power 189

12 A "New" Perspective on Left and Right 247.

Notes:

Essays translated from the Italian.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Del Noce, Augusto, 1910-1989. Essays. Selections. English. Crisis of modernity.

ISBN:

9780773544420

0773544429

9780773544437

0773544437

OCLC:

879528729