From Men into Gods: American Pragmatism, Italian Proto-Fascism, and Secular Religion
This article argues that the philosophy of American pragmatism was a genetic factor that may have contributed to the formation of certain key elements of Italian fascist ideology, or what Emilio Gentile has called the ‘theology’ of the fascist ‘political religion’. Scholars who have studied the tran...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
2014
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| In: |
Politics, religion & ideology
Year: 2014, Volume: 15, Issue: 4, Pages: 541-564 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article argues that the philosophy of American pragmatism was a genetic factor that may have contributed to the formation of certain key elements of Italian fascist ideology, or what Emilio Gentile has called the ‘theology’ of the fascist ‘political religion’. Scholars who have studied the transatlantic reception history of classical American pragmatism have long been forced to acknowledge the existence of a historical connection between pragmatism and fascism; however, this relationship has never been adequately explained at the conceptual level. This article focuses on the precise moment when pragmatism entered into the genealogy of fascism - that is, the ‘proto-fascist’ avant-garde intellectual Giovanni Papini's reading and reformulation of the philosophy of William James. It seeks to correct the misconception that Papini was neither a serious reader of James nor a serious philosopher in his own right by showing that (a) Papini correctly understood James's thought and extrapolated from it in new and philosophically interesting directions, and (b) James himself accepted and approved of what Papini did with his philosophy and would even incorporate distinctive aspects of the ‘Papinian’ approach to pragmatism into his own later work. The article also seeks to show that the Papinian conception of the Uomo-Dio, or ‘Man-God’, could have served as an early prototype of the so-called ‘new fascist man’ - who, in an apparently paradoxical, self-contradictory formulation, pursued self-transcendence through self-assertion. |
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| ISSN: | 2156-7697 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Politics, religion & ideology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/21567689.2014.959505 |