Spinoza and Twentieth-century Italian Culture

The paper distinguishes between philosophy and culture and explains the reasons why it is preferable to investigate the relationships between Spinoza and the Italian culture (rather than philosophy) of the twentieth century. Italian culture is characterized by five prevailing forces: Roman Catholicism, the neo-idealism of Croce and Gentile, fascism, Marxism, the mass media. Spinoza’s conceptual world has remained foreign to Italian culture, where it has not been expressly opposed, as, for example, by the Catholic side. The paper then examines some of the main philosophical interpretations of Spinoza (as advanced by Giovanni Gentile, Piero Martinetti, Augusto Guzzo, and Antonio Banfi) showing the relationships between them, the philosophy of their authors, and some salient characteristics of the Italian culture of the century. The theologizing attitude of these philosophers (except Banfi), although expressed in different forms, led them to often misleading interpretations that contributed to nullifying a possible encounter between Spinoza and Italian culture. Finally, mention is made of the historical, philological and exegetical research which, over the last thirty years, has offered a new and significant contribution, with an international impact, to Spinoza studies.