On Europe, Freedom, and History: Benedetto Croce’s Unorthodox Liberalism (1925–1932)

This article examines Benedetto Croce’s liberalism as a metapolitical response to Italian Fascism, focusing in particular on its relationship with his views on Europe and historical knowledge. Croce’s liberalism, deeply rooted in his historicist philosophy, conceived freedom as a dynamic, ever-evolving process inseparable from historical consciousness. His Europeanism, for its part, was not geopolitical but a cultural and philosophical conviction: for Croce, to be liberal was to be historicist, and to be historicist was perforce to be European. From this perspective, he argued that modern freedom emerged through Europe’s critical engagement with its own past – a process increasingly threatened, from the 1870s onward, by anti-historicist doctrines. His thought, centred on the tension between individual agency and historical necessity, represents a lasting reflection on the fragility and enduring promise of European liberalism.