Piero Gobetti Research Articles

Гобетти П. Достоевский как классик и мистик русской литературы

<p>In an essay written in 1921, the Italian thinker, writer and publisher Piero Gobetti conducts a critical analysis of the creative heritage of F. M. Dostoevsky from certain positions. Exploring the spiritual and moral problems of the Russian writer, the author creates an integral image of Dostoevsky the classic and categorically does not recognize Dostoevsky the mystic, pointing out that mysticism in his work stems from the style itself — the «torturous psychological analysis» of life. The original text is a fragment of the earliest edition of P. Gobetti's collection «Paradox of the Russian Spirit» («Paradosso dello spirito russo», (1926)), not translated into Russian. An analysis of general cultural reflections on the role of the Russian intelligentsia and the role of Russian literature in the collection is given in the article of this issue «“The Paradox of the Russian Spirit” by Piero Gobetti». </p><p>The translation was made according to the publication: Gobetti P. “Dostoievschi”, <em>Paradosso dello spirito russo</em>. Torino: Edizioni del Baretti, 1926. 256 p. URL: <a href="https://archive.org/details/paradossodellosp0000gobe/page/n9/mode/1up" target="_blank">https://archive.org/details/paradossodellosp0000gobe/page/n9/mode/1up</a></p>

«Парадокс русского духа» Пьеро Гобетти

During his short life, the Italian anti-fascist intellectual Piero Gobetti (1901–1926) was able to accomplish the incredible. He was the founder, editor and author of three magazines (Energie nove, 1918; La rivoluzione liberale, 1922; Il Baretti, 1924); he managed his own publishing house (Piero Gobetti edizioni), in which 114 volumes were published in 4 years; wrote books, articles, was a translator from russian. In Italy, they recognize his importance as one of the main distributors of Russian culture in Turin in the 1920s. In Russia, they are almost unfamiliar with the publications of P. Gobetti, even with his repeatedly reprinted work entitled «The Paradox of the Russian Spirit» (1926). In this article we try to consider the general cultural aspects and paradoxes of the time and place of this study's appearance in the context of the change of epochs, intellectual movements of those years and in the Italian national context. Looking ahead, we can say that the book, conceived as an analysis of the revolutionary ideology's movement in Russia, or at least it is completed chapters, turned out to be a text about Russian culture, or even, according to Vittorio Strada, about the specific role of the russian «intelligentsia». For a better understanding of the views of P. Gobetti, this issue also provides a translation of his essay «Dostoevsky as a classic and mystic of Russian literature», published in 1921.

Interview with Pietro Polito. Between the history of “our roots” and the history of present: the Centro studi Piero Gobetti

The Centro studi Piero Gobetti is an institute focused on the history and the political thought of the XX century, which aims are both to safeguard and make accessible the works of Piero Gobetti and the consequent cultural traditions and to spread their values, vision and principles, as drivers for social change. In this interview, the director Pietro Polito traces the history of the Study Center, founded in 1961, and deepens the working lines for the next years.

The Anti-Fascism of a “Liberal Revolutionary”:Piero Gobetti (1901–1926)

Open AccessThe Anti-Fascism of a “Liberal Revolutionary”:Piero Gobetti (1901–1926)Ersilia Alessandrone PeronaErsilia Alessandrone PeronaErsilia Alessandrone Gambardella (in Perona), born in 1943 in Bolzano. Literary and historical studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. She was a researcher at the Piero Gobetti Study Center in Turin and, until 2012, director of the Piedmont Institute for the History of the Resistance and the contemporary society Giorgio Agosti. She is currently a member of the boards of both institutes. She helped found the Diffuse Museum of Resistance, Rights, and Freedom in Turin, of which she was president. She has dedicated studies to political symbolism, women’s writing, and edition of works by Piero Gobetti, whose correspondence she oversees.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:Jun 2021https://doi.org/10.13109/tode.2021.18.1.73SectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail AboutAbstractDer Journalist und politische Schriftsteller Piero Gobetti ist eines der prominentesten Opfer des Faschismus. Der Beitrag unternimmt den Versuch, den Inhalt und die Instrumente seines (wesentlich kulturellen) Antifaschismus zu erfassen. Die zentrale These lautet: Gobetti bekämpfte den Faschismus im Namen seines politischen Projekts einer zivilen und ökonomischen Modernisierung des Staates. Seine zentrale Idee war die einer „liberalen Revolution“, entwickelt im Geist der Erneuerung der Jahre nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Da er Faschismus ausschließlich als italienisches Phänomen ansah, stand er an der Grenze zwischen dem Zeitalter des Liberalismus und dem des Totalitarismus. Dennoch sind die Stärke seiner „Rhetorik“ und die Effektivität seines kulturellen Antifaschismus von hoher Relevanz für die Gegenwart. Previous article Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Download book coverVolume 18Issue 1June 2021 ISSN: 1612-9008eISSN: 2196-8276HistoryPublished online:June 2021 Information© 2021 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen, ein Imprint der Brill-GruppeThis work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.PDF download

Piero Gobetti: Not Only an Analysis of Italian Affairs

Piero Gobetti (Turin 1901- Paris 1926) has been always considered just as a political writer of Italian affairs, but this amounts to an understatement. In his journals, Gobetti took into account several foreign countries with regard to politics, economy, culture, customs and traditions. In these analysis Gobetti proved to have extensive knowledge of the inland dynamics of each state described.

Constitutional Resilience Between Rupture of History and Continuity of Resistance

Abstract The overture of the paper provides a brief survey of the philosophical positions (from Aristotle to the contemporary debate) focusing the conjecture of the legal and constitutional continuum as a problematic presupposition of theories of constituent power. The positions of the authors that we can call as continuist authors (up to Kelsen and the neo-normativism, including Soviet jurists and theorists of the constitutional cycles) constitutes the dominant part of the theoretical evolution. We discuss it (respectfully) even if we openly criticize it, with a peculiar debate involving that other position called as discontinuist (whose authors are especially Marxists philosophers, anti-fascist intellectuals like Piero Gobetti, and their references in philosophy such as Leibniz and Vico). In the first movement of the paper, we reconstruct the equivoque at the basis of the conjecture of the continuum. It corresponds to a «three-time» scheme of constitutional dynamics: (revolutionary) rupture – transition – constitution. This structure makes useless (conceptually unusable, and perhaps sources of logical contradictions) both rupture and transition. The second and final movement underlines the theoretical demand to consider the transition and the constitution as coextensive domains. Transition is, in other words, already Constitution, and the constitution is always a transition. To the latter ones, we introduce and add another phenomenon characterizing the historical phase of the transition, namely the Resistance. The fact of resistance escapes the constitutionalisation, and imposes upon the latter a necessary character of transition.

Piero Gobetti and his Writings On International Politics In The 1920s

Piero Gobetti (Turin 1901- Paris 1926) was not only one of the most important thinker and political writer of the Twentieth Century, but also one of the greatest organizers of culture: in his short life, he founded three journals (Energie Nove, Rivoluzione Liberale and Il Baretti) and a publishing house (Piero Gobetti Editore). Within his prodigious intellectual activity (obviously against Mussolini and what he represented), there was also room for reflection on the international politics of the 1920s. Gobetti’s attention to international politics was expressed first in Energie Nove and then in Rivoluzione Liberale, with projects of columns and unique numbers especially dedicated to some foreign countries.

Classics against the Regime. Piero Gobetti and Fascist Censorship in the wake of the Matteotti murder

Classics against the Regime. Piero Gobetti and Fascist Censorship in the wake of the Matteotti murder

La cultura catalana a Itàlia: el cas de Cesare Giardini.

This paper looks at aspects of the life and work of the Italian Catalanophile Cesare Giardini (Bologna 1893–Milan 1970) up until the 1930s. Giardini’s initial activity as an actor afforded him the chance to travel to Barcelona in 1912 with the theatre company of the great Italian actress Lyda Borelli. During the month that Giardini spent in Barcelona, he was able to get in touch with a number of representatives of Catalan culture despite his considerable youth. In the 1920s, he began working with the Milan publishing firm Edizioni Alpi, which published Italian translations of Catalan works, such as The Catalan Nationality by Enric Prat de la Riba (1924). Giardini’s efforts to disseminate Catalan literature also involved his publication of a large number of articles in various newspapers and magazines throughout his long career. In 1926, he put out an anthology of Catalan poets through the publishing firm of Piero Gobetti (Edizioni del Baretti) and this anthology would be reprinted in 1950 with few changes.

L’„eretico” Piero Gobetti e le tre “dimensioni” della storia del Risorgimento

SOMMARIO: 1. Premessa - 2. La dimensione “teorica” - 3. La dimensione “pratica” - 4. La dimensione “personale” - 5. Conclusione. T he “heretic” Piero Gobetti and the three “dimensions” of the history of the Risorgimento ABSTRACT: Piero Gobetti’s “the heresy of the Risorgimento” allows to distinguish three “points of view” of the political and cultural experience of the “heretical” Gobetti, the “theoretical” one, the “practical” one and “personal” one. Three “profiles” that realized a systematic dimension, in the relationship of the Risorgimento with the “Liberal Revolution”, according to a research perspective that has never been fully analyzed. A reflection that highlights the “drama of the Risorgimento”, the “programmatic formulas” of “The Liberal Revolution” and Piero Gobetti's “clarity of authentic feelings” which moves on the “ground of heresy” with his “choice” of life.

Le provocazioni della ricerca. Gli Stati Uniti nelle riviste di Piero Gobetti

Among the many influences that shaped Piero Gobetti’s thought, the American model – the model of a modern industrial democracy – deserves some attention. Such model had become part of the collective imaginary with the US intervention in the First world war. Even though there are only a few explicit references to the US model in Gobetti’s works, he and his collaborators clearly bore that model in mind. This paper focuses on three main themes in Gobetti’s and his collaborators’ works: Wilsonianism, that is the adherence to the US president’s views; the reflection on the protestant origins of the modernization typical of the Anglo-American «democracy of work»; and the crisis of democracy due to modern mass communication. This interest in American culture is also proven by the attention paid to Anglo-American pragmatism, which was the topic of Ada Prospero’s (Gobetti’s wife) dissertation.

Suffragio femminile e uguaglianza di genere in Piero Gobetti

The article analyses the attitude towards the political rights of women in Piero Gobetti’s articles, mainly in the journals Energie Nove and La Rivoluzione Liberale, which he edited in the years 1918-1920 and 1922-1925. While supporting women’s suffrage in principal, Gobetti’s stance towards gender equality was ambivalent; his journals rarely touched upon the issue of women’s right to vote, even when the question was eagerly debated in parliament. Although he strongly advocated women’s intellectual education, he was far from promoting a change in traditional gender roles. The article likewise examines the ambiguous attitude of the young women in Gobetti’s circle, who were ambitious in pursuing their goals in education and in their professional lives but were nonetheless averse to committing to the suffragist battle.

Gramsci and Gobetti: a case of elective affinity

The focus of this article is the association between Gramsci and the radical liberal, Piero Gobetti (1901–1926). Although little known outside Italy, Gobetti was a regular, if marginal, presence in Gramsci’s circle of associations in Turin. His idiosyncratic doctrine of ‘revolutionary liberalism’ owed much to Gramsci’s Factory Council theory and, later, Gramsci himself identified Gobetti as the type of radicalized intellectual the Communist Party ought to engage in its struggle for hegemony. In the Prison Notebooks, too, Gobetti’s novel interpretation of Italy’s post-war crisis received several references and shared much with Gramsci’s own. Yet, despite their mutual admiration and appropriation, the connection between the two can be understood in terms of an ‘elective affinity’, that is, an association based on selected compatibilities. This term might well serve as a clue to the affinities we find with Gramsci’s work today.

Gramsci and Gobetti: a case of elective affinity

The focus of this article is the association between Gramsci and the radical liberal, Piero Gobetti (1901–1926). Although little known outside Italy, Gobetti was a regular, if marginal, presence in Gramsci’s circle of associations in Turin. His idiosyncratic doctrine of ‘revolutionary liberalism’ owed much to Gramsci’s Factory Council theory and, later, Gramsci himself identified Gobetti as the type of radicalized intellectual the Communist Party ought to engage in its struggle for hegemony. In the Prison Notebooks, too, Gobetti’s novel interpretation of Italy’s post-war crisis received several references and shared much with Gramsci’s own. Yet, despite their mutual admiration and appropriation, the connection between the two can be understood in terms of an ‘elective affinity’, that is, an association based on selected compatibilities. This term might well serve as a clue to the affinities we find with Gramsci’s work today.

Il paese mancato di Piero Gobetti. Il problema italiano

Piero Gobetti's ‘failed nation’ The article aims to expounds the essence of Piero Gobetti’s analysis of Italian politics between the Risorgimento and Fascism. According to Gobetti, Italy never had a ‘liberal revolution’, which is why liberalism reappears in Italy in its original form, i.e. as a revolutionary doctrine. The weakness of this liberalism is reflected in moral and political weakness. The article seeks to demonstrate how, for Gobetti, Italian politics keep returning to the same themes, as it has traditionally been perceived in Italian political literature from Machiavelli to Benedetto Croce. Gobetti is, in this sense, both classical and modern. The combination of liberalism and republicanism is a characteristic of his analysis that helps one understand the prominence of political and civil discourse in Italy, a country that has had no religious reform, but at the same time had a secular political theory. Nevertheless, this combination, which remains elitist, is powerless to effect change, alien as it is to the rest of the political corpus. Gobetti’s œuvre typifies the idea of Italian political and moral history that divides Italy into two opposing parts. Fascism frequently represents one of the two poles.

Discourses on Love and Europe: Italian Europeanists in the Interwar Period

This article presents two ways of configuring the connection between Europe and love in the Italian context, embodied in two authors of the twentieth century.Giorgio Quartara (1883–1951), a marquis and lawyer, formulated this connection in terms borrowed from nineteenth-century materialism, offering an interpretation that followed Bachofen's ideas on original matriarchy, and foreseeing sexual liberation as a correlate of social revolution. However, he was very critical of the type of materialism represented by Marxism. Quartara, who drew inspiration from Masonic ideas, was engaged in the international movements for peace as well as in feminism.Leo Ferrero (1903–33) was part of the strong social and intellectual tradition represented by his family, composed of secular Jews (his maternal grandfather was Cesare Lombroso, his father Guglielmo Ferrero). Leo connected the concepts of Europe and love in a non-confessional form of Christianity that allowed him to make intercultural comparisons with other religions and cultures. Although Leo Ferrero harks back to traditions of thought that join European culture with the continent's political problems, such as those of Giuseppe Mazzini and Piero Gobetti, he differs from both of them in for his culturalist approach.

The intellectual community of La Rivoluzione Liberale

While Piero Gobetti has often been the subject of historical attention in Italy since his death in 1926, the existing literature on this anti-fascist intellectual and editor has almost always considered him in the context of political tradition and focused on his theories and historical studies rather than on his editorial activities. This article aims to redress this balance, by situating Gobetti within the context of the socio-economic environment of post First World War and early fascist Turin, and by examining his role as an editor and cultural organiser with respect to his most well known periodical: La Rivoluzione Liberale. Drawing on the personal correspondences of Gobetti and the administrative archives of the periodical, an account of its circulation and readership will be constructed in order to determine the nature (in geography, education, profession and political affiliation) of the community of the ‘Liberal Revolution’.

Piero Gobetti and the rhetoric of liberal anti-fascism

This article examines the anti-fascist rhetoric of the self-proclaimed `revolutionary liberal', Piero Gobetti, in Italy in the early 1920s. Gobetti is interesting from a rhetorical perspective for two reasons: first, for his efforts to redefine liberalism as an emancipatory ethic of struggle that extended to the revolutionary worker's movement; and second, for his rejection of fascism as essentially continuous with the anti-conflictual tendencies of the liberal parliamentary regime. An exemplary `ideological innovator', Gobetti's `paradiastolic' redescription of liberalism and his metaphorical reading of fascism underscored a commitment to the value of rhetorical disputation over the meaning and form of liberty. This contrasts with contemporary approaches to fascism — and purportedly similar ideologies — which demonize or objectify in a way that forestalls such a debate. Yet, paradoxically, the cost of Gobetti's innovations was an inability to secure what Perelman calls the `universal audience', a task that preoccupied Gobetti's Marxist friend, Gramsci.

Piero Gobetti's agonistic liberalism

This article examines the ‘revolutionary liberal’ outlook expounded by the young Italian journalist and intellectual, Piero Gobetti, immediately following the First World War. It considers the historical evolution of his ‘agonistic’ liberalism according to which conflict rather than consensus serves as the basis of social and political renewal. The article traces the formation of Gobetti's thought from his idealist response to the crisis of the liberal state through to his endorsement of the communist revolutionaries in Turin and his denunciation of fascism as the continuation of Italy's failed tradition of compromise. Whilst Gobetti's views presently resonate with a growing interest in the agonistic dimension of politics, it is argued that his elitism and his understanding of liberalism as a ‘civic religion’ reveal challenging tensions in his thought.

Italian liberal socialism: Anti-fascism and the third way

This article surveys the discourse of liberal socialism in inter-war Italy. Like its British counterpart of the same period, Italian liberal socialism anticipated certain themes in contemporary efforts to forge a left-of-centre third way, in particular an ethically-driven rebalancing of individual liberty with social justice. Unlike its British version, the Italian variety was organized around anti-fascism and the demand for a revolutionary rupture with the post-unification state. Following an outline of three key thinkers in the broad liberal socialist tradition--Piero Gobetti, Carlo Rosselli and Guido Calogero--the role of anti-fascism as a 'discursive frontier' in structuring liberal socialist discourse is discussed, as well as the limitations it set on its success in developing into a popular ideology.