Ortensio Zecchino, Why We Cannot Not Call Ourselves “Christians”. Readings and disputes on the famous essay by Benedetto Croce, Rubbettino Editore, Soveria Mannelli (Catanzaro) 2024, pages 255, euro 18.00.
Both the Preface (pages 11-15) by Eugenio Mazzarella - philosopher and, as he defines himself, «a Christian man… reasonably obliged to transcendence by what I see in immanence» (page 13), and the Afterword by Dino Cofrancesco (pages 231-249: a true essay after the essay!) which precisely, as stated in the title, offers «a modest non-philosophical commentary on the essay by Ortensio Zecchino» (page 231), already highlight well, albeit synthetically, the various emerging profiles in Ortensio Zecchino's research. Above all, they outline the underlying themes of the essay, which Benedetto Croce published ten days after a sleepless night on August 16, 1942, during which the idea of ​​writing it also occurred to him (page 5).
Appearing in “La Critica” on November 20, 1942, with the famous title Why We Cannot Not Call Ourselves “Christians” (page 6), this essay by Croce, written not without “labor… in those terrible times” (page 88, number 79), Zecchino - firmly convinced that it should not be read in isolation, but rather “in a continuum with the others of the same period” (page 196), “in the context of the writings that came from Croce’s pen in those terrible years between the agony of fascism and the dawn of democracy” (page 138) -, therefore examines the premises, the contents and the outcomes; and from the very first bars, he clarifies the text and context, as in the opening scene of a theatrical action, of which the rest of the pages will offer a meticulous analysis and a very informed analytical development, also the result of archive consultations that are punctually reported in the course of the gripping exposition. Croce's was an essay that enjoyed «an extraordinary fortune», having been published «in the midst of a “world” war», in a «Europe» that «now appeared Nazified» (page 9) and when «in the spring of '42 the first creaks of the fascist regime had begun to appear» (page 10). The future organization of a new Order was being hypothesized, involving parties, intellectuals and even the Holy See. The volume reminds us: «At the Catholic University of Milan, already at the end of 1941, a group of “little professors” had begun to gather around Giuseppe Dossetti… In August 1941, Spinelli, Rossi and Colorni’s manifesto For a free and united Europe had been launched from Ventotene… In September of that 1942, Alcide De Gasperi, with a handful of volunteers, founded the Christian Democracy in Milan, in Enrico Falk’s house» (page 11). Later, Croce’s peculiar relationship with the “dear De Gasperi” would be intense (Croce’s last letter to him is dated 25 January 1951), as will be seen particularly, after Croce died on 20 November 1952, in the oration in memoriam pronounced by De Gasperi, in which, as his daughter attests, her father’s emotional voice expressed his feelings towards the “precious friend” (page 195).
Zecchino's long and informed survey concludes with the convincing observation that Croce's essay "cannot be read in isolation, but in a continuum with others from the same period" (page 196); that is, "the essay, for the time in which it was written and for the high profile it had, was intended to be an appeal to the world... but it also wanted to constitute... a strong ideological motivation to coagulate a political alliance in Italy between forces sincerely sensitive to the defense of freedom" (page 201).
This is the context in which we must understand the disputes that Croce's writing will raise and, periodically, still raises. Zecchino examines almost all of them, offering the reader a lesson in method. In fact, on the one hand, the writing must be explored in depth, taking into account Croce's state of mind and the things already manifested since the Philosophy of Practice of 1908 (page 70) - the philosopher had already mentioned some aspects in the Soliloquy of an Old Philosopher of 1942 (page 66), and had set them as premises in his essay of 1940, entitled The Benefit of Christ (page 68). In short, Croce "felt burdened by the duty of not remaining silent and of making his voice heard" (page 13). On the other hand, Zecchino notes and realizes, it is necessary to make a meticulous reconstruction of all the interpretative interventions, even critical ones, that were aroused by the great uproar generated by Croce's essay (page 15), starting from the examination of the «main argument of the Catholic side». In this part, it was hypothesized «that behind Croce's openness there was hidden – something obvious – a historicist and immanentistic vision, in irreconcilable contrast with the transcendent vision proper to Christianity» (page 15); but even on the secular side, there was no lack of reservations, such as the actual panning of Croce's essay, which was written by Mario Pannunzio, who went so far as to write that «That essay is wrong even in its title: when can a philosopher ever speak in the plural?» (page 15). On the other hand, Zecchino continues, we need to reread Croce's essay in the light of his later writings from which, we read literally, comes "an even more powerful illumination" (page 73): from the short writing of 1951 - a review of a writing by Christopher Dowson on religion and Western culture (page 73) up to all the interventions that take up and relaunch the themes of the finis Europae and, with Osvald Spengler, of the end of the West itself. : Thus, a peculiar contribution is offered to the discussion, which we could call eschatological, and which Zecchino examines meticulously, in the light of Croce's suffering in those terrible times: a suffering described from the early fifties of the twentieth century to the third decade of the twenty-first century (compare page 88, number 79) regarding the problem of evil (compare pages 78 ff.), thanks to which Croce was able to arrive, after the war season, at "a newfound philosophical serenity" (page 86).
The chapters of the volume therefore unfold before our eyes, examining the different moments of the discussion, the distancing, the distinctions, the adhesions: from the first irritated reaction by the fascists, whose prompter was Don Giuseppe De Luca, to the intervention of Giovanni Gentile, who published the essay La mia religione (My religion, 9.2.1943), in which he peremptorily states: "I am Christian [...] I am Catholic" (page 22). Zecchino, with regard to this “dialectical” intervention by Gentile (whose relationship with Croce had deteriorated due to philosophical disagreements and then became antithetical in 1925, when Gentile moved to the side of fascism and Croce to the side of antifascism) expresses a precise thesis of his: Gentile, in short, had read Croce’s essay and, in some way, responds to certain of his statements «which will end up attracting the attention of readers and critics, benevolent and otherwise, which seem to be dictated by a polemical view» (page 25). Regarding Gentile’s different philosophical vision, Zecchino examines Gentile’s subsequent criticisms of Croce, whose essential interest Gentile identified in intelligere (= intellectualism), which is considered a sophism like Columbus’ egg, in which, that is, «this imagined reality is a product of human thought» (page 29); a one could have, in fact, objected a «teeming subjectivism» and the «polygony of Catholicism» (page 35). Gentile, returning to Manzoni, contests the main accusation that had come to him from the Holy Office (that is, the religion conceived by Gentile would humanize God or divinize man) even if, as Del Noce observed, «no Catholic, even one who admits Gioberti's polygony, will be able to recognize Gentile's religiosity as Catholic; because in this demystified religion, positive revelation itself is reduced to myth» (page 38).
As for the reactions of the Catholic world to Croce's essay, Zecchino starts from the first comments, of a private nature, by Karl Vossler (linked to Croce since 1889), not without subsequently observing that the Catholic world offers a series of articulated positions that are not unanimous: Giuseppe De Luca; Ernesto Buonaiuti; Guido Gonella in “L’Osservatore Romano” of 14 January 1943; the severe interventions of the Jesuit magazine “La civiltà cattolica”; the commentary by Giuseppe Ricciotti; by Domenico Mondrone; the review by Don Giuseppe De Luca in “Il Regno”; the article by Giuseppe Scremin in “Studium”; the little-known commentary by Giuseppe Sturzo entrusted, on 15 July 1943, to the American magazine “People and Freedom”: given the importance of this commentary, Zecchino, who proves to be a rigorous reader of the original texts and not only of the Italian versions, reports the original English text on page 58, number 80). In essence, faced with the position of Croce's writing, this variegated Catholic world "initially showed a certain disorientation" (page 41), but did not prevent, first Sturzo and then, more evidently, Father Vincenzo Cilento, from noting, on Sturzo's part, that "it is possible to be good Christians both inside and outside the Church" (page 59) and, ten years later, on Father Cilento's part, that "there is a direct communion between the great spirits and God", a statement that, denying the essential mediation of the Church, appeared precisely heretical" (page 59). In essence, Zecchino declares himself to be firmly convinced that Croce's essay must be correlated with some of his previous anticipations, entrusted to the essays of Philosophy of practice (1908) and History and criticism of historiography (see page 45, number 58) and that its intent must also be correlated with other European and world scenarios. For example, regarding the «spiritual sense of the essay» (page 61), Carl Schmitt - whom Biagio De Giovanni considers, with Croce, one of the dramatically aware...