Abstract

Palmiro Togliatti, Benedetto Croce and the Scienza nuova. A controversy with Fausto Nicolini in three commentaries for «Rinascita».This paper explores a controversy flared in 1953 between the Italian communist leader Palmiro Togliatti and the historian Fausto Nicolini. The former challenged the claim – supported by Nicolini – that Soviet Russian scholars considered Vico as a precursor of Marxism, defending nevertheless the legitimacy of Marxist readings of the Scienza nuova. Indirectly, this debate touched the intellectual legacy of Benedetto Croce, whose philosophy – according to Togliatti – had taken since the 1930s an “apocalyptic turn”, insisting on the threat posed by Communism to European civilization and its persistence.