Abstract

Within the context of the Neapolitan historicist school, two important works concerning Benedetto Croce have been recently published. In his book Filosofia pratica e filosofia civile nel pensiero di Benedetto Croce, Giuseppe Cacciatore combines an original reading of Croce as a “philosopher of life” with an emphasis on the ethical dimension of historicism as philosophy. In his research on Storia universale e patologia dello spirito. Saggio su Croce, Domenico Conte proposes a new approach to the theme of universal history in Croce’s thought, which becomes the basis for a global reinterpretation of the Italian philosopher, who is not regarded as the theoretician of the rationality of history, but, on the contrary, as a thinker of the European crisis and the “pathology of the spirit”