In this episode, I speak with Professor Carlo Lancellotti about the late Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce and his book The Crisis of Modernity. Del Noce died in 1989, but his writings are very relevant and help explains much of our contemporary situation.
Del Noce was born in 1910 and died in 1989 living through the turmoil of the 20th century. He was a profound social analyst and wrote about secularization, revolution, totalitarianism, and critical engagement with Karl Marx.
Before he died in 1989, Del Noce argued that Marxist ideas failed in the East, but realized itself in the West. It failed economically and politically, but it was realized philosophically and socially in the West Part of this was a shift from Christian bourgeois to pure bourgeois, where the search for liberation and happiness is done purely in the material realm.
In this wide ranging conversation we talk about totalitarianism, the religious nature of revolution, consumerism, the hybrid of Marxist anthropology with bourgeois pursuit of happiness; hippies and yuppies, the absolutization of politics, and the danger of forbidding questions.
Professor Lancellotti is a professor of mathematical physics at The College of Staten Island—City University of New York and also teaches Physics the Graduate School of the City University of New York. His research includes work on the kinetic theory of plasmas and gravitating systems. He did his undergraduate at the University of Milan and his PhD at the University of Virginia. His the translator of three volume of of Del Noce’s work in English: The Crisis of Modernity, The Age of Secularization, and The Problem of Atheism
Resources
Augusto Del Noce Essay: Marxism died in the West because it Realized Itself in the West
Carlo Lancellotti Essay: Augusto Del Noce on the New Totalitarianism
Carlo Lancellotti Essay: The Dead End of the Left? Augusto del Noce’s Critique of Modern Politics
MMM Essay: Secularism and the Re-Emergence of Myth
The Crisis of Modernity (Volume 64) Augusto Del Noce, Carlo Lancellotti
The Age of Secularization (Volume 74) (McGill-Queen’s Studies in the Hist of Id) Augusto Del Noce
The Triumph of the Yuppie: Carlo Lancellotti on Augusto del Noce, Secularization, Revolution, and the Crisis of Modernity