Croce, Gramsci, Bobbio and the Italian Political Tradition [Paperback]

This book gathers together fifteen classic essays by leading scholar Richard Bellamy, tracing the history of Italian political thought from Beccaria to Bobbio.This book gathers together fifteen classic essays by leading scholar Richard Bellamy, tracing the history of Italian political thought from Beccaria to Bobbio. Written over the past 25 years, they constitute the first account in English of the modern Italian political tradition. The author pays special attention to the different ways Italian theorists have linked politics and ethics, and their various conceptions of the state and of democracy. The resulting variations on Machiavellian themes gave rise to distinctively Italian understandings of Liberalism, Marxism, Fascism and Socialism, which were all associated with a peculiarly realist account of democracy. Among the thinkers discussed are Cesare Beccaria, Antonio Genovesi, Giuseppe Mazzini, Benedetto Croce, Giovanni Gentile, Antonio Gramsci, Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca and Norberto Bobbio.ContentsAcknowledgements and Preface ixIntroduction  Studying the Italian Political Tradition 1Chapter One  Italian Social and Political Thought: 18901945 13Part One: Enlightenment and ReformChapter Two  Da metafisico a mercatante Antonio Genovesi and theDevelopment of a New Language of Commerce in Eighteenth-Century Naples 27Chapter Three  Between Utility and Rights: Cesare Beccarias On Crimes andPunishments 47Part Two: Hegel, Croce and Idealist LiberalismChapter Four  Hegels Conception of the State and Political Philosophy in aPost-Hegelian World 67Chapter Five  What is Living and What is Dead in Croces Interpretation of Hegel? 83Chapter Six  A Modern Interpreter: Benedetto Croce and the Politics ofItalian Culture 93Chapter Seven  Idealism and Liberalism in an Italian New Liberal Theorist:Guido De Ruggieros History of European Liberalism and the Crisis ofIdealist Liberalism 113Part Three: Croce contra GramsciChapter Eight  Gramsci, Croce and the Itall“.