Giuseppe Rensi

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Giuseppe Rensi (born May 31, 1871 in Villafranca di Verona , † February 14, 1941 in Genoa ) was an Italian , later Swiss lawyer and socialist philosopher .

Life

Rensi was the son of a doctor and his wife Emilia Wallner. After school he studied law first in Padua, then in Rome, where he also received a degree in 1893. He began to be interested in socialism at a young age . He worked on some political magazines, such as Napoleone Colajannis Rivista popolare (people's magazine), or the Critica Sociale (social criticism) of the social democratic politician Filippo Turati . At Turati's instigation, Rensi went to Milan to work on the newspaper La lotta di classe (The Class Struggle).

In 1898 he had to flee to Switzerland due to political unrest. In Italy he was sentenced to 11 years in prison in absentia. In 1903 he received Swiss citizenship and became the first socialist member of parliament in the canton of Ticino. He lived and worked in Bellinzona as a lawyer. He married the educator Perucchi Lauretta and had two daughters with her, Emilia and Algisa.

In 1911 he received a teaching position for moral philosophy in Bologna, but shortly afterwards went to Ferrara and Florence. Further stations were Messina and Genoa. Impressed by the First World War , he gave up his idealistic ideas and became a skeptic. He expressed his first thoughts on his skeptical philosophy in 1919 in his work Lineamenti di filosofia scettica (Bologna 1919; reprint, Rome 2014).

After initially sympathizing with Italian fascism , he soon became a staunch opponent. So in 1925 he signed Benedetto Croce's Manifesto of Italian Intellectuals Against Fascism . Persecution by the regime began in 1927 when he was given leave of absence from his teaching post. Afterwards he managed to go back to work for a while, but in 1930 he and his wife were arrested on charges of belonging to a political conspiracy. In 1934 he finally lost his chair, was dismissed from the university and had to work on a bibliography of Liguria under arrest.

Giuseppe Rensi died on February 14, 1941 from the consequences of an abdominal operation, which resulted in complications. He is buried in the cemetery of Staglieno , a district of Genoa. On his tombstone is the inscription: ETSI OMNES NON EGO (Even if everyone participates, I don't).

His daughter Emilia (1901–1990) became a well-known freethinker, worked for the anarchist magazine Volontà (Wille) and other libertarian projects. She managed the extensive archive of her father's letters and documents, which is now in the University of Milan. Her sister Algisa Rensi went to the monastery of Lugo di Romagna , where she died in 1994.

Works

  • Una Repubblica italiana: il Canton Ticino , “Critica sociale”, Milan 1899; Reprinted in Locarno, 1994
  • Gli “Anciens Régimes” e la democrazia diretta . I e II ed., Bellinzona 1902. III ed., Libreria Politica Moderna, Rome 1926; Reprint Milan 1995
  • L'immoralismo di Nietzsche , Genoa 1905.
  • Le antinomie dello spirito , Piacenza 1910.
  • Sic et non: metafisica e poesia , Rome 1910.
  • Il genio etico ed altri saggi , Bari 1912; (second edition 1953).
  • Il fondamento filosofico del diritto , Piacenza 1912.
  • Sulla risarcibilità dei danni morali , Verona 1913.
  • Formalismo e amoralismo giuridico , Verona 1914.
  • La trascendenza: studio sul problema morale , Turin 1914.
  • Istinto, morale e religione , Bologna 1917.
  • Lineamenti di filosofia scettica , Bologna 1919; Reprinted Rome 2014
  • La scepsi estetica , Bologna 1920.
  • La filosofia dell'autorità , Palermo 1920; Reprinted in Catania 1993.
  • Polemiche antidogmatiche , Bologna 1920.
  • L'orma di Protagora , Milan 1920.
  • Principi di politica impopolare , Bologna 1920.
  • Introduzione alla scepsi etica , Naples 1921.
  • Teoria e pratica della reazione politica , Milan 1922.
  • L'amore e il lavoro nella concezione scettica , Milan 1923; Reprint Catania 1933.
  • Dove va il mondo? , Inchiesta fra gli scrittori italiani, Rome 1923.
  • L'irrazionale, il lavoro, l'amore , Milan 1923.
  • Interiora rerum , Milan 1924; Revision of La filosofia dell'assurdo , Milan 1937; New release Milan 1991.
  • Apologia dell'ateismo , Rome 1925; Reprinted Rome 2013
  • Realismo , Milan 1925.
  • Apologia dello scetticismo , Rome 1926.
  • Autorità e libertà: le colpe della filosofia , Rome 1926; Reprint Naples 2003.
  • Il materialismo critico , Milan 1927; expanded Rome in 1934.
  • Spinoza , Rome 1929; expanded Turin in 1941; extended reprint Naples 2014.
  • Pagine di un diario intimo , Rieti 1930.
  • Dal diario di un filosofo , Todi 1931; Reprinted Imola 1998.
  • Pagine di un diario , Genoa 1931.
  • Schizzi di uomini e di dottrine , Modena 1932.
  • Le aporie della religione , Catania 1932.
  • Pagine di un diario , Rome 1932.
  • Passato, presente, futuro , Milan 1932.
  • Motivi spirituali platonici , Milan 1933.
  • Pagine di un diario , Turin 1934.
  • Vite parallele di filosofi: Platone e Cicerone , Naples 1934.
  • Critica della morale , Catania 1935.
  • Paradossi di estetica e dialoghi dei morti , Milan 1937.
  • Frammenti di una filosofia del dolore e dell'errore, del male e della morte , Modena 1937; new revised edition Naples 2011.
  • Figure di filosofi: Ardigò e Gorgia , Naples 1938.
  • Autobiografia intellettuale. La mia filosofia. Testamento filosofico , Milan 1939; Reprint Milan 1989.
  • Poemetti in prosa e in verso , Milan 1939.
  • La morale come pazzia , Modena 1942; Reprinted Rome 2013
  • Trasea, contro la tirannia , Milan 1943.
  • Lettere spirituali , Milan 1943; Reprint Milan 1987.
  • Sale della vita (saggi filosofici) , Milan 1951.
  • La filosofia dell'assurdo , Milan, 1991; Translated into French by J. Grenier and N. Emery, Paris 1996.
  • La religione. Spirito religioso, misticismo e ateismo , Foggia 2006.
  • Contro il lavoro. Saggio sull'attività più odiata dall'uomo , Camerano 2012.

Act

Rensi taught as a professor at the University of Genoa and was considered a representative of relativism and a supporter of the Conservative Revolution in Italy. In his work Filosofia dell'autorità , written in 1920, he justified the necessity of an authority based on violence with the absolute irreconcilability of world views that only such an authority could create order in society. With that he initially became a supporter of the rising fascism in Italy . With his work Apologia dell'ateismo , however , he opposed Mussolini in 1925 and was one of the supporters of Benedetto Croce's manifesto against fascism in the same year. He was suspended from his teaching post in 1927 and imprisoned in 1930. He was finally released in 1934 after he had published further critical writings.

literature

  • E. Buonaiuti: Giuseppe Rensi. Lo scettico credente. Rome 1945.
  • R. Chiarenza (Ed.): L'inquieto esistere. Genoa 1993.
  • G. De Liguori: Il sentiero dei perplessi. Naples 1995.
  • N. Greco: Giuseppe Rensi. Politica, autorità, storia. Palermo 2005.
  • Daniela Pauli Falconi: Giuseppe Rensi. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . February 8, 2012 , accessed January 21, 2020 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Website about Giuseppe Rensi with a detailed biography and work details (accessed November 22, 2015)
  2. ↑ Patricia Chiantera-Stutte: From the avant-garde to traditionalism: the radical futurists in Italian fascism from 1919 to 1931 . Campus, 2002, p. 90 f .
  3. ↑ Guido Bonsaver: Censorship and literature in fascist Italy . University of Toronto Press, 2007, pp. 42 .
personal data
SURNAME Rensi, Giuseppe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rẹnsi, Giuseppe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Villafranca di Verona
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1941
Place of death Genoa