Crisis of Modernity

The Crisis of Modernity by Augusto del Noce, translated by Carlo Lancellotti, 306 pages

The first English translation of major essays by one of the most perceptive Italian philosophers of the "short twentieth century", The Crisis of Modernity focuses on the great moral struggle of that period - for and against Marxism and Fascism, revealed here as mirror images, revolutionary ideologies that happen to point in opposite directions.  For del Noce, each is an expression of modern gnosticism - the belief that the world as it exists is irredeemably wicked, and must be replaced with an entirely new creation belonging to some mythical future or past.  The consequence of the empty triumph of Marxism, he argues, is late modern nihilism, a soulless technocracy focused entirely on production and consumption.

Del Noce maintains that philosophy is implicit in all human activity, though it often requires a philosopher to give it voice.  The result is a concentration on the philosophical underpinnings of historical trends and movements.  He diagnoses the modern era as a continuous expression of the ideology of progress as liberation from every limitation, and therefore the abolition of tradition and elimination of community, and therefore the desecration of the sacred and the de-humanization of man.