Description
Book SynopsisUsing a transnational approach to the intellectual history of 19th-century Italy, this book examines the highly idiosyncratic juxtaposition and amalgamation of local and foreign philosophical traditions, chiefly represented by the thought of Giambattista Vico and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Alessandro De Arcangelis convincingly argues the decisive role this played in shaping a historical mindset able to direct, and give legitimacy to, Italians' experiences of political change. By adopting a distinctly revisionist perspective, Arcangelis contends that, contrary to most scholarly verdicts on these exchanges, Italian thinkers did not view foreign ideas as models to imitate, or passively apply to the Italian political context. Instead, they maintained a highly critical attitude, which encouraged them to question what they were learning from their reception of foreign sources, critique their conceptual foundations, and grow suspicious of their applicability to the historical and politi
