Augusto Del Noce: Toward an Education of Limits

Carlin, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0955-9463 (2021) Augusto Del Noce: Toward an Education of Limits. Educational Theory, 71 (5). pp. 631-650. ISSN 0013-2004

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Abstract

Augusto Del Noce (1910-1989) is widely regarded in his home country of Italy as one of the most important political philosophers of the second half of the 20th Century. Renowned for his ability to demonstrate the impact of ideological movements on the history of the 20th Century, Del Noce's work covers a range of topics including modernity, technology, contemporary Catholicism, secularism, eroticism, communism, fascism, and progressivism among other topics. Perhaps controversially, Del Noce is best known for his claim that the failure of Marxism in the 20th Century has not led to its complete dissolution, but rather its incorporation (minus it's revolutionary aspect) into a new ideological totalitarianism that now appears in the form of secular progressivism. Although Del Noce holds a distinguished place within Italian philosophical and intellectual circles, his work has largely remained unknown in most parts of Europe and the English-speaking world. Recently however, as Del Noce's writings have begun to be translated into English, a new and expanded engagement with his work has taken place. While new analyses of Del Noce's thought have slowly appeared in a variety of academic disciplines, no work has yet examined Del Noce's significance for the field of education. As a result, in this essay Matthew Carlin rectifies this oversight by examining a wide range of Del Noce's writing, paying particular attention to how his historico-political analysis of the emergence of modern progressivism necessitates the creation of a new education of limits for the 21st Century