Esistenzialismi: filosofie della crisi in Italia a cavallo della Seconda Guerra Mondiale

The essay follows the thread of the question on the reasons for the crisis of Italian existentialism immediately after the Second World War, despite a phase of lively philosophical production on existentialism. It follows the different and intertwining paths of three protagonists of this season: Nicola Abbagnano, Luigi Pareyson and Enrico Castelli. First of all, it is shown that existentialism, especially in Pareyson and Castelli, is closely linked to the historical climate as an age of crisis even if it is problematic that it may represent the solution. Secondly, through the historical placing of existentialism in Pareyson and Abbagnano, the ascendants appear differently conceived, but above all their descriptions lead to question the very notion of existentialism as a lasting and coherent perspective. In conclusion, the different theoretical positions are compared: the central notions of Abbagnano's existentialism outline a theory of the complexity of being as natural and human that prelude, in the definition of "positive existentialism", to the neo-illuministic outcomes of his subsequent thought; Pareyson instead conceives the idea of God as crucial in the definition of existentialism as a philosophy of the finite destined to resolve itself, as a philosophy of choice, in spiritualism. Castelli is finally indicated as the one of the three that remains most problematically linked to the idea of existentialism as the philosophy of the crisis understood as structural.