ABSTRACT: The author makes known that he has received protests following upon his short article ["Taccuino"] that appeared in »Il Mondo on November 8 entitled "Why I Prefer Not To Call Myself A Christian". He primarily defends Russell, not as a mathematician or a philosopher of that analytic-linguistic school to which he doesn't belong and which he more than once criticised in various essays, but as "the last survivor of those great non-conformists who... created modern England" and so far from "other masters, so basically conservative in their Marxian or Hegelian mentalities" who prosper in Italy. He rejects the sarcasm directed against Russell by one of his interlocutors and reminds us of the thesis - that one must chose "primarily between Christ and Nietzsche" in order not to end up as did Hitler or Mussolini - which was Russell's before it became Benedetto Croce's. He expounded it in a volume entitled "The School of Man" which was criticised by Croce because it was so little inclined towards historicis

m and rather tending to credit the democratic theses of "the fundamental rights of man and the citizen" against which Croce raged, most recently when they were proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations. [It is one of the weekly "Quaderni" ("Notebooks", ed.) of Guido Calogero]

(»Il Mondo , November 29, 1960)

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How hard it is not only to understand others but to make oneself understood by them! And how dangerous it is to presuppose that the readers of your articles have read any of your books as well! (Which does not detract from but rather confirms the idea that mutual understanding is the supreme ideal and thus also the most difficult of things).

After my short piece "Why I Prefer Not To Call Myself A Christian" ("Quaderno" of November 8) I received expressions not only of agreement but just as many protests. And in the issue of November 12-13, a contributor to "Voce Repubblicana" (2) protested whose disdain of Russell had caused this reaction of mine. Now then, very seldom have I had such a distinct sensation that such protests were not being made against me but against others.

Almost all those who wrote to me had taken for granted that I admired Russell first of all as the author together with Whitehead of the "Principia Mathematica". And they warned me against the limitations of analytic-linguistic philosophy... as if I were a follower of this school and as if (in parentheses) Russell himself had not criticised, in recent times, his countrymen with a mania for linguistic analysis! The truth is that already in 1938 I had published a book "La conclusione della filosofia del conoscere" [The Conclusion Of The Philosophy of Knowing", ed.] against the surviving logical-gnoseological obsessions of philosophers. And if it was not easy to consult that book until a short time ago, because it was out-of-print and not to be found, it is now available again in an enlarged edition (Sansoni 1960) to which has been added, among other things, a recent essay "Di certe presistenti illusioni del logici e dei metodologi" ["Concerning Some Persistent Illusions of Logicians and Methodologists", ed

.] which, in fact, takes an ironic tack to the "Pangloss disease", that is to say, the infatuation with the so-called analytic philosophy of language with which my critics seem to consider me to be infected.

If I have defended Russell, I have not done so for the "Principia", which I consider to be in the competence of mathematicians and of little interest to philosophers, but because he is the last survivor of those great non-conformists who, like G.B. Shaw, James Joyce, and D.H. Lawrence, created modern England, fighting continually against what continued to be antiquated in the culture and customs of their country. And if we in Italy had had masters of thought and criticism of Bertrand Russell's mental type and polemical vigour, rather than other masters, at bottom much more intrinsically conservative in their Marxian or Hegelian mentalities, we would not need to fight as much today against a situation in which the majority still seems to have no choice except within a triad of equally antiquated dialectical theologies (those of Catholicism, Marxism and idealism), while the conservative forces remain serenely in power.

This much being said, I can without hesitation agree with my debating partner on the point of a merely symbolical and polemical legitimacy and call A the greatest philosopher, B the greatest writer and C the greatest dentist living. Phrases of this kind only indicate that if a young man in prison were authorised to read one philosopher or one writer only, I would recommend that one to him rather than that other. So let us agree then not to abuse such Nobel Prize formulas (which in any case Russell was to receive rather than any Italian philosophers) or beauty contests. But on the condition that he too takes another look at his assertion that "Russell is meritorious primarily for livng long" (where "meritorious" should be understood as meaning "has the merit of"), that is, in a word, that Croce is still the greatest of all living philosophers, even after his death! And on the condition that he makes clear to me what he meant to say with these words.

We will limit ourselves to explaining, in order to avoid misunderstanding, what our adversary prefers to leave discreteliy in the shadows, which is what political considerations will have influenced Croce in composing his famous essay "Why We Cannot Call Ourselves Christians" which is still for us a true masterpiece.

What, if you please, "do I prefer leaving discretely in the shadows?" The quotation from Russell that is repeated mercilessly that "one must above all choose between Nietzsche and Christ in order to avoid ending up as did Hitler and Mussolini? But if I am not wrong this is precisely what is maintained, without the nebulous theologizing in that essay of Croce's, in a certain book published three years earlier and which - according to a rather widespread opinion - contributed to restoring to youth the basic sense of the values of freedom and the moral choice that they therefore demanded without any enticing historicist acceptance of what was happening - a book which consequently did not appeal to Croce who felt certain of his theses criticised and the implicit recollection of how, before 1925, he had disdained the "seductions of the Goddess Justice and the Goddess Humanity" and hence had devalued those fundamental rights fo man and the citizen, against which he had to turn again when they were proclaimed

in the United Nations charter. The title of that book was "The School of Man", and it too is no longer impossible to find because it has been newly published (Sansoni, 1956) - so that my friendly adversary of »La Voce Repubblicana could read it if he wanted to.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Calogero, Guido - (Rome 1904 - 1986) - Italian philosopher. He developed a moral philosophy marked by a strong civic commitment based on the principle of dialogue. Major works: "Lezioni di filosofia" (Lessons in Philosophy) (1946-47), "Logo e dialogo" (1956) and numerous articles in the weekly »Il Mondo . He was among the founders of the Radical Party.

2) Voce Repubblicana, La - The official organ of the Italian Republican Party.