Marxism and Embodied Thought: Denis de Rougemont's Writings on Commitment (1931–1938)

Fabrizio Carlino; Anna Pia Ruoppo; Giangiacomo Vale

doi:10.6093/978-88-6887-445-2

Authors

Fabrizio Carlino

Università Niccolò Cusano - NCI Paris

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7034-6566

Anna Pia Ruoppo

University of Naples Federico II

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6185-0576

Giangiacomo Vale

Niccolò Cusano University of Rome

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0721-8809

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/978-88-6887-445-2

Keywords:

Denis de Rougemont, engagement, marxism, non-conformism, 1930s

Synopsis

Publisher: FedOA - Federico II University Press

Series: European Philosophical Studies

Pages: 310

Language: Italian

Abstract: In September 1946, in his address to the first Rencontres Internationales of Geneva, Denis de Rougemont denounced the conformism of those intellectuals who, by joining a political party, believed they were committing themselves, while in fact abandoning their proper role by subordinating thought to a ready-made worldview. This speech serves as a touchstone for a conception of commitment that Rougemont had developed throughout the 1930s, one that offered an alternative to the model that would come to dominate the postwar period with Sartre's figure of the intellectuel engagé. If the human being, understood as a person, is at once free and responsible, then genuine commitment consists in the "refusal of every form of enlistment" and in accepting the risks inherent in remaining faithful not to a cause or an ideology, but to one's own vocation. The essays collected in this volume trace the internal development of this personalist conception of intellectual work, born out of a critical engagement with Marxism and its political manifestations, and illuminate what was ultimately at stake: not only the struggle for intellectual hegemony in a Europe marked by the rise of fascism, but also the formulation of an integral federalism for Europe, a project to which Rougemont would devote much of his work in the decades that followed.

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Author Biographies

Fabrizio Carlino, Università Niccolò Cusano - NCI Paris

Fabrizio Carlino holds a PhD in philosophy (Università del Salento and Paris IV–Sorbonne) and is qualified in France for the functions of maître de conférences. His research focuses on the history of Marxism, with particular attention to the French reception of dialectical materialism and to the thought of Louis Althusser. He teaches at the Université catholique de Lille and is a cultore della materia at the Università Niccolò Cusano. He is a member of the Società italiana di filosofia morale and of the Groupe de recherches matérialistes, and serves as editorial secretary of the journal Cahiers du GRM. Among his publications on the question of engagement and on the history of intellectuals: : Sartre e Rougemont di fronte all'Europa, in «Rassegna europea», giugno 2026; Une conception antimarxiste de l’engagement : Denis de Rougemont dans les années 1930, in «Il Pensiero storico», dicembre 2025; In ‘difesa della cultura’ e dell’autonomia: note sulla funzione dell’intellettuale nella crisi dello spazio pubblico europeo, in A. Donise, R. Peluso, F. Pitillo, A. P. Ruoppo (dir.), La provincia europea. Idee e rappresentazioni della crisi dell’Europa. 1900-1939, Federico II University Press – FedOA, Napoli 2025; La théorie des “deux sciences”, in «Implications philosophiques». Dossier: Marxismes d'entre-deux-guerres en France, 2021; Teoria, analisi concreta e situazione concreta in Althusser, in A. P. Ruoppo, I. Viparelli, M. Morra, Università e movimenti. Teorie e pratiche politiche dal '68 all'oggi, La Città del Sole, Napoli 2021; Sur l’introduction du matérialisme dialectique en France : le programme du Cercle de la Russie neuve dans le processus de formation du ‘rationalisme moderne’, in «Actuel Marx», n. 57, PUF, 2015; Le forme di esistenza della filosofia: ripensare l’università a partire dal rapporto tra scienza e ideologia, in G. Ferraro, La filosofia come professione, Alleo, Pisa 2015; Clercs et traîtres, chercheurs et révolutionnaires : autour de quelques tentatives oubliées d’articuler travail théorique et action politique, in «Cahiers du GRM», n. 6, 2014.

Anna Pia Ruoppo, University of Naples Federico II

Anna Pia Ruoppo is an associate professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Naples “Federico II” and works as an Erasmus lecturer at the Technische Universität Darmstadt. She is also a member of the doctoral board in Philosophical Sciences at the University of Naples “Federico II” and at Alberto Hurtado University in Santiago, Chile; an external collaborator with the Praxis Centre in Portugal and the Centre for Studies on Marx and Marxism at the University of Padua; and co-director of the international project “Umanesimi in transizione” and the international project “Polemos. Thinking of War as a Category of the Present’. She studied in Germany (Heidelberg, Tübingen, Freiburg im Breisgau) and in France (Paris). She is the author of numerous essays and translations. She has published the monographs Vita e Metodo (Florence, 2008), L’attimo della decisione (Genoa, 2011); Thinking Existence at the Level of Practice (Naples, 2022), Marxism and Existentialism: Two Philosophies of Europe (Milan, 2023) and has recently edited, together with R. Rubio, M. Rampazzo Bazzan, I. Viparelli and M. Boemio, Humanisms in Transition between Europe and Latin America (Milan, 2026).

Giangiacomo Vale, Niccolò Cusano University of Rome

Giangiacomo Vale is Associate Professor of Political Philosophy at Niccolò Cusano University, Rome. His research focuses on modern and contemporary political philosophy, with particular attention to sovereignty, federalism, and European integration. He has directed and participated in several international research projects on sovereignty, European democracy, multilevel governance, and raison d'État. His publications address political theory, the history of political thought, and the philosophy of Europe, with a sustained interest in the symbolic and cultural dimensions of the political, as well as in the European personalist and federalist traditions. Among his publications on the thought of Denis de Rougemont: Denis de Rougemont e il futuro della democrazia europea. L’Europa delle Regioni e la governance multilivello, («Il Pensiero Storico», n. 18, 2025); Ricostruire l’Europa a partire dalla cultura. I fondamenti culturali della federazione europea nel pensiero di Denis de Rougemont («Storia del Pensiero Politico», n. 3, 2021); Le regioni e la Federazione europea nel pensiero di Denis de Rougemont (AEFVG, 2021); The Person beyond the Individual and the Masses. The Crisis of Western Man and the Personalist Revolution in the Thought of Denis de Rougemont («Heliopolis», n. 1, 2020); Una e Diversa. L’Europa di Denis de Rougemont (Mimesis, 2018); La nazione e la guerra. Genealogia e prognosi del nazionalismo nel pensiero di Denis de Rougemont (Nuova Cultura, 2016); Pólemos. La dialettica federalista in Denis de Rougemont (Nuova Cultura, 2013); La Croce, l’Asse e la Spira. Simbolismo dell’Occidente nell’opera di Denis de Rougemont («Metábasis», n. 16, 2013).