Guido De Ruggiero



Guido De Ruggiero (Naples, 23 March 1888 – Rome, 29 December 1948) was a historian of philosophy, university professor, and Italian politician.

Work
De Ruggiero taught history of philosophy first at the University of Messina (from 1923) and later at the University of Rome (from 1925).

De Ruggiero was friendly to socialism, though not a socialist himself. He believed liberals should be open to collectivism. De Ruggiero denounced both Bolshevik and laissez faire ideas while embracing the trade unions. He endorsed Mario Missiroli’s argument that the Socialist Party was the true inheritor of historical liberalism and that liberal ideology had the potential to be a revolutionary force in post-war Italy.

Having acceded to the idealism of Giovanni Gentile and Benedetto Croce, his assertion of the values of liberalism made him a leading exponent of the resistance to Fascism. In 1925 he was among the signatories of the Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, written by Benedetto Croce. He was dismissed from teaching in 1942, arrested and released only on 25 July 1943.

He was one of the founders of the anti-fascist Action Party. Later he was rector of the University of Rome from 1943 to 1944 and subsequently held the post of Minister of Public Education in the government of Ivanoe Bonomi (1944).

He was author, among other works, of an impressive history of philosophy in 13 volumes, published between 1918 and 1948, and The History of European Liberalism published in 1925, both at Laterza. One particularly notable volume by De Ruggiero is his book Existentialism: The Philosophy of Existence as it comprehensively dissects this philosophy with an even balance of exposition and analysis. It clarifies the tenets of each Existentialist thinker and provides an invaluable critique of the movement as a whole. De Ruggiero states: "I believe the time has come to draw up some kind of provisional judgement on the so-called philosophy of existence, in order to bring it back within the confines of reality."