New Humanism and Historical Humanism: On two Recent Books by Michele Ciliberto and Massimo Cacciari

The need for a new humanism is strongly felt in present-day Italian and European culture. This need gives rise to the question: what is the relationship between this new humanism and historical humanism? A few years ago, one of the most esteemed Italian historians of philosophy, Michele Ciliberto, posed this question in his book Il nuovo Umanesimo (2017). This book presents a rather gloomy image of Italian humanism as an age of great uncertainty, of transformation and crisis, and above all as an age characterised by an anguished questioning as to the human being and its destiny. Massimo Cacciari’s book La mente inquieta (2019), which is connected to Ciliberto’s Il nuovo umanesimo in many ways, presents a similar image of Italian humanism. In this essay, I will examine the common features of these books and then evaluate their meaning for present-day attempts to give life to a new humanism.