Works by Eugenio Colorni, by Bordighera Press, New York
THE LEIBNIZ COMPROMISE
Bordighera, 2024
… the shift from Eugenio’s main student interest in science in favor of theoretical philosophy, on one hand, and his post-graduation “German period,” on the other (along with the visible maturation of his politica! awareness), in the end led Colorni to pursue in depth the study of Leibniz’s originai texts. lt is therefore possible that his postgraduate thesis, The Youthful Philosophy of Leibniz (1933), contained some foretaste of what would later become a key feature of Colorni’s Leibniz studies-“translating” Leibniz’s work into modern terms, so as to make it accessible to contemporary philosophers.
EUGENIO COLORNI (1909-1944), socialist philosopher and politica! activist, was also interested in literary criticism, natural sciences, and psychology. Following the racial laws of 1937, he was incarcerateci and then confined in the Ventotene island where together with Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi, and Ursula Hirschmann promoted the European Federalist Movement. Leader in the Resistance in Rome, he was murdered by the infamous fascist and Nazi Koch gang a few days prior to the liberation of Rome.
Edited and introduction by Luca Meldolesi Translated by Michael Gilmartin
THE PHILOSOPHICAL ILLNESS AND OTHER WRITINGS
“The answer [Eugenio Colomi’s, to a question of Ursula Hirschman’s on the existence of ‘concentric circles’ in explanations of reality] is this: that the philosophical illness is more difficult to eradicate than you think, and that it lurks in the most unimaginable places and people […]. All these concentric explanations are in fact ‘philosophies.’ Each coherent in itself, each ‘true’ from a certain point of view, each ‘beautiful’, ‘satisfying’, ‘habitable’; sometimes ‘exciting’ […]. No wonder, then, if they turn out to be satisfying, calming and coherent. Now just take each of these concentric circles and ask yourself — what good are they beyond giving me all this satisfaction? And then you will see all this beautiful concentricity and coherence fall apart, and each of the circles will prove no longer to be a self-contained whole, but something detached and fragmentary. The utility of the dialectic is in interpreting some spiritual things and some historical phenomena, and that’s all […]. Analytic psychology is useful in treating certain nervous disorders, and helping us understand certain mental processes even in healthy people, and that’s all Kant helps physics deal with time and space and causality his way. And he’s not good for anything else. You ask me if it also makes me nervous to see how easily our minds think in analogies — which we then take to be facts. Does it make me nervous?! I’ve been nervous for twelve years, and only now have I begun to sort this out.”
The Philosophical illness and other writings
“The answer [Eugenio Colomi’s, to a question of Ursula Hirschman’s on the existence of ‘concentric circles’ in explanations of reality] is this: that the philosophical illness is more difficult to eradicate than you think, and that it lurks in the most unimaginable places and people […]. All these concentric explanations are in fact ‘philosophies.’ Each coherent in itself, each ‘true’ from a certain point of view, each ‘beautiful’, ‘satisfying’, ‘habitable’; sometimes ‘exciting’ […]. No wonder, then, if they turn out to be satisfying, calming and coherent. Now just take each of these concentric circles and ask yourself — what good are they beyond giving me all this satisfaction? And then you will see all this beautiful concentricity and coherence fall apart, and each of the circles will prove no longer to be a self-contained whole, but something detached and fragmentary. The utility of the dialectic is in interpreting some spiritual things and some historical phenomena, and that’s all […]. Analytic psychology is useful in treating certain nervous disorders, and helping us understand certain mental processes even in healthy people, and that’s all Kant helps physics deal with time and space and causality his way. And he’s not good for anything else. You ask me if it also makes me nervous to see how easily our minds think in analogies — which we then take to be facts. Does it make me nervous?! I’ve been nervous for twelve years, and only now have I begun to sort this out.”
The Final Year – 1943-1944
“He was ready to let himself be pervaded by an idea and to experience it by compassionately living it, so as to possess it. Then sometimes he would turn it around and transform it into something rich and strong, in Shakespeare’s words. If I think of a baffling and miraculous intelligence, able even to absorb superstition, even astrology or magic, and transform them into an original treasure, I think of Eugenio Colorni.”
— Guido Morpurgo-Tagliabue
“Ricordo di Colorni,” Arethusa, July-August 1945
Eugenio “detests a federation organized through state diplomacy for purposes of economics and power. He sees a federation in terms of a socialist movement — that is, born of the people. And therefore revolutionary (just as he detests arranged marriages or unions without love, in which one tends to exploit and reduce the other to oneself).”
— Luisa Villani Usellini, “A Very Quick Note,” undated
“In short, Colorni’s thinking was an incandescent magma of colossal genius that would have assailed any sphere his intellectual interests had turned to.”
— Leo Solari, 18 May 2004
“I remember Angelo, this great scientist, this great scholar, this great freedom fighter also as a man who was exquisitely political, exceptionally able in political activity and propaganda and in the lessons he was able to teach us even though he was
Dialogues
Systems, love, philosophy, science, end-means, anthropomorphism, economy, action, success, separation: these are the main theoretical themes of “that strange and extraordinary dialogue” that developed between Eugenio Colorni and Altiero Spinelli in the Ventotene island (1939-42). They represent an easily accessible, interdisciplinary, iconoclastic, liberating, and fantastic intellectual feast under extreme conditions of confinement imposed by the fascist regime. They developed hand in hand with the political discussion that, with the contribution of Ernesto Rossi and Ursula Hirschmann, gradually unveiled the well-known political Manifesto for the unification of Europe.
The discovery of the possible
Excerpts from political writings and correspondence II
“Just as philosophy does not make progress by resolving eternal problems, but rather by rigorously meditating on particular facts, procedures and methods, and leaving the general systemic position in the background, deliberately inaccurate and only hinted at; so also politics, in my view, will not move forward by retouching its ideological structure, setting out formulations and solutions for eternale problems; but by keeping its eye on developing events and trying to influence them using the most effective and unbiased methods; always, of course, in the light of some basic positions which it should be enough to have clear in one’s heart and, I would say, in one’s instincts, without needing to bend all your efforts toward giving them a clear and exact and logical formulation.”
(Eugenio Colorni, “Letter to Altiero Spinelli”, 1943)
Critical Thinking in Action
Excerpts from political writings and correspondence
Albert Hirschman to Ursula Hirschmann: “Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Foucault are ‘maitres à penser’. Eugenio was actually the opposite: a constant critic, questioner, stimulator. That he was homme d’action and penseur critique at the same time was maybe his special trait […]. Maybe you should change the title here to ‘Pensatore critico e uomo d’azione’ ”. (New York, early 70s). Albert Hirschman on Eugenio Colorni and his friends in 1937-38 Trieste: The “[…] combination [they had] of participation in public affairs with intellectual openness seems to me the ideal microfaundation of a democratic politics”. (Laurea Honoris Causa, Torino, November 12th, 1987). Albert Hirschman to Nicoletta Stame and Luca Meldolesi: “Sono grato a voi che rinnovate l’amicizia con Eugenio Colorni” (Princeton, May 2004).
Critical Thinking in Action
Excerpts from political writings and correspondence
Albert Hirschman to Ursula Hirschmann: “Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Foucault are ‘maitres à penser’. Eugenio was actually the opposite: a constant critic, questioner, stimulator. That he was homme d’action and penseur critique at the same time was maybe his special trait […]. Maybe you should change the title here to ‘Pensatore critico e uomo d’azione’ ”. (New York, early 70s). Albert Hirschman on Eugenio Colorni and his friends in 1937-38 Trieste: The “[…] combination [they had] of participation in public affairs with intellectual openness seems to me the ideal microfaundation of a democratic politics”. (Laurea Honoris Causa, Torino, November 12th, 1987). Albert Hirschman to Nicoletta Stame and Luca Meldolesi: “Sono grato a voi che rinnovate l’amicizia con Eugenio Colorni” (Princeton, May 2004).