Paul Hazard: «la crisi della coscienza europea» e l’idealismo italiano

Paul Hazard’s La crise de la conscience européene is a book that gives its title to an era. By this definition, Hazard is indeed referring to a neglected thirty years of European history (1680-1715): the period in which the crisis became the forge from which the great ideas of the Enlightenment were born. But the book also gives its title to the era in which Hazard lives: it was published in 1935 and is conspicuously part of the contemporary debate on the crisis of Europe. This article examines La crise de la conscience européene (The European Mind: The Critical Years: 1680-1715, 1935) in this double sense. It also examines its reception in the context of Italian Idealism (Croce, Gentile, De Ruggiero). It is divided into four sections: 1. From Révolution to Crise; 2. Critique of the Crise; 3. The Struggle against Reason and History; 4. Europe is its Crisis.