Danzare sull’abisso. La crisi di civiltà nella Francia tra le due guerre

In 1919, Valéry evoked the collapse of civilisation with La Crise de l’esprit. Spengler had initiated the debate a year earlier with The Decline of the West. Actually, this reflection has older roots: the positivists and evolutionists had preceded Valéry and Spengler in the late nineteenth century. In fact, the Enlightenment, particularly in the historical philosophies of Gibbon or Voltaire, sought to uncover the causes of the decline and demise of the great past civilisations. The article elaborates on the concept of débâcle of civilisation, focusing on France between the two world wars. During this period, both the right and the left, revolutionaries and conservatives, writers and philosophers, denounced the profound crisis affecting the modern world. Specifically, they criticised France and its politics, Europe and its culture, the figure of the intellectual, the apparent successes of modern society, the industry and the culture of industrialism it engendered.