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Professor Carlo Lancellotti on Western Culture Facing a New Totalitarianism

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Monday, March 13, 2017

5:30 pm - 7:30 pm



Speaker

Carlo Lancellotti is Professor of Mathematics at the College of Staten Island & City University of New York. His field of interest is Mathematical Physics. Professor Lancellotti has translated three of the Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce’s works into English, led various Scala seminars on the thought of Del Noce and has also participated in Scala’s Love of Learning webinar series.

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Event Overview

Professor Carlo Lancellotti has recently translated into English the book Crisis of Modernity, written by the influential Italian philosopher, Augusto Del Noce. In this talk entitled, “Is Western Culture Facing a New Totalitarianism?” Professor Lancellotti will discuss del Noce’s thesis that since the 1960s Western culture has been facing a “new totalitarianism.” This new totalitarianism excludes from the public sphere of all forms of discourse that do not fit into a scientistic and essentially technocratic paradigm. According to Del Noce, what defines totalitarianism is the complete subordination of both ethics and culture to politics. Coercion by force is not necessarily the best method to that effect. A much better way is to remove all the “equipment”, so to speak, that makes it possible to transcend politics:  philosophical reason, non-utilitarian liberal education, national tradition, the family as a vehicle of ideal values, etc. The resulting scientistic form of totalitarianism is very different from older forms because it is a totalitarianism of disintegration rather than a totalitarianism of domination.