Domenico Losurdo was convinced of the intrinsically political nature of philosophy: political judgment is the test that verifies or falsifies even the most complex metaphysics, which have no meaning ...if they are not related to the real world. Losurdo often had to defend himself against the accusation of political partisanship. Therefore, he was obliged to demonstrate constantly that he had mastered the history of modern and contemporary philosophy, together with its main theoretical nodes, better than anyone else. Over some 40 years of work, he showed a keen interest in classical German philosophy, studying its relationship with the French Revolution and altering our conceptions of it forever. He turned subsequently to examining liberalism, showing that it is not a theory of individual liberties but represents first and foremost the self-awareness of the "free" community who perceive themselves as "well-born," that is, as aristocrats. Finally, he dedicated himself to the reconstruction of Marxism and historical materialism, starting from a redefinition of the concept of class struggle and undertaking a revaluation of "Eastern Marxism," linked to the anti-colonial struggle, in relation to "Western Marxism." His death leaves us poorer but the conceptual tools he forged will help us to continue his work.
Domenico Losurdo's War and Revolution: Rethinking the Twentieth Century tries to respond to historical revisionism, focusing on authors like Ernst Nolte and works such as The Black Book of Communism. ...Rereading categories such as totalitarianism and genocide, Losurdo's essay defends against the demonisation of the French and Russian revolutionary cycles and the anticolonial revolutions they generated. Reinstating or relativising the Nazi-Fascist experience as a defensive "counter-movement" to the Bolshevik offensive, historical revisionism overlooks the violence that characterises the history of the classically liberal countries and Western colonialism. However, Losurdo demonstrates how, far from just representing a response to the Bolshevik advance, the Nazi-Fascist criminal projects followed the Anglo-American model of colonialism. Niall Ferguson also glosses over these genealogies, delegitimating anticolonial revolutions, transfiguring the United States as the legitimate heir of the British Empire, as well as making it the champion of the cause of modernity and democracy. Faced with its own difficulties and the current emergence of China on the global stage, the American Empire is called upon to openly reject the principle of equality between nations and establish a new world order for the good of humanity. The success that this British historian enjoys is especially worrying, Losurdo concludes.
General and special knowledge about the history of European historiography and its revisionist movements, as well as editorial experience were used to identify the basic problems in writing large and ...smaller studies and articles in Serbian historiography, with special emphasis on typology and problems of scientific review.
Until now, the history of the non-violence movement has been written by commentators who have no intention of hiding their sympathies for the movement. However, Domenico Losurdo's Non-violence: A ...History beyond the Myth is one of the first texts to confront this topic with seriousness, using scientific methods and a comparative historiographic approach. Losurdo does not limit himself to a history of the ideas of the movement's leading figures-from the American Christian abolitionists to Gandhi and Luther King-but instead analyses their theories, political opinions, contradictions, moral dilemmas and concrete behaviours in the context of great historical crises and transformations. Losurdo's book also dedicates plenty of space to current events, analysing how the West today uses non-violence as a way to discredit its enemies. The delegitimation of the People's Republic of China and the so-called "colour revolutions" demonstrate that even a noble ideal like non-violence can be easily exploited with a malicious intention. It is preferable, then, according to Losurdo, to fight for a "democratisation of international relations" that will inevitably lead to the strengthening of the front of less developed countries and to battling against the oxymoronic "humanitarian wars" or "wars for peace."
Since premodern narratives on translatio imperii, across the role of the Greco-Persian Wars and the Crusades in Hegel’s philosophy of history, the world-historical meaning of great conflicts ...represents one of the main issues of universal history. After premature quasi-Hegelian and postmodernist theses on the end of history and the end of the philosophy of history, this theme obtrudes the confrontations with the legacy of the twentieth century. The hegemonic Western recapitulation of the period in question depends on the concept of totalitarianism. In the case of historical revisionism, this implicates not only the accusation against the October Revolution because of the launching of the “international civil war”, but even the critique of the wider revolutionary cycle initiated in 1789. However, the revisionist manoeuvre works only under the condition of Eurocentric optical illusion which throws back colonialism as the key dimension of the modern progress. Moreover, the reasons for the failures of the contemporary left ought to be sought in the underestimation or neglect of the anti-imperialist struggles and their geopolitical conditions. This paper endeavours to respond to actual challenges by means of an overview of Domenico Losurdo’s interdisciplinary philosophy of history.
Em contexto de avanços da extrema-direita no plano mundial, um debate ganha força nos meios políticos e intelectuais: é possível falar em novas formas de fascismo? Princípios publica a versão ...completa e atualizada de texto seminal na abordagem do tema, publicado originalmente no jornal Folha de S.Paulo (16 set. 2018).
Coincidência não fortuita, no mesmo momento em que se reunia em São Paulo o grupo que fundou Crítica Marxista, Domenico Losurdo publicou Da Revolução de Outubro à nova ordem internacional (novembro ...de 1993). Estávamos naqueles anos infelizes da história contemporânea, em que o desmantelamento do bloco soviético rompera, a favor do bloco capitalista agrupado na aliança bélica da Otan, quatro décadas do equilíbrio estratégico EUA/URSS. Longas colunas de renegados e desertores aderiam à democracy e à globalization made in USA, sob o pretexto de que o fiasco de Gorbachev e o golpe capitalista de Ieltsin teriam comprovado o “fracasso” do marxismo. Tristes papagaios do “pensamento único” neoliberal, eles sustentavam que, suprimida a URSS, entraríamos numa era de paz, sem muros nem fronteiras.
Domenico Losurdo é um dos mais importantes pensadores marxistas da atualidade, professor de Filosofia na Universidade de Urbino, na Itália, membro e fundador da Associação Marx XXI esimo Secolo. Em ...sua vasta obra, ressaltamos sua crítica ao pensamento liberal, tema central da presente entrevista. Essa crítica foi desenvolvida nos livros Contra-história do liberalismo; A linguagem do império; Liberalismo entre civilização e barbárie; Democracia e bonapartismo; Hegel, Marx e a tradição liberal: liberdade, igualdade, Estado.
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