“SOSTITUIRE AL VINCERE IL CONVINCERE”: LA RIPRESA DEL DIALOGO FILOSOFICO IN EUROPA NEL SECONDO DOPOGUERRA (1945-1949).

With the end of the Second World War, even before peace was signed, European intellectuals restarted their dialogue. While the First International Meeting was being held in Geneva, representatives from 150 nations were meeting in Rome at a conference organised by the Italian Philosophical Society. The cultural debate also centred on the foundation of two journals, 'Les Temps moderns' and 'Die Wandlung'. On the agenda was above all the confrontation between Marxism and Existentialism. What contribution can intellectuals make to the understanding of the present and the transformation of society? Which thought movement is best able to shape the future? Is it possible to reinstate pre-1939 values? Or must a new worldview assert itself? Following the trace of the major cultural activities organized in those years, the contribution reconstructs the post-war debate in Italy, France and Germany in the crucial years between the end of the war and 1949, when the formalization of the division into blocs made it clear that a philosophy that in teh westen world wanted to have a hold on the present could no longer start from the alternative of Marxism and Existentialism, but from their possible hybridization.