Storicismo o barbarie. Critica e crisi della civiltà liberale

The issue of barbarism, in its complicated affair with culture, has been pivotal in the interwar period. Starting with a similar ‘barbarian’ analogy present both in Benedetto Croce’s Oxford lecture on Antistoricismo in 1930 and in Delio Cantimori review of Huizinga’s Im Schatten von Morgen (1936), the article explores the different attitudes towards the issue of the decadence in (and against) the liberal world. Thus it throws new light on Cantimori’s intellectual journey, particularly in relation to his double reading of Huizinga (in the 1930s as a fascist, in the 1960s as a communist). Through this scrutiny, the article analyzes the relationship between realism and moralism in historical judgement and focuses on the self-perception of the intellectuals regarding their role between culture and politics.