Lo Stato e l'etica. Il carteggio di Felice Battaglia con Benedetto Croce (1927-1951)

The purpose of this essay is to outline the theoretical debate between Benedetto Croce and Felice Battaglia on the Philosophy of the State. Occurred mainly throughout the Thirties and the Forties, it opposed Croce’s economic theory of the State, as enunciated in his Elementi di politica (1925), and the ethical State theory, as asserted in Battaglia’s Scritti di teoria dello Stato (1939). The paper deals as well with Battaglia’s previous work Diritto e filosofia della pratica (1931), wherein the Calabrian philosopher analysed neo-idealistic dialectics, both Gentilian’s dialectics of contradictory opposites and Crocean’s nexus of concrete distincts. The scrutiny of neo-idealistic dialectics inspired the elaboration of a new dialectics of contrary opposites, based on the concept of the ethos – i.e. the essential lawfulness – that would later be identified with the State itself in Battaglia’s fundamental essay La concezione speculativa dello Stato (1935). The essay also introduces the private correspondence between Battaglia and Croce.