Fear of Freedom

Carlo Levi and Edited by Stanislao G. Pugliese

Paper, 176 pages, 13 illus.
ISBN: 978-0-231-13997-7
$18.95

April, 2008
Cloth, 176 pages, 13 illus.
ISBN: 978-0-231-13996-0
$69.50

"Carlo Levi affirms the aversion against the abstractly ferocious State, which makes people an indistinct material unity and enslaves them; he also criticizes religion, which only creates myths and rituals in place of the sacred. For the author, freedom is consciousness of reality, it is knowledge. To avoid the loss of autonomy and the independence of individuals and society, it is necessary to interrogate ourselves constantly on the meaning of freedom. The concept of freedom must continuously be rethought through social and cultural forces: only in this way can humanity indeed be free of fear." — Valdo Spini, member of the Italian Parliament and president of the Fondazione Circolo Rosselli, Florence

"Fear of Freedom is Carlo Levi's provocative and challenging meditation on the apparent disintegration of Western civilization. This new edition of Levi's seminal work is enhanced by Stanislao G. Pugliese's lucid introduction. A valuable guide to Levi's intellectual development and to his timeless analysis of fascism, which foreshadows the work of such social critics as Umberto Eco and Susan Sontag." — Lawrence Baldassaro, professor of Italian and director, Honors College, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

"Fear of Freedom was the first book Carlo Levi wrote. It laid the groundwork for all his future writings and is indispensable for a thorough understanding of the subtleties of not only his novels, Christ Stopped at Eboli and The Watch, but also his travelogues and his journalism. For anyone wanting to go beyond the surface of this deceptively complex figure, Adolphe Gourevitch's translation and Stanislao G. Pugliese's full introduction are a very welcome and precious resource." — David Ward, professor of Italian and chair, Department of Italian Studies, Wellesley College

Related Subjects

• Ethics
• European and British Literature
• European History

About the Author

Carlo Levi (1902-1975) was born in Turin and earned a degree in medicine, though he never formally practiced and instead gravitated toward painting and was an active participant in the anti-fascist underground. Twice arrested for his politics, and eventually exiled, he wrote a memoir entitled Christ Stopped at Eboli while hiding from the Nazis in Florence. After the Second World War, Levi divided his time between painting, politics (serving in the Italian Parliament), and writing. Upon his death, he was universally recognized as one of Europe's leading intellectuals. He is buried in Aliano. About the Editor: Stanislao G. Pugliese is professor of modern European history at Hofstra University. He has been a visiting research fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the University of Oxford. He is the author of Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile and is presently writing a biography of the Italian writer Ignazio Silone. About the Translator: Adolphe Gourevitch was a Russian scholar and translator of E. A. Belyaev's Arabs, Islam, and the Arab Caliphate in the Early Middle Ages.

top of page