Abstract

In my contribution, I would deal with the cultural and political crisis born at the end of the 19th c. – but spanned the entire 20th century – around the attempt to answer these questions: How can we address the gigantic transformation provoked by the Technological society? How can we avoid that human beings are being crushed by the enormous power of material and anonymous forces, such as Technique and Economy? How can we save the contemporary man from the corruption created by the increasing availability of material goods, that makes him even less autonomous and even more fragile, because of his dependency on external elements? While the answers varied, the starting question was identical for a large part of the cultures critical of the model of modernity that has been emerging in the West over the past century.