Guido de Ruggiero's Philosophy of Historical Action

This essay sets de Ruggiero's ideas in the broad context of European intellectual and political history. While he is regarded primarily as an historian, argues Gily Reda, de Ruggiero's 'specular phenomenology' contains a philosophy of value, life and action, a re-evaluation of the history of philosophy, a Weltanschauung, a new metaphysics of civilization, and an interpretation of Kant's metaphysics of the future. She shows that this part of the philosopher's work describes neither universal history nor philosophy of history, but an interpretive process made up of new arguments concerning self-conscious intellectual actions. She goes on to argue that, as de Ruggiero reconstructs values and theories to draw an outline of European culture, he contributes to the creation of culture and civilization.