Fuga saeculi. Spiritualità monastica e crisi della civiltà nel pensiero tedesco del primo Novecento

In opposition to the mainstream of a contemporary thought dened as individualist and critical against the traditional values of Western Civilization, on one side,and to the reactionary recovery of a fake image of the Middle Ages, on the otherside, some authors of the early twentieth century belonging to the German lan- guage area found in the monastic spirituality and the medieval theological tra-ditions the source for thinking a new kind of society. Aim of this paper is, there- fore, to focus authors like Paul Landsberg, Hugo Ball, Martin Heidegger, RomanoGuardini, to show the crucial role of this philosophical tradition and his topics inthe discussions about a reformation of the contemporary society and a rethinkingof some principles of the Western Civilization