sceptical nature of my mind and that the scattered sceptical ingredients always present in my spirit came to merge into a complete and harmonious whole. And what produced this "enlightenment" in me was above all the war". The first theoretical formulation of this sceptical line of his thought are the Lineamenti di filosofia scettica of 1919, where he argues that the war has destroyed his optimistic faith in the universality of reason, replacing it with the tragic spectacle of its pluriversity. He set out his thinking on this concept in his Filosofia dell’autorità (1921). Here he argued that, because different world views cannot be reconciled intellectually, there needs to be a single political authority backed by physical force in order to establish order in society. On this ground he was initially a supporter of the then nascent Fascist movement. By 1925, however, with his work Apologia dell'ateismo, he opposed Mussolini and was counted among the supporters of Benedetto Croce, having signed Croce's manifesto against Fascism the same year. After his early sympathy with the fascist regime he had become its opponent, and he recognised how the idealistic doctrine of Giovanni Gentile had become the regime's ideological cover. From around this time he began to be persecuted by the fascist regime. In 1927 he was suspended from his lectureship on the grounds of incompatibility with the regime; he was temporarily readmitted to teaching, but in 1930 he was arrested together with his wife for political conspiracy (they had been hosting anti-fascist political and philosophical discussions at their home), an arrest which was followed by a brief imprisonment. In 1934, having published further critical writing, he was definitively dismissed from his post, with the loss of his chair of moral philosophy at the University of Genoa. Instead, he was confined to an office in the university library, for the purpose of drafting a Ligurian bibliography. During these years his intellectual production became fragmented and took mainly the form of a diary (Scheggie, 1930, Impronte, 1931; Cicute, 1931; Sguardi, 1932; Scolii, 1934; Frammenti di una filosofia dell’errore e del dolore, del male e della morte, 1937). Other writings from this time were the Paradossi d’estetica e Dialoghi dei morti (1937), Autobiografia intellettuale. La mia filosofia. Testamento filosofico (1939), Lettere spirituali (1943) and Sale della vita. Saggi filosofici (1951). Death and legacy Rensi died on 14 February 1941 from complications following abdominal surgery, and