Giovanni Gentile
For Gentile, nothing exists outside the living act of thinking, in which subject and object, individual and community are produced together; to educate is for spirit to form itself, and the state is this ethical will within each person, not an external power – the doctrine of the ‘ethical state’ that he put at the service of Fascism.
Placement
Sicilian philosopher who radicalised Hegel’s idealism into “actual idealism”: reality exists only in the act of thinking; as minister of education (1922–24) he reformed Italian schools, and he later directed the “Enciclopedia Italiana”.
Key ideas
- Actual idealism
- Thought as pure act
- Education as self-formation of spirit
- The ethical state
Influence
Influenced by 3
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
influenced by ✓
In The Reform of Hegelian Dialectic (1913) Gentile moved the dialectic from Hegel’s concepts into the present act of thinking, which produces subject and object together. G. Gentile, La riforma della dialettica hegeliana (1913); H. S. Harris, The Social Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile (1960)
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel › 1770–1831
Antonio Rosmini
influenced by
Gentile wrote his thesis Rosmini and Gioberti (1898) under Jaja, reading Rosmini, as Spaventa had, as an Italian counterpart of Kant and a forerunner of idealism. G. Gentile, Rosmini e Gioberti (1898); H. S. Harris, The Social Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile (1960)
Evidence: AI draft
Antonio Rosmini › 1797–1855
Karl Marx
influenced by
In The Philosophy of Marx (1899) Gentile read Marx’s praxis in the Theses on Feuerbach as the unity of thinking and doing, later central to his actualism. G. Gentile, La filosofia di Marx (1899); H. S. Harris, The Social Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile (1960)
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Criticism
Criticized by 2
Benedetto Croce
criticised by
In the anti-fascist intellectuals’ counter-manifesto (1925) Croce rejected Gentile’s fascist manifesto, its confusion of politics with scholarship and its claim that fascism was a new faith. B. Croce, “Una risposta di scrittori, professori e pubblicisti italiani al manifesto degli intellettuali del fascismo”, Il Mondo, 1 May 1925; G. Gentile, Manifesto degli intellettuali fascisti (21 Apr. 1925)
Evidence: AI draft
Benedetto Croce › 1866–1952
Antonio Gramsci
criticised by
Gramsci criticised Gentile’s actual idealism as a speculative philosophy of the state and his 1923 school reform as deepening class divisions in education (Prison Notebooks, Q. 11–12). A. Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, Q. 11 and Q. 12 (1932–33), ed. V. Gerratana (1975)
Evidence: AI draft
Antonio Gramsci › 1891–1937
Works
The main statement of actual idealism: nothing exists outside the present act of thinking, in which subject and object, individual and universal are produced together.
Written in 1943 and published after his death: society arises in the individual as an inner dialogue, and the state is the highest form of this ethical community.
Position
Gentile is on the map as the author of actual idealism, a radical form of Italian neo-idealism. Following Spaventa and reforming Hegel’s dialectic, he held that reality is not a given object but the present act of thinking, in which subject and object, individual and universal are produced together; nature and history exist only as moments of this act. From this he derived a philosophy of education as the self-formation of spirit, in which teacher and pupil become one in the act of teaching, and a theory of the ethical state, which the individual finds within as the will of the community. Croce objected publicly in 1913 that actual idealism dissolved the distinct forms of spirit into a single undifferentiated act, and the political break of 1925 ended their collaboration; Gramsci criticised both the philosophy and the school reform; in Britain R. G. Collingwood engaged with his ideas. Gentile’s thought cannot be separated from his role in fascism: as minister, as author of the 1925 manifesto and of the philosophical part of the “Doctrine of Fascism”, he gave the regime a philosophical justification, and his concept of the ethical state entered its self-description as a “totalitarian” state. Research, from Gabriele Turi’s biography (1995) to A. James Gregor (2001), documents this role; it remains debated how far his idealism itself implied this politics.
Life & context
Giovanni Gentile was born on 30 May 1875 in Castelvetrano in Sicily. He studied at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa under Donato Jaja, a pupil of Bertrando Spaventa, and wrote his thesis on Rosmini and Gioberti (printed 1898); “The Philosophy of Marx” followed in 1899. From 1903 he worked with Benedetto Croce on “La Critica”. He taught at secondary schools, then held chairs in Palermo, from 1914 in Pisa and from 1917 in Rome, and in 1920 founded the “Giornale critico della filosofia italiana”. Appointed a senator in 1922, he was minister of public education in Mussolini’s government from 31 October 1922 to 1 July 1924 and carried out the school reform of 1923; in the same year he joined the National Fascist Party. On 21 April 1925 he published the “Manifesto of Fascist Intellectuals”, to which Croce replied with a counter-manifesto. As scientific director of the Enciclopedia Italiana he wrote the philosophical first part of the article “Fascismo” (1932), which was circulated under Mussolini’s name as “The Doctrine of Fascism”. After 1943 he sided with the Republic of Salò and became president of the Accademia d’Italia. On 15 April 1944 he was shot dead in Florence by a commando of the communist GAP.
Further main works
- Rosmini and Gioberti (Rosmini e Gioberti, 1898)
- The Philosophy of Marx (La filosofia di Marx, 1899)
- The Reform of Hegel’s Dialectic (La riforma della dialettica hegeliana, 1913)
- System of Logic as Theory of Knowing (Sistema di logica come teoria del conoscere, 1917–23)
Appears in
- Journey ‘Philosophy under National Socialism’ · Stop 1 of 10
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