The Theory of Mind as Pure Act

Introduction

The “General Theory of Spirit as Pure Act” appeared in 1916 and was based on Gentile’s lectures in Pisa; H. Wildon Carr’s English translation of 1922 bears the title “The Theory of Mind as Pure Act”. It is the main statement of actual idealism. Gentile starts from the thesis that only the act of thinking as it is being performed is real – not thought as a finished product (pensiero pensato) but thinking itself (pensiero pensante). Space and time, nature, other minds and history are not given outside this act but are posited within it, and the plurality of empirical individuals is grounded in a single transcendental self. The book works this out for the relation between the empirical and the transcendental self and for nature and history. It was the basis of Gentile’s influence in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s and of Croce’s objection that the act absorbs all distinctions.

Connections

Builds on

• Science of Logic1812 · Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

More works by Giovanni Gentile

• 1946Genesis and Structure of Society