Gentile, Giovanni

Gentile, Giovanni (jōvän`nē jāntē`lā), 1875–1944, Italian philosopher and educator. He taught philosophy in several Italian universities and for many years contributed to the magazine of Benedetto Croce. In 1920 he founded the Giornale critico della filosofia italiana. An early supporter of the Fascist movement, he has been called the philosopher of Fascism. In 1922 he was made a senator and until 1924 was minister of public instruction. While in this office he reformed the structure of public education. He also directed the work of the new Enciclopedia italiana. Gentile's philosophy, called actual idealism, is a form of neo-Hegelian idealism and was developed in Teoria generale dello spirito come atto puro (1916, tr. The Theory of Mind as Pure Act, 1922).

Bibliography

See studies by H. S. Harris (2d ed. 1966), M. E. Brown (1966), and W. A. Smith (1970).

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Gentile, Giovanni

(born May 30, 1875, Castelvetrano, Italy—died April 15, 1944, Florence) Italian philosopher, sometimes called the “philosopher of fascism.” A university professor, he and Benedetto Croce edited the journal La Critica (1903–22). He served in education posts in Benito Mussolini's government. His philosophy of “actual idealism,” strongly influenced by G.W.F. Hegel, denied the existence of individual minds and of any distinction between theory and practice, subject and object, past and present. He planned and edited the Enciclopedia Italiana (1936) and wrote prolifically on education and philosophy. Among his works are The Reform of Education (1920), The Philosophy of Art (1931), and My Religion (1943). He was killed by antifascist communists.

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Gentile, Giovanni 

Born May 30, 1875, in Castelvetrano; died Apr. 15, 1944, in Florence. Italian neo-Hegelian philosopher; an ideologist of fascism. Minister of education in the Mussolini government (1922-24). Professor of history of philosophy at the University of Palermo (from 1907), the University of Pisa (from 1914), and the University of Rome (1917-44).

Gentile’s philosophical system, his so-called actualism, is a subjective idealist variant of neo-Hegelianism. In reforming Hegel’s philosophy, Gentile came close to Fichte’s view, reducing reality to the current thinking process, what he called the “act of thought” or “thinking thought.” Since he identified the act of thought with actual reality, he contrasted it not only to the whole objective world but also to past thought, to “thought thought,” which, according to Gentile, was an “ossified” and materialized thinking process and hence no longer dialectical.

Gentile cooperated with the fascist government and became an apologist of the totalitarian state, which he viewed as the embodiment of the moral spirit. He called for the total submission of the personality to the state and for the dissolution of individuals in political history.

WORKS

Opere complete, vols. 1-16. Florence, 1935-46.

REFERENCES

Efirov, S. A. Italïianskaia burzhuaznaia filosofiia 20 v. Moscow, 1968. Chapter 2.
Giovanni Gentile: La vita e ilpensiero, vols. 3, 6. Florence, 1950-54.
Harris, H. S. The Social Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile. Urbana, 1960.

S. A. EFIROV