Born May 9, 1909, in Rieti. Italian philosopher and historian of philosophy. Professor at the University of Florence since 1950.
A considerable part of Garin’s work is devoted to problems of the history of Renaissance culture and philosophy. He was one of the first Italian historians to refute Croce’s idealistic concept of the development of culture, and he was the first to make scholarly use of much of the manuscript heritage of the humanists, including Pico della Mirándola. In his Chronicle of Italian Philosophy of the 20th Century (1955; Russian translation, 1965), Garin considers the history of philosophy in connection with the development of Italian culture and political history and traces the ideological preparation for fascism. The book as a whole was given a high but critical rating by Italian Marxists.