Giovanni Gentile was an
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
neo-Hegelian Idealist philosopher, a peer of
Benedetto CroceBenedetto Croce was an Italian critic, idealist philosopher, and occasionally also a politician. He wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, methodolgy of history writing and aesthetics, and was a prominent liberal, although he opposed laissez-faire free trade...
. He described himself as 'the philosopher of
FascismFascism, , comprises a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology and a corporatist economic ideology developed in Italy. Fascists believe that nations and/or races are in perpetual conflict whereby only the strong can survive by being healthy, vital, and by asserting themselves in...
', and
ghostwroteA ghostwriter is a professional writer who is paid to write books, articles, stories, reports, or other texts that are officially credited to another person. Celebrities, executives, and political leaders often hire ghostwriters to draft or edit autobiographies, magazine articles, or other written...
A Doctrine of Fascism"The Doctrine of Fascism" is an essay signed by Benito Mussolini and officially attributed to him, although it was most likely written by Giovanni Gentile. It was first published in the Enciclopedia Italiana of 1932, as the first section of a lengthy entry on "Fascismo"...
(1932) for
Benito MussoliniBenito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini,
KSMOM GCTE was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism. He became the Prime Minister of Italy in 1922 and began using the title Il Duce by...
. He also devised his own system of philosophy,
Actual IdealismActual Idealism was a form of idealism developed by Giovanni Gentile that grew into a 'grounded' idealism contrasting the Transcendental Idealism of Immanuel Kant and the Absolute idealism of G. W. F...
.
Life and thought
Gentile was born in
CastelvetranoCastelvetrano is a town in the province of Trapani, Sicily, Italy. The archeological site of Selinunte is located within the territory of the comune. It was the birthplace of Giovanni Gentile, the key philosopher of the fascist movement in Italy....
,
SicilySicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is an autonomous region of Italy. Several much smaller islands surrounding it are considered to be part of Sicily....
. Gentile was inspired by such Italian thinkers as Mazzini,
RosminiBlessed Antonio Rosmini-Serbati was an Italian Roman Catholic priest and philosopher.-Biography:Born at Rovereto, Italy, he belonged to a noble and wealthy family, but at an early age decided to enter the priesthood...
,
Giobertithumb|250px|Vincenzo Gioberti.Vincenzo Gioberti was an Italian philosopher, publicist and politician.-Biography:Gioberti was born in Turin....
and Spaventa from whom he borrowed the idea of
autoctisi or self-construction, but was just as strongly influenced by the German idealist and materialist schools of thought – namely
Karl MarxKarl Heinrich Marx was a Germanphilosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist and revolutionary, whose ideas are credited as the foundation of modern communism...
, Hegel, and Fichte with whom he shared the ideal of creating a Wissenschaftslehre, or theory for a structure of knowledge which makes no assumptions.
Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th- century German philosopher and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, using a distinctive German-language style and displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and...
too, played an influence on Gentile, as can be seen in an analogy between Nietzsche's
Übermensch and Gentile's
Uomo Fascista.
He held the philosophy chair at
PalermoPalermo is a historic city in Southern Italy, the capital of the autonomous region Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its rich history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
University, from 1907 to 1914, and later in Pisa. He was also
Benito MussoliniBenito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini,
KSMOM GCTE was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism. He became the Prime Minister of Italy in 1922 and began using the title Il Duce by...
's minister of Public Education in 1923, implementing sweeping reform of the Italian secondary school system, commonly referred to as the "Riforma Gentile", which had a deep and long-lasting influence on Italian education.
Soon after, Gentile formulated important works such as
The Theory of Mind as Pure ActActus Purus is a term employed in scholastic philosophy to express the absolute perfection of God.Created beings have potentiality that is not actuality, imperfections as well as perfection. Only God is simultaneously all that He can be, infinitely real and infinitely perfect: `I am who I am`...
(1916) &
Logic as Theory of Knowledge (1917). In these works Gentile devised what he called
Actual IdealismActual Idealism was a form of idealism developed by Giovanni Gentile that grew into a 'grounded' idealism contrasting the Transcendental Idealism of Immanuel Kant and the Absolute idealism of G. W. F...
, a unified metaphysical system reinforcing his sentiments that philosophy when isolated from life, and alternately, life when isolated from philosophy are two modes of the same backwards cultural bankruptcy. It was a theory that for him could finally realise how philosophy could directly influence, mould, and penetrate into life: philosophy could govern life.
His system saw thought as all-embracing: he claimed none could actually leave their sphere of thinking or exceed their own thought.
RealityReality, in everyday usage, means "the state of things as they actually exist." Literally, the term denotes what is real; in its widest sense, this includes everything that is, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. Reality in this sense includes being and sometimes is considered to...
to Gentile could not be thinkable except in relation to the activity by means where it becomes thinkable. Gentile posited this as a unity held within the active subject along with the multitude of
abstractAbstraction is the process or result of generalization by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a leather soccer ball to a ball retains only the information...
separate
phenomenaA phenomenon is any observable occurrence. In popular usage, a phenomenon often refers to an extraordinary event. In scientific usage, a phenomenon is any event that is observable, however commonplace it might be, even if it requires the use of instrumentation to observe it...
of all that was. Wherein each phenomenon when truly realized was in fact then centered in this unity and it was therefore innately
spiritualThe term supernatural or supranatural pertains to an order of existence beyond the scientifically visible universe. Religious miracles are typically supernatural claims, as are spells and curses, divination, the belief that there is an afterlife for the dead, and innumerable others...
,
transcendentIn philosophy, the adjective transcendental and the noun transcendence convey three different but somehow related primary meanings, all of them derived from the word's literal meaning , of climbing or going beyond: one sense that originated in Ancient philosophy, one in Medieval philosophy, and one...
and
immanentImmanence, derived from the Latin in manere - "to remain within" - refers to philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence, which hold that some divine being or essence manifests in and through all aspects of the material world...
to all other possible things that were in contact with it. Gentile used this as a framework to begin an entire systematization of all otherwise seemingly disparate items of interest now subject to this rule of absolute self-identification, making all consequences that arise from this
hypothesisA hypothesis is a proposed explanation for an observable phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι - hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose." For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...
the correct ones. What resulted may be interpreted as an idealist foundation for
Legal NaturalismLegal naturalism is a term coined by Olufemi Taiwo to describe a current in the social philosophy of Karl Marx which can be interpreted as one of Natural Law. Taiwo considered it the manifestation of Natural Law in a dialectical materialist context.-Books:...
.
Gentile, described both by himself and Mussolini as 'the philosopher of
FascismFascism, , comprises a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology and a corporatist economic ideology developed in Italy. Fascists believe that nations and/or races are in perpetual conflict whereby only the strong can survive by being healthy, vital, and by asserting themselves in...
', ghostwrote
A Doctrine of Fascism"The Doctrine of Fascism" is an essay signed by Benito Mussolini and officially attributed to him, although it was most likely written by Giovanni Gentile. It was first published in the Enciclopedia Italiana of 1932, as the first section of a lengthy entry on "Fascismo"...
for
Benito MussoliniBenito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini,
KSMOM GCTE was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism. He became the Prime Minister of Italy in 1922 and began using the title Il Duce by...
. It first appeared in 1932 in the Italian Encyclopedia (which was edited by Gentile). In it he described the traits characteristic of Italian Fascism at the time: compulsory state
corporatismCorporatism is a system of economic, political, and social organization where corporate groups such as business, ethnic, farmer, labour, military, patronage, or religious groups are joined together into a single governing body in which the different groups are mandated to negotiate with each other...
, Philosopher Kings, abolition of the
parliamentThe Parliament of Italy is the national parliament of Italy. It is a bicameral legislature with 945 elected members . The Chamber of Deputies, with 630 members is the lower house. The Senate of the Republic is the upper house and has 315 members .Since 2005, a Proportional System electoral law is...
ary system, and
autarkyAutarky is the quality of being self-sufficient. Usually the term is applied to political states or their economic policies. Autarky exists whenever an entity can survive or continue its activities without external assistance. Autarky is not necessarily economic. For example, a military autarky...
. He also wrote the
Manifesto of the Italian Fascist Intellectuals which was signed by many thinkers and writers such as
Luigi PirandelloLuigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934,for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and c. 40 plays, some of which are written in...
. Gentile was minister of education and later a member of the Fascist Grand Council during the Fascist regime. He stayed loyal to Mussolini after the establishment of the
Republic of SalòThe Italian Social Republic was a puppet state of Nazi Germany led by the "Duce of the Nation" and "Minister of Foreign Affairs" Benito Mussolini. The RSI exercised official sovereignty in northern Italy but was largely dependent on the Wehrmacht to maintain control...
and accepted an appointment from the government. In 1944 he was killed by a group of anti-fascist
partisansThe Italian resistance movement was a partisan force during World War II.-Origins of the movement:After Italy's armistice on 8 September 1943, the Italian resistance movement became massive...
led by Bruno Fanciullacci, while returning from the Prefecture in
FlorenceFlorence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence...
, where he had previously argued for the release of anti-fascist intellectuals.
Gentile had believed so firmly in the philosophical concreteness of Fascism as having a dialectical intelligence surpassing intellectual scrutiny, that he presumed intellectual opposition could only reinforce and give credence to help the truth of his conception of Fascism as a superior and liberally thinking polity.
Phases of his thought
There are a number of developments within his thought and career which defined his philosophy.
- The discovery of Actual Idealism in his work Theory of the Pure Act (1903)
- The political favour he felt for the invasion of Libya
Libya , officially the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya , is a country located in North Africa...
(1911) and the entry of Italy into World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
(1915) - The dispute with Benedetto Croce over the historic inevitability of Fascism.
- His role as education minister (1923)
- His belief that Fascism could be made to be subservient to his thought and the gathering of influence through the work of such students as Ugo Spirito.
Philosophy
Benedetto Croce wrote that Gentile "...holds the honor of having been the most rigorous neo–Hegelian in the entire history of Western philosophy and the dishonor of having been the official philosopher of Fascism in Italy." His philosophical basis for fascism was rooted in his understanding of
ontologyOntology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as of the basic categories of being and their relations...
and
epistemologyEpistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge...
, in which he found vindication for the rejection of
individualismIndividualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses independence and self-reliance. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires, while opposing most external interference upon one's choices, whether by society, or any other group or...
, acceptance of
collectivismCollectivism is a term used to describe any moral, political, or social outlook, that emphasizes the interdependence of every human in some collective group and the priority of group goals over individual goals. Collectivists focus on community and society, and seek to give priority to group goals...
, with the
stateA sovereign state is a political association with effective internal and external sovereignty over a geographic area and population which is not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state...
as the ultimate location of authority and loyalty to which the individual found in the conception of individuality no meaning outside of the state (which in turn justified
totalitarianismTotalitarianism is a political system where the state, usually under the control of a single party or faction, recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
).
Ultimately, Gentile foresaw a social order wherein opposites of all kinds weren't to be given sanction as existing independently from each other; that 'publicness' and 'privateness' as broad interpretations were currently false as imposed by all former kinds of Government;
capitalismCapitalism is an economic and social system in which the means of production are privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in a market; profits are distributed to owners or invested in technologies and industries; and wages are paid to labor...
,
communismCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
, and that only the reciprocal totalitarian state of Corporative Syndicalism, a Fascist state, could defeat these problems made from reifying as an external that which is in fact to Gentile only a thinking reality. Whereas it was common in the philosophy of the time to see conditional subject as abstract and object as concrete, Gentile postulated the opposite, that subject was the concrete and objectification was abstraction (or rather; that what was conventionally dubbed "subject" was in fact only conditional object, and that true subject was the 'act of' being or essence above any object).
Gentile was a notable philosophical theorist of his time throughout Europe, since having developed his 'Actual Idealism' system of
IdealismIdealism is the philosophical theory that maintains that the ultimate nature of reality is based on mind or ideas. It holds that the so-called external or "real world" is inseparable from mind, consciousness, or perception...
, sometimes called 'Actualism.' It was especially in which his ideas put subject to the position of a transcending truth above
positivismPositivism is a philosophy that holds that the only authentic knowledge is that which is based on actual sense experience. Metaphysical speculation is avoided...
that garnered attention; by way that all senses about the world only take the form of ideas within one's mind in any real sense; to Gentile even the analogy between the function & location of the physical brain with the functions of the physical body were a consistent creation of the mind (and not brain; which was a creation of the mind and not the other way around). An example of
Actual IdealismActual Idealism was a form of idealism developed by Giovanni Gentile that grew into a 'grounded' idealism contrasting the Transcendental Idealism of Immanuel Kant and the Absolute idealism of G. W. F...
in
TheologyThe term "theology" literally means the study of God, deriving from the Greek word theos, meaning 'God', and the suffix -ology from the Greek word logos meaning "discourse", "theory", or "reasoning"...
is the idea that although man may have invented the concept of God, it does not make God any less real in any sense possible as far as it is not presupposed to exist as abstraction and except in case qualities about what existence actually entails (i.e. being invented apart from the thinking making it) are presupposed.
Benedetto CroceBenedetto Croce was an Italian critic, idealist philosopher, and occasionally also a politician. He wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, methodolgy of history writing and aesthetics, and was a prominent liberal, although he opposed laissez-faire free trade...
objected that Gentile's "pure act" is nothing other than
SchopenhauerArthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity...
's
willWill, or willpower, is a philosophical concept that is defined in several different ways.-Will as internal drive:Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche defines will similarly to the "any internally motivated action" usage, but more narrowly. In this sense, will is more a "creative spark," a certain...
.
Therefore Gentile proposed a form of what he called 'absolute Immanentism' in which the divine was the present conception of reality in the totality of one's individual thinking as an evolving, growing and dynamic process. Many times accused of
SolipsismSolipsism is the philosophical idea that one's own mind is all that exists. Solipsism is an epistemological or ontological position that knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjustified. The external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist...
, Gentile maintained his philosophy to be a
HumanismHumanism is a perspective common to a wide range of ethical stances that attaches importance to human dignity, concerns, and capabilities, particularly rationality. Although the word has many senses, its meaning comes into focus when contrasted to the supernatural or to appeals to authority...
that sensed the possibility of nothing beyond what was contingent; the self's human thinking, in order to communicate as immanence is to be human like oneself, made a cohesive empathy of the self-same, without an external division, and therefore not modeled as objects to one's own thinking.
Gentile's immanentist philosophy was divergent from others in that while he put the center of existence and all spirituality in the individual, he perceived the consequence of this to mean complete selfless immersion and relegation to the social plane in action as being the truest vanguard of the will of an individual so understood, when rightly and purely expressed. This is because to Gentile social reality was not exterior to the individual, but was a qualified extension of the individual by the fact that it was the individual who recognized social reality and all its implications and qualifications through no means beyond the mind of himself. Though he may imagine he does so through his senses, which are again only external in so far as the mind internally apprehends them to be. This act constituting the full extent of what represents external character, continues to be for Gentile a product solely within the apprehension that transcends exterior being. Doing so by virtue that such immanent apprehension is what exclusively must be referred to when maintaining the basis of what seems external to the individual.
Gentile maintained the need for an intelligent opposition to the intellectualizing of systems into being, divorced from practice, which he would classify 'abstract' and for that reason unwieldy if not unworkable. Though this stand is cited by his terminology as "anti-intellectualism" he attributes to it still the factor of intelligence. Meaning 'intelligence' is as it penetrates, and not as it is object, i.e. not as it is when in the "intellectual" tense of the word. In the common meaning of this term outside of Gentiles highly analytic interpretation of it to his philosophy, Gentiles philosophy in fact contains all of the criteria in regard to comporting a favorable position toward having "intellectual" pursuits.
Gentile took the stand against
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
and psycho-analysis that one cannot abstract (i.e. make object out of) the source that creates its own surrounding reality, as one does by his own philosophy, and that any empirical observations of behavioral anthropology appear true because empiricalism always adheres to its own laws, being a closed system it is true within its own considered vacuum. Rather than look to the external for the source of ones mentality, Gentile held that any colourations on what the external first manifests as are initially created within the self, and therefore the external is a product of one's psychology and not the other way around.
Gentile's theory may be considered an extreme form of
Occam's RazorOccam's razor , entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem , is the principle that can be popularly stated as "when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better." The principle is attributed to 14th-century English...
, though it can appear to common sense to defy Occam's Razor outright by the complex thinking involved to relate with his theory. Gentile however deduced that common sense in considering material reality was to him not philosophical because it was not self-critical of its sensory presuppositions. To Gentile, making a thought category of his theory itself defied it by turning it into object, as any such idea of the philosophy that was not kept in subject or truly 'actual' could not be Actual Idealism.
One of his most important works is
Genesi e Struttura della Società in which he argues that the individual is an abstraction originating from analysis of society. One of the consequences he draws is that the state and the individual are one and the same and that their division is an example of formal abstraction. The work was written after Mussolini had been deposed by the Fascist Grand Council but before the proclamation of the armistice between
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
and the Allies on September 8 1943 and the Republic of Salò on September 14 1943.
Gentile's definition of and vision for Fascism
Gentile sought to make his philosophy become the basis of Fascism in much the same manner Marx had developed his philosophy as the basis of Communism. However, with Gentile & with Fascism, the 'problem of the party' existed, and existed by the fact that the Fascist party came to be organically rather than from a tract or pre-made doctrine of thought. This complicated the matter for Gentile as it left no consensus to any way of thinking among Fascists, but ironically this aspect was to Gentile's view of how a state or party doctrine should live out its existence: with natural organic growth and dialectical opposition intact. The fact that Mussolini gave credence to Gentile's view points via Gentile's authorship helped with an official consideration, even though the 'problem of the party' continued to exist for Mussolini himself as well.
Gentile placed himself in the Marxist tradition in many respects, but he believed that Marx's conception of the dialectic to be the fundamental flaw of his application to system making. To Gentile, Marx made the dialectic into external object, and therefore abstracted it by making it part of some process that theoretically exists of outward matter & material. The dialectic to Gentile could only be something of human precepts, something that is an active part of human thinking. Dialectic was to Gentile concrete subject and not
abstract objectAn abstract object is an object which does not exist at any particular time or place, but rather exists as a type of thing . In philosophy, an important distinction is whether an object is considered abstract or concrete. Abstract objects are sometimes called abstracta An abstract object is an...
. This Gentile expounded by how humans think in forms wherein one side of a dual opposite could not be thought of without its complement.
"Upward" wouldn't be known without "downward" and "heat" couldn't be known without "cold", while each are opposites they are co-dependent for either one's realization: these were creations that existed as dialectic only in human thinking and couldn't be confirmed outside of which, and especially could not be said to exist in a condition external to human thought like independent matter & a world outside of personal subjectivity or as an empirical reality when not conceived in unity and from the standpoint of the human mind.
To Gentile, Marx externalizing the dialectic was essentially a fetishistic mysticism. Though when viewed externally thus, it followed that Marx could then make claims to the effect of what state or condition the dialectic objectively existed in history,
a posteriori of where any individuals opinion was while comporting oneself to the totalized whole of society. i.e. people themselves could by such a view be ideologically 'backwards' and left behind from the current state of the dialectic and not themselves be part of what is actively creating the dialectic as-it-is.
Gentile thought this was absurd, and that there was no 'positive' independently existing dialectical object. Rather, the dialectic was natural to the state, as-it-is. Meaning that the interests composing the state are composing the dialectic by their living organic process of holding oppositional views within that state, and unified therein. It being the mean condition of those interests as ever they exist. Even criminality, is unified as a necessarily dialectic to be subsumed into the state and a creation and natural outlet of the dialectic of the positive state as ever it is.
This view justified the corporative system, wherein the individualized and particular interests of all divergent groups were to be personably incorporated into the state, each to be considered a bureaucratic branch of the state itself and given official leverage. Gentile, rather than believing the private to be swallowed synthetically within the public as Marx would have it in his objective dialectic, believed that public & private were
a priori identified with each other in an active & subjective dialectic: one could not be subsumed fully into the other as they already are beforehand the same. In such a manner each is the other after their own fashion & from their respective, relative, and reciprocal, position. Yet both constitute the state itself and neither are free from it, nothing ever being truly free from it, the state existing as an eternal condition and not an objective, abstract collection of atomistic values and facts of the particulars about what is positively governing the people at any given time.
Works
| Writings of Giovanni Gentile (to 1935) |
*Delle Commedie di Antonfranceso Grazzi, detto "Il Lasca" (1896)
- Una critica del materialismo storico (1897)
- Rosmini e Gioberti (1898)
- La filosofia di Marx (1899)
- Il concetto della storia (1899)
- L'insegnamento della filosofia nei licei (1900)
- Il concetto scientifico della pedagogia (1900)
- Della vita e degli scritti di B. Spaventa (1900)
- Polemica hegeliana (1902)
- L'unita della scuola secondaria e la libertà degli studi (1902)
- Filosofia ed empiricismo (1902)
- La rinascità dell'idealismo (1903)
- Dal Genovesi al Galluppi (1903)
- Studi sullo Stoicismo romano del I sec. d. C. (1904)
- Riforme liceali (1905)
- Il figlio di G. B. Vico (1905)
- La riforma della scuola media (1906)
- Le varie redazioni del De sensu rerum di T. Campanella (1906)
- Giordano Bruno nella storia della cultura (1907)
- Il primo processo d'eresia di T. Campanella (1907)
- Per la scuola primeria allo stato (1907)
- Vincenzo Gioberti nel primo centenario dell sua nascità (1907)
- Il concetto della storia della filosofia (1908)
- Vincenzo Cuoco pedagoista (1908)
- Scuola e filosofia (1908)
- Ilmodernismo e i rapporti fra religione e filosofia (1909)
- Un poeta del pensiero. Cultura (1911)
- Bernardino Telesio (1911)
- The Theory of Mind as Pure Act (1912)
- Il programma della Biblioteca Filosofica di Palermo (1912)
- Intorno all'idealismo attuale: ricordi e confessioni (1913)
- I problemi della scolastica e il pensiero italiano (1913)
- La riforma della dialettica hegeliana (1913)
- Sommario di pedagogia come scienza filosofica (1913)
- Il torto e il diritto del positivismo (1914)
- La filosofia della guerra (1914)
- Pascuale Galluppi giacobino? (1914)
- Documenti pisani della vita e delle idee di V. Gioberti (1915)
- Donato Jaja (1915)
- Biblografia delle lettere a stampa di V. Gioberti (1915)
- Studi vichiani (1915)
- L'esperienza pura e la realtà storica (1915)
- Per la riforma deglie insegamenti filosofici (1916)
- Il concetto dell'uomo nel rinascimento (1916)
- I fondamenti della filosofia del diritto (1916)
- Teoria generale dello spirito come atto puro (1916)
- Le origini della filosofia contemporanea in Italia (1917)
- Sistema di logica come teoria del conoscere (1917)
- Il carattere storico della filosofia italiana (1918)
- Esiste una scuola italiana? (1918)
- Il Marxismo di Benedetto Croce (1918)
- Il tramonto della cultura Siciliana (1919)
- Mazzini (1919)
- Il realismo politico di V. Gioberti (1919)
- Guerra e fede (1919)
- Dopo la vittoria (1920)
- Il problema scolastico del dopoguerra (1920)
- La riforma dell'educazione (1920)
- Discorsi di religione (1920)
- Giordano Bruno e il pensiero del rinascimento (1920)
- Arte e religione (1920)
- Bertrando Spaventa (1920)
- Difesa della filosofia (1920)
- Storia della cultura piedmontese della 2a meta del sec. XIX (1921)
- Frammenti di estetica e letteratura (1921)
- Albori della nuova Italia (1921)
- Educazione e scuola laica (1921)
- Saggi critici (1921)
- La filosofia di Dante (1921)
- Il concetto moderno della scienza e il problema universitario (1921)
- G. Capponi e la cultura toscana nel secolo decimonono (1922)
- Studi sul rinascimento (1923)
- Dante e Manzoni, con un saggio su Arte e religione (1923)
- I profeti del Risorgimento Italiano (1923)
- Intorno alla logica del concreto (1924)
- Preliminari allo studio del fanciullo (1924)
- La riforma della scuola (1924)
- Il fascismo e la Sicilia (1924)
- Il fascismo al governo della scuola (1924)
- Che cosa è fascismo (1925)
- La nuova scuola media (1925)
- Avvertimenti attualisti (1926)
- Frammenti di storia della filosofia (1926)
- Saggi critici (1926)
- L'eredità di Vittorio Alfieri (1926)
- Cultura fascista (1926)
- Il problema religioso in Italia (1927)
- Il pensiero italiano del secolo XIX (1928)
- Fascismo e cultura (1928)
- La filosofia del fascismo (1928)
- La legge del Gran Consiglio (1928)
- Manzoni e Leopardi (1929)
- Origins and Doctrine of Fascism (1929)
- La filosofia dell'arte (1931)
- La riforma della scuola in Italia (1932)
- Introduzione alla filosofia (1933)
- La donna e il fanciullo (1934)
- Origini e dottrina del fascismo (1934)
- Economia ed etica (1934)
- Leonardo da Vinci (Gentile one of contributors, 1935)
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| Complete writings of Giovanni Gentile as published by Le Lettere |
Opere sistematiche
I-II. Sommario di pedagogia come scienza filosofica.
(Vol. I: Pedagogia generale; vol. II: Didattica).
III. Teoria generale dello spirito come atto puro.
IV. I fondamenti della filosofia del diritto.
V-VI. Sistema di logica come teoria del conoscere (voll. 2).
VII. La riforma dell'educazione.
VIII. La filosofia dell'arte.
IX. Genesi e struttura della società.
Opere storiche
X. Storia della filosofia. Dalle origini a Platone.
XI. Storia della filosofia italiana (fino a Lorenzo Valla).
XII. I problemi della Scolastica e il pensiero italiano.
XIII. Studi su Dante.
XIV Il pensiero italiano del Rinascimento.
XV. Studi sul Rinascimento.
XVI. Studi vichiani.
XVII. L'eredità di Vittorio Alfieri.
XVIII-XIX. Storia della filosofia italiana dal Genovesi al Galluppi (voll. 2).
XX-XXI. Albori della nuova Italia (voll. 2).
XXII. Vincenzo Cuoco. Studi e appunti.
XXIII. Gino Capponi e la cultura toscana nel secolo decimonono.
XXIV. Manzoni e Leopardi.
XXV. Rosmini e Gioberti.
XXVI. I profeti del Risorgimento italiano.
XXVII. La riforma della dialettica hegeliana.
XXVIII. La filosofia di Marx.
XXIX. Bertrando Spaventa.
XXX. Il tramonto della cultura siciliana.
XXXI-XXXIV. Le origini della filosofia contemporanea in Italia. (Vol. I: I platonici; vol. II: I positivisti; voll. III e IV: I neokantiani e gli hegeliani).
XXXV. Il modernismo e i rapporti fra religione e filosofia.
Opere varie
XXXVI. Introduzione alla filosofia.
XXXVII. Discorsi di religione.
XXXVIII. Difesa della filosofia.
XXXIX. Educazione e scuola laica.
XL. La nuova scuola media.
XLI. La riforma della scuola in Italia.
XLII. Preliminari allo studio del fanciullo.
XLIII. Guerra e fede.
XLIV. Dopo la vittoria.
XLV-XLVI. Politica e cultura (voll. 2).
Fragments
XLVII-XLVIII. Frammenti di estetica e di teoria della storia (voll. 2).
XLIX-L. Frammenti di critica e storia letteraria.
LI-LII. Frammenti di filosofia.
LIII-LV. Frammenti di storia della filosofia.
Letter collections
I-II. Carteggio Gentile-Jaja (voll. 2)
III-VII. Lettere a Benedetto Croce (voll. 5)
VIII. Carteggio Gentile-D'Ancona
IX. Carteggio Gentile-Omodeo
X. Carteggio Gentile-Maturi
XI. Carteggio Gentile-Pintor
XII. Carteggio Gentile-Chiavacci
XIII. Carteggio Gentile-Calogero
XIV. Carteggio Gentile-Donati
Rare and unpublished
1. Eraclito. Vita e frammenti.
2. La filosofia della storia. Saggi e inediti. |
Works about Giovanni Gentile in English
- A. James Gregor
A. James Gregor is a Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley who is well known for his views on Fascism and security issues.-Early life:...
, Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism (Transaction Publishers, 2001). ISBN 0-7658-0072-1
- A. James Gregor
A. James Gregor is a Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley who is well known for his views on Fascism and security issues.-Early life:...
, Origins and Doctrine of Fascism: With Selections from Other Works by Giovanni Gentile (Transaction Publishers, 2004). ISBN 0-7658-0577-4
- M. E. Moss, Mussolini's Fascist Philosopher, Giovanni Gentile Reconsidered (Lang, 2004). ISBN 0-8204-6838-X
- William A. Smith, Giovanni Gentile on the existence of God (Beatrice-Naewolaerts, 1970)
Works about Giovanni Gentile in Italian
- Giovanni Gentile (Augusto del Noce, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990)
- Giovanni Gentile filosofo europeo (Salvatore Natoli, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1989)
- Giovanni Gentile (Antimo Negri, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1975)
- Faremo una grande università: Girolamo Palazzina-Giovanni Gentile; Un epistolario (1930-1938), a cura di Marzio Achille Romano (Milano: Edizioni Giuridiche Economiche Aziendali dell'Università Bocconi e Giuffré editori S.p.A., 1999)
- Parlato, Giuseppe. "Giovanni Gentile: From the Risorgimento to Fascism." Trans. Stefano Maranzana. TELOS
Telos is an academic journal published in the United States. It was founded in May 1968 to provide the New Left with a coherent theoretical perspective. It sought to expand the Husserlian diagnosis of "the crisis of European sciences" to prefigure a particular program of social reconstruction...
133 (Winter 2005): pp. 75–94.
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