Gentile, Giovanni(1875–1944)
Giovanni Gentile was one of the major figures in the resurgence of Hegelian idealism in Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century. His "actual idealism," or "actualism," represents the subjective extreme of the idealist tradition in that the present activity of reflective awareness (l'atto del pensiero, pensiero pensante) is regarded as the absolute foundation on which all else depends. The act of thinking is the "pure act" that creates the world of human experience.
Life and Works
Gentile was born on May 30, 1875, at Castelvetrano in Sicily. He began his university education as a student of Italian literature under Alessandro d'Ancona at Pisa in 1893, but was quickly drawn into the study of philosophy by Donato Jaja, a pupil of the Neapolitan Hegelian, Bertrando Spaventa. Of the two main threads that run through all of Gentile's work, one—his concern with the theory and practice of education—is rooted directly in his own temperament and his strongly felt vocation as a teacher; but the other—his almost chauvinistic interest in the Italian philosophical tradition and its relation to the general European tradition—reflects the lifelong influence of Spaventa on his mind. His degree thesis, Rosmini e Gioberti (Pisa, 1898), in which he emphasized points of contact and agreement between the native Catholic thinkers and the German Idealists, was meant to illustrate Spaventa's thesis regarding "the circulation of European philosophy."
His second book was a critical examination of Karl Marx (La filosofia di Marx, Pisa, 1899) from an orthodox Hegelian standpoint.
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