THE IDEALISM OF GIOVANNI GENTILE

by ROGER W. HOLMES

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Τζεντίλε Τζιοβάνι (Giovanni Gentile 1875- 1944). Ιταλός ιδεαλιστής, καθηγητής στο Παλέρμο, στην Πίζα και τη Ρώμη. Εκδότης της Ιταλικής Εγκυκοπαίδειας και υπουργός Παιδείας επί Μουσολίνι. Έργo το: teoria generale dello spirito come atto puro
PREFACE
ITALIAN idealism is older by half a century than German idealism. Its birth year is 1730, when Giambattista Vice’s La
scienza nuova was first published. In a period in which Italian thought was dominated by the contemplation of clear and distinct ideas and the deduction of rational systems therefrom, La scienza nuova gave voice to the new concept of human knowledge as developing through a self-generative process.
Vico described his new science as a history of human ideas according to which the metaphysics of the human mind ought to proceed. He stressed for the first time the subjective activity of the individual as the foundation of logic, of the individual spirit, and of the spirit of a whole people. To use Spaventa’s vivid metaphor, Vico was a comet among the naturalists and the mathematicians of the eighteenth century.
But La scienza nuova became hidden in Italy, hidden even to Italians. The main current of idealism has accepted as its
source the deservedly famous writings of Immanuel Kant. Its movement, from Kant through Schelling and Fichte to Hegel,
was reported in Italy by Galluppi, Rosmini, and Gioberti.
Pascuali Galluppi (1770-1846) was to Italian idealism what Kant was to the German school, the first critical philosopher.
But he had the benefit of Kant’s precedence. Antonio Rosmini (17971855), while a great student and critic of German
idealism, was more a Catholic philosopher than an idealist. He interpreted Galluppi as Hegel interpreted Kant, finding once
more the concept of Being as a synthesis of the particular of sensation and the universal of intellection. But things human
were to him insufficient: “Truth is not the work of human…

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