Italian idealism, born from interest in the German movement and particularly in Hegelian doctrine, developed in Italy starting from the spiritualism of the nineteenth-century Risorgimento tradition, and culminated in the first half of the twentieth century in its two greatest exponents: Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile.
In the age of Romanticism, Italian patriots' philosophical circles, especially in Naples, found in Hegelian idealism the way to give a spiritual and cultural imprint to the historical path towards national unification. [1]
The interest in the Hegelian doctrine in Italy spread especially for the works of Augusto Vera (1813–1885) and Bertrando Spaventa (1817–1883), without omitting also the importance of the studies on Hegel "Aesthetic" by Francesco De Sanctis (1817–1883), author of the Storia della letteratura italiana .
De Sanctis's concept of art and of literary history, inspired by Hegel, will stimulate the genesis of Crocian idealism. [2]
Augusto Vera, author of writings and commentaries about Hegel, was a famous philosopher in Europe, who interpreted the Hegelian Absolute in a religious and transcendent sense. [3]
An opposite interpretation was formulated by Bertrand Spaventa, for whom the Spirit was immanent in the history of philosophy.
Reconstructing the development of Italian philosophy, Spaventa argued that Italian Renaissance thought of Bruno and Campanella had been at the origin of modern philosophy, but had stopped due to the Counter-Reformation. Its task now was to catch up with European philosophy, linking up with Vico's mind philosophy, which along with those of Galluppi, Rosmini, and Gioberti, had anticipated themes of Kantism and German idealism.
Se la filosofia non è una vana esercitazione dell'intelletto, ma quella forma reale della vita umana, nella quale si compendiano e trovano il loro vero significato tutti i momenti anteriori dello spirito, è cosa naturale che un popolo libero si riconosca e abbia la vera coscienza di se stesso anche ne' suoi filosofi. [4] | If philosophy is not a vain exercise of the intellect, but the real form of human life within which are compounded and find their true meaning all the past moments of the spirit, then it is natural for a free people to recognize itself and find the true conscience of itself in its own philosophers. [4] |
Spaventa reformulated the Hegelian dialectic, reinterpreting it from the perspective of Kantian and Fichtian conscientialism or subjectivism. He considered the act of thinking prevalent with respect to the phases of objectification and synthesis. That is, he supported the need to «mentalise» Hegel, because the Mind is the protagonist of every original production. The synthesis of the actual thinking of the Spirit was then placed by Spaventa, as the only reality, not only after the hegelian moments of Idea and of Nature, but so as to permeate them also from the beginning. [5]
After a parenthesis characterized by positivism, in 1913 Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944) with the publication of The reform of Hegelian dialectics resumed Spaventa's interpretation of the Hegelian Idea, seeing in Hegelian Spirit the category of becoming as coinciding with the pure act of thought in which the whole reality of nature, history and spirit was transfused. [6] Every thing exists only in the mental act of thinking it: there are no single empirical entities separated from the trascendental consciousness; even the past lives only in the actual, present moment of memory. To Gentile, who considered himself the "philosopher of Fascism", [7] actual idealism was the sole remedy to philosophically preserving free agency, by making the act of thinking self-creative, and, therefore, without any contingency and not in the potency of any other fact. [6]
Gentile reproached Hegel for having built his dialectic with elements proper to "thought", that is to say that of determined thought and of the sciences. For Gentile, instead, only in "thinking in action" is dialectical self-consciousness that includes everything.
Una concezione idealistica mira a concepire lo stesso assoluto, il tutto, come idea: ed è perciò intrinsecamente idealismo assoluto. Ma assoluto l'idealismo non può essere se l'idea non coincide con lo stesso atto del conoscerla; perché - è questa la più profonda origine delle difficoltà in cui si dibatte il platonismo - se l'idea non fosse lo stesso atto per cui l'idea si conosce, l'idea lascerebbe fuori di sè qualche cosa, e l'idealismo pertanto non sarebbe più assoluto. [8] | An idealistic conception aims at conceiving the absolute, the whole, as an idea, and is therefore intrinsically absolute idealism. But absolute it cannot be unless the idea coincides with the act of knowing it, because — and here we find the very root of the difficulty in which Platonism is entangled — were the idea not the act itself through which it is known, it would leave something outside itself, and the idealism would then no longer be absolute. [8] |
Gentile made a pivotal distinction to factors concerning Idealism's own criteria for reality, which have stood since Berkeley's adage «esse est percipi» by distinguishing between the concrete real «act of thinking» (pensiero pensante), and the abstract «static thought» (pensiero pensato). [6]
To his actual vision was opposed since 1913 Benedetto Croce (1866–1952, cousin of Bertrando Spaventa) who in his Essay on Hegel interpreted Hegelian thought as immanentist historicism: he also understood the Hegelian dialectic of the opposites in a different way, integrating it with that of the «distincts». [6] According to Croce, in fact, the life of the Spirit also consists of autonomous moments that are not opposed, but rather distinct, that is:
Referring to Giambattista Vico, Croce identified philosophy with history, understood not as a capricious sequence of events, but the implementation of Reason, in the light of which it becomes possible the historical understanding of the genesis of facts, and their simultaneous justification with her own unfolding.
La storia non è mai giustiziera, ma sempre giustificatrice; e giustiziera non potrebbe farsi se non facendosi ingiusta, ossia confondendo il pensiero con la vita, e assumendo come giudizio del pensiero le attrazioni e le repulsioni del sentimento. [9] | History never metes out justice, but always justifies; she could not carry out the former act without making herself unjust — that is to say, confounding thought with life, taking the attractions and repulsions of sentiment for the judgments of thought. [9] |
Historian's task is therefore to overcome every form of emotionality towards the studied matter, and to present it in form of knowledge, without referring to good or evil. [6]
After having characterized Italian philosophical culture for over forty years, after the Second World War the neo-idealism entered a crisis, replaced by existentialism, neo-positivism, phenomenology and marxism. [6]
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher and one of the most influential figures of German idealism and 19th-century philosophy. His influence extends across the entire range of contemporary philosophical topics, from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political philosophy, the philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy.
Idealism in philosophy, also known as philosophical idealism or metaphysical idealism, is the set of metaphysical perspectives asserting that, most fundamentally, reality is equivalent to mind, spirit, or consciousness; that reality is entirely a mental construct; or that ideas are the highest form of reality or have the greatest claim to being considered "real". The radical latter view is often first credited to the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato as part of a theory now known as Platonic idealism. Besides in Western philosophy, idealism also appears in some Indian philosophy, namely in Vedanta, one of the orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, and in some streams of Buddhism.
Benedetto Croce was an Italian idealist philosopher, historian, and politician who wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, historiography, and aesthetics. A political liberal in most regards, he formulated a distinction between liberalism and "liberism". Croce had considerable influence on other Italian intellectuals, from Marxists to Italian fascists, such as Antonio Gramsci and Giovanni Gentile, respectively.
Giovanni Gentile was an Italian philosopher, educator, and politician. Described by himself and by Benito Mussolini as the "philosopher of Fascism", he was influential in providing an intellectual foundation for Italian Fascism, and ghostwrote part of "The Doctrine of Fascism" (1932) with Mussolini. He was involved in the resurgence of Hegelian idealism in Italian philosophy and also devised his own system of thought, which he called "actual idealism" or "actualism", which has been described as "the subjective extreme of the idealist tradition".
Actual 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. Hegel. To Gentile, who considered himself the "philosopher of fascism" while simultaneously describing himself as liberal and socialist, actualism was presented the sole remedy to philosophically preserving free agency, by making the act of thinking self-creative and, therefore, without any contingency and not in the potency of any other fact.
Absolute Idealism, a philosophical theory that posits reality as a manifestation of a singular, underlying spiritual or ideal essence, forms the cornerstone of a profound intellectual tradition. Absolute Idealism is chiefly associated with Friedrich Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel, both of whom were German idealist philosophers in the 19th century. The label has also been attached to others such as Josiah Royce, an American philosopher who was greatly influenced by Hegel's work, and the British idealists.
Augusto Vera was an Italian philosopher who followed Hegel's theories and translated many of his works.
Ludovico Geymonat was an Italian mathematician, philosopher and historian of science. As a philosopher, he mainly dealt with philosophy of science, epistemology and Marxist philosophy, in which he gave an original turn to dialectical materialism.
Vincenzo Cuoco was an Italian writer. He is mainly remembered for his Saggio Storico sulla Rivoluzione Napoletana del 1799. He is considered as one of the precursors of Italian liberalism and the realist school. Cuoco adapted the critique of political rationalism of Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre for liberal ends, and has been described as a better historian than either of them. He influenced many subsequent Italian intellectuals, from Ugo Foscolo and Alessandro Manzoni to Bertrando and Silvio Spaventa to Benedetto Croce and Antonio Gramsci.
Luigi Pareysón was an Italian philosopher, best known for challenging the positivist and idealist aesthetics of Benedetto Croce in his 1954 monograph, Estetica. Teoria della formatività, which builds on the hermeneutics of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
The Gentile Reform of 1923 was a reform of the Italian educational system through a series of normative acts, by the neo-idealist philosopher Giovanni Gentile, minister of education in Benito Mussolini's first cabinet. It officially recognized 21 universities in Italy.
Over the ages, Italian philosophy had a vast influence on Western philosophy, beginning with the Greeks and Romans, and going onto Renaissance humanism, the Age of Enlightenment and modern philosophy. Philosophy was brought to Italy by Pythagoras, founder of the school of philosophy in Crotone, Magna Graecia. Major philosophers of the Greek period include Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, Empedocles and Gorgias. Roman philosophers include Cicero, Lucretius, Seneca the Younger, Musonius Rufus, Plutarch, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Clement of Alexandria, Sextus Empiricus, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Augustine of Hippo, Philoponus of Alexandria and Boethius.
Roberto Esposito is an Italian political philosopher, critical theorist, and professor, notable for his academic research and works on biopolitics. He currently serves as professor of theoretical philosophy at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa.
Bertrando Spaventa was a leading Italian philosopher of the 19th century whose ideas had an important influence on the changes that took place during the unification of Italy and on philosophical thought in the 20th century.
Silvio Spaventa was an Italian journalist, politician and statesman who played a leading role in the unification of Italy, and subsequently held important positions within the newly formed Italian state.
The following is a list of the major events in the history of German idealism, along with related historical events.
Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are works in philosophy that are strongly influenced by Karl Marx's materialist approach to theory, or works written by Marxists. Marxist philosophy may be broadly divided into Western Marxism, which drew from various sources, and the official philosophy in the Soviet Union, which enforced a rigid reading of Marx called dialectical materialism, in particular during the 1930s. Marxist philosophy is not a strictly defined sub-field of philosophy, because the diverse influence of Marxist theory has extended into fields as varied as aesthetics, ethics, ontology, epistemology, social philosophy, political philosophy, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of history. The key characteristics of Marxism in philosophy are its materialism and its commitment to political practice as the end goal of all thought. The theory is also about the struggles of the proletariat and their reprimand of the bourgeoisie.
Vito Fazio-Allmayer was an Italian philosopher, pedagogist and university teacher.
Giorgio Fano was an Italian philosopher and linguist. He belonged to the school of Italian neo-idealist thinkers, among a group of artists and writers who made Trieste of the early Twentieth Century a notable center of intellectual activity. Fano read and interpreted the work of Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile from an original point of view. In particular, he recognized the importance of the natural sciences and mathematics, which in his system are not pseudo-concepts. He also stressed the major importance of the simplest and most basic aspects of the life of mind, inspired by reflections of Gianbattista Vico.
Baldasarre Labanca was an Italian Christian theologian and historian.
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