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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 tried to give a spiritual, moral and ideal imprint to the historical path towards national unification.[1][2]
Initially, both Antonio Rosmini (1797–1855) and Vincenzo Gioberti (1801–1852) revived the Augustinianneoplatonic themes of the interiority of conscience and divine illumination, but the former aspired to reform Kantianism in an ontological and transcendent sense, the latter more oriented towards countering the subjectivism of modern philosophy emerging from Descartes, reaffirming the objective preeminence of God, or "Entity-Idea", on which to build an ontologism understood in an almost pantheistic manner.[3]
Later, the revolutionary and liberal tendencies of the Risorgimento bourgeoisie, especially in Naples, found in Hegelianidealism the way to a cultural and ideological renewal of the country.[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 Hegelian "Aesthetic" by Francesco De Sanctis (1817–1883), author of the History of Italian Literature.[4]
De Sanctis's concept of art and of literary history, inspired by Hegel, will stimulate the genesis of Crocian idealism.[5]
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.[6]
An opposite interpretation was formulated by the neo-hegelianBertrand 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.[7]
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.[7]
スパヴェンタはヘーゲルの弁証法を再構築し、カントやフィヒティの意識主義または主観主義の観点から再解釈した。彼は、思考行為が客観化と総合の段階において優勢であると考えていた。つまり、彼はヘーゲルを「精神化する」必要性を支持した。なぜなら、精神はあらゆる独創的な創造の主役だからである。そして、精神の実際の思考の総合は、ヘーゲルの理念と自然の瞬間の後だけでなく、最初からそれらを浸透するように、スパヴェンタによって唯一の現実として位置づけられた。[ 8 ]
実証主義に特徴づけられる括弧の後、1913年にジョヴァンニ・ジェンティーレ（1875-1944）は『ヘーゲル弁証法の改革』の出版により、ヘーゲルの理念に関するスパヴェンタの解釈を再開し、ヘーゲルの精神において、生成のカテゴリーが、自然、歴史、精神の現実全体が注入される純粋な思考行為と一致すると考えた。 [ 9 ]すべてはそれを考える精神的行為の中にのみ存在する。超越論的意識 から分離された単一の経験的実体は存在しない。過去でさえ、記憶の実際の現在瞬間にのみ生きている。自らを「ファシズムの哲学者」とみなしたジェンティーレにとって、[ 10 ]現実観念論は、思考行為を自己創造的にし、したがっていかなる偶然性もなく、他のいかなる事実の潜在力にも依存しないようにすることによって、哲学的に自由意志を維持する唯一の救済策であった。[ 9 ]
ジェンティーレは、ヘーゲルが「思考」、すなわち規定された思考と諸科学に固有の要素を用いて弁証法を構築したことを非難した。ジェンティーレにとって、あらゆるものを包含する弁証法的な自己意識は、「行動における思考」においてのみ存在するのである。
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.[11]
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.[11]
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).[9]
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».[9] 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.[12]
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.[12]
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.[9] Croce also affirmed the contemporaneity of history, since any event or problem from the past becomes present the moment it is studied and thought about.[13] In spirit thus philosophy and history coincide, so that the latter is an ever-living progress toward freedom: «Life and reality are history, and nothing but history».[14]
Among the other exponents of this idealistic era in Italy, there was Guido De Ruggiero (1888–1948),[15] a student of Croce and Gentile, who saw in Stateinstitutions the privileged place for the manifestation and development of the hegelian Spirit, in a continuous process towards a growing self-awareness and realization of the Idea. He derived from it an idealism of a social liberal nature,[15] thanks to which the possession of history helps one not to be possessed or conditioned by it.[16]
Other students of Gentile were divided between a "left-wing" orientation,[17] such as Ugo Spirito (1896–1979) who defended actualist immanentism to the point of adopting so-called "problematicism",[18] and a right-wing orientation, such as Armando Carlini (1878–1959),[17] and later Augusto Del Noce (1910–1989), who advocated the need for openness to religious transcendence.[19]Adolfo Omodeo (1889–1946) instead brought about a convergence between Croce's idealistic historicism and Gentile's actualism, uniting historical knowledge of thought and creative action in the synthesis of the spirit.[16]
Finally, outside of academic idealism, the esotericist Julius Evola (1898–1974) aimed to transform philosophical theory into practicalrealization, something that for him could only occur in the magical-hermetic dimension, that is, in a magical idealism, the term he gave to his metaphysical system.[20]
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,[9] of which the chief exponent, Antonio Gramsci, was partly indebted to the input of Italian idealism.[21]