Croce, Benedetto

Croce, Benedetto (b. 25 Feb. 1866, d. 20 Nov. 1952). Italian philosopher, historian, and politician Born in Abbruzzi, he studied law in Rome, but soon became interested in philosophy. In his first essay published in 1893, he re-established the separation between art and science, and categorized the study of history as an art. As he elaborated in his Teoria e storia della storiografia (The Theory and History of Historiography, 1917), the writing of history was a function of intuition, imagination, and thought, and hence principally related to the discipline of philosophy. He became the leading exponent of Italian new idealism against the positivism predominant in the late nineteenth century. During 1903–46, he was also a prominent literary figure as editor of the review La critica. He served as Minister of Public Instruction in Giolitti's last government (1920–1), and as a historian he subsequently became the most prominent apologist for the Giolittian era. He first regarded Mussolini with tolerant detachment, but openly opposed Fascism from 1925 following the Matteotti Crisis and the ensuing Aventine secession. In 1943, he refounded the Liberal Party, which failed, however, to transform itself into a major political force in the following years.