GENTILE, GIOVANNI

Italian idealist philosopher, educator, and statesman; b. Castelvetrano, Sicily, May 30, 1875; d. Florence, April 15, 1944. He was a student of the Hegelians D. Jaja and B. Spaventa and was a collaborator with B. croce on La Critica. As minister of public instruction (1922–24) he wrought an extensive transformation in the Italian educational system, inspired by the principles of his own philosophy—to which he gave the name actual idealism. Gentile consciously related his philosophical position to his interpretation of the history of Western philosophy; thus actual idealism can best be understood as Gentile's response to the basic quest of Western thought, the establishment of the immanent rationality of concrete existence. Actualism draws its profoundest inspiration from the insight of G. vico: verum factum convertuntur; the immanent rationality of concrete existence can be grasped only through the principle of its becoming. Gentile develops this insight into the proposition that reality is a process of "autoctisi" involving position, distinction, and unification, by which all immediacy, dualisms, and transcendence are overcome. Relying on the critique of Spaventa, Gentile concluded that Hegel had misconceived the dialectic through his faulty notion of becoming. The clues to a rectification of this error are to be found in a purified form of the Kantian synthesis a priori and in Spaventa's conception of the dialectic of actual thought.

This correction of Hegel gives rise to Gentile's theory of the spirit as "pure act": reality that "is" insofar as "it is not yet," but "becomes," or "makes itself"; this reality is the "I," the individual that becomes by the process of universalizing itself. This "I" is the only concrete reality; it is not a subject that "is" as an object, a "fact," but an "act." Gentile develops the notion of "I" and of "pure act" in two directions: the existential and moral, which terminates in his theory of education, and the abstract, which is expounded in the Sistema di Logica (1917–23). The Logica distinguishes the "logic of what is thought" from the "logic of the act of thinking"; since "what is thought" has its whole being from the act of thinking, the logic of the latter is more basic and the ground of the former. The former is the realm of the concept and is governed by the principle of identity; the latter is pure becoming and is governed by the dialectic. These are united in the concrete existence of the "I." The self-generation of the "I" is not an abstract process; it is concrete, and as such is the fulfillment of a duty or project, which is identical with the self; the "I" is a moral reality, a value and a generator of values. The process by which the "I" realizes itself in its own universalization is education. As a consequence, pedagogy is the highest reach of philosophy and paideia the purest form of concrete existence under its rational aspect.

See Also: hegelianism and neo-hegelianism; idealism.

Bibliography: Works. Opere complete, 60 v. (Florence 1957–) Literature. Istituto di Studi Filosofici, Bibliografia filosofica italiana dal 1900–1950, 4 v. (Rome 1950–56) 2:111–133. v. a. bellezza, Bibliografia degli scritti di G. Gentile (Florence 1950); Enciclopedia filosofica, 4 v. (Venice-Rome 1957) 2:631–643; L'esistenzialismo postivo di G. Gentile (Florence 1954). Giovanni Gentile: La vita e il pensiero, 8 v. (Florence 1948–57). e. chiocchetti, La filosofia di G. Gentile (Milan 1922). u. spirito, Note sul pensiero di G. Gentile (Florence 1954). m. m. thompson, The Educational Philosophy of G. Gentile (Los Angeles 1934). h. s. harris, The Social Philosophy of G. Gentile (Urbana 1960). r. w. holmes, The Idealism of G. Gentile (New York 1937).

[a. r. caponigri]