Giovanni Gentile : the heir of the Risorgimento

Abstract

This thesis offers a novel interpretation of Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944) as the ‘Heir of the Risorgimento’. While Gentile is mostly neglected in the Anglophone scholarship, existing literature tends to focus exclusively on readings of Gentile qua philosopher or ‘Philosopher of Fascism’. In doing so, scholars have, for the most part, overlooked Gentile’s writings on the history of Italian thought, as well as his journalistic activity during the First World War.

In my reading, Gentile subscribes to the prototype of Risorgimento intellectual, from whom he inherits a number of convictions: the immanence of philosophy in life, the practice of reconstructing the history of Italian thought, and the centrality of culture to political life. The unitary reading of Gentile I propose in this thesis, shows that Gentile, much like the Risorgimento thinkers he admired and studied at length, was concerned with establishing unity amongst Italians.

I do not interpret Gentile’s political character as a feature that appears with his adhesion to the Fascist Regime, but as a profound trait of his intellectual personality, pervading his philosophy and historical analysis. Therefore, rather than studying segments of Gentile’s oeuvre in isolation, I seek to connect the different areas of his corpus, as well as explaining his political allegiance to the Fascism.