Giovanni Gentile

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Lore & Background

Gentile was born in Castelvetrano, Italy. He was inspired by Risorgimento-era Italian intellectuals such as Mazzini, Rosmini, Gioberti, and Spaventa, but also strongly influenced and mentored by the German idealist and materialist schools of thought—namely Karl Marx, Hegel, and Fichte. Friedrich Nietzsche, too, influenced him, as seen in an analogy between Nietzsche's Übermensch and Gentile's Uomo Fascista. In religion he presented himself as a Catholic (of sorts), and emphasised actual idealism's Christian heritage; Antonio G. Pesce insists that 'there is in fact no doubt that Gentile was a Catholic'; and Gentile once spoke of 'his' atheism only in reference to the accusation of atheism leveled against him, although he maintained until the end that he was culturally Catholic. He won a fierce competition to become one of four exceptional students of the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, where he enrolled in the Faculty of Humanities. In 1898 he graduated in Letters and Philosophy with a dissertation titled 'Rosmini e Gioberti', that he realized under the supervision of Donato Jaja, a disciple of Bertrando Spaventa. During his academic career, Gentile served as Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of Palermo (27 March 1910); Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Pisa (9 August 1914); Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of Rome (11 November 1917), and later as Professor of Theoretical Philosophy (1926); Commissioner of the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (1928–32), and later as its Director (1932–43); and Vice President of Bocconi University in Milan (1934–44). A long-time collaborator of Benedetto Croce, the two first became friends in 1896 and remained close until 1925, when Croce sided against fascism and Gentile for it with their Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals and Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals respectively.

Reader's Guide

Gentile's significance lies in his role as the leading intellectual architect of Italian fascism. His system of actual idealism provided a philosophical justification for the fascist state, and his political influence was most tangible in the 1923 Gentile Reform of the Italian educational system, the first major legislation of the Fascist government, which lasted in some capacity until 1962. The reform made religious instruction mandatory in junior schools, gave equal distinction to private (notably Catholic) and state schools, and allowed both to sit the same qualification exams for entrance into higher education. It also mandated that Italian was the only language to be used in public schools, severely impacting the autonomy of non-Italian speaking minorities—known as allogeni—particularly in the regions of Alto-Adige and the Julian March, recently annexed in the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye following the First World War. Included in this reform was an attempt to limit the number of women teachers in schools, part of Italian Fascism's wider campaign against feminism. Under Gentile's reform, the secondary school system was substantially reorganised: the technical schools (scuola technica) were abolished, replaced by 'complementary schools' (scuola complementare) which did not allow access to universities. Pupil numbers were successfully reduced—secondary school student numbers dropped from 337,000 to 237,000 between 1923 and 1926–27, and university students by 13,000, from 53,000 in 1919–20 to 40,000 in 1928–29. Although his political influence waned as Mussolini sought the alliance of the Catholic Church in the late 1920s, which conflicted with Gentile's secularism, he remained a faithful Fascist, even after the 1943 armistice with the Allies, and followed Mussolini into the Italian Social Republic. He was assassinated in 1944 by partisans of the Italian resistance.

Did You Know?

• Gentile won a fierce competition to become one of four exceptional students of the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.
• He graduated in 1898 with a dissertation titled 'Rosmini e Gioberti' under the supervision of Donato Jaja, a disciple of Bertrando Spaventa.
• Gentile served as Vice President of Bocconi University in Milan from 1934 until his death in 1944.
• Secondary school student numbers dropped from 337,000 to 237,000 between 1923 and 1926–27 under his education reform.
• He was assassinated in 1944 by partisans of the Italian resistance.