GIOVANNI GENTILE AND ITALIAN FASCISM
This research paper critically analyzes the philosophy of Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944) and discusses its relevance to Italian fascism and its leader Benito Mussolini.
From roughly 1925 to 1932 Gentile and his philosophy played a central role in the evolution of Italian fascism while at other times his and its influence were more marginal. In the two decades which preceded Mussolini's takeover of the Italian state in 1922, Gentile became widely known for his philosophy of actualism, a neo-Hegelian, anti-Marxist, idealistic, elitist and nationalist view of reality, society and history, one of many currents in Italian intellectual thought and popular writing which rejected the status quo and called for Italy's spiritual, political, economic and social regeneration under a strong, authoritarian state and a more vigorous assertion of Italian interests abroad. In 1923-1924, Gentile served as Mussolini's first Education Minister, but his reform of the public school system achieved only limited results.
As the leading theoretician of the regime, Gentile formulated and synthesized into a coherent doctrine the diverse and often conflicting elements of Italian fascism and provided much of its ethical and moral raison d'etre. He also led the partially-successful early effort to rally Italian intellectuals behind the regime. After 1932, Gentile's influence within the government and the fascist movement declined, because his stridently expressed anti-clericalism was at odds with Mussolini's efforts to reach an accommodation with the Catholic Church, and because a new generation of young fascists came to the fore whose members found Gentile's philosophy of actualism too abstract or too moderate. A loyal fascist until the end, Gentile came out of semi-retirement in 1943 to join the ill-fated puppet Salo Republic which he served in a senior cultural capacity until he was assassinated in Florence by you...