Giovanni Gentile

Giovanni Gentile was an Italian pedagogue, philosopher, and politician. Alongside Benedetto Croce, he was a major proponent of Italian idealism, developing his own system known as "actual idealism." He is recognized as the "philosopher of fascism" for his significant role in providing an intellectual basis for Italian fascism, including authoring the 1925 Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals and co-writing The Doctrine of Fascism. As Minister for Public Education, he implemented the 1923 Gentile Reform, a significant overhaul of the Italian education system. He also co-founded and served as the first editor of the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia. Despite a decline in his political influence due to ideological differences with Mussolini's later policies, Gentile remained a loyal Fascist, even joining the Italian Social Republic after 1943. He was assassinated by partisans in 1944. His philosophy, actual idealism, emphasized the primacy of the "pure act" of thinking, viewing mind as the Absolute and education as the means of its revelation, leading to concepts like absolute immanentism and a form of humanism.