Maggi's Croce, Sasso's Gentile and the riddles of twentieth-century Italian intellectual history

Abstract

Claiming to occupy the forefront of modern thought, Croce and Gentile together dominated Italian intellectual life during the first half of the twentieth century. But though their intellectual interaction continued, they split definitively as Gentile embraced Fascism and Croce sought to recast liberalism in response to the Fascist challenge. Both then suffered eclipse as postwar Italians sought to embrace what seemed the wider western mainstream. Reflecting the recent Italian effort at reassessment, Sasso and Maggi offer major works focused, respectively, on the basis of Gentile's Fascism and the adequacy of Croce's response to his challenging era. Working through the limits of the two studies suggests how we might treat Croce and Gentile in tandem, as central to an innovative, sometimes troubling, distinctively Italian tradition that merits reconnection with the mainstream of western intellectual history, especially as we continue seeking to learn from the disastrous trajectories of Fascism and totalitarianism.

Keywords:

• Croce
• Fascism
• Gentile
• Historicism
• Idealism