Abstract

The philosophic, historical, and literary Italian culture of the first half of our century was largely dominated by a trend of thought that can be correctly called “Neo-idealist,” the most prominent exponents of which were Giovanni Gentile and Benedetto Croce. The latter’s very broad scientific activity moved, and attained its highest and most durable achievements, in the ambit of the theory and history of Italian and European literature, of civil historiography, and of social and political theory. We cannot here attempt even a very sketchy explanation, interpretation, and evaluation of the undoubtedly remarkable contribution which Croce’s scientific work was able to offer to the development of our century’s European culture. Here we shall confine our critical interest only to the philosophical theories stricto sensu elaborated by Croce in the course of his wider historiographic activities. They stem indeed from a personal reading, interpretation, and criticism of Hegel’s speculative idealism; and he proposed them to contemporary scholars as the extreme and most mature stage of modern thought’s whole development. Thus, should they turn out to be generally tenable, any attempt today to vindicate Hegel’s thought as fully up-to-date and valid, at least with respect to its deepest logical-metaphysical and methodological-dialectical “substance,” could not but appear to be openly anachronistic. Whence, then, the inescapable need for a careful critical examination of their content, meaning, and real plausibility in the present historical-cultural situation.