Abstract

This essay assesses Gentile's contributions to practical philosophy, showing how a distinctive but idiosyncratic moral theory emerges over the course of his systematic works. Wakefield argues that Gentile's thoroughgoing anti-realism does not, as some critics have thought, leave him unable to distinguish reasonable from unreasonable arguments or good from bad reasons for action. While actual idealism veers too close to implausible relativism to have much use as an all-purpose philosophical outlook, argues Wakefield, it retains real power as a practical theory