Actual idealism

Therefore, they do not make sense only spiritualist or only materialist orientations, as it does not have the clear division between spirit and matter of Platonism, as reality is unique: here is evident the influence of Renaissance pantheism and Brunian immanentism, more than Hegelianism[3] Unlike Benedetto Croce (proponent of absolute historicism or historicist idealism for which all reality is "history" and not an act in the Aristotelian sense) Gentile appreciates Hegel not so much the historicist horizon, as the idealistic system based on consciousness as a "transcendental subject", or the assumption of consciousness as the principle of reality, a position that brings him closer to Fichte.

[3] Reality is thus not a fact, a factual and static datum, but an act, an action of the spirit, a dynamic activity endowed with an infinite power.

Although realists admit that the external world is the only knowable one, enclosable within a "static" concept based on the repeatability of experience that would testify to the existence of a solid basis transcending the mutability of our perceptions, they continue to dogmatically assume that there is something real independently of the thought that thinks it.

Except that our eyes, we can only look at them in the mirror!Even if we presume to objectify the subjective act of the Ego, we would still lower it to one of the many finite objects of knowledge.

Even the [...] truth of the equivalence of the internal angles of a triangle to two right angles is something closed and separated only by abstraction; in reality, it is articulated in the process of geometry through all the minds, in which this geometry, in the world, is realized.The determined forms of thought reality, that is, of "experience," are expressions of the historical, spatiotemporal becoming of the Spirit: their multiplicity is not next to the unity of the Spirit, but belongs to the world as the object of consciousness, which unifies them all in a simple act.

Christian philosophy has the merit of overcoming the intellectual position of the Greeks, their materialistic representation of the world, through the arduous effort to spiritualize reality, while still affirming the transcendence of the Spirit.

The cogito ergo sum of Descartes is a fundamental step in the journey of Western philosophy toward the self-consciousness of the actualist principle, as are George Berkeley's famous adage esse est percipi[18] and Kant's a priori synthesis, though they still admit some realist and transcendent elements beyond the act of thinking.

[20] To this end, Gentile endorses the need, already stated by Spaventa, to "kantianize" Hegel, by bringing the totality of the mind within the unity of the transcendental self.

Gentile is repeatedly reiterates the concreteness of the spiritual life of the thinking act, which unfolds in the dialectical triad thesis-antithesis-synthesis, represented by art, religion and philosophy.

[7] Restoring the authentic Christian tradition, Gentile proposes to renew even the spiritualistic instances of the Italian Risorgimento, removing them from Platonism and mysticism of transcendence, in favor of an immanent religiosity that excludes any barrier between sacred and profane, and in which every man finds within himself, and in every aspect of his life, the concrete unity of the spirit.

On the other hand, being faced with an object that it does not create, whose materiality is opposed to the activity of the spirit, science is in a condition of passivity typical of religion.

Ignoring the true impenetrable being of things, science knows what it considers to be a pure phenomenon, a subjective, one-sided and fragmentary appearance, like the image of the poet who sends a flash of lightning to the imagination in a dream from which the mind is distant from reality.

[27] Because actualism denies the existence of immutable realities that oppose thought, every limit to free human creativity falls in the technico-scientific direction.

In this sense, Gentile presents himself as "more liberal than Wilson and more socialist than Lenin" ("più liberale di Wilson e più socialista di Lenin, certamente"),[29][additional citation(s) needed] defending a human liberty understood as the capacity to universalize oneself by going beyond the limits of one's own empirical singularity.

In view of a reform of ethics and of the national conscience of which Actualism would have constituted the foundations, he motivated his adherence to Fascism by honouring himself as its official philosopher.

[7] Actual idealism was successful in that it promoted a theory of regarding thought, that garnered enough attention to be a competitor to the new waves of positivism, and therefore materialist conceptions of social life that were vying for reformist tendencies in the politics of the time.

Its ideas were key to helping the National Fascist Party consolidate power in Italy with its own reform, and integral to giving fascism the content of its philosophical sentiment.

With actualism, Gentile reforms Hegelian dialectic based on the spiritualist motives of the Italian ontological tradition, reconciling them with the needs of concrete character of Marxist thought.

[34] An opponent of all intellectualism, which he considered detached from reality, he succeeded in postulating a theory of speculative thought that would obtain sufficient consensus to compete with the new waves of positivism (and thus of materialist conceptions of social life) that were clashing in the field of reformist political trends of the time.

[35] However, unlike Benedetto Croce, who permeates Italian culture in general, Gentile had an impact on the specifically philosophical milieu of his time.

[37] With his conception idealist, Gentile intends to become a prophet of the spirit, a priest of an immanent divinity that religion wrongly considers transcendent, devoid of limits and imperfections.

[6] This concept, however, enters a crisis at the end of World War II, when new philosophical paradigms based on existentialism and individualistic presuppositions impose themselves.

Also because of the strong political value of his personality, he criticized Hegel: he was indeed wrong, according to him, to have attempted a dialectic (relation/conflict between "thesis" and "antithesis", in order to generate an infinite series of rational "syntheses", aiming at Progress) relative to the thought, i.e., to the Spirit or to the thinkable reality, whereas the only dialectic is the one that involves the thinking, i.e., the human subject in the act in which he thinks.

[38] Among Gentile's most faithful disciples is Ugo Spirito, who defends the immanentism of his philosophy, to the point of reconciling it, after a long philosophical journey, with a vision that elevates science to the rank of cornerstone of the contemporary age.