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Initially, both Antonio Rosmini (1797–1855) and Vincenzo Gioberti (1801–1852) revived the Augustinian neoplatonic themes of the interiority of conscience and divine illumination, but the former aspired to reform Kantianism in an ontological and transcendent sense, the latter more oriented towards countering the subjectivism of modern philosophy emerging from Descartes, reaffirming the objective preeminence of God, or "Entity-Idea", on which to build an ontologism understood in an almost pantheistic manner.
Later, the revolutionary and liberal tendencies of the Risorgimento bourgeoisie, especially in Naples, found in Hegelian idealism the way to a cultural and ideological renewal of the country.
The interest in the Hegelian doctrine in Italy spread especially for the works of Augusto Vera (1813–1885) and Bertrando Spaventa (1817–1883), without omitting also the importance of the studies on Hegelian "Aesthetic" by Francesco De Sanctis (1817–1883), author of the History of Italian Literature.Guido Oldrini, L'idealismo italiano tra Napoli e l'Europa, Milan, Guerini, 1998.
De Sanctis's concept of art and of literary history, inspired by Hegel, will stimulate the genesis of Crocian idealism..
Augusto Vera, author of writings and commentaries about Hegel, was a famous philosopher in Europe, who interpreted the Hegelian Absolute in a religion and transcendent sense..
An opposite interpretation was formulated by the neo-hegelian Bertrand Spaventa, for whom the Spirit was immanent in the history of philosophy.
Reconstructing the development of Italian philosophy, Spaventa argued that Italian Renaissance thought of Giordano Bruno and Campanella had been at the origin of modern philosophy, but had stopped due to the Counter-Reformation. Its task now was to catch up with European philosophy, linking up with Vico's mind philosophy, which along with those of Galluppi, Antonio Rosmini, and Gioberti, had anticipated themes of Kantism and German idealism.
Spaventa reformulated the Hegelian dialectic, reinterpreting it from the perspective of and Fichte conscientialism or subjectivism.
He considered the act of thinking prevalent with respect to the phases of objectification and synthesis. That is, he supported the need to «mentalise» Hegel, because the Mind is the protagonist of every original production.
The synthesis of the actual thinking of the Spirit was then placed by Spaventa, as the only reality, not only after the hegelian moments of Idea and of Nature, but so as to permeate them also from the beginning..
Gentile reproached Hegel for having built his dialectic with elements proper to "thought", that is to say that of determined thought and of the sciences. For Gentile, instead, only in "thinking in action" is dialectical self-consciousness that includes everything.
Gentile made a pivotal distinction to factors concerning Idealism's own criteria for reality, which have stood since George Berkeley's adage « esse est percipi» by distinguishing between the concrete real «act of thinking» ( pensiero pensante), and the abstract «static thought» ( pensiero pensato).
To his actual vision was opposed since 1913 Benedetto Croce (1866–1952, cousin of Bertrando Spaventa) who in his Essay on Hegel interpreted Hegelian thought as immanentist historicism: he also understood the Hegelian dialectic of the in a different way, integrating it with that of the «distincts». According to Croce, in fact, the life of the Spirit also consists of autonomous moments that are not opposed, but rather distinct, that is:
Referring to Giambattista Vico, Croce identified philosophy with history, understood not as a capricious sequence of events, but the implementation of Reason, in the light of which it becomes possible the historical understanding of the genesis of facts, and their simultaneous justification with her own unfolding.
Historian's task is therefore to overcome every form of towards the studied matter, and to present it in form of knowledge, without referring to good or evil.
Croce also affirmed the contemporaneity of history, since any event or problem from the past becomes present the moment it is studied and thought about. In spirit thus philosophy and history coincide, so that the latter is an ever-living progress toward freedom: «Life and reality are history, and nothing but history».
Other students of Gentile were divided between a "left-wing" orientation,. such as Ugo Spirito (1896–1979) who defended actualist immanentism to the point of adopting so-called "problematicism", and a right-wing orientation, such as Armando Carlini (1878–1959), and later Augusto Del Noce (1910–1989), who advocated the need for openness to religious transcendence.Ugo Perone, Giovanni Ferretti, Storia del pensiero filosofico, pp. 347-349, Turin, SEI, 1988.
Adolfo Omodeo (1889–1946) instead brought about a convergence between Croce's idealistic historicism and Gentile's actualism, uniting historical knowledge of thought and creative action in the synthesis of the spirit.
Finally, outside of academic idealism, the esotericist Julius Evola (1898–1974) aimed to transform philosophical theory into practical realization, something that for him could only occur in the magical-hermeticism dimension, that is, in a magical idealism, the term he gave to his metaphysical system.
After having characterized Italian philosophical Italian culture for over forty years, after the Second World War the neo-idealism entered a crisis, replaced by existentialism, neo-positivism, phenomenology, and marxism, of which the chief exponent, Antonio Gramsci, was partly indebted to the input of Italian idealism.
The Idealisms of Gentile and Croce
After a parenthesis characterized by positivism, in 1913 Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944) with the publication of The reform of Hegelian dialectics resumed Spaventa's interpretation of the Hegelian Idea, seeing in Hegelian Spirit the category of becoming as coinciding with the pure act of thought in which the whole reality of nature, history and spirit was transfused..
Every thing exists only in the mental act of thinking it: there are no single empirical entities separated from the Transcendentals consciousness; even the past lives only in the actual, present moment of memory. To Gentile, who considered himself the "philosopher of Fascism",M. E. Moss (2004), Mussolini's Fascist Philosopher: Giovanni Gentile Reconsidered. New York: Peter Lang. . actual idealism was the sole remedy to philosophy preserving free agency, by making the act of thinking self-creative, and, therefore, without any contingency and not in the potency of any other fact.
Other idealists
Among the other exponents of this idealistic era in Italy, there was Guido De Ruggiero (1888–1948), a student of Croce and Gentile, who saw in State institutions the privileged place for the manifestation and development of the hegelian Geist, in a continuous process towards a growing self-awareness and realization of the Idea. He derived from it an idealism of a social liberal nature, thanks to which the possession of history helps one not to be possessed or conditioned by it.
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