Contemporary Thought of Italy. By Angelo Crispi. (Williams; and Norgate.
58.)
Tnn last twenty years have witnessed the birth of a anew school of philosophy, and the eminence of its chief exponents; Signore Croce and Giovanni Gentile, has conferred upon Italy a philosophical importance greater than she has had since the Renaissance. Their philosophy is in harmony win} recent developments in Italian national life ; it is characterized by the same confidence, the same energy, and, we may add; by the same self-assertiveness. They are at one in emphasizing the " national " character of their philosophy, claiming that it is associated in a quite peculiar sense with the modern revival of Italy.
It is this aspect of their thought, an aspect which seems, as it were, to afford an intellectual countenance to the self-assertive• ness of the modern Italian spirit, that emerges most clearly from Dr. Crispi's excellent study. No work in English explai0 so well and so clearly exactly what the theories are which Croce and Gentile hold—by no means an easy task—relates these theories so intelligibly to the main body of idealist thought, indicates so precisely their points of departure from Hegel, and brings out so admirably their differences from each other, while leaving nevertheless as an abiding impres- sion on the reader's mind the directness of their bearing upon contemporary events. This is not to say that Dr. Crispi avows himself an adherent of the Neo-Idealist school ; on the contrary, he brings some acute and searching criticism to bear both upon Croce and •upon Gentile, giving in his final chapter, with evident approval,a first-rate summary of the works of a number of philosophers, Filippo' Mosel, Aliotta, and Bernardino Varisco, who are in uncompromising opposition to the prevalent school.
What Croce and Gentile have done is in effect to banish Absolutes from the universe. Not only has Hegel's Absolute gone by the board, but the objective external world of science, objective criteria of right and wrong, objective standards of aesthetic appreciation, and finally God Himself have been jettisoned in its company. Nothing is left but the human mind, which not only exercises the function of knowing but, since knowing is essentially a creative-act, literally manufac- tures the universe which it knows. The universe which the mind studies is in short simply an exteriorization of mind itself, so that in looking outward, as it seems to do in science, to inspect a world of independent fact, it is merely (for Gentile, though not for Croce) turning inward upon its own past thoughts. Nature, and in fact everything which can be known, is simply the past history of the knowing mind.
In denying the existence of objects of knowledge other than those of our own creating, and dispensing in consequence with those transcendent elements in ethics and religion which are commonly based on such objects, Gentile is affirming, or so he would have us believe, the freedom, worth and dignity of man, If not only Mind in the Hegelian sense but my human mind is
legislative to the universe, if there is no external fact, no brute intractable matter to withstand my will or to thwart my wishes, then in a new and extremely important sense my will and my wishes assume the authoritative force and sanction of law ; I am in short a law unto myself. Not only do I become the centre of the universe, but the rest of the universe is only there (being specially created for the purpose by me) in order to place me in its centre.
How far this view of the self does in fact contribute to human
. dignity is a matter for individual judgment. For my part I can only say that to me the endeavour to generate all the richness and variety of the universe out of the thinking activity of individual minds seems incredibly trivial and petty, and, by robbing of value and interest the universe which mind studies,..to _diminish the greatness of mind itself. e. E. jOADA
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