At the dawn of the 20th century, Giovanni Gentile definitively rejected the possibility of justifying the State through nationality, a concept that had been at the heart of European nationalist philosophy at the end of the 19th century. Gentile believed that the nation was determined by the State and for the State. Without the “spirit of the State,” it would remain a mere community of customs, language, religion, soil, and so on. These material elements form a conscious moral unity only through the action of the State, which is the true presupposition of nationality. Therefore, the nation materializes by “acting out” as a State. In the ethical identity constituted by the national State, Gentile rethinks the State as a concrete realization of the human spirit. It is a reality internal to the individual, coinciding with the community of citizens. Gentile does not legitimize the State as inter homines, or “among us,” but rather in interiore homine, or “within us.” It is the interiorized State that we create within ourselves. The State is not merely what we see above us or through our interaction with others; it is also realized simply by thinking—a spiritual movement that will sooner or later influence the outside world, modifying it. In my chapter, I will focus on Gentile’s vision of the State in relation to ethics, religion, and economics. With this vision, he attempts to overcome liberal atomism and Marxist materialism. Gentile believes that both of these doctrines are united by an Enlightenment root, which gives rise to their “faith” in abstract individualism and their inability to achieve an organic vision of human life, in which the “particular” and the “universal” coexist dialectically. Finally, I will clarify the clear independence of Gentile’s vision from Hegelian statolatry, with which it has often been erroneously associated.
Chapter 3 · Abstract