Introducing Giovanni Gentile, the ‘Philosopher of Fascism’

Abstract

It is incredible that so few Gramsci scholars writing in English have explored the rich literature on the Riforma Gentile—the educational reform set in motion in 1923 by Giovanni Gentile, Mussolini’s first Minister of Public Instruction. Not a single reference to Gentile’s own writings or to contemporaneous research on Italian education appears in David Forgacs’ and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith’s commentary in Selections from Cultural Writings (Gramsci, 1985), for example, or in Forgac’s notes in The Antonio Gramsci Reader (Gramsci, 2000). In Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Gramsci, 1971) and Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Gramsci, 1995), editors Quintin Hoare, Nowell-Smith, and Derek Boothman cite none of Gentile’s educational work, though they do mention others of his publications. In his notes to The Modern Prince and Other Writings (Gramsci, 1957), Louis Marks refers to no original material for his biography of Gentile, while concluding inaccurately that he ‘supported fascism from the start’ (p. 190). Indeed, of all Gramsci’s work translated into English, only the second volume of the Prison Notebooks edited by Joseph Buttigieg mentions even a single primary source on the Riforma Gentile (Gramsci, 1996).