Giovanni Gentile

Giovanni Gentile ( jen-TEE-lay; Italian: [dʒoˈvanni dʒenˈtiːle]; 29 May 1875 – 15 April 1944) was an Italian pedagogue, philosopher, and politician. He was one of the primary founders of fascism.

Born in Castelvetrano, Gentile graduated from the Scuola Normale Superiore and the University of Pisa. He, alongside Benedetto Croce, was a major exponents of Italian idealism in Italian philosophy, and also devised his own system of thought, which he called "actual idealism" or "actualism", which has been described as "the subjective extreme of the idealist tradition".

Described by himself and by Benito Mussolini as the "philosopher of fascism", he was influential in providing an intellectual foundation for Italian fascism, notably through writing the 1925 Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals, and part of the 1932 "The Doctrine of Fascism" with Mussolini. As Minister for Public Education, he introduced in 1923 the so-called Gentile Reform of the Italian educational system, the first major piece of legislation passed by the Fascist government, which would last in some capacity until 1962. He also helped found the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia with Giovanni Treccani, and was its first editor.

Though his political influence waned as Mussolini sought the alliance of the Catholic Church in the late 1920s, which conflicted with Gentile's secularism, he remained a faithful Fascist, even after the 1943 armistice with the Allies, and followed Mussolini into the Italian Social Republic. He was assassinated in 1944 by partisans of the Italian resistance.