The Moral Problem

In this lecture, taken from the Discorsi di religione (Lectures on Religion), Gentile tries to make sense of morality in the absence of a transcendent reality. This lecture is in some respects uncharacteristic of Gentile's work. While the tenets of actual idealism give rise to the question, the answer is elaborated without recourse to the technical apparatus of actual idealism. As a result, the lecture plainly shows us Gentile not, as he was sometimes thought to be, as the expounder of a rigid and rarefied doctrine, but as a sensitive and careful interpreter of the philosophical problems thrown up in the course of life as actually lived.