The Actuality of Gentile's Philosophy of History

This essay reconstructs Gentile's conception of history as the product of the eternal act of thinking. Peters charts the development of this distinctive position, presenting it as the product of a sustained attempt to unite past and present, fact and value, thought and action within a single theory. He argues that, despite a number of weaknesses that Gentile neglected to consider and the regrettable, dubious extremes to which he extended his theory in the Fascist period, it deserves greater attention from today's historians of philosophy.