Abstract

This is a book about the personal and philosophical relationships between three Italian philosophers and their intersection with the life and thought of the English polymath R. G. Collingwood. It is well known that many of the most controversial ideas of the Italians were developed in direct engagement with each other through published encounters and private correspondence. The connection between Collingwood and the Italians, although vaguely familiar to English and Italian readers, is far less well known in its details, perhaps because Collingwood himself played down his debt to them in his An Autobiography. He simply alludes to the Fascist Giovanni Gentile, and ignores Croce. Collingwood makes a passing...