SOURCE: “Modern Thinkers III: Giovanni Gentile,” in The Australian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy, Vol. IV, No. 1, March, 1926, pp. 8-17.

In the following essay, Garnett explains and analyzes major ideas in The Theory of Mind as Pure Act.

In The Theory of Mind as Pure Act Gentile has rendered the student of philosophy the valuable service of setting out in comparatively brief form a reasoned statement of his mature philosophical thinking. It is not an easy work to read, for the author has packed into it in concise form the thought of many years, and he revels in brilliant paradoxes which are intensely stimulating, but the meaning of which is not always easily grasped. The aim of this essay is therefore partly expository—to offer an interpretation of Gentile's thought or to serve as an introduction to the study of his work—and partly to present a criticism...