SOURCE: “Gentile Versus Croce: A Comparison of Two Rival Aesthetic Systems,” in Symposium, Vol. XI, No. 1, Spring, 1957, pp. 75-91.

In the following essay, Gullace contrasts the aesthetic theories of Benedetto Croce with those of Gentile in his La filosofia dell'arte.

Gentile's name has been completely neglected in this post-war period, for reasons not hard to fathom. But whatever the sentiments or resentment toward Fascism's official philosopher, his vigorous contribution to the development of Italian thought in the past fifty years cannot be ignored. If Croce has dominated the Italian cultural scene since the turn of the century, Gentile has stood a close second to him. For over twenty years the two fought side by side the battle against positivism and pedantic erudition in literary studies. The new idealistic trends which characterize Italian thought in this first half of the twentieth century, the revival of studies and researches on...