Practical Idealism: On Fernanda Gallo’s Reading of Hegel and Italian Political Thought

Italian receptions of Hegel's political thought analysed in Fernanda Gallo's careful study, can be examined through Fichte's concepts of 'positing' or taking up extrinsic material within a pre-existing conceptual scheme, but in this reciprocal interaction, both elements, receiver and received, are changed. Gallo shows both how Hegel is filtered through Italian philosophical traditions and how Hegel's thought in turn challenges these traditions. While early German receptions of Hegel raise the state's relation to economic issues as the defining problem of the modern age, Italian interlocutors appear to stress cultural renewal.