The Free Spirit: Guido de Ruggiero on Actualism and Politics

The aim of this article is to examine the metaphysical foundations of Guido de Ruggiero's liberalism and to ask what these can tell us about his changing view of Giovanni Gentile's actualism, a major influence on his thought before the First World War. It is argued that de Ruggiero's 'actualism' was never the same as Gentile's, but was drawn from the same intellectual sources; that the actualist conception of free and self-conscious agency runs through both versions of the doctrine, but is interpreted in different ways; and finally that the contrasts between de Ruggiero's and Gentile's political allegiances result from something other than their contrasting interpretations of actualism, which serves, in the end, less as a theory andmore as a set of basic principles, images and ideals that each philosopher tried to modify and match to the political circumstances in which he found himself.