Carabellese versus Croce. Che cosa significa essere filosofi (e idealisti)?

The purpose of this article is to reconstruct from a historical and theoretical point of view the controversy that opposed from 1914 the Apulian philosopher Pantaleo Carabellese, founder of an “integral ontologism”, in his opinion unique heir of the authentic idealistic tradition of Italy, to Benedetto Croce and to his “absolute historicism”. Initially agreeing in affirming the necessary distinction of the Spirit (term to which Carabellese prefers “Conscience”) against the actualistic monism, the two thinkers will come to conflict on the “theory of degrees” and on the status of philosophy until the definitive break which will bring Croce to label Carabellesian thought as a “sublime inconclusion” and Carabellese to tear to pieces Croce’s historicism as a “humanistic psychologism”.