This chapter investigates how ideological and political motivations prompted Italian Hegelians in the second half of the nineteenth century to posit a contrived identification between the Renaissance and the Risorgimento, recognising in them a common revolutionary character. By focussing on Italian Hegelians’ interpretations of Giordano Bruno’s philosophy and Tommaso Campannella’s work, this chapter deals with ideas of modernity, interpretations of the Renaissance in nineteenth century Europe, and anticlericalism in the Risorgimento.

Although this chapter recognises the key role of Piedmont in the Italian unification process, it challenges the historiography that tends to overshadow the work of Southern Italian political representatives in the new Parliament. This chapter explores the contribution of the political thought and political praxis of Italian Hegelians, most of whom were from the South, to the building of the new Italian State. Many of them had first served the Kingdom of Italy in the Southern provinces during the delicate transition period, then in the central government and parliament in the early years of state-building, between 1861 and the 1880s, serving as representatives in both of the main parties, the Historical Right (Destra Storica) and the Historical Left (Sinistra Storica). It also explores the reshaping of the Hegelian theory of the State, reinterpreted as it was by Italian Hegelians, and how it served the new Italian political context and contributed to the understanding and designing of the new Italian State.

This chapter investigates the political leadership of Italian Hegelians who participated in the post unification governments and contributed to the institutional organisation of the new State. It highlightes how their interpretation of Hegelian ideas was applied in their political practices and explores the legacy of this tradition at the end of the nineteenth century with a particular focus on the work of Antonio Labriola. His engagement with Marxism was recognised by the author himself as a direct consequence of the critical Hegelianism he had learned at the school of the Neapolitan Hegelians as a young student and with which he was in constant dialogue throughout his life. This chapter uncovers and reshapes the context of Italian readings of Hegel’s philosophy in the nineteenth century, exploring the creative and critical adaptation of Hegel’s political thought to Italian intellectual and political milieux.