Benedetto Croce was a philosopher, historian, politician, and a foremost Italian thinker. He produced a large oeuvre which combines logic, history, aestheticism, economics and ethics.

For a short period, Croce was Minister of Education, until Mussolini gained power in 1922. He defended man's freedom of will, also during and after the rise of Italian fascism, in works such as La storia come pensiero e come azione (1938) and the Manifest of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals (1925), in which he challenged fascist philosopher Giovanni Gentile.