Giuseppe Rensi (31 May 1871 in Villafranca di Verona – 14 February 1941 in Genoa) was an Italian philosopher. Early life and education Giuseppe Rensi's father Gaetano was a doctor; his mother was Emilia Wallner, and he also had a sister, Teresa. He attended high school in Verona, then studied law, first in Padua and then in Rome, where he graduated in 1893. As a young man he began to collaborate on socialist-inspired periodicals, for example the Rivista popolare, directed by Napoleone Colajanni, and the Critica Sociale, directed by Filippo Turati. At Turati's invitation he moved to Milan where he began regularly to frequent socialist circles. He also worked on the periodical La lotta di classe. Exile to Switzerland Following the Milan food riots of May 1898 and their aftermath, he was forced to flee to Switzerland. In his absence he was sentenced to 11 years in prison. In 1903 he obtained Swiss citizenship, and became the first socialist deputy in the parliament of the Canton of Ticino. He lived in Bellinzona where he worked as a lawyer and married the teacher and educationalist Lauretta Perucchi (1873-1966). They had two daughters, Emilia and Algisa. He worked with several local newspapers, including Il Dovere, directed by Luigi Colombi, and L’Azione, directed by Carlo Maggini. He was also editor-in-chief of Enrico Bignami's Coenobium. Academic work, philosophy and politics On returning to Italy in 1908, he met Benito Mussolini in Como. He then concentrated on his philosophical studies, writing Il genio etico ed altri saggi and La trascendenza un neoidealismo trascendente, influenced by the thinking of the American philosopher Josiah Royce. He was also elected to the municipal and provincial council of Verona. In 1911 he worked as a lecturer in moral philosophy at Bologna, but soon moved to Ferrara where he taught for two years (1913-1914), and then to Florence (1914-1916). After a short stay in Messina he moved permanently to Genoa where he lived in Via Palestro. He taught as a professor at the University of Genoa and was considered a proponent of Relativism and a supporter of the Conservative Revolution in Italy. His experience of the First World War sent his idealistic convictions into crisis, leading him towards scepticism, as he wrote later in his Intellectual Autobiography of 1939: "It was while I was at the University of Messina, around 1916 ... that I myself acquired full awareness of the