AUTOCTESIS (a. from «self» and «historical» «creation»). — Self-creation, the positing of oneself. The term dates back to B. Spaventa; the concept is central to Gentilian actualism, which conceives reality as the immanent positing of the Spirit in act. Reality is neither a presupposition nor a given confronting thought, but exists insofar as it is present in thought; and thought itself exists only insofar as it is in act, in an eternal becoming and coming-to-be, and in this its coming-to-be, it realizes nature and history. Hence the only true reality is the act of thought (the subject), which eternally posits itself (autonoesis, self-consciousness, a.), and in positing itself, also posits the world. “All of nature and all of history is, as the creation of the Ego which bears it within itself and eternally produces it in itself, in its a.” (G. Gentile, *Teoria generale dello Spirito come Atto puro*, Florence 1938, p. 252). In this sense, a., as the principle of unification, indeed of absolute identification in the spiritual act, is presented by idealism as the only way to explain the reality (positiveness) of the abstract and the concrete, of the universal and the individual (op. cit., p. 97 ff.).
Christian philosophy rejects the concept of a. as logically and metaphysically unsustainable, opposing to it the concept of God as Pure Act, as infinite perfection, in the substantial identity of being and thought (v. ATTUALISMO; GENOCCHI, GIOVANNI).