[Footnote 1: Vico: Principles of a New Science of the Common Nature of Nations, 1725; Works, in six volumes, edited by G. Ferrari, 1835-37, new ed.. 1853 seq. On Vico cf. K. Werner, 1877 and 1879. [Also Flint's Vico, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, 1884.—TR.]
If Vico anticipates the Hegelian view of history, Antonio Genovesi (1712-69), who also taught at the University of Naples, and while the former was still living, shows himself animated by a presentiment of the Kantian criticism.[1] Appreciating Leibnitz and Locke, and appropriating the idea of the monads from the one and the unknowableness of substance from the other, he reaches the conviction—according to statements in his letters—that sense-bodies are nothing but the appearances of intelligible unities; that each being for us is an activity, whose substratum and ground remains unknown to us; that self-consciousness and the knowledge of external impressions yield phenomena alone, through the elaboration of which we produce the intellectual worlds of the sciences. For the rest, Genovesi thus advises his friends: Study the world, devote yourselves to languages and to mathematics, think more about men than about the things above us, and leave metaphysical vagaries to the monks! His countrymen honor in him the man who first included ethics and politics in philosophical instruction, and who used the Italian language both from the desk and in his writings, holding that a nation whose scientific works are not composed in its own tongue is barbarian.
[Footnote 1: In the following account we have made use of a translation of the concluding section of Francesco Florentine's Handbook of the History of Philosophy, 1879-81, which was most kindly placed at our disposal by Dr. J. Mainzer. Cf. La Filosofia Contemporanea in Italia, 1876, by the same author; further, Bonatelli, Die Philosophic in Italien seit, 1815; Zeitschrift für Philosophic und philosophische Kritik, vol. liv. 1869, p. 134 seq.; and especially, K. Werner, Die Italienische Philosophic des XIX. Jahrhunderts, 5 vols., 1884-86. [The English reader may be referred to the appendix on Italian philosophy in vol. ii. of the English translation of Ueberweg, by Vincenzo Botta; and to Barzellotti's "Philosophy in Italy," Mind, vol. in. 1878.—TR.]
The sensationalism of Condillac, starting from Parma, gained influence over Melchiore Gioja (1767-1828; Statistical Logic, 1803; Ideology, 1822) and Giandomenico Romagnosi (1761-1835; What is the Sound Mind? 1827), but not without experiencing essential modification from both. The importance of these men, moreover, lies more in the sphere of social philosophy than in the sphere of noëtics.
Of the three greatest Italian philosophers of this century, Galluppi, Rosmini, and Gioberti, the first named is more in sympathy with the Kantian position than he himself will confess. Pasquale Galluppi[1] (1770-1846; from 1831 professor at Naples) adheres to the principle of experience, but does not conceive experience as that which is sensuously given, but as the elaboration of this through the synthetic relations (rapporti) of identity and difference, which proceed from the activity of the mind. Vincenzo de Grazia (Essay on the Reality of Human Knowledge, 1839-42), who holds all relations to be objective, and Ottavio Colecchi (died 1847; Philosophical Investigations, 1843), who holds them all subjective, oppose the view of Galluppi that some are objective and others subjective. According to De Grazia judgment is observation, not connection; it finds out the relations contained in the data of sensation; it discovers, but does not produce them. Colecchi reduces the Kantian categories to two, substance and cause. Testa, Borelli (1824), and, among the younger men, Cantoni, are Kantians; Labriola is an Herbartian.
[Footnote 1: Galluppi: Philosophical Essay on the Critique of Knowledge, 1819 seq.; Lectures on Logic and Metaphysics, 1832 seq.; Philosophy of the Will, 1832 seq.; On the System of Fichte, or Considerations on Transcendental Idealism and Absolute Rationalism, 1841. By the Letters on the History of Philosophy from Descartes to Kant, 1827, in the later editions to Cousin, he became the founder of this discipline in his native land.]
Antonio Rosmini-Serbati[1] (born 1797 at Rovereto, died 1855 at Stresa) regards knowledge as the common product of sensibility and understanding, the former furnishing the matter, the latter the form. The form is one: the Idea of being which precedes all judgment, which does not come from myself, which is innate, and apprehensible by immediate inner perception (essere ideale, ente universale). The pure concepts (substance, cause, unity, necessity) arise when the reflecting reason analyzes this general Idea of being; the mixed Ideas (space, time, motion; body, spirit), when the understanding applies it to sensuous experience. The universal Idea of being and the particular existences are in their being identical, but in their mode of existence different. In his posthumous Theosophy, 1859 seq., Rosmini no longer makes the universal being receive its determinations from without, but produce them from its own inner nature by means of an a priori development. Vincenzo Gioberti[1] (born 1801 in Turin, died 1852 at Paris) has been compared as a patriot with Fichte, and in his cast of thought with Spinoza. In place of Rosmini's "psychologism," which was advanced by Descartes and which leads to skepticism, he seeks to substitute "ontologism," which is alone held capable of reconciling science and the Catholic religion. By immediate intuition (the content of which Gioberti comprehends in the formula "Being creates the existences") we cognize the absolute as the creative ground of two series, the series of thought and the series of reality. The endeavors of Rosmini and Gioberti to bring the reason into harmony with the faith of the Church were fiercely attacked by Giussepe Ferrari (1811-76) and Ausonio Franchi (1853), while Francesco Bonatelli (Thought and Cognition, 1864) and Terenzio Mamiani (1800-85; Confessions of a Metaphysician, 1865), follow a line of thought akin to the Platonizing views of the first named thinkers. The review Filosofia delle Scuole Italiane, called into life by Mamiani in 1870, has been continued since 1886 under the direction of L. Ferri as the Rivista Italiana di Filosofia.
[Footnote 1: Rosmini: New Essay on the Origin of Ideas, 1830 (English translation, 1883-84); Principles of Moral Science, 1831; Philosophy of Right, 1841.] [Footnote B: Gioberti: Introduction to the Study of Philosophy, 1840; Philosophical Errors of A. Rosmini, 1842; On the Beautiful, 1841; On the Good, 1842; Protology edited by Massari, 1857. On both cf. R. Seydel, Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 1859.]
The Thomistic doctrine has many adherents in Italy, among whom the Jesuit M. Liberatore (1865) may be mentioned. The Hegelian philosophy has also found favor there (especially in Naples), as well as positivism. The former is favored by Vera, Mariano, Ragnisco, and Spaventa (died 1885); the Rivista di Filosofia Scientifica, 1881 seq., founded by Morselli, supports the latter, and E. Caporali's La Nuova Scienza, 1884, moves in a similar direction. Pietro Siciliani (On the Revival of the Positive Philosophy in Italy, 1871) makes the third, the critical, period of philosophy by which scholasticism is overthrown and the reason made authoritative, commence with Vico, and bases his doctrine on Vico's formula: The conversion (transposition) of the verum and the factum, and vice versa. Subsequently he inclined to positivism, which he had previously opposed, and among the representatives of which we may mention, further, R. Ardigò of Pavia (Psychology as Positive Science, 1870; The Ethics of Positivism, 1885; Philosophical Works, 1883 seq.), and Andrea Angiulli of Naples (died 1890; Philosophy and the Schools, 1889), who explain matter and spirit as two phenomena of the same essence; further, Giuseppe Sergi, Giovanni Cesca, and the psychiatrist, C. Lombroso, the head of the positivistic school of penal law.
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