H. P. Grice, "Filosofia italiana"

Italian: H. P. Grice: “It’s absurd the little Oxonians know about Italy – it’s all about the Grand Tour! The only Oxonian seriously into things Italian, that I know of, are Collingwood, Bosanquet, and the fashionable Hegelians!” “As a response, I propose to lecture on Italian philosophy, with a view to implicature.”

Italy over the ages has had a vast influence on Western philosophy, beginning with the Greeks and Romans, and going onto Renaissance humanism, the Age of Enlightenment and modern philosophy.

Philosophy is brought to Italy by Pythagoras, founder of the Italian school of philosophy in Crotone.

Major Italian philosophers of the Grecian period include:

Xenophanes,

Parmenides,

Zeno,

Empedocles, and, lastly,

Gorgias, responsible for bringing philosophy to Athens.

There are several formidable Roman philosophers, such as:

Cicero,

Lucretius,

Seneca,

Musonius Rufus,

Plutarch,

Epictetus,

Marcus Aurelius,

Clement of Alexandria,

Alcinous,

Sextus Empiricus,

Alexander of Aphrodisias,

Ammonius Saccas,

Plotinus,

Porphyry,

Iamblichus,

Themistius,

Augustine of Hippo,

Proclus,

Philoponus of Alexandria,

Damascius,

Boethius, and

Simplicius of Cilicia.

Roman philosophy is heavily influenced by that of Greece.

Italian mediaeval philosophy is mainly Christian, and includes several important philosophers and theologians such as Thomas Aquinas.

Aquinas is a student of Albert the Great, a brilliant Dominican experimentalist, much like the Franciscan Roger Bacon of Oxford.

Aquinas reintroduces Aristotelian philosophy to Christianity.

Aquinas believes that there is no contradiction between faith and secular reason.

Aquinas believes that Aristotle achieves the pinnacle in the human striving for truth, and thus adopts Aristotle's philosophy as a framework in constructing his theological and philosophical outlook.

Aquinas is a professor at the prestigious University of Paris.

The Renaissance is an essentially Italian (Florentine) movement, and also a great period of the arts and philosophy.

Among the distinctive elements of Renaissance philosophy are:

— the revival (renaissance means "rebirth") of classical civilisation and learning.

— a partial return to the authority of Plato over Aristotle, who had come to dominate later medieval philosophy; and

— among some philosophers, enthusiasm for the occult and Hermeticism.

As with all periods, there is a wide drift of dates, reasons for categorization and boundaries.

In particular, the Renaissance, more than later periods, is thought to begin in Italy with the Italian Renaissance and roll through Europe.

Renaissance Humanism was a European intellectual movement that was a crucial component of the Renaissance, beginning in Florence, and affected most of Italy.

The humanist movement develops from the rediscovery by European scholars of Latin literary and Greek literary texts.

Initially, a humanist was simply a scholar or teacher of Latin literature.

Humanism describes a curriculum – the “studia humanitatis” – consisting of grammar, rhetoric, moral philosophy, poetry, and history, as studied via Latin and Greek literary authors.

Humanism offers the necessary intellectual and philological tools for the first critical analysis of texts.

An early triumph of textual criticism by Lorenzo Valla reveals the Donation of Constantine to be an early medieval forgery produced in the Curia.

This textual criticism creates sharper controversy when Erasmus follows Valla in criticising the accuracy of the Vulgate translation of the New Testament, and promoting readings from the original Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.

Italian Renaissance humanists believe that the liberal arts (art, music, grammar, rhetoric, oratory, history, poetry, using classical texts, and the studies of all of the above) should be practiced by all levels of "richness".

Italian humanists also approve of self, human worth and individual dignity.

Italian humanists hold the belief that everything in life has a determinate nature, but man's privilege is to be able to choose his own path.

Pico della Mirandola writes the following concerning the creation of the universe and man's place in it:

“But when the work was finished, the Craftsman kept wishing that there were someone to ponder the plan of so great a work, to love its beauty, and to wonder at its vastness.”

“Therefore, when everything was done, He finally took thought concerning the creation of man.”

“He therefore took man as a creature of indeterminate nature and, assigning him a place in the middle of the world, addressed him thus.”

“”Neither a fixed abode nor a form that is thine alone nor any function peculiar to thyself have we given thee, Adam, to the end that according to thy longing and according to thy judgement thou mayest have and possess what abode, what form and what functions thou thyself shalt desire.””

“”The nature of all other beings is limited and constrained within the bounds of law.””

“”Thou shalt have the power to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which are brutish.””

“”Thou shalt have the power, out of thy soul's judgement, to be born into the higher forms, which are divine."”

Italy is also affected by a movement called Neoplatonism, which is a movement which had a general revival of interest in Classical antiquity.

Interest in Platonism is especially strong in Florence under the Medici.

During the sessions at Florence of the Council of Ferrara-Florence, during the failed attempts to heal the schism of the Orthodox and Catholic churches, Cosimo de' Medici and his intellectual circle make acquaintance with the Neoplatonic philosopher George Gemistos Plethon.

Plethon’s discourses upon Plato and the Alexandrian mystics so fascinate the learned society of Florence that they name him the second Plato.

John Argyropoulos is lecturing on Greek language and literature at Florence, and Marsilio Ficino becomes his pupil.

When Cosimo de’ Medici decides to refound Plato's Academy at Florence, his choice to head it is Ficino, who makes the classic translation of Plato from Greek to Latin, as well as a translation of a collection of Hellenistic Greek documents of the Hermetic Corpus, and the writings of many of the Neoplatonists, for example Porphyry, Iamblichus, Plotinus, et al..

Following suggestions laid out by Gemistos Plethon, Ficino tries to synthesize Christianity and Platonism.

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli is an Italian philosopher, and is considered one of the most influential Italian Renaissance philosophers and one of the main founders of modern political science.

Machiavelli’s most famous work is “The Prince.”

“The Prince”’s contribution to the history of political thought is the fundamental break between political realism and political idealism.

Machiavelli’s best-known essay exposits and describes the arts with which a ruling prince can maintain control of his realm.

The essay concentrates on the "new prince", under the presumption that a hereditary prince has an easier task in ruling, since the people are accustomed to him.

To retain power, the hereditary prince must carefully maintain the socio-political institutions to which the people are accustomed; whereas a new prince has the more difficult task in ruling, since he must first stabilize his new-found power in order to build an enduring political structure.

That requires the prince being a public figure above reproach, whilst privately acting immorally to maintain his state.

The examples are those princes who most successfully obtain and maintain power, drawn from Machiavelli’s observations as a Florentine diplomat, and his ancient history readings; thus, the Latin phrases and Classic examples.

“The Prince” politically defines “virtu” as any quality that helps a prince rule his state effectively.

Machiavelli is aware of the irony of good results coming from evil actions, and because of this, the Catholic Church proscribes “The Prince,” registering it to the “Index Librorum Prohibitorum,” moreover, the Humanists also viewed the essay negatively, among them, Erasmus of Rotterdam.

As a treatise, the primary intellectual contribution of Machiavelli’s “Prince” to the history of political thought is the fundamental break between political Realism and political Idealism — thus,

“The Prince” is a manual to acquiring and keeping political power.

In contrast with Plato and Aristotle, a Classical ideal society is not the aim of the prince’s will to power.

As a political philosopher, Machiavelli emphasises necessary, methodical exercise of brute force and deception to preserve the status quo.

Between Machiavelli's advice to ruthless and tyrannical princes in “The Prince” and his more republican exhortations in “Discorsi,” some conclude that “The Prince” is actually only a satire.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for instance, admires Machiavelli the republican and, consequently, argues that “The Prince” is an essay for the republicans as it exposes the methods used by princes.

If “The Prince” is only intended as a manual for tyrannical rulers, it contains a paradox:

It is apparently more effective if the secrets “The Prince” contains would *not* be made publicly available.

Also Antonio Gramsci argues that Machiavelli's audience is the common people because the rulers already know these methods through their education.

This interpretation is supported by the fact that Machiavelli writes in the vernacular, Italian, not in Latin (which would have been the language of the ruling elite).

Although Machiavelli is supposed to be a realist, many of his heroes in “The Prince” are in fact mythical or semi-mythical, and his goal (i.e. the unification of Italy) essentially utopian at the time of writing.

Many of Machiavelli’s contemporaries associate him with the political tracts offering the idea of “Reason of State”, an idea proposed most notably in the writings of Jean Bodin and Giovanni Botero.

To this day, contemporary usage of “Machiavellian” is an adjective describing someone who is "marked by cunning, duplicty, or bad faith.”

“The Prince” is the treatise that is most responsible for the term being brought about.

To this day, "Machiavellian" remains a popular term used in casual and political contexts, while in psychology, "Machiavellianism" denotes a personality type.

Cesare Beccaria is one of the greatest writers of the Italian Age of Enlightenment.

Italy is also affected by the enlightenment, a movement which is a consequence of the Renaissance and changes the road of Italian philosophy.

Followers of the group often meet to discuss in private salons and coffeehouses, notably in the cities of Milan, Rome and Venice.

Cities with important universities such as Padua, Bologna and Naples, however, also remain great centres of scholarship and the intellect, with several philosophers, such as Giambattista Vico (who is widely regarded as being the founder of modern Italian philosophy) and Antonio Genovesi.

Italian society also dramatically changes during the Enlightenment, with rulers such as Leopold II of Tuscany abolishing the death penalty.

The church's power is significantly reduced, and it is a period of great thought and invention, with scientists such as Alessandro Volta and Luigi Galvani discovering new things and greatly contributing to Western science.

Beccaria is also one of the greatest Italian Enlightenment writers, who is famous for his masterpiece “Of Crimes and Punishments.”

Italy also has a renowned philosophical movement with Idealism, Sensism and Empiricism.

The main Sensist Italian philosophers are Gioja and Romagnosi.

Criticism of the Sensist movement comes from other philosophers such as Pasquale Galluppi, who affirms that a priori relationships are synthetic.

Antonio Rosmini, instead, is the founder of Italian Idealism.

The most comprehensive view of Rosmini's philosophical standpoint is to be found in his “Sistema filosofico,” in which he sets forth the conception of a complete encyclopaedia of the human knowable, synthetically conjoined, according to the order of ideas, in a perfectly harmonious whole.

Contemplating the position of recent philosophy from Locke to Hegel, and having his eye directed to the ancient and fundamental problem of the origin, truth and certainty of our ideas, Rosmini writes:

“If philosophy is to be restored to love and respect, I think it will be necessary, in part, to return to the teachings of the ancients, and in part to give those teachings the benefit of modern methods.”

— Theodicy, a. 148.

Rosmini examines and analyses the fact of human knowledge, and obtains the following results:

— the notion or idea of being or existence in general enters into, and is presupposed by, all our acquired cognitions, so that, without it, they would be impossible.

— this idea is essentially objective, inasmuch as what is seen in it is as distinct from and opposed to the mind that sees it as the light is from the eye that looks at it.

— the idea is essentially true, because being and truth are convertible terms, and because in the vision of it the mind cannot err, since error could only be committed by a judgment, and here there is no judgment, but a pure intuition affirming nothing and denying nothing.

— by the application of this essentially objective and true idea the human being intellectually perceives, first, the animal body individually conjoined with him, and then, on occasion of the sensations produced in him not by himself, the causes of those sensations, that is, from the action felt he perceives and affirms an agent, a being, and therefore a true thing, that acts on him, and he thus gets at the external world, these are the true primitive judgments, containing the subsistence of the particular being (subject), and its essence or species as determined by the quality of the action felt from it (predicate)

— reflection, by separating the essence or species from the subsistence, obtains the full specific idea (universalization), and then from this, by leaving aside some of its elements, the abstract specific idea (abstraction).

— the mind, having reached this stage of development, can proceed to further and further abstracts, including the first principles of reasoning, the principles of the several sciences, complex ideas, groups of ideas, and so on without end, and, finally,

— the same most universal idea of being, this generator and formal element of all acquired cognitions, cannot itself be acquired, but must be innate in us, implanted by God in our nature.

Being, as naturally shining to our mind, must therefore be what men call the light of reason.

Hence the name Rosmini gives it of ideal being; and this he lays down as the fundamental principle of all philosophy and the supreme criterion of truth and certainty.

This Rosmini believes to be the teaching of St Augustine, as well as of St Thomas, of whom he was an ardent admirer and defender.

In the 19th century, there are also several other movements which gain some form of popularity in Italy, such as Ontologism.

The main Italian son of this philosophical movement is Vincenzo Gioberti, a metaphysician.

Gioberti's writings are more important than his political career.

In the history of Italian philosophy they stand apart.

As the speculations of Rosmini-Serbati, against which he wrote, have been called the last link added to medieval thought, so the system of Gioberti, known as Ontologism, more especially in his greater and earlier works, is unrelated to other modern schools of thought.

It shows a harmony with the Roman Catholic faith which caused Cousin to declare that Italian philosophy was still in the bonds of theology, and that Gioberti was no philosopher.

Method is with Gioberti a synthetic, subjective and psychological instrument.

Gioberti reconstructs, as he declares, ontology, and begins with the ideal formula, the "Ens" creates ex nihilo the existent.

God is the only being (Ens).

All other things are merely existences.

God is the origin of all human knowledge (called lidea, thought), which is one and so to say identical with God himself.

It is directly beheld (intuited) by reason, but in order to be of use it has to be reflected on, and this by means of language.

A knowledge of being and existences (concrete, not abstract) and their mutual relations, is necessary as the beginning of philosophy.

Gioberti is in some respects a Platonist.

Gioberti identifies religion with civilization, and in his treatise “Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani” he arrives at the conclusion that the church is the axis on which the well-being of human life revolves.

In it Gioberti affirms the idea of the supremacy of Italy, brought about by the restoration of the papacy as a moral dominion, founded on religion and public opinion.

In his later works, the “Rinnovamento” and the “Protologia,” Gioberti is thought by some to have shifted his ground under the influence of events.

Gioberti’s first work had a personal reason for its existence.

A fellow-exile and friend, Paolo Pallia, having many doubts and misgivings as to the reality of revelation and a future life, Gioberti at once set to work with “La Teorica del sovrannaturale,” which was his first publication.

After this, philosophical treatises follow in rapid succession.

The “Teorica” is followed by “Introduzione allo studio della filosofia.”

In this work Gioberti states his reasons for requiring a new method and new terminology.

Here Gioberti brings out the doctrine that religion is the direct expression of the idea in this life, and is one with true civilization in history.

Civilization is a conditioned mediate tendency to perfection, to which religion is the final completion if carried out.

It is the end of the second cycle expressed by the second formula, the Ens redeems existences.

Essays on the lighter and more popular subjects, “Del bello” and “Del buono,” follow the “Introduzione.”

“Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani” and the “Prolegomeni” to the same, and soon afterwards his triumphant exposure of the Jesuits, “Il Gesuita moderno,” no doubt hastens the transfer of rule from clerical to civil hands.

It is the popularity of these semi-political works, increased by other occasional political articles, and his “Rinnovamento civile d'Italia,” that causes Gioberti to be welcomed with such enthusiasm on his return to his native country.

All these works are perfectly orthodox, and aid in drawing the liberal clergy into the movement which results since his time in the unification of Italy.

The Jesuits, however, closed round the pope more firmly after his return to Rome, and in the end Gioberti's writings are placed on the Index.

The remainder of his works, especially “La Filosofia della Rivelazione” and the “Prolologia,” give his mature views on many points.

Other Ontological philosophers include Terenzio Mamiani, Luigi Ferri, and Ausonio Franchi.

Augusto Vera is probably the greatest Italian Hegelianist philosopher.

It is during his studies, with his cousin in Paris, that Vera comes to know about philosophy and through them he acquires knowledge of Hegelianism and it culminates during the events of the French Revolution.

In England Vera continues his studies of Hegelian philosophy.

During his years in Naples, Vera maintains relationships with the Philosophical Society of Berlin, which originally consists of Hegelians, and keeps up to date with both the German and the French Hegelian literature.

Vera undertakes a close commentary of Hegel's “Introduzione alla filosofia.”

Much of Vera’s work on neo-Hegelian theories are undertaken with Bertrando Spaventa.

Some see the Italian Hegelian doctrine as leading to Italian Fascism.

Some of the most prominent philosophies and ideologies in Italy also include anarchism, communism, socialism, futurism, fascism, and Christian democracy.

Both futurism and fascism (in its original form, now often distinguished as Italian fascism) are developed in Italy at this time.

Italian Fascism is the official philosophy and ideology of the Italian government.

Giovanni Gentile is one of the greatest Italian Idealist/Fascist philosophers, who greatly supports Benito Mussolini.

Gentile has a great number of developments within his thought and career which define his philosophy:

— the discovery of Actual Idealism in his work “Theory of the Pure Act”

— the political favour he felt for the invasion of Libya and the entry of Italy into The Great War.

— the dispute with Benedetto Croce over the historic inevitability of Fascism.

— his role as education minister.

— Gentile’s belief that Fascism can be made to be subservient to his thought and the gathering of influence through the work of such students as Ugo Spirito.

Benedetto Croce writes that Gentile "holds the honour of being the most rigorous neo–Hegelian in the entire history of Western philosophy and the dishonour of being the official philosopher of Fascism in Italy."

Gentile’s philosophical basis for fascism is rooted in his understanding of ontology and epistemology, in which he finds vindication for the rejection of individualism, acceptance of collectivism, with the state as the ultimate location of authority and loyalty to which the individual found in the conception of individuality no meaning outside of the state (which in turn justifies totalitarianism).

Ultimately, Gentile foresees a social order wherein opposites of all kinds are not to be given sanction as existing independently from each other; that 'publicness' and 'privateness' as broad interpretations were currently false as imposed by all former kinds of Government; capitalism, communism, and that only the reciprocal totalitarian state of Corporative Syndicalism, a Fascist state, could defeat these problems made from reifying as an external that which is in fact to Gentile only a thinking reality.

Whereas it was common in the philosophy of the time to see conditional subject as abstract and object as concrete, Gentile postulates the opposite, that subject is the concrete and objectification is abstraction (or rather; that what was conventionally dubbed "subject" is in fact only conditional object, and that true subject is the 'act of' being or essence above any object).

Gentile is a notable philosophical theorist of his time throughout Europe, since having developed his 'Actual Idealism' system of Idealism, sometimes called 'Actualism.'

It is especially in which his ideas put subject to the position of a transcending truth above positivism that garnered attention; by way that all senses about the world only take the form of ideas within one's mind in any real sense; to Gentile even the analogy between the function and location of the physical brain with the functions of the physical body were a consistent creation of the mind (and not brain; which was a creation of the mind and not the other way around).

An example of Actual Idealism in Theology is the idea that although man may have invented the concept of God, it does not make God any less real in any sense possible as far as it is not presupposed to exist as abstraction and except in case qualities about what existence actually entails (i.e. being invented apart from the thinking making it) are presupposed.

Benedetto Croce objects that Gentile's "pure act" is nothing other than Schopenhauer's will.

Therefore, Gentile proposes a form of what he calls 'absolute Immanentism' in which the divine is the present conception of reality in the totality of one's individual thinking as an evolving, growing and dynamic process.

Many times accused of Solipsism, Gentile maintains his philosophy to be a Humanism that senses the possibility of nothing beyond what was contingent; the self's human thinking, in order to communicate as immanence is to be human like oneself, makes a cohesive empathy of the self-same, without an external division, and therefore not modeled as objects to one's own thinking.

Meanwhile, anarchism, communism, and socialism, though not originating in Italy, take significant hold in Italy with the country producing numerous significant figures in anarchist, socialist, and communist thought.

In addition, anarcho-communism first fully forms into its modern strain within the Italian section of the First International.

Italian anarchists often adhere to forms of anarcho-communism, illegalist or insurrectionary anarchism, collectivist anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, and platformism.

Some of the most important figures in the anarchist movement include Italians such as:

Errico Malatesta,

Giuseppe Fanelli,

Carlo Cafiero,

Alfredo M. Bonanno,

Pietro Gori,

Luigi Galleani,

Severino Di Giovanni,

Giuseppe Ciancabilla,

Luigi Fabbri,

Camillo Berneri, and

Sacco and Vanzetti.

Other Italian figures, influential in both the anarchist and socialist movements, include Carlo Tresca and Andrea Costa, as well as the author, director, and intellectual Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Antonio Gramsci remains an important philosopher within Marxist and communist theory, credited with creating the theory of cultural hegemony.

Italian philosophers are also influential in the development of the non-Marxist liberal socialism philosophy, including:

Carlo Rosselli,

Norberto Bobbio,

Piero Gobetti,

Aldo Capitini, and

Guido Calogero.

Many Italian left-wing activists adopt the anti-authoritarian pro-working class leftist theories that become known as autonomism and “operaismo.”

Giuseppe Peano is one of the founders of analytic philosophy and contemporary philosophy of mathematics.

Recent analytic philosophers include:

Mauro Dorato,

Carlo Penco,

Francesco Berto,

Emiliano Boccardi,

Alessandro Torza,

Matteo Plebiani,

Luciano Floridi, and

Luca Moretti.

See also:

List of Italian philosophers

References:

See:

Jerry Bentley, “Humanists and holy writ”

Princeton University

Pico

Yates, Frances A.

“Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition”

University of Chicago Press

Moschovitis Group Inc, Christian D. Von Dehsen and Scott L. Harris,

“Philosophers and religious leaders,”

The Oryx Press, 117.

Definition of MACHIAVELLIAN

merriam-webster

Skinner, Quentin

“Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction.”

OUP Oxford.

Christie, Richard; Geis, Florence L.

“Studies in Machiavellianism.”

Academic Press.

“The Enlightenment throughout Europe"

history-world

“History of Philosophy 70".

maritain

“Augusto Vera".

Facoltà Lettere e Filosofia

“La rinascita hegeliana a Napoli".

Ex-Regno delle Due Sicilie.

“L'ESCATOLOGIA PITAGORICA NELLA TRADIZIONE OCCIDENTALE".

RITO SIMBOLICO ITALIANO.

“Idealismo. Idealistas".

Enciclopedia GER.

Benedetto Croce,

“Guide to Aesthetics,” Tr. by Patrick Romanell, "Translator's Introduction,"

The Library of Liberal Arts, The Bobbs–Merrill Co., Inc.

Runes, Dagobert, ed., Treasure of Philosophy,”

“Gentile, Giovanni"

Nunzio Pernicone, "Italian Anarchism", AK Press.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Giovanni Gentile, Italian neo-Hegelian Idealist philosopher.

Bertrando Spaventa, Italian philosopher.