Adolfo Levi
Adolfo Levi (1878 – 1948) was an Italian philospher.
L'indeterminismo nella filosofia francese contemporanea
[edit]- Adolfo Levi, L'indeterminismo nella filosofia francese contemporanea, Bernardo Seeber, Firenze, 1904.
- Towards the end of the first half of the century, that form of Cousin's philosophy prevailed, which, from being eclectic as it had originally been announced, had increasingly moved towards spiritualism; but it was a timid spiritualism, wary of both the research of experimental sciences and the bold constructions of German metaphysics; In short, the philosophy that Cousin had dominated in French schools was a doctrine more suited to men of letters or politicians than to truly philosophical minds. (Introduction, chap. I, p. 3)
- For Sécretan, all necessities, even logical ones, are relative; God created logical, mathematical, and moral truths: truth and good are divine creation. The order of the world is necessary because it is a free effect of divine will: everywhere necessity rests on freedom and presupposes it. The absolute is God with respect to the world because divine attributes exist only with respect to the world.
- So, for the absolute to become God, he must create the world; but why did he create it? Since absolute being is absolute freedom, the act of creation must be an act of absolute freedom; the reason for creation must therefore not be found in the nature of absolute being, because it would no longer be free (therefore it must be neither a duty nor a need, etc.): that is, it must be found not in the creator but in the creature that does not yet exist. (Introduction, chap. II, pp. 11-12)
- According to Sécretan, in consciousness we find the feeling of obligation, the law of duty: this presupposes free will: it is very true that this cannot be demonstrated, but neither can universal determinism be demonstrated. Freedom and determinism are two contradictory hypotheses, one necessary for morality, the other necessary for science: which one should be chosen? (Introduction, chap. II, pp. 12-13)
- The fundamental principle of Renouvier is this: One cannot speak of things except as they are given to knowledge, as representations, that is, as phenomena. Hence the name of phenomenalism that was given to the Renouvier system. (Introduction, chap. II, p. 14)
- [...] Milhaud [...] aimed to demonstrate that logical certainty governed by the principle of contradiction has a purely subjective value, that is, it does not go beyond the field of creations of thought and that, as far as it refers to things, it does not allow us to affirm anything that goes beyond the circle of phenomena already observed. (Book II, chap. I, p. 183)
- Milhaud fights positivism because it claims to subject the free activity of thought to the iron yoke of sensible experience, and with this he takes up and continues Descartes' mathematical rationalism in opposition to the empiricism and experimentalism of modern scientific positivism, based on physics that is not so much mathematical as experimental, and on the biological sciences [...]. (Book II, Conclusion, pp. 234-235)
- Milhaud, first and most of all, is an ardent defender of the supreme sovereignty of the free activity of reason. It is true that he combats two characteristics of old rationalism: the metaphysical tendencies to believe that by constructing thought one can penetrate objective reality and impose on it the logical necessity typical of the former; but by attacking the objectivism and determinism of ancient rationalism, he believes he is contributing to the fullest triumph of rational thought. (Book II, Conclusion, p. 239)