ANGIULLI, ANDREA. – Italian pedagogist, born at Castellana (Bari) in 1837 and died in Rome in 1890, he is a noted representative of Italian pedagogical positivism. Having gone to Germany in 1862 to perfect his philosophical studies, he remained there for more than three years; he then visited Paris and London. Returning to his homeland, he first taught at the Vittorio Emanuele lyceum in Naples, and subsequently taught pedagogy at the University of Bologna. In 1876 he moved to Naples, where he took up the teaching of pedagogy at that university.
A. grounds the pedagogical problem in science and identifies it with the problem of social progress. For him, science must dethrone every religion, every dogma, every metaphysics. The constitution of society can arise only from science, which is “the new providence, power, and social foresight.” This is the programme of modern democracy; indeed, modern democracy arises from this programme. For A., science is positive philosophy, which represents the totality of the sciences and, like all the sciences, must adhere to experience. For A. there is no a priori knowledge, and in his work La filosofia e la scienza positiva (1868) he can affirm that the spirit, which is “the metaphysical absolute, is not a result of criticism and scientific research, but a hypothesis, a fantastic production.” Scientific investigation is positive and historical research, and philosophy too is research and not dogma; it is experimental and not metaphysical, a posteriori and not a priori. Thus philosophy is reconnected with our civil tradition, whose course Catholics and theologians such as Rosmini and Gioberti have broken; therefore, in order to re-enter the great current of culture, it is necessary to remake the national conscience “with a free school and a free philosophy.” But the social organism cannot be reconstituted without reconstituting the individual persons who compose II. Now the reconstitution of individuals must be provided for by education, which is physical and intellectual at the same time, moral and aesthetic, civil and religious. This education, however, is not the result of a moment of the human spirit, but the fruit of a progressive evolution. Religion and experience, the pagan world and the Christian world, positive science and abstract intellectualism are opposed directions which, coexisting within education, clash and contradict one another, thus halting every possibility of impetus and development. It is therefore necessary to restore unity to the mind and to direct the lives of individuals towards determined goals; and this can be done only by science, which in A.’s conception assumes the character of a new religion. And since the modern State does not remain indifferent or extraneous to the formation of its citizens, it has the task of implementing this scientific unity of minds.
Having affirmed the principle of science as the unifier and regulator of minds, A., in his demand for the secular character of the school, denies it religious instruction in the name of truths that he calls objective merely because they arise from science. Religious instruction, however, far from being absent from the school, would remain there as a primitive and original foundation, revealed in a purer form; there would in fact remain “the sovereign law of the cosmic order without caprices and without pardons, and the feeling of our dependence” would rise “to a greater intellectual height.” Here one cannot fail to perceive the coldness of a religion that is no longer feeling, the movement of the inner conscience and therefore an impetus and aspiration, but a cold and passive nature. Now firmly established in the principle that science and culture, in their progressive movement, are, one might say, the new religion, A. wants children to be educated in contact with concrete and perceptible facts. Mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and mechanics are therefore the disciplines they must embrace, closing their eyes to that entire mythical and fantastic world in which, fundamentally, childhood alone knows how to live and can live. The new myth, science, is not the domain of the school alone; it must also penetrate families, because only in this way can the people themselves clear away the prejudices that obscure them and make themselves free. A. thus fell into the very abstract intellectualism from which he wished to escape, and stiffened the school into a sterile dogmatism, devoid of that religious spirit and vision which cannot be tampered with without compromising the very foundation of all education.
La filosofia e la scuola. 1888. Articles and notes by A. are scattered in: Rivista critica di scienze, lettere e arti, and in: Rassegna critica di opere filosofiche, scientifiche e letterarie.
Studies. – F. Alterocca, Sulla vita e sulle opere di A. A., Milano 1890; F. Orestano, Angiulli, Roma 1907; G. Allievo: Opuscoli pedagogici, Torino 1909; G. Taurè, La vita e il pensiero di A. A., Roma 1914; G. Giuffrida, Il fallimento della pedagogia scientifica, Città di Castello 1920; G. Gentile, Le origini della filosofia contemporanea in Italia, II: I positivisti, Messina 1921; S. Caramella, Studi sul positivismo pedagogico, Firenze 1921; G. Colozza, s. V. in A. Martinazzoli and L. Credaro, Dizionario illustrato di pedagogia, Milano, s. d., pp. 51-58; G. Calò, L'antessignano del positivismo pedagogico: A. A., in Dottirino e Opere, Lanciano 1932. Nino Sammartano