Ardigò, Roberto

ARDIGÒ, ROBERTO. - Philosopher, b. at Casteldidone (Cremona) in 1828 to a modest family, d., by suicide, at Mantua in 1920. He completed, through financial help, the studies that led him, in 1851, to the priesthood. Canon of Mantua in 1863, he was suspended a divinis in 1869 for his philosophical study on Pietro Pomponazzi. In 1871, after his new work La psicologia come scienza positiva, he laid aside the habit, continuing to teach philosophy at the lyceum of Mantua until, in 1881, he was appointed to the university chair of Padua, where he remained until 1909.

Of irreproachable moral conduct, he devoted himself to his favorite studies, nor did he show himself insensible to the fame of being the head of the school of Italian positivism and a symbol of aversion to every authority that seemed in any way constrictive of the most absolute freedom of thought; to such a degree that his name, to his genuine sorrow, was raised also as the banner of the most stale anticlericalism. A. expounded his philosophical thought, oriented toward English and French positivist researches (Spencer and Comte), whose influence he underwent, and toward the successes of scientific progress, in numerous volumes on every subject then under discussion, from psychology to cosmogony and sociology. But the gnoseological and methodological cornerstones of his system rest on the asserted necessity of applying fully to philosophy the method of the natural sciences; on the principle of the naturalness of every fact; on the reducibility of the essence of the I to a pure sensory phenomenon («everything is sensation and grouping of sensations, and nothing more»), and this too, like its psychic manifestations, to a mere rhythm of energetic wavelengths, on purely physiological bases.

Of evolutionism he developed, more than anything else, the concept of the process from the indistinct to the distinct; of ethics and sociology he brought to light above all the formative function of moral qualities on the part of society, of a disinterested character and by means of suggestion, example, habit, while to these elements religion also was reduced; in this field, indeed, he defended several errors: he declared the dogma of creation puerile; that spirit and matter, eternally coexisting, derive from a prior indistinct state; that Providence is absurd, absurd the intervention of God in the government of the world. Therefore three works were placed on the Index: Pietro Pomponazzi (decr. 1869); La psicologia come scienza positiva (decr. 1872); La formazione naturale nel fatto del sistema solare (decr. 1879). On education he took up again the concept of natural formation, on whose basis abilities and habits are built up, resolving themselves into art and character through exercise conducted with the scientific method, from the simple to the complex, with didactic anticipations and objective intuitions. Of his whole system there survives the principle of experimental methodology, which, although for the most part limited by A. himself to the archetype of the natural sciences, nonetheless did not remain unfruitful, even outside the sphere of his school, in the development of philosophical thought, soon almost submerged by encroaching idealism.

Studies: M. Liberatore, in La Civ. Cattolica, 7th series, 6 (1869, II), p. 699 ff.; F. Berardinelli, ibid., 8th series, 3 (1871, III), pp. 201-11. - G. Marchesini, La vita e il pensiero di R. A., Milan 1907; G. Zamboni, Il valore scientifico del positivismo di R. A. e della sua conversione, Verona 1921; G. Marchesini, R. A.: L'uomo e l'umanità, Florence 1922; E. Troilo, A., Milan 1926; G. Gentile, Le origini della filosofia contemporanea in Italia, II: I positivisti, Messina 1927; G. Tarozzi, A., Rome 1928; F. Amerio, A., Brescia 1947.

Paolo Bonatelli