CARLO CANTONI. — Philosopher, b. at Groppello Cairoli (Pavia) on 12 Apr. 1840, d. at Pavia on 11 Sept. 1906. He studied at Turin and in Germany (Göttingen), where his teachers were respectively Bertini and Lotze, the latter having a strong influence on the formation of his thought. He taught theoretical philosophy at the University of Pisa.
C. may be considered the leading exponent of Italian Neo-Kantianism, of which the Rivista filosofica was the official organ during the period of his editorship (from 1899 until his death). In his polemics, both against positivism and scientism and against transcendental idealism, C., who opposed every metaphysical construction that he regarded as beyond the limits of human reason, strove to reconcile, through a renewed Kantianism or “realist criticism,” the Kantian a priori with the empirical-psychological exigencies of positivism. On the one hand, “we cannot conceive the world without thought, and this is an essential element by which the world and the real exist” (E. Kant, I, p. 421), and on the other, our thought presupposes “the existence of an absolute real,” the necessary foundation of every affirmation we make (ibid., p. 353). This is the central theoretical motif underlying the most notable and extensive work of C., E. Kant (vol. I, Milan 1879; vol. II, 1878; vol. III, 1884; 2nd ed., Florence 1893–1901), whose importance is almost exclusively historical (it is the first complete critical monograph on Kant in Italian). Of little interest are the Esposizione critica delle dottrine filosofiche del Jouffroy (Turin 1862) and the essay G. B. Vico (1876).