CANTONI, CARLO. – Philosopher, born at Groppello Cairoli (Pavia) on 12 April 1840, died at Pavia on 11 September 1906. He studied in Turin and Germany (Göttingen), where his teachers were, respectively, Bertini and Lotze, the latter of whom greatly influenced the formation of his thought. He taught theoretical philosophy at the University of Pisa.
C. may be regarded as the leader of the Italian neo-Kantian school, of which the Rivista filosofica was the official organ during the period of his editorship (from 1899 until his death). In polemic both with positivism and scientism and with transcendental idealism, C., opposed to every metaphysical construction, which he regarded as lying beyond the limits of human reason, endeavoured to harmonize, through a renewed Kantianism or “realist criticism,” the Kantian a priori with the empirical-psychological requirement of positivism. On the one hand, “the world cannot be conceived without thought, and this is an essential element whereby the world and reality exist” (E. Kant, I, p. 421); on the other, our thought presupposes “the existence of an absolute reality,” the necessary foundation of all our affirmations (ibid., p. 353). This is the central theoretical motif underlying C.’s most notable and extensive work, E. Kant (vol. I, Milan 1879; vol. II, ibid. 1883; vol. III, ibid. 1884; 2nd ed., Florence 1893–1901), whose importance is almost exclusively historical (it is the first complete Italian critical monograph on Kant). Of little interest are the Esposizione critica delle dottrine filosofiche del Jonffroy (Turin 1862) and the essay G. B. Vico (ibid. 1867).