CANTONI, CARLO. - Philosopher, b. at Groppello Cairoli (Pavia) on 12 April 1840, d. at Pavia on 11 September 1906. He studied at Turin and in 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 considered the founder of Italian neo-Kantianism, of which the Rivista filosofica was, during the period of his editorship (from 1899 until his death), the official organ. In polemic both with positivism and scientism and with transcendental idealism, C., opposed to every metaphysical construction, which he considered beyond the limits of human reason, strove to harmonize, through a renewed Kantianism or "realist criticism," the Kantian a priori with the empirical-psychological demand of positivism. On the one hand, "the world cannot be conceived 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 one of our affirmations (ibid., p. 353). This is the central theoretical motif that underlies 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).
Bibliography4 works
Michele Federico Sciacca