CARABELLESE, Pantaleo. — Philosopher, born in Molfetta (Bari) on 6 July 1877, died in Genoa on 19 September 1948. He first taught at the University of Palermo and then, from 1931, in the chair of History of Philosophy at the University of Rome, succeeding Gentile in the chair of Theoretical Philosophy. He nobly devoted his life to meditation and teaching.
A pupil of Masci in Naples and later of Varisco in Rome, one might say that his “critical ontologism” is a rethinking of Varisco’s critical idealism, mediated through Kant and Rosmini (though a Rosmini reduced to Kant and thus anti-Rosminian) and, more than might appear, through Spinoza. Ultimately, Carabellese, with the concept of objectivity as immanence, sought to reconcile the opposing demands of realism and idealism through a reworking of traditional ontologism in the light of Kantian criticism. Hence the name “critical ontologism,” meaning: “ontologism” or intuition of being; “critical” insofar as being is immanent as an idea or object to consciousness. Reality is a plurality of subjects: they are the true reality of being, which is the unity of their multiplicity: “thus the multiple subject conditions the unique being, and the unique being conditions the multiple subject” (*L’essere e il problema religioso*, Bari 1914, p. 46). From the development of this pantheistic position emerged the two fundamental theoretical works of Carabellese: *La critica del concreto* (Pistoia 1921; 3rd ed., Florence 1948) and *Il problema teologico come filosofia* (Rome 1931). Other works include: *La coscienza morale* (La Spezia 1915); *La filosofia di Kant* (Florence 1927); *Il mio ontologismo* (in *Giornale critico della filosofia italiana*, 17 [1936], pp. 309-26); *L'idealismo italiano* (Naples 1939; 2nd ed., Rome 1943); *Che cosa è la filosofia* (Rome 1942); *Da Cartesio a Rosmini* (Florence 1946).
For Carabellese, “critical of the concrete” transcends the two opposing abstractions of idealism and realism, in that, for the philosophy of the concrete, the object (being) is not outside thought (realism), nor is it a creation of the subject (idealism). Absolute universality does not belong to the subject (idealism), but to the object; not, however, to the object of realism, but to that which is the uniqueness of subjects and constitutes their objectivity. “Otherness, therefore, is not a characteristic of pure objectivity” (*Il problema teologico come filosofia*, p. 23); it belongs to subjects. Otherness = subjectivity, to which the absolute object is immanent as an object of consciousness. Thus, in positive consciousness we find an object that is ideal precisely because it is an object; and subjects that, precisely because they are conscious spirituality, are real. These subjects realize the ideal object; that object substantiates the real subjects, since it is being in itself (ibid., p. 130). This pure noumenal object is God. Carabellese states that it also satisfies religious consciousness, in that the “genuine essence of religion” does not require the existence of God (ibid., p. 148), which is demanded only by old and uncritical realism. God does not exist: existence is subjectivity and otherness; the absolute object is pure objectivity (idea). To say that God exists is to deny God, to make Him a relative (reciprocal) subject to other subjects. God is the unique being immanent to the consciousness of individuals, “He is the pure object of consciousness” (ibid., p. 181). The ontological argument is true insofar as God is an idea and only an idea, not insofar as existence is demonstrated from the idea.
Although Carabellese rejected the accusation, his position amounts to substantial atheism: reducing God to the pure object immanent to consciousness is to deny God. Carabellese did not consider that the existence of subjects is one thing, while the existence attributed to God is another, where (and only in God) existence and essence coincide. The pure object of which he speaks is not the God of reason, nor is it the God of religious consciousness. Carabellese deserves credit for having restored philosophy to its metaphysical sense in an age of dilettantish antimeta-physics.