CARABELLESE, PANTALEO. - Philosopher, b. at Molfetta (Bari) on 6 July 1877, d. at Genoa on 19 Sept. 1948. First a professor at the University of Palermo and then, from 1931, of the History of Philosophy at the University of Rome until he succeeded Gentile there in the chair of theoretical philosophy. He spent his life nobly in meditation and teaching.
A pupil of Masci in Naples and then of Varisco in Rome, one may say that his "critical ontologism" is a rethinking of Varisco's critical idealism, through Kant and Rosmini (but a Rosmini reduced to Kant and therefore anti-Rosminian) and, more than it appears, through Spinoza. At bottom C., with the concept of objectivity as immanence, seeks to satisfy the opposing demands of realism and idealism through a reworking of traditional ontologism in the light of Kant's criticism. Hence the name critical ontologism, that is: "ontologism" or intuition of being; "critical" insofar as being is immanent as 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 one being, and the one being conditions the multiple subject" (L'essere e il problema religioso, Bari 1914, p. 46). From the elaboration of this pantheistic position were born C.'s two fundamental theoretical works: La critica del concreto (Pistoia 1921; 3rd ed., Florence 1948) and Il problema teologico come filosofia (Rome 1931). His other works: 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 Cortesi a Rosmini (Florence 1946).
The "critique of the concrete," for C., goes beyond the two opposing abstractions of idealism and realism, insofar as, for the philosophy of the concrete, the object (being) is not outside thought (realism), but is also not a creation of the subject (idealism). Absolute universality is not of the subject (idealism), but of the object; not, however, of the object of realism, but of 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 object of consciousness. Therefore, in positive consciousness we find an object that is ideal, precisely because it is an object; and subjects that, precisely because they are aware 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. It, says C., also satisfies the religious consciousness, insofar as the "genuine essence of religion" does not require the existence of God (ibid., p. 148), which is required only by the 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, is to make of him a subject relative (reciprocal) to other subjects. God is the one being immanent to the consciousness of individuals, "he is the pure object of consciousness" (ibid., p. 181). The ontological argument is true in the sense that God is idea and only idea and not insofar as one demonstrates existence from the idea.
Although C. rejected the accusation, his is substantial atheism: to reduce God to the pure object immanent to consciousness is to deny God. C. did not take into account that one thing is the existence of subjects, another is the existence attributed to God, where (and only in God) existence and essence coincide. The pure object of which C. speaks is not the God of reason and even less the God of the religious consciousness. C. retains the merit of having brought philosophy back to its metaphysical sense, in times of dilettantish anti-metaphysicality.
Bibliography13 works
Michele Federico Sciacca