De Sarlo, Francesco

DE SARLO, FRANCESCO. - Philosopher, b. at S. Chirico Raparo (Potenza) on 15 Feb. 1854, d. at Florence on 14 Jan. 1937. He began as a physician, but soon devoted himself to philosophy and psychology. It was the period of triumphant positivism, and it was to De Sarlo's credit that he opposed the conclusions that it was claimed could be deduced in the moral and religious sphere by the method of positive inquiry. He openly proclaimed himself a spiritualist and theist, although he intended to give his spiritualism an exclusively psychological basis, and his theism was presented only as a hypothesis, not demonstrable by reason, yet nonetheless supported by considerations that made it more probable than the others (cf. Metafisica, scienza e moralità, Rome 1898).

In 1900 he was appointed to the chair of theoretical philosophy at the Institute of Higher Studies in Florence, and in 1903 he published I dati dell'esperienza psichica; in the same year he founded, at that institute, a laboratory of experimental psychology, the first in Italy. From it issued, in 1906-1907, the two volumes of Ricerche di psicologia, with works by him and by his pupils. He also promoted these studies outside the school with great fervor. But he did not neglect the moral problem, as can be seen from the two volumes published in 1907: L'attività pratica e la coscienza morale and Principi di scienza etica. With these De Sarlo moved ever further from positivism, embracing the principle of value, which has meaning only for consciousness and demands a spiritual point of view. In that same year he founded a journal, La cultura filosofica, which had a prosperous decade of life, with many writings by him and by his most able pupils. An important characteristic of La cultura filosofica was its opposition, not only to positivism, but even more to the idealism that was then arising and spreading rapidly in Italy. Against idealism De Sarlo always firmly maintained two principal points: the dualism of subject and object, that is, the existence of the external world as other than and independent of consciousness; and the individuality of consciousness, that is, its concrete existence in the multiplicity of subjects, albeit in relation to one another. In this opposition to idealism De Sarlo increasingly accentuated his closeness to positivism, inasmuch as, for him too, philosophy must, like every other science, be founded on experience, even though it has as its own task reflection on the epistemological and logical principles presupposed by science, which are always centered, for him, in the study of human psychological activity. Cf. on this point the two volumes of Psicologia e filosofia (1918), and still more, as an overall exposition of his thought, the Introduzione alla filosofia (Rome 1928); cf. also Esame di coscienza: quarant'anni dopo la laurea (Florence 1928). For his polemic against idealism, the motives are summarized in the volume Gentile e Croce: lettere filosofiche di un superato (Florence 1933). A consequence of this twofold polemical stance, anti-positivist and at the same time anti-idealist, was, in metaphysics, a mild agnosticism, with which, while he recognized the necessity of positing an absolute principle and the legitimacy of problems that transcend experience, he judged that it was not the task of philosophy to discuss such questions: it can at most advance conjectures and seek to grasp some glimmer or fragment of the rational order that governs the world: the rest is entrusted to religious faith, which, while responding to an irrepressible need of the human spirit, can do without demonstrations. Also worthy of note is the interest, shown by him and promoted in his school, in the knowledge of contemporary thought: see, among others, his volumes Il pensiero moderno (Palermo 1915) and Filosofi del tempo nostro (Florence 1916). For his position on the ethico-political question, cf. the volume L'uomo nella vita sociale (Bari 1931).

Armando Carlini