PHENOMENISM. — In its most rigorous expression, phenomenism is the philosophical system that denies the reality of the thing-in-itself beyond mere phenomenon (q.v.) and thus affirms that all reality is reduced to facts and contents of psychic experience. This is pure phenomenism, which might also be called metaphysical phenomenism, in contrast to epistemological phenomenism. The latter, without denying the thing-in-itself or, in any case, without pronouncing on its existence (agnostic phenomenism), nonetheless denies that it is knowable, reducing all our knowledge to mere phenomenon understood as subjective representation.
Epistemological phenomenism arises in the history of thought with Protagoras (q.V. sophists). The conception, in fact, of sensible perception as the heterogeneous result of the encounter of two movements—one of the object and one of the perceiving sense—led to empirical relativism, in which phenomenism was already implicit. Protagoras could therefore affirm that “man is the measure of all things” (Diogenes Laertius, IX, 51; Plato, Theaetetus, 152 a), inasmuch as he cannot perceive reality as it is in itself, but only as it appears to him in the moment of perception, conditioned and determined by his present and individual subjectivity.
Phenomenism in the stricter sense (agnostic or pure phenomenism) is a characteristic position of modern philosophy, determined principally by the critique directed by G. Locke and D. Hume against the objectivity of the concept of substance. It is therefore on the basis of empiricism that modern phenomenism is born and develops, inserting itself in turn into the history of idealism through the gradual process of absorbing the real into the sphere of subjective experience.
Thus, while in the empirical immaterialism of G. Berkeley only material reality is reduced to the status of phenomenon, D. Hume—who would later be followed in this by representatives of the empirico-materialistic school (I. Taine, T. Huxley, and, in an at least agnostic sense, J. Stuart Mill)—extends phenomenism even to the field of spiritual experience, denying the substantiality of the ego or knowing subject: “For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception” (A Treatise of Human Nature, I, 1, part 4, sect. VI, Italian trans. by A. Carlini, Bari 1926, p. 305). Against the metaphysical scepticism implicit in Hume’s integral phenomenism, Kant’s critical reconstruction does not avail, for it too results in an epistemological phenomenism in which theoretical human reason is definitively barred from any knowledge of things-in-themselves. And Kantian phenomenism lives on in much of subsequent philosophical speculation, which remains fixed in the relativism of knowledge and thus in the denial of its objectivity in the strongest and most traditional sense of the term: thus, if with varying emphasis and different approaches, in G. F. Herbart, R. Lotze, W. Hamilton, A. Comte, H. Spencer, and principally in the author of French neo-criticism, C. Renouvier, who reduces the entire world of experience and theoretical knowledge to a system of relations among phenomena. In Italy, a new and radical form of phenomenism was vigorously propounded by C. Guastella (q.v.).
Idealism, born from Kantian critique as a further development of his postulates and an attempt at metaphysical reconstruction in the face of his agnosticism, resolves itself, too, at least insofar as concerns the world of our experience, into phenomenism. The reduction, in fact, of reality to the subjective unfolding of transcendent consciousness (J. G. Fichte), or to the dialectical process of the Idea (G. W. F. Hegel), or to the perpetual self-positing of the act (G. Gentile), necessarily entails the denial of reality as an ontological position transcending the immanent experience of the subject, and thus the denial of the thing-in-itself beyond the phenomenal world.
The extreme position of pure phenomenism cannot claim any solid logical-metaphysical consistency. Indeed, even setting aside all the negative consequences in the ethical sphere that follow from the denial of the substantial reality of the human spirit, the reduction of all reality to phenomenon or mere conscious representation is inconceivable once the absolute value of the logical-metaphysical principles of thought is acknowledged: the phenomenon, as a datum and fact of consciousness, presupposes that at least consciousness, as the unifying perceptual centre of phenomena, possesses the ontological consistency of being or substance.
As for epistemological-agnostic phenomenism, it can only be defended on the presupposition of the absolute subjectivity of the phenomenon. But this is a mere postulate of relativism, unjustified both by the nature of knowledge (which does require the conformity of the object to the conditions of the knowing subject, but not the absolute heterogeneity of the datum of consciousness with respect to reality) and by the positive contents that reflection finds in consciousness. In the interior and clear experience of our spiritual activity, we in fact truly know something of our most intimate being, and through the appearance in sensible experience of an extreme reality—albeit under partial and relative aspects—the path remains open for thought to a positive and objective knowledge of the thing-in-itself (q.V. knowledge).