GALLUPPI, PASQUALE – Philosophy, born at Tropea, in Calabria, to Baron Vincenzo on 2 April 1770, died at Naples on 13 December 1846. He received his initial philosophical and mathematical education in his native city and at the Seminary of S. Lucia del Mela, in Sicily; he then attended the University of Naples, where his teacher was the celebrated regalist Francesco Conforti. Already at Tropea, G. had come into contact with Leibnizian thought, and from the theological atmosphere of his surroundings he had developed a profound interest in theological problems, nourishing himself on intensive biblical and patristic studies and directing his particular interest toward S. Agostino. These Augustinian preferences were not unrelated to the Jansenist inspiration of his sources and teachers; and this explains why G.’s first publication, the Memoria apologetica (1795), intended to clarify his thought on the relations between nature and Grace, was theological in character and polemical toward local ecclesiastical figures.
From the study of Cartesian and Leibnizian philosophy, G. moved on to that of Condillac, deriving from it an awareness both of the need for a critical investigation of knowledge and of the insufficiency of sensationalism; evidence of this opposition to sensationalism is found in the pamphlet Su l’analisi e su la sintesi (1807). Between 1807 and 1815, G. came into contact with Kantianism, recognizing its critique of German dogmatism and accepting the necessity of a critical problem, but rejecting its particular a priori solution. During this period he progressively clarified and matured his own thought, outlined in a brief writing (1815) circulated as the preface to his principal work and systematic exposition of his thought, the Saggio filosofico su la critica della conoscenza (6 vols., 1819–32). He subsequently published (1820–27), in six small volumes, the Elementi di filosofia (Logica pura, Psicologia, Ideologia, Logica mista, Filosofia morale, Teologia naturale); and in 1827 thirteen Lettere filosofiche sulle vicende della filosofia relativamente ai principi delle conoscenze umane da Cartesio sino a Kant inclusivamente; in 1838 a Lettera XIV was added, in which the state of French philosophy at that time was presented and it was shown how the development of modern problems of thought required the author’s own solution.
The reputation G. had by then acquired in Italy and abroad earned him the appointment to the chair of “intellectual” or theoretical philosophy at the University of Naples (4 October 1831). In the following November the philosopher delivered a distinguished inaugural lecture, subsequently published as Introduzione a fronte delle Lezioni di logica e metafisica (4 vols., 1832–34), which constitute the fruit of his academic teaching. The following works belong to the period of his residence in Naples: one volume of a Storia della filosofia (1840), the first of the twelve volumes that the work was to comprise, of which, besides the published volume, a second manuscript remains; and the four volumes of a Filosofia della volontà (1832–40), a work left incomplete. On 29 December 1838, the Académie de France, at the proposal of V. Cousin, appointed G. a foreign corresponding member, and the King of France, at the proposal of Minister Guizot, awarded him the Légion d’honneur; G. reciprocated by sending the Academy the Considerazioni filosofiche sull’idroalismo trascendentale e sul razionalismo assoluto (1841). In addition to the writings mentioned, two political pamphlets are noteworthy: Opuscoli filosofici sulla libertà individuale; La sguarda d’Europa sul Regno di Napoli (both 1820).
Scrupulous in his scholarly work, G. did not readily withdraw from his opinions; his thought is crystalline, but his exposition is at times careless and betrays a literary training inadequate to his philosophical preparation; liberal in spirit, he opposed every excess of Jacobinism; sincerely religious, he was affected by the Jansenist atmosphere of the period, but always preserved, and deepened in the later years of his life, a fundamental and conscious Catholic orthodoxy, of which numerous manuscript documents remain; indeed, from one letter to Rosmini and another to an unidentified Jesuit priest, it is possible to discern an essentially apologetic inspiration in his speculation. He hoped for a decisive restoration of spiritual and Catholic values and worked to “build a barrier against the torrent of unbelief born of false philosophy” (G. Di Napoli, p. 144): the general gnoseological atmosphere of the philosophy contemporary with him led him to emphasize the critical aspect of speculative inquiry, but his thought was thoroughly, if not fully and systematically, metaphysical.
Galluppian philosophy, described by its author as a “philosophy of experience,” intends, on the modern terrain of the epistemological problem, to preserve together the rights of experience and of thought; against sensationalism and empiricism on the one hand, and transcendentalism on the other, G. affirms the indispensability of an ontic datum grasped in experience and of the consequent spiritualizing and universalizing elaboration proper to intelligence: neither the pure passivity of sense, therefore, nor creative apriorism, but the rational mediation of empirical immediacy.
The point of departure is provided, with Agostino and Cartesio, by self-consciousness, which grasps and affirms a real entity, the “me,” and provides that “shore of existence” which was so important to the philosopher. G.’s works contain lengthy and penetrating reflections on this radical character of self-consciousness, which, although inclined toward excessive psychologism, deviates from Cartesian conscientialism as a position granting speculative predominance to the cogito. And against the Cartesian deformation of self-consciousness, closed within its own world, G. asserts that “from the human spirit one cannot have perception of the me without having perception of an outside the me” (Saggio, III, § 1); this is the Galluppian doctrine of external perception “from outside,” which, against all modern speculation from Cartesio to Kant and Rosmini, is vindicated in its extrasubjective character and in its immediacy, while recognizing its relativity to the subject.
Upon these data given to the subject, and given precisely as reality in itself intuited by the subject, operates “mediation,” that is, the abstracting and universalizing activity of thought, which is endowed with the two faculties or functions of analysis and synthesis; through the first, the concept is grasped in the perceived datum, while through the second it is attributed to the manifold and distinguished from others. Two notions enter into this differentiating or classifying attribution, notions which the spirit forms through comparison or synthesis: identity and diversity. Since these have no counterpart in an objective reality or in anything given to the subject, G. calls them subjective; this has led several critics, erroneously, to think of the Kantian a priori.
As regards the objectivity or subjectivity of notions, one must distinguish their origin from their value: the notions of identity and diversity are subjective in origin because they derive from the comparative activity of the spirit, and also in value because no datum corresponds to them that is, as absolute reality, the identical and the diverse;
the notions of substance and cause are objective in origin because they derive from a datum, and in value because they correspond to it; the notion of God is subjective in origin because it does not derive from a datum but is the fruit of rational mediation, yet objective in value because a reality corresponding to it exists, namely God.
On the basis of a realistic gnoseology, G. constructed a solid metaphysics of God and man which, despite its shortcomings, is consciously spiritualist and leads toward an ethical-juridical doctrine inspired by the great Christian tradition. The Kantian influence in the exaltation of duty against the unrestrained utilitarianism of his contemporary ideologues is undeniable; but the practical synthetic a priori judgments admitted by G. coincide with Kant’s only in their logical-formal consideration: that is, G. calls practical judgments synthetic a priori insofar as the predicate “duty,” which is not identical with it, is joined to the subject, representing a human action; and while the subject of practical judgments is an objective notion because it derives from a perceived datum, the predicate “duty” is a subjective notion, like that of merit. Thus, even in ethics, G.’s presumed Kantianism is unjustified.
The fortunes of Galluppian philosophy, after an initial universal consensus, declined considerably from 1860 onward, particularly because of the impetuous Giobertian ontologism associated with nationalist movements; and in the second half of the century it was overshadowed by the positivist tide. After the First World War, interest in the figure and thought of G. increased, as is demonstrated by the works published during the past fifteen years.
Giovanni Di Napoli