POSITIVISM. — Philosophical (scientific, historical) tendency that arose in the 19th century and predominated in its second half (classical p.), but experienced subsequent revivals in the 20th century (contemporary p.). It represents a development of empiricism (v.) divergent from materialist currents. idealism (v.) in science (v.).
Its origins are parallel to the distinction within Romantic philosophy (v. ROMANTICISM; SCHELLING) between the “negative,” or rational, and the “positive,” or revelatory of data. A. Comte (v.) was the first to regard (in private instruction from 1826, and in public instruction from 1832) negative philosophy (theological-metaphysical) as annulled and reabsorbed into the positive, and to restrict the latter to scientific notions and their coordination, with the exclusive predominance of sensory and phenomenal cognitions and of their affirmative values (positive data). In this “positive method” he had been preceded by Sophie Germain (1776–1831). Comte gave the designation “p.” to the sociological doctrine he created and intended to reform the “scientific stage” of civilization. MELLO (v.) led his development of empiricism toward analogous consequences, but polemicized with Comte (A. C. and positivism, London 1865) in order to re-evaluate certain metaphysical hypotheses of a psychological and moral order. Thus there emerged a French p. (Pierre Laffitte, E. Littré [v.], H. Taine [v.], E. Renan [v.], F. Le Dantec), directed toward the cult of the method of intuitive observation and probable induction, and toward the elaboration of sociology (A. Espinas, G. Tarde, E. Durkheim, L. Lévy-Bruhl), but alien to metaphysics and inclined toward religious tolerance; and English p. (A. Bain [v.], H. T. Buckle, Herbert Spencer [v.], G. K. Lewes, T. H. Huxley [v.]), which sought, evolution (v.), to reconcile methodical and sociological p. with the search for metempirical principles. In Germany, p. was developed by Ernst Laas (1837–85: Idealismus und Positivismus, 1879–84) and by the historian of ethics Friedrich Jodl (1848–1914: Kritik der Idealismus, posthumous, 1920) as realistic empiricism; by Eugen Dühring (1833–1921) actualism (v.). But it soon became confused with other currents, such as the empirio-criticism of R. Avenarius (v.), the critical realism of J. H. von Kirchmann and Th. Zieben, and VAIHINGER, HANS (v.). In Italy, p. first asserted itself, materialism (v.) and evolutionism, in the social sciences (Cesare Lombroso [v.], Filippo Turati [v.], Napoleone Colajanni, Achille Loria, Enrico Ferri [v.], Leonida Biasolati) and in
pedagogy (Pietro Siciliani, Andrea Angiulli, Saverio De Dominicis); in connection with empiricism, in the moral and historical sciences (Aristide Gabelli, Pasquale Villari). But it acquired a form Ardigo (v.) and his school (G. Tarozzi [v.], G. Cesca, G. Dandolo, G. Marchesini, E. Bodrero, G. B. Grassi Bertazzi). In a sense akin to p., the materialistic evolutionism of Enrico Morselli (Riv. di filos. scientifica, 1881–91), the spiritualistic empiricism of Angelo Brofferio (1845–94), GUASTELLA, COSMO (v.) developed. In Russia, p. was disseminated in a historical-social sense by P. Lawrow (1823–1920) and Michailovskij (1842–1904), and re-evaluated in a psychological-moral sense by Bishop Nikanor (La filos. positiva e l'esistenza sovrasensibile, Petersburg 1875–88); Comte’s sociology was reworked by Massimo Kovalevskij, and English empirio-p. by Nikolas Grot (1852–99). In Poland, the Comtist tendency penetrated through the radical p. of the Warsaw school (Julian Ochorovicz, 1850–1917, and Jan W. David, 1859–1914) and the conservative p. of the historical school of Krakow (Stanislao Tarnovski, 1837–1917).
P. has as its principle of knowledge the observation of “facts,” both physical and psychic, as sensory objects, through observation and experiment by a conscious subject. subject (v.) object (v.) within the same natural order, in which they were confused by popular (mythological, theological) knowledge and from which they were abstracted by metaphysical knowledge. The “fact” is a datum of knowledge (phenomenon [v.]), whose coming into being or becoming is recognized, and which is therefore reproducible or reconstructible in its relations. Fundamental among these is the identity of the fact (A = A), which distinguishes the phenomenon from all other phenomena in its singularity and is the object of intuitive observation. Other kinds of facts, for example indistinct or non-identical ones, are not knowable. Variations of facts give rise to other facts: science analyzes these changes insofar as they present constant and themselves identical relations (inductive and deductive laws); philosophy classifies the sciences as identical in subject (systematic synthesis). Hypotheses (v.) and predictions or anticipations concerning the origin and development of facts are admissible only if they lead to the observation of other facts (verification) and if they are founded on the facts themselves. General notions (definitions, laws, formulae) are summarizing or schematic descriptions of individual, repeated, or comprehensive facts: the epistemology of p. is realistic, its logic nominalistic, and it excludes every form of apriorism (v. APRIORISMO) dogmatism (v.).
The synthesis of the relations between subject and object is sensory and psychophysical in nature: experience must therefore fall within the order of sensibility and of the reciprocal relativity of subject and object. Sensation-perception (v.) is the experimental fact into which science must be resolved: Hume’s (v.) substance (v.) is therefore accepted, and substance is replaced by formal, conventional, or conditional hypotheses. With cause (v.), p. instead admits that it must represent the uniformity and regularity of relations between experience (v.). Cause and effect are thus resolved into antecedent and consequent phenomena: the idea of efficient cause is excluded as a metaphysical invention, the idea of final cause does not go beyond biological adaptation and utilitarian intentions, and the epistemological induction (v.) alone. But the scientifically defined cause is the invariable antecedent of its consequent or effect and, in relation to it, unconditioned. The causal relation is in fact a description or a thorough analysis of the same identity of the fact at two successive moments. The only question may be whether the identity of the fact through the two phenomena, thus constantly connected as cause and effect through the generalization of their relation, is to be defined by proceeding from the effect (distinct) toward the cause, in which case it is determining and necessary (Comte, Stuart Mill, Ardigò), but by induction; or from the cause (indistinct, homogeneous) toward the effect, in which case it leaves room for indeterminacy (Spencer, Tarozzi), but abandons the inductive basis.
The common philosophy (v.) is the synthesis of the sciences does not correspond to the classical-scholastic concept of the scientia scientiarum; rather, it is opposed to it, since metaphysics (v.) to the particular sciences, whereas the latter proceeds inductively from the particular sciences to philosophy as an overall view of the most general results. The philosophical conception thus proposed is limited in its principles by the abstract and nominalistic character of the very systematic and methodological unity to which it aspires. If philosophy is to be scientific, it could achieve this as a particular science of certain facts; as a systematic synthesis, however, it becomes an abstraction. The principle of the identity of facts as a methodological canon is insufficient in relation to the logic of identity from which it derives, because the latter would be entrusted solely to the subject’s sensibility. If the positivist doctrine is stripped of the scientific methods it adopted and of its appeals to criticism, its sophistical aspect becomes evident in the order of the moral sciences, in which the “facts” are acts already completed or extinguished, that is, data of abstraction (v. ASTRAITTO; LUSTRAZIONE).
In the moral and historical sciences, p. claimed their complete renewal on the basis of experimental data, since empiricism too had proceeded in these fields from psychological motives. The morality of the positivists (v. ETICA) is founded on the analysis of moral facts as they are manifested, by relating the individual subject to the natural and social environment in which he operates and to which he adapts. It seeks to establish laws of consciousness (v.) comparable in certainty nature (v.) determinism (v.) to indeterminism. Moral and social laws are defined inductively (through observation and inner and outer experience, and through statistics), and define the constancy of individuals’ modes of action; on this basis they possess the value of norms for prediction and evaluation, but their dogmatic foundation disappears. freedom (v.) of the individual comes to consist in his independence from a priori determinations, distinct from facts, and is recognized in habitual or institutional freedoms. P. nevertheless asserts that the ethics of humanity develops by rising toward ideals of an evolutionary order, in which abnormal or irregular facts disappear in favor of legality. From this point of view, egoistic hedonism (v. EDONISMO) or utilitarianism (v. UTILITARISMO) is condemned to yield to social instincts and to the formation of an altruistic consciousness capable of producing greater overall happiness. The highest positive ideal is that of justice (v.), that is, of individual and collective life in conformity with the laws. The moral sciences sociology (v.), which studies the genesis and organization of human society in the forms given by experience and according to their realistic requirements: its ideal coincides with its law, namely, civilization (v.). Education (v.), too, must lead the biological and psychological individual to act in conformity with his social relations and vocations and to align his aptitudes with them. These theories of p. were greatly praised as sufficient to replace the spiritualism (v.); but, apart from the uncritical ingenuousness of the “positive” ideals, they lack sufficient universality and are merely observed aspirations, not ideals in themselves.
In the juridical world, p. achieved more lasting successes through its conceptions of criminal law and experimental law. The “positive school of law” is founded on the identification of the juridical “fact” with the idea of a crime, because the fact in its singularity is ex-lege. Consequently, the individual too is initially delinquent with respect to established law and customary society: when he is unable to obey it, he becomes an offender as a result of his own biopsychic individuality (hereditary taints, deficiencies, and congenital and acquired illnesses). The punishment (v.) inflicted upon him must therefore be corrective and reformative in nature, not vindictive. The same must be said of insanity in relation to normal and social consciousness. The administration of justice and the formulation of laws should be founded on observation of the “facts” subject to them statistics (v.), and should follow lines of reasoning parallel to the conduct and habits of juridical persons.
In the historical sciences (v. STORIA), the “positive method” assigned the greatest importance to the collection and selection of “facts” through documentation and oral and written tradition, to the reconstruction of events in their empirical objectivity, and to the elimination of transcendent causality and providential finality. P. admits historical causes only inductively and within limits imposed by probability and by natural and economic factors, and bases knowledge of the past on analogy with social phenomena studied experimentally. Historiography pursued in this manner does not in practice rise above erudition and narrative and descriptive exposition, to which it reduces even moments of genius and heroism and manifestations of spiritual life. P. thus also relegated religion to the order of human things, as a complex of beliefs belonging to prescientific epochs, and proposed replacing it either with the so-called religion of humanity (v. COMTE) or with certain philosophical principles of a theistic nature (v. STUART). Toward the end of the nineteenth century, however, the positivists almost all inclined toward anticlericalism and secularism (v.).
Contemporary p. presented certain further tendencies distinct from the preceding, or “classical,” ones, as a result of the advances in the sciences that it had committed itself to accepting. Thus, in the twentieth century, there arose “relativistic p.” and “neopositivism” (v.).
“Relativistic p.” derives from VAIHINGER, HANS (v.) through the incorporation of the theory of physical relativity into epistemological and moral doctrines. Its initiators (Joseph Petzoldt, Das Weltproblem vom Standpunkte des positivistischen Positivismus aus hist.-krit. dargest., Lipsia 1906; Heinrich Gomperz, Weltanschauunglehre, Jena 1905-1908) in fact extended scientific relativity (v.) to the theory of sensations and feelings, with the intention of restoring philosophy from every absoluteness of the given and of restoring Protagorean subjectivism (Pathempirismus).
Neo-p. accepts Kantian criticism as the ascertainment and description of the formal data of knowledge in the order of sensibility. The universality and necessity of cognitions derive from the fact that they are not contradicted in actuality; that is, they have intuitive value. Factual data are objective actions perceived in relation to a subjective reaction (or feeling), from which their “name,” or expression, derives. The datum underlying the “name” is called the “bearer,” and science verifies whether it is or is not present, or whether it must still be found (if it is “possible”). If the name lacks a datum, it is abstract and gives rise to truths of formal logic (“tautologies”). Human knowledge can thus connect and reorder the totality of verified cognitions and coherent expressions into systems that are not contradicted, and pass from one to another by “translation” (fantasi logica); but it cannot overcome the subjectivity of the feeling from which it begins in ascertaining the data. The rational possibility therefore fails—that is, a possibility not contradicted in actuality—God (v.), because such proof would transcend subjectivity. For a further exposition V. NEOPOSITIVISMO.
As can be seen from these two latest manifestations, p., despite its claim to reconcile
philosophy with objective science, cannot go beyond a formal rearrangement of a provisional system of empirical truths and methodological expedients. Its cultural contribution was to emphasize the meaning of the «positive» (the position of the individual [v.] and of the given, the determination of feeling), of which both idealism and spiritualism are conscious. V. also: CONCEPT; KNOWLEDGE; EMPIRICISM; INDUCTION; LOGIC; NOMINALISM; UNIVERSALS.