Positivism

POSITIVISM. - A philosophical (scientific, historical) movement that arose in the 19th century and dominated its second half (classical positivism) but with successive revivals in the 20th century (contemporary positivism). It represents an elaboration of empiricism (v.) diverging from materialist currents. It opposes Platonic and metaphysical idealism (v.) in favor of experimental and evolutionist science (v.).

Its origins are parallel to the distinction within Romantic philosophy (v. ROMANTICISM; SCHELLING) between "negative," or rational, philosophy and "positive" philosophy, or philosophy revelatory of data. A. Comte (v.) was the first (in private teaching from 1826, and in public teaching from 1832) to regard negative (theologico-metaphysical) philosophy as annulled and reabsorbed into positive philosophy, and he restricted the latter to scientific notions and their coordination, with the exclusive predominance of sensible and phenomenal cognitions and their affirmative values (positive data). In this "positive method" he had been anticipated by Sophie Germain (1776-1831). Comte gave the name "positivism" to the sociological doctrine he created and destined to reform the "scientific stage" of civilization. John Stuart Mill (v.) carried his elaboration of empiricism toward analogous consequences, but he polemicized against Comte (A. C. and positivism, London 1865) in order to rehabilitate certain metaphysical hypotheses of a psychological and moral order. Thus there arose a French positivism (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 averse to metaphysics and inclined to religious tolerance, and an English positivism (A. Bain [v.], H. T. Buckle, Herbert Spencer [v.], G. K. Lewes, T. H. Huxley [v.]) which sought to reconcile, through the theory of evolution (v.), methodological and sociological positivism with the search for metempirical principles. In Germany positivism was developed by Ernst Laas (1837-85: Idealismus und Positivismus, 1879-84) and by the historian of ethics Friedrich Jodl (1848-1914: Kritik des Idealismus, posthumous, 1920) as realistic empiricism; by Eugen Dühring (1833-1921) as anti-metaphysical actualism (v.). But it soon became confused with other currents, such as the empirical criticism of R. Avenarius (v.), the critical realism of J. H. von Kirchmann and Th. Ziehen, the fictionalist pragmatism of Hans Vaihinger (v.). In Italy positivism established itself first, in connection with materialism (v.) and with evolutionism, in the social sciences (Cesare Lombroso [v.], Filippo Turati [v.], Napoleone Colajanni, Achille Loria, Enrico Ferri [v.], Leonida Bissolati) 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 took on a form of its own with Roberto Ardigò (v.) and his school (G. Tarozzi [v.], G. Cesca, G. Dandolo, G. Marchesini, E. Bodrero, G. B. Grassi Bertazzi). In a sense akin to positivism there developed the materialistic evolutionism of Enrico Morselli (Riv. di filos. scientifica, 1881-91), the spiritualistic empiricism of Angelo Brofferio (1845-94) and the phenomenism of Cosmo Guastella (v.). In Russia positivism was diffused in a historico-social sense by P. Lawrow (1823-1920) and by Mikhailovsky (1842-1904), and revalued in a psychologico-moral sense by Bishop Nikanor (La filos. positiva e l'esistenza sovrasensibile, St. Petersburg 1875-88): Comte's sociology was reworked by Maxime Kovalevsky, English empirio-positivism by Nikolai Grot (1852-99). In Poland the Comtean movement penetrated with the radical positivism of the Warsaw school (Julian Ochorowicz, 1850-1917, and Jan W. David, 1859-1914) and the conservative positivism of the historical school of Cracow (Stanisław Tarnowski, 1837-1917).

Positivism has as its principle of knowledge the ascertainment of "facts," both physical and psychic, as sensible objects, through observation and experiment on the part of a conscious subject. Scientific knowledge distinguishes the subject (v.) and the object (v.) within the same natural order, in which they were confused for popular (mythological, theological) knowledge and from which they were abstracted for metaphysical knowledge. The "fact" is a datum of knowledge (phenomenon [v.]), whose coming-to-be 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, e.g., indistinct or non-identical ones, are not knowable. The variations of facts give rise to other facts: science analyzes these changes insofar as they present constant and in turn identical relations (inductive and deductive laws); philosophy classifies the sciences as identical in their subject (systematic synthesis). Hypotheses (v.) and predictions or anticipations concerning the origin and development of facts are admissible only if they lead to the ascertainment of other facts (verification) and if they are founded on the facts themselves. General notions (definitions, laws, formulas) are summary or schematic descriptions of single or repeated facts, or comprehensive ones: the epistemology of positivism is realistic, its logic is nominalistic, and it excludes every form of apriorism (v. A PRIORI) and dogmatism (v.).

The synthesis of the relations between subject and object is of a sensible and psychophysical order: 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 resolve itself: thus Hume's (v.) critique of the idea of substance (v.) is accepted, and this idea is replaced by formal or conventional or conditional hypotheses. For the idea of cause (v.), however, positivism admits that it must represent the uniformity and regularity of the relations between phenomena within the limits of experience (v.). Cause and effect are thus resolved into antecedent and consequent phenomenon: 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 foundation of causality is empirical induction (v.) alone. But the scientifically defined cause is the invariable antecedent of its consequent or effect and, relatively to it, unconditioned. The causal relation is in fact a description or in-depth analysis of the very identity of the fact in two successive moments. It can only be a question whether the identity of the fact across the two phenomena, thus constantly linked as cause and effect through the generalization of their relation, is to be defined by moving from the effect (distinct) toward the cause, in which case it is determining, necessary (Comte, Stuart Mill, Ardigò), but by induction, or from the cause (indistinct, homogeneous) toward the effect, in which case it leaves room for indetermination (Spencer, Tarozzi), but the inductive basis is abandoned.

The common doctrine of the positivists that philosophy (v.) is the synthesis of the sciences does not correspond to the classical-scholastic concept of scientia scientiarum, but is opposed to it, since the latter develops in a deductive sense from metaphysics (v.) to the particular sciences, and the former in an inductive sense, 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 methodical unity to which it aspires. If philosophy is to be scientific, it could succeed as a particular science of certain facts: as a systematic synthesis it becomes an abstraction. The principle of the identity of facts as a methodical canon is insufficient with respect to the logic of identity, from which it derives, because this would be entrusted solely to the sensibility of the subject. If the positivist doctrine is stripped of the scientific methods it assumes 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; ASTRAZIONE).

In the moral and historical sciences, positivism claimed for itself their integral renewal, according to experimental data, since even empiricism had proceeded in them from psychological motives. The morality of the positivists (v. ETICA) is founded on the analysis of moral facts as they stand, connecting the individual subject with the natural and social environment in which he operates and to which he adapts. It tends to establish laws of consciousness (v.) comparable in certainty and validity to those of nature (v.) and therefore prefers determinism (v.) to indeterminism. Moral and social laws are defined by induction (from observation and inner and outer experience, and from statistics), and they define the constancy of the modes of action of individuals, on the basis of which they have the value of norms of prediction and evaluation: but their dogmatic foundation ceases. The freedom (v.) of the individual comes to consist in his independence from a priori determinations, different from facts, and is recognized in habitual or institutional liberties. Positivism asserts moreover 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 egoism, whether hedonistic (v. EDONISMO) or utilitarian (v. UTILITARISMO), is condemned to yield to the social instincts and to the formation of an altruistic consciousness as capable of 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 therefore have their culmination in sociology (v.), which studies the genesis and ordering of human society in the forms given by experience and according to their realistic exigencies: its ideal coincides with its law, that is, with the continuous progress of civilization (v.). Education (v.) too must lead the biological and psychological individual to act in conformity with his social relations and vocations and to conform his aptitudes thereto. These theories of positivism were much vaunted as sufficient to replace the corresponding theories of idealism and spiritualism (v.); but, apart from the uncritical naivety of the "positive" ideals, they lack sufficient universality, and are merely observed aspirations, not ideals in themselves.

In the juridical world positivism had 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 the constituted law and to customary society: when he fails to obey it, he becomes a criminal through the effect of his own biopsychic individuality (hereditary taints, congenital and acquired deficiencies and diseases). The penalty (v.) inflicted on him must therefore be of a correctional and reformative nature, not vindictive. The same must be said of madness in comparison with normal and social consciousness. The administration of justice and the formulation of laws should be founded on the observation of the "facts" subject to them and on the results of statistics (v.), and should follow reasonings parallel to the behaviors and habits of juridical persons.

In the historical sciences (v. STORIA) the "positive method" gave the greatest importance to the collection and sifting 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. Positivism admits historical causes only inductively and limited by probability, and by natural and economic factors, and founds the knowledge of the past on analogy with social phenomena studied experimentally. Historiography thus developed does not in practice go beyond erudition and narrative and descriptive exposition, to which it reduces even the moments of genius and heroism and the manifestations of spiritual life. Positivism thus came to relegate religion too to the order of human things, as a complex of beliefs belonging to prescientific epochs, and to propose to replace it either with the so-called religion of humanity (v. COMTE) or with certain philosophical principles of a theistic nature (v. MILL, J. STUART). Toward the end of the 19th century, however, the positivists inclined almost all toward anticlericalism and laicism (v.).

Contemporary positivism has presented still other tendencies distinct from the preceding, or "classical," ones, as a result of the progress of the sciences which it had obliged itself to accept. Thus in the 20th century there is "relativistic positivism" and "neopositivism" (v.).

"Relativistic positivism" derives from the school of Avenarius and Vaihinger (v.) through the assumption of the theory of physical relativity in gnoseological and moral doctrines. Its initiators (Joseph Petzoldt, Das Weltproblem vom Standpunkte des positivistischen Positivismus aus hist.-krit. dargest., Leipzig 1906; Heinrich Gomperz, Weltanschauunglehre, Jena 1905-1908) in fact extended scientific relativity (v.) to the theory of sensations and feelings, with the aim of restoring philosophy from every absoluteness of the datum and of restoring Protagorean subjectivism (Pathempirismus).

Neo-positivism accepts the Kantian critique as a statement and description of the formal data of knowledge in the order of sensibility. The universality and necessity of cognitions derive from their not being contradicted in fact; that is, they have intuitive value. The data of fact are objective actions perceived in relation to a subjective reaction (or feeling), from which the "name" or expression of them derives. The datum underlying the "name" is called the "bearer," and science verifies whether it is there or is not there or is still to be found (whether 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 rearrange the whole of verified cognitions, and of coherent expressions, into non-contradictory systems and pass from one to another by "translation" (fantasi logica); but it cannot overcome the subjectivity of the feeling from which it starts for the ascertainment of data. There thus comes to be lacking the rational possibility (not contradictable in fact) of a proof of the existence of God (v.), because it would transcend subjectivity. For a further exposition v. NEOPOSITIVISMO.

As can be seen from these last two manifestations, positivism, despite its claim to accord philosophy with objective science, it cannot go beyond a formal rearrangement of a temporary system of empirical truths and methodological expedients. Its cultural contribution has been to accentuate the meaning of the "positive" (positing of the individual [v.] and of the datum, determination of feeling), of which both idealism and spiritualism are aware. See also: CONCETTO; CONOSCENZA; EMPIRISMO; INDUZIONE; LOGICA; NOMINALISMO; UNIVERSALI.

Santino Caramella