Messinese’s latest, stimulating book on Gustavo Bontadini develops a wide range of philosophical-metaphysical themes. We consider here the theme of creation and the meaning of elaborating the «theorem of creation» in the framework of Bontadini’s metaphysics, with the intention of excluding the importation of becoming into the Creator. The theme is placed side by side with the question about the relationship with the biblical doctrine of creation from nothing. Another important content, which raises instances of comparison with topical contemporary themes in the epistemological, religious, and scientific fields, is Messinese’s analysis of the relationship between the God of metaphysics and the God of faith, questioning the contribution of metaphysics to present Christianity.
Moving from Leonardo Messinese’s recent volume, the paper traces the way Gustavo Bontadini valorises modern thought in order to a renewal of classical metaphysics. In particular, he offers an original interpretation of Giovanni Gentile’s Actualism concerning the concepts of Unity of Experience and Whole. Bontadini shows that the former does not coincide with the latter, but must be transcended by a non-becoming and creative Absolute. The distinction between metaphysics (the rigorous knowledge grounded in the principle of non-contradiction) and philosophy (the outcome of the existential choice that the individual inevitably makes about himself in the face of being) is then examined, and the resulting consequences for the relationship between reason and faith are analysed.
Since Bontadini is convinced that the traditional formulations of the metaphysics of transcendence do not withstand the criticism of modern and contemporary philosophy, he has appropriately integrated them by highlighting their authentic foundation, which consists in the principle of the immutability of being originally affirmed by Parmenides. Furthermore, he has shown that only by moving from this principle a creationist perspective can be rigorously deduced. Certainly, Parmenides’ principle is also open to Severino’s interpretation, but only if being is conceived of univocally: Bontadini’s position would then have benefited, and still would benefit, from a closer attention to the doctrine of analogy, which he instead always underestimated.
The essay aims to focus on the metaphysical originality and the theological interest of Gustavo Bontadini’s theoresis: the radical semantization of being, based on the epistemic institution of Parmenides, makes understandable also the realism of the theological difference established by the principle of creation. The innovative power of this revival of the pre-Socratic metaphysical logos has been largely underestimated. Bontadini’s disciple Emanuele Severino, on the other hand, who hinted at its originality within Christian philosophy itself, then lost its philosophical coherence, joining it fideistically to the critique of faith. A more rigorous reading allows us to appreciate the coherence between the methodological assumption of the Parmenides’ principle and the ontological value of the principle of creation, argued by Bontadini as the appropriate philosophical space for the inscription of the thought of faith within the horizon of its own realist intentionality. Faith, in fact, cannot remain separate and extrinsic to the unity of experience that institutes the insurmountable plane for any possible realism of thought.
In the paper I provide some insights in response to the remarks I received during the discussion about my recent book on Gustavo Bontadini, which took place on 28 April 2022 at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. After highlighting some of Bontadini’s lesser-studied themes that deserve to be better known (the concept of Christian philosophy, the relationship between metaphysical and scientific knowledge, the dehellenisation of the Christian faith), I focus on his youthful Postulate of the Rationality of Reality, his historical-theoretical relationship with Gentile’s Actualism and, finally, on the metaphysical-theological inference and the conjugation of faith and reason that he had developed.
The article aims at showing the reasons that led Gustavo Bontadini to become explicitly interested in apologetics in the last phase of his thought. Moreover, it offers an account of the nature and function that he attributed to apologetics in the context of its coeval crisis in philosophical and theological thought. The article is divided into three parts: the first outlines Bontadini’s understanding of the contemporary task of apologetics in the face of the fideism manifested by postconciliar Catholic theology and the debate on the dehellenization of Christianity. The second considers the nexus between apologetics and «apologetic re-comprehension», which qualifies Bontadini’s view of apologetics and its relationship with metaphysics and Christian philosophy. In the third and concluding part, some considerations are made on the relevance and value of Bontadini’s conception of apologetics while showing some critical elements concerning his proposal for the «rigorization» of rational theology.
2023 marked one hundred and twenty years since the birth of Gustavo Bontadini and half a century since the publication of one of his major writings, Per una teoria del fondamento. My contribution aims to reconstruct the role of this essay in the author’s intellectual development and to mention some remarks made by the critics to the related creationist conclusions. This work highlights the great value of Bontadini’s essay, to be considered as one of the summits of the entire history of «classical metaphysics».
In this paper, I discuss the realism of Gustavo Bontadini and its rational demonstration. In particular, I try to discuss this «pure realism» and its «logic of presence», in relation to hermeneutics, analytic philosophy, idealism and the so-called «new realism».
This paper has a twofold objective. On the one hand, it offers a reconstruction of the way in which Gustavo Bontadini understands the function of Husserl’s phenomenology within his own account of the history of modern philosophy (this being the more historical ambition of the present text). On the other hand, by tackling the systematic problem of how Bontadini understands the nature of «experience» (the Unity of Experience or UoE), its goal is to outline a basic interpretation of Husserl’s ontological intentionality. As will be argued, despite what Bontadini himself claims, Husserl’s doctrine of intentionality and of the ontological import of intentionality cannot at all be superimposed on Bontadini’s own view of UoE.
From his earliest youth, Bontadini identified Gentile’s ‘idealismo attuale’ as the highest form of immanentism and claimed Gentile’s ‘Logo concreto’ to represent the most rigorous thematization of the notion of experience. Moving from Gentile’s legacy (and not against it), Bontadini thus engaged in the constructive mediation of the experience, i.e., he aimed to restore metaphysics by mediating experience as Gentile characterized it. This is a unique and extremely original operation in European philosophy and still deserves a careful examination. Bontadini also suggests to avoid any reduction of metaphysics to gnoseology, a tendency still characterising contemporary philosophy.
This article critically examines Gustavo Bontadini’s analysis of the concept of being. After presenting the philosopher’s views on the semantization of being, the article highlights some problematic points in Bontadini’s analysis, particularly the lack of distinction between being as ens and being as esse. However, if one attempts to paraphrase Bontadini’s argument regarding the contradiction of becoming by distinguishing between entity and existence, it becomes clear that this argument is widely discussed in contemporary analytic philosophy and that various responses have been attempted.
The present article aims to study the opposition between realism and idealism concerning the problem of the immanence of being to thought. Specifically, it assesses Bontadini’s refutation of the immanence thesis in relation to some significant developments in epistemic logic and contemporary epistemology. The analysis focuses on some critical issues about the structure of the relationship between thought and being, the critique of the immanence thesis, and the defense of the negation of immanence. The article is divided into five sections, with an introduction, followed by sections on the «Unity of Experience», the relationship between thought and being, the opposition between realism and idealism, and an analysis of Bontadini’s criticisms of the immanence thesis.
As it is known, Bontadini used to say about himself that he was a fascist, especially after Mussolini signed the Lateran Pacts with the Vatican in 1929. It is equally well-known that he participated in the partisan Resistance. The aim of this paper is to analyse what compelled Bontadini to change his views and if his decision to withdraw his support for the authoritarian regime might be somewhat justifiable and understandable.
Gustavo Bontadini is generally known for his contribution to metaphysical reflection. Famous, indeed, is his «short discourse», a sort of direct path through which he intends to incontrovertibly demonstrate the existence of God. Equally famous is his polemic with Emanuele Severino, who forced Bontadini’s neoclassical metaphysics within the narrow limits of a renewed Parmenidism. Lesser known, is instead Bontadini’s contribution to the so-called «second philosophies», especially with regard to philosophical anthropology and moral philosophy. The present paper is precisely devoted to these lesser-studied features of his thought.
This paper aims to examine the relevance of Bontadini’s analysis of «Contemporaryism». Bontadini introduced this historical-philosophical category to denote that contemporary philosophy is primarily characterized by a strong anti-metaphysical perspective on knowledge and experience. In order to evaluate the inconsistency of this «Anti-Metaphysicism» – exemplified by Neopositivism – the paper will first emphasize the role of Bontadini’s «Neoclassical Philosophy» in the broader context of Western philosophy’s development. Consequently, the historical and theoretical significance of Neoclassical Philosophy will be highlighted through its metaphysics, understood as a rational discussion of «anthropological differences». In this regard, the paper will ultimately underscore the originality of Bontadini’s non-dogmatic conception of metaphysics, which is based on acknowledging the richness of experience and the capacity for reason to be open-ended.
The presence of David Hume in Gustavo Bontadini’s thought is anything but accidental. Bontadini has devoted several historiographical analyses to the Scottish thinker, enhancing the tendentially «pure» instance of his philosophy of experience, but also critically highlighting the places where it remains attached to the dualistic motifs of earlier empiricism. In this work of confrontation and discussion, Bontadini came to accept some of Hume’s doctrinal solutions, and in particular his critique of the relation of cause and effect. This led him to rethink traditional demonstrations of the existence of God in the light of an impossibility of the via causationis. The result is therefore a departure from the methods of Scholastic Aristotelianism and, in general, a weakening of the aetiological character of metaphysics. Moreover, the causality recovered by Bontadini through theological means is such that the distinction between the cause itself and its effect is reduced to a minimum.
The article analyses Gustavo Bontadini’s interpretation of modern philosophy, particularly with reference to Immanuel Kant’s critical proposal. Influenced especially by actualism and the Milano School of Amato Masnovo and Francesco Olgiati, Bontadini argues for the priority of metaphysics over gnoseology, pointing out the limitations of modern thought based on representations of reality rather than reality itself directly given to thought. His critique focuses particularly on the aesthetics and analytics of the Critique of Pure Reason, and he believes that Kant represents a breaking point with the classical metaphysical tradition, culminating in a «deflagration» of gnoseologism. Bontadini sees Kant as the culminating point of a deviation from metaphysical realism that runs throughout modernity, although he recognizes the historical importance and transformative potential of Kantian philosophy. Bontadini’s perspective contrasts with that of other philosophers, contemporary with Kant, who appreciate his innovation and influence on modern thought, and it differs from the positive historical assessment that has also been given in subsequent centuries.
The essay analyses Bontadini’s «Creation Theorem». Moving from the contradictory nature of Becoming, which needs a Ground, Bontadini argues that Being reveals a synthetic structure, which sublates in its genetic horizon data and contents of human experience. This leads to a radical ontology of God’s nature, a solution that raises some questions about the personal character of Christian God.
Gustavo Bontadini put forward the reasons for an affirmation of transcendence and creation in a philosophical context deeply marked by Kant’s Transcendental dialectic. The present contribution has three goals. (1) It reconstructs Bontadini’s theoretical relationship with the Critique of Pure Reason, which he regarded as an exemplary case of gnoseological naturalism. (2) It highlights the places in the Critique where Kant problematically introduces the diverse features of the noumenon and its relation to empirical reality. (3) It characterizes Bontadini’s theoretical proposal as enhancing the relevant concern of Kant’s critique of metaphysics: not to apply the categories governing experience to the positive noumenon. Thus, in its attempt to determine transcendent reality without categorising it in an empirical sense, classical metaphysics acquires, with Bontadini, a more essential and rigorous profile.
In the years immediately following his dissertation, Bontadini advocated a fideist-style metaphysics based on the «circle of power and consciousness», which was, however, soon abandoned. This paper aims to compare his ideas with the thought of Sartre, who, despite arriving at an anti-metaphysical conclusion, shares with Bontadini the perspective of viewing the human being as an incomplete circle of consciousness and power (or being). Finally, a different epistemological understanding of this circle is proposed in order to effectively explore the possibility of a metaphysics of transcendence.
Gustavo Bontadini is best known for his work on metaphysics and the reaffirmation of epistemic knowledge in relation to the transcendent Being. However, this speculative production has been accompanied and supported in Bontadini by a multiplicity of studies concerning the history of philosophy, carried out especially in his early years. Those studies were later followed by some considerations on the method of philosophical historiography. Retracing some aspects of the debate between Bontadini and Eugenio Garin, the article aims to bring out some peculiar aspects of Bontadini’s philosophical historiography, trying also to highlight some points of contact with the historiographic perspective, with which he has a debate.
The essay aims to delve into the «metaphysics of transcendence» that characterizes Gustavo Bontadini’s thought. The first step of this metaphysics is to explore the nature of experience and demonstrate that it is not the whole. The process of experiencing is rooted in a non-contradictory being. On the other hand, Emanuele Severino argues that contradiction must also be excluded from the process of becoming, where entities appear and disappear but do not cease to exist entirely. This critique allows us to interpret Bontadini’s «Principle of Creation» as creatio ex esse Dei, rather than ex nihilo. Therefore, every being must be considered in its own positivity. However, a distinction remains between being unconditional (which exists in the fullness of being and cannot be otherwise) and being conditioned, which has not yet attained the fullness of its being. This represents the ontological standpoint of the author, who seeks to derive a more rigorous conclusion from the comparison between Bontadini and Severino.
We discuss the topic of transcendence as understood by Gustavo Bontadini. We refer in particular to Bontadini’s works of the 1950es, whereas we only sketch some reservations on his writings of the 1970es. Finally, we attach a brief addendum that discusses the evolution of transcendence in contemporary philosophy.
BONTADINI: CONTRIBUTO ALLA METAFISICA DELL’ESPERIENZA (1925)
Gustavo Bontadini’s 1925 dissertation is a «seminal» text in more than one sense: not only was it his first real work, which he would later take from by publishing parts of it, but more important, it constitutes the first version of his only – at least tentatively – systematic book, Saggio di un metafisica dell’esperienza published in 1938. Dealing with the problem of the Absolute and Transcendence, in his dissertation he argues for a «transcendental fideism» based on the «Postulate of the Rationality of the Real», i.e., a position opposite to the later one of the Saggio and his entire speculative path. The publication of Bontadini’s dissertation – hitherto unpublished – is thus crucial for tracing the evolution of his thought, both from a theoretical and historiographical point of view.
The 400th anniversary of Pascal’s birth invites us to engage in a more comprehensive reflection on the Seventeenth-century thinker, his enduring legacy, and the debates he has sparked over the centuries. It allows us to pinpoint several key aspects of his relevance, notably the critical significance of his ideas concerning epistemology, philosophy, ethics, and religion.
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