Martinetti, Piero (1872–1943)

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MARTINETTI, PIERO
(1872–1943)

Piero Martinetti, an Italian metaphysician, was professor of theoretical philosophy at the University of Milan from 1906 until 1931, when he resigned in protest against the oath imposed on university professors by the Fascist regime.

Martinetti sought to reestablish metaphysics as a valid science by a method whose validity would have to be recognized even by positivists. This project involved a refutation of positivism on its own grounds. The positivist attack on metaphysics, Martinetti claimed, is valid only against vulgar or dogmatic metaphysics. Scientific metaphysics meets all the requirements of scientific methodology. It adheres to data that all science must recognize; but it is no mere synthesis of the sciences, for it interprets scientific findings and determines their meaning rather than their mere truth. Consequently, a scientific metaphysics would achieve, on a posteriori grounds, successive unifications of empirical data until the Absolute was achieved.

The first of the successive levels in this projected unification is that of the "I" or self as a unity of sensuous consciousness. This is the constant flux of sense perception, the central point around which all perception is synthesized. At this stage no distinction is made between subject and object. The self at this level possesses a rudimentary transcendental character in the invincible conviction that its sense perceptions are identical with those of all possible subjects, but this persuasion is itself a mere datum.

This intimation of the transcendental and a priori provides a means of passage to the next level of synthesis, the logical level. But the a priori forms of synthesis are not a priori in the Kantian sense; they are "con-natural" with their empirical content. Among these forms are substance and cause, which unify respectively the coexistent and the successive. The movement from the sensible forms of unity to the logical forms is not itself a logical process; rather, it is entirely natural. Logic is the "science of the natural conformations of human thought," and logical relations are therefore empirical relations.

The third stage of synthesis, that of absolute unity, cannot be achieved in thought; it is implied in the dynamic of thought. We can have no speculative concept, but only a symbolic intuition, of it. However, it cannot be concluded, therefore, that our knowledge is limited to phenomena. The absolute unity is always present, although in an imperfect way, because it enters structurally into all levels of synthesis. This omnipresence of the Absolute Martinetti called mystical: "Our knowledge is a mystic unity with the eternal Logos."

This process of synthesis applies also to the practical order, whose transcendental principle is liberty. Morality exhibits a primary synthesis in the form of necessity freely achieved—a synthesis that is continued and extended by art and religion.