JimFar
20th April 2006, 11:20
Seveal years ago, I picked up a copy of Della Volpe's Logic as a Positive Science at a used bookstore. Among the things that I have noted about him is how sparse the literature on him is in English as compared to other Marxist writers of comparable stature (i.e. Lukacs, the Frankfurters, Sartre or Althusser). From my attempts at doing Web searches on him, it would seem that most commentary on him is still in Italian. What little there is in English seems primarily concerned with his work in esthetics (there does appear to have some interest in him by film scholars and art critics). That raises the question of why this should be the case. Is this simply the result of a parochialism that ignores work done in the Latin countries (in which case why has Gramsci drawn so much attention over the last thirty years)? Or is it perhaps the substance of his message has been unappealing to anglophone intellectuals. His thesis in Logic as a Positive Science was basically that whatever progress has been made in philosophy has come out of struggles against apriorist idealism and della Volpe provides in his book several case studies of such critiques of apriorism including Plato's critique of Parmenides, Aristotle's critique of Plato, Galileo's critique of scholastic science, Kant's critique of Leibniz's rationalism, and the young Marx's critique of Hegelian idealism.
For della Volpe the thrust of all of these critiques of apriorism was a movement towards materialism even though that movement did not really come to fruition until Marx & Engels. Della Volpe was also noteworthy for his anti-Hegelian interpretation of Marxism which put him at odds both with diamat and with much of Western Marxism(i.e. Gramsci, Lukacs, the Frankfurters, Sartre) which have to varying degrees emphasized the Hegelian roots of Marxism. Indeed, della Volpe contended that Hegel in some respects represented a regression from the achievements of Kant so that the young Marx in his critique of Hegel was forced to recover some of the ground that had been lost in the shift from Kantianism to Hegelianism.
Apparently, the key to della Volpe's understanding of the philosophical bases of Marxism lied in his treatment of the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction. In della Volpe's view, Aristotle in formulating this law of logic treated it not only as a formalistic principle but also as an ontological principle as well. Here, the analysis of the relations between particulars and universals, between subjects and predicates is of crucial importance. Plato in his critique of Parmenides, showed, that discourse about the world becomes possible once the duality of Being and Not-Being was replaced by the dichotomy of sameness-otherness but Plato (in Della Volpe's view failed to push this to its logical conclusion). In analyzing the relations between species and general, Plato developed his famous theory of forms which was bases on his method of diariesis but this attempted to explain the lower genera in terms of the higher which required that we tacitly presuppose the lower general so that we can discover what the higher ones are in the first place. Thus, Plato claimed that true knowledge transcended sense perception but he required sense to apprehend reality in the first place. As della Volpe saw it, Aristotle exposed this contradiction within Plato's thinking. Aristotle as an ontological materialist saw that the substance of a species cannot be different from the substance of any member of that species. From this he concluded that whatever exists is determinate and non-contradictory and that to think is to think of some determinate object. Therefore, in a materialist ontology, subject and predicate will always stand in synthesis in every judgement. The predicate is thus not induced from the subject nor is the subject deduced from the predicate - both rationalism and empiricism were thus in error.
At the same time Aristotle failed to push this critique to its logical conclusion because he retained Plato's assumption that true knowledge must be certain and permanent and so necessary and unchangeable. Therefore, he retreated from the nominalist implications of his original insight by dividing the category of substance into first and second substance so that individual entities constituted one kind of substance while the genera and species to which they belong comprise a second substance. In this way Aristotle continued Plato's belief that the universal has ontological primacy over individuals and so the empirical world is subsidiary to a transcendent realm.
These notions continued to dominate Western thought into the Renaissance when Galileo challenged the assumptions of scholastic science. Galileo demanded that theories about the natural world had to be empirically testable, that such theories
must be subjected to the test of experiment and observation. Furthermore, Galileo outlined the essentials of the logic of modern science by recognizing that experimental verification works not by being able to prove a given hypothesis to be true (which would involve committing the fallacy of affirming the consequent) but rather by the elimination of its rivals as they are disconfirmed or refuted experimentally. Here, della Volpe advances an understanding of the logic of scientific verification that is not unlike the one that Karl Popper presented in his Logic of Scientific Discovery. However, as far as I can tell, Della Volpe did not rely upon Popper in developing his analysis, but on such writers as Galileo, Lord Bacon, Claude Bernard, John Dewey, and Friedrich Engels. Whereas, Popper was concerned in The Logic of Scientific Discovery was concerned with providing solutions to the demarcation problem (i.e. rules for distinguishing science from non-science) and the induction problem, della Volpe was concerned mainly with demonstrating that the "moral sciences" follow the same logic as the natural or positive sciences, and with showing that Marx had likewise embraced what della Volpe called a "moral Galileanism." Della Volpe contended that Marx in such writings as his 1857 Introduction and his Capital had outlined, and then applied this moral Galileanism to his work in political economy. He argued that Marx demonstrated that " . . . there is only one logic, there is only one one method, that is of modern science understood and expounded in the materialist
sense, which has nothing whatever to do with any attempted positivist or scientist justification of science." Thus for della Volpe Marx had demonstrated the unity of science, although this defense of the unity of science was different from the one that the logical positivists later were to give.
For della Volpe the Galilean logic of science (in both the natural and moral sciences) was a dialectical one. And in Logic as a Positive Science, della Volpe outlined his own conception of dialectics or to be more specific materialist dialectics. In this discussion, della Volpe articulates his rejection of Hegelian dialectics including the laws of dialectics such as the law of the negation of the negation, the law of the unity of opposites and the law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For della Volpe, all such formulations were in reality quite undialectical, "...merely formulas of abstract thought, of a mystified and therefore 'falsely mobile' and undialectical dialectic." Rather, for della Volpe true dialectical thinking is represented by the process of scientific inquiry in which proposed scientific laws are formulated as hypotheses, which are tested against
empirical reality, and then are modified or replaced. The self-correcting nature of science was for della Volpe, the true embodiment of dialectics, not the abstract speculative metaphysics of Hegel and his disciples. For della Volpe, in scientific inquiry, induction and deduction are said to form a methodological circle, along with matter & reason, fact (or 'accidental') and hypothesis (or 'necessary'). And
these methodological circles constitute the basis for scientific dialectics. In della Volpe's view scientific dialectics was concerned with the formulation and verification of hypotheses as opposed to hypostases. Della Volpe used these foregoing arguments to defend the thesis that Marxism is a science insomuch as to the extent that it relies upon a Galilean methodology, it is examplifying the same sort of logic as that which underlies the natural sciences. Capital is the best examplification of this moral Galileanism in practice, with Marx exploding the apriorist reasonings of the classical economists which involved reliance upon 'speculative' or 'forced' abstractions which had implied the existence of natural and eternal economic laws. Instead Marx followed a methodology that relied upon determinate abstractions instead. Della Volpe analyzed Marx's methodology as one which followed the pattern of Concrete-Abstract-Concrete (C-A-C), which is the pattern or circle of scientific materialist dialectics (as opposed to Hegelian dialectics which follows the circle of Abstract-Concrete-Abstract).
For della Volpe the thrust of all of these critiques of apriorism was a movement towards materialism even though that movement did not really come to fruition until Marx & Engels. Della Volpe was also noteworthy for his anti-Hegelian interpretation of Marxism which put him at odds both with diamat and with much of Western Marxism(i.e. Gramsci, Lukacs, the Frankfurters, Sartre) which have to varying degrees emphasized the Hegelian roots of Marxism. Indeed, della Volpe contended that Hegel in some respects represented a regression from the achievements of Kant so that the young Marx in his critique of Hegel was forced to recover some of the ground that had been lost in the shift from Kantianism to Hegelianism.
Apparently, the key to della Volpe's understanding of the philosophical bases of Marxism lied in his treatment of the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction. In della Volpe's view, Aristotle in formulating this law of logic treated it not only as a formalistic principle but also as an ontological principle as well. Here, the analysis of the relations between particulars and universals, between subjects and predicates is of crucial importance. Plato in his critique of Parmenides, showed, that discourse about the world becomes possible once the duality of Being and Not-Being was replaced by the dichotomy of sameness-otherness but Plato (in Della Volpe's view failed to push this to its logical conclusion). In analyzing the relations between species and general, Plato developed his famous theory of forms which was bases on his method of diariesis but this attempted to explain the lower genera in terms of the higher which required that we tacitly presuppose the lower general so that we can discover what the higher ones are in the first place. Thus, Plato claimed that true knowledge transcended sense perception but he required sense to apprehend reality in the first place. As della Volpe saw it, Aristotle exposed this contradiction within Plato's thinking. Aristotle as an ontological materialist saw that the substance of a species cannot be different from the substance of any member of that species. From this he concluded that whatever exists is determinate and non-contradictory and that to think is to think of some determinate object. Therefore, in a materialist ontology, subject and predicate will always stand in synthesis in every judgement. The predicate is thus not induced from the subject nor is the subject deduced from the predicate - both rationalism and empiricism were thus in error.
At the same time Aristotle failed to push this critique to its logical conclusion because he retained Plato's assumption that true knowledge must be certain and permanent and so necessary and unchangeable. Therefore, he retreated from the nominalist implications of his original insight by dividing the category of substance into first and second substance so that individual entities constituted one kind of substance while the genera and species to which they belong comprise a second substance. In this way Aristotle continued Plato's belief that the universal has ontological primacy over individuals and so the empirical world is subsidiary to a transcendent realm.
These notions continued to dominate Western thought into the Renaissance when Galileo challenged the assumptions of scholastic science. Galileo demanded that theories about the natural world had to be empirically testable, that such theories
must be subjected to the test of experiment and observation. Furthermore, Galileo outlined the essentials of the logic of modern science by recognizing that experimental verification works not by being able to prove a given hypothesis to be true (which would involve committing the fallacy of affirming the consequent) but rather by the elimination of its rivals as they are disconfirmed or refuted experimentally. Here, della Volpe advances an understanding of the logic of scientific verification that is not unlike the one that Karl Popper presented in his Logic of Scientific Discovery. However, as far as I can tell, Della Volpe did not rely upon Popper in developing his analysis, but on such writers as Galileo, Lord Bacon, Claude Bernard, John Dewey, and Friedrich Engels. Whereas, Popper was concerned in The Logic of Scientific Discovery was concerned with providing solutions to the demarcation problem (i.e. rules for distinguishing science from non-science) and the induction problem, della Volpe was concerned mainly with demonstrating that the "moral sciences" follow the same logic as the natural or positive sciences, and with showing that Marx had likewise embraced what della Volpe called a "moral Galileanism." Della Volpe contended that Marx in such writings as his 1857 Introduction and his Capital had outlined, and then applied this moral Galileanism to his work in political economy. He argued that Marx demonstrated that " . . . there is only one logic, there is only one one method, that is of modern science understood and expounded in the materialist
sense, which has nothing whatever to do with any attempted positivist or scientist justification of science." Thus for della Volpe Marx had demonstrated the unity of science, although this defense of the unity of science was different from the one that the logical positivists later were to give.
For della Volpe the Galilean logic of science (in both the natural and moral sciences) was a dialectical one. And in Logic as a Positive Science, della Volpe outlined his own conception of dialectics or to be more specific materialist dialectics. In this discussion, della Volpe articulates his rejection of Hegelian dialectics including the laws of dialectics such as the law of the negation of the negation, the law of the unity of opposites and the law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For della Volpe, all such formulations were in reality quite undialectical, "...merely formulas of abstract thought, of a mystified and therefore 'falsely mobile' and undialectical dialectic." Rather, for della Volpe true dialectical thinking is represented by the process of scientific inquiry in which proposed scientific laws are formulated as hypotheses, which are tested against
empirical reality, and then are modified or replaced. The self-correcting nature of science was for della Volpe, the true embodiment of dialectics, not the abstract speculative metaphysics of Hegel and his disciples. For della Volpe, in scientific inquiry, induction and deduction are said to form a methodological circle, along with matter & reason, fact (or 'accidental') and hypothesis (or 'necessary'). And
these methodological circles constitute the basis for scientific dialectics. In della Volpe's view scientific dialectics was concerned with the formulation and verification of hypotheses as opposed to hypostases. Della Volpe used these foregoing arguments to defend the thesis that Marxism is a science insomuch as to the extent that it relies upon a Galilean methodology, it is examplifying the same sort of logic as that which underlies the natural sciences. Capital is the best examplification of this moral Galileanism in practice, with Marx exploding the apriorist reasonings of the classical economists which involved reliance upon 'speculative' or 'forced' abstractions which had implied the existence of natural and eternal economic laws. Instead Marx followed a methodology that relied upon determinate abstractions instead. Della Volpe analyzed Marx's methodology as one which followed the pattern of Concrete-Abstract-Concrete (C-A-C), which is the pattern or circle of scientific materialist dialectics (as opposed to Hegelian dialectics which follows the circle of Abstract-Concrete-Abstract).