Abstract
Husserl is one of the authors who most influenced Preti’s thought. Starting from his early texts, Husserl represents a constant and, most importantly, a dynamic presence in Preti’s work. Indeed, Husserlian philosophy, along with the transcendental philosophy to which it ultimately belongs, constitutes the theoretical core of the rationalistic themes that are central to Preti’s philosophy. The aim of the present essay is to investigate the various forms and ways in which Husserl’s philosophy exerted an influence on Preti’s thought: firstly as essential to the definition of what Preti called “the principle of immanence;” then, in combination with insights drawn from pragmatism and logical empiricism, as functional in developing his Neo-Enlightenment proposal; finally, in his last works, as central to rethinking of the theoretical outcomes reached over the course of the previous decade.
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Notes
- 1.
Parrini, Paolo. 2004. Filosofia e scienza nell’Italia del Novecento. Figure, correnti, battaglie. Milan: Guerini. 169ff. (All translations of Italian texts are my own).
- 2.
Preti, Giulio. 1942. Fenomenologia del valore. Milan: Principato. 20 footnote.
- 3.
In another passage from the same work, for example, we read that “it is only by virtue of this assumed alterity [between the two distinct poles of self-consciousness] that the subject is not only a transcendental subject (universality of experience) and the object only the content (particularity and stream of experience), but rather that the subject is also a particular objectivity which realizes its universality within a world that sets some limits for it.” Immediately afterwards, the same concept is formulated in distinctly Husserlian terms: within the subject-object correlation, Preti goes on to explain, “noesis and noema are correlative concepts, which do not subsist outside of this correlation.” Preti, Fenomenologia del valore, 80. The possibility of translating such notions from one language into the other shows a deep convergence of perspectives. On this point, see also what Preti was to write some 20-odd years later in: Preti, Giulio. 1958. Il mio punto di vista empiristico. In: Preti, Giulio. 1976. Saggi filosofici. Vol. 1: Empirismo logico, epistemologia e logica. 475–495. Firenze: La Nuova Italia. 478.
- 4.
Preti, Giulio. 1934. Filosofia e saggezza nel pensiero husserliano. In: Saggi filosofici. Vol. 1. 3–9 (8).
- 5.
Ibid., 5. On Preti’s use of Husserl’s monadology as a means to distance himself from Banfi’s interpretation of Husserl, see: Mocchi, Mauro. 1990. Le prime interpretazioni di Husserl in Italia. Il dibattito sulla fenomenologia: 1923–1940. Florence: La Nuova Italia. 110ff.
- 6.
Preti, Filosofia e saggezza nel pensiero husserliano, 9.
- 7.
Preti, Giulio. 1935. I fondamenti della logica formale pura nella “Wissenschaftslehre” di B. Bolzano e nelle “Logische Untersuchungen” di E. Husserl. In: Saggi filosofici. Vol. 1. 10–31 (14).
- 8.
For a reconstruction of these aspects of Preti’s thought, I will refer to: Ferrari, Massimo. 2014. Il giovane Preti lettore di Bolzano. In: Sulla filosofia teoretica di Giulio Preti. In occasione del centenario, ed. Luca Scarantino, 119–134. Milan: Mimesis.
- 9.
Preti, I fondamenti della logica formale pura, 31.
- 10.
Preti, Giulio. 1943. Idealismo e positivismo. Milan: Bompiani. 11.
- 11.
Ibid., 5–6.
- 12.
Ibid., 29.
- 13.
Ibid., 30–31.
- 14.
Ibid., 29.
- 15.
Ibid., 66.
- 16.
Ibid., 67.
- 17.
Preti further developed this insight over the following years, seeking to provide a methodological clarification of the neo-empiricist principle of verification by juxtaposing the sense-meaning conceptual pair with the Husserlian one of Erfüllung-Bedeutung. For a compelling and exhaustive reconstruction of this extremely relevant point, I refer to Parrini, Filosofia e scienza nell’Italia del Novecento, 181ff.
- 18.
Preti, Idealismo e positivismo, 71.
- 19.
Ibid., 51.
- 20.
Ibid., 73.
- 21.
Ibid., 23.
- 22.
Ibid., 22–23. For a more in-depth investigation of the significance of these two criticisms that Preti directs at Husserl in Idealismo e positivismo, see Peruzzi, Alberto. 2014. L’idealpositività. In: Sulla filosofia teoretica di Giulio Preti. In occasione del centenario, ed. Luca Scarantino, 89–117.
- 23.
Preti, Idealismo e positivismo, 94.
- 24.
Preti, Giulio. 1957. Praxis ed empirismo. Turin: Einaudi. 25.
- 25.
Preti, Giulio. 1957. L’ontologia della regione “natura” nella fisica newtoniana. In: Saggi filosofici. Vol. 1. 413–435 (414–415).
- 26.
Ibid., 416.
- 27.
For an interpretation of the role played by the pragmatist concept of meaning in Preti’s philosophy, I will refer to Gronda, Roberto. 2013. Filosofie della praxis. Preti e Dewey. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale.
- 28.
Preti, L’ontologia della regione “natura” nella fisica newtoniana, 415.
- 29.
Preti, Giulio. 1953. Linguaggio comune e linguaggi scientifici. In: Saggi Filosofici. Vol. 1. 127–220 (194).
- 30.
Ibid., 208.
- 31.
See e.g. what Preti writes with regard to a possible Husserlian integration of Carnap’s syntactical analysis, in view of its ‘semanticisation’: Preti, Giulio. 1955. Il problema della L-verità nella semantica carnapiana. In: Saggi filosofici. Vol. 1. 337–376 (357).
- 32.
Ibid., 341–342. One must bear in mind, however, the significant point emphasised by Preti in “L’ontologia della regione ‘natura’.” He writes: “A very important difference that stems from this is that for us ontology is invariably formal to some degree. It always consists either of tautologies, or of L-truths, or of enunciations containing variables. Instead, Husserl had clearly distinguished between formal ontology (…) and regional, ‘material ontologies’ founded on the intuition of ‘material’ essences. For us, the difference only consists in the degree of formalism.” Preti, L’ontologia della regione “natura” nella fisica newtoniana, 414–415.
- 33.
Preti, Il problema della L-verità nella semantica carnapiana, 376.
- 34.
Preti, Giulio. 1961. “La crisi delle scienze europee” di Husserl. In: Saggi filosofici. Vol. 1. 449–453 (452).
- 35.
It must be said that in parallel to this no doubt one-sided reading, Preti was willing to acknowledge the importance of the concept of lifeworld, to the point that he employed it to refer to what, in the previous years, he had referred to by the term praxis, namely the concrete historical and social world in which human beings live and operate. At the same time, the concept of lifeworld or primary experience was strongly distinguished from the notion of basic experience, understood as a theoretical concept whose legitimate field of application is the epistemological discourse. On these issues in French phenomenology—in particular that of Merleau-Ponty—see Lanfredini, Roberta. 2014. Fenomenologia della carne in Giulio Preti. In: Sulla filosofia teoretica di Giulio Preti. In occasione del centenario, ed. Luca Scarantino, 71–87.
- 36.
Preti, Giulio. 1962. Il linguaggio della filosofia. In: Saggi filosofici. Vol. 1. 455–474 (459–460).
- 37.
Ibid., 461.
- 38.
Ibid., 462.
- 39.
Husserl, Edmund. 1999. The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. 92.
- 40.
Preti, Giulio. 1968. Retorica e logica. Turin: Einaudi. 219.
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Gronda, R. (2020). Preti and Husserl. In: Buongiorno, F., Costa, V., Lanfredini, R. (eds) Phenomenology in Italy. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 106. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25397-4_4
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