#actualism

“In a sense, of course, political conservatism is inherent in all idealist precepts, at least in their vulgarized form. In the broad sense in which it was derived from the philosophy of Plato, idealism stood for the view that the material world is merely the imperfect reflection of an underlying spiritual reality. Idealism implied a certain contempt for material existence, an attitude that perpetuated in more secular form the Christian renunciation of worldliness. German idealist ethics reaffirmed the Christian view that the pursuit of material happiness is unworthy of the human spirit. The proper goal of human endeavor is the moral perfection of the soul.

The conservative political implications of such attitudes emerged in the intellectual reaction in Germany to the French Revolution. Perhaps it was the hopelessness of revolutionary politics in eighteenth-century Germany that led so many reform-minded Germans to pin their hopes on moral improvement instead. The Terror and the revolutionary wars reinforced the tendency of German idealists to view the French Revolution as inspired by basely materialistic motives. Moral freedom, the freedom from desire and temptation, came to be viewed as superior to the political freedoms espoused by the French.

There is an irony here, for idealism, too, reflected discontent with the political status quo. Hegel, for instance, sought to overcome the inadequacy of real conditions by subsuming them in a grandly rational historical process, the full meaning of which was not clear to mankind at any intermediate stage. This confidence in the ultimate beneficence of the world spirit enabled Hegel later in life to glorify the Prussian state. Nonetheless, völkisch ideologues tended to be suspicious of the progressive implications of the Hegelian dialectic. They appealed instead to the more safely apolitical idealism of Goethe or Schiller. This, too, is not without irony, for classical self-cultivation (and the Romantic flight into dream and fantasy) also reflected frustration in the face of stultifying social reality. Yet the effect of idealist attitudes was not to mobilize energies for social or institutional reform but instead to channel them into quiescent self-improvement. Idealism represented a mode of adjustment to a stratified social order in which the aristocracy still enjoyed legally sanctioned privileges. This elitism was reflected in the idealist assumption that only the philosopher or poet could hope to cultivate the spirit in a manner leading to true self-fulfillment.

In the course of the nineteenth century, idealism permeated the educated stratum of German society in a vulgarized form. Self-styled idealists professed opposition to the pursuit of wealth and material goods, as well as to the indulgence of bodily appetites and sensual pleasures. Most educated Germans embraced idealism as a superior German alternative to Western utilitarianism and liberalism, both of which stood condemned as egoistic, success-oriented doctrines. "Idealism is present," wrote Paul de Lagarde, one of the earliest exponents of völkisch thought, "wherever man acts out of inner needs against his own advantage, against his own comfort, against the world surrounding him." Idealism was personified in the saintly, but martial hero who resists worldly temptation and overcomes evil. Idealists considered themselves the true heirs of the Lutheran tradition, whereas in Western Europe rational and materialistic values had triumphed. Idealists valued the underlying creative accomplishments of "culture" more highly than the ephemeral scientific and technological progress of "civilization."

The philosophy of modality is a branch of metaphysics that deals with the concepts of possibility and necessity. It explores the nature of different modes of truth, such as what is possible, what is necessary, and what might have been. These discussions are crucial for understanding a wide range of philosophical issues, from the nature of reality to the structure of language and logic.

Key Concepts in the Philosophy of Modality

Possible Worlds:

Concept: Possible worlds are a way to conceptualize different ways the world might have been. They provide a framework for discussing possibility and necessity.

Argument: Philosopher David Lewis famously argued for the existence of a plurality of possible worlds, where each possible world is as real as the actual world we live in. Other philosophers, like Saul Kripke, use possible worlds as a heuristic device rather than claiming their literal existence.

Modal Logic:

Concept: Modal logic is a formal system that extends classical logic to include operators that express modality (necessity and possibility).

Argument: In modal logic, □ represents necessity ("necessarily") and ◇ represents possibility ("possibly"). For example, □P means "P is necessarily true," and ◇P means "P is possibly true."

Necessity and Contingency:

Concept: Necessity refers to what must be the case, while contingency refers to what could be the case but is not necessarily so.

Argument: Philosophers distinguish between different types of necessity, such as logical necessity (true in all possible worlds) and metaphysical necessity (true in all worlds that share certain fundamental structures).

Essence and Accidents:

Concept: Essential properties are those that an entity must have to be what it is, while accidental properties are those that an entity can have but does not need to have.

Argument: Aristotle first distinguished between essence and accidents, and contemporary modal metaphysics continues to explore this distinction in the context of possible worlds and modal properties.

De Re and De Dicto Modality:

Concept: De re (about the thing) modality pertains to the properties of things themselves, while de dicto (about the saying) modality pertains to statements or propositions.

Argument: For example, "It is possible that the tallest building is in New York" (de dicto) vs. "The tallest building might have been in New York" (de re). The former is a statement about the possibility of a proposition, while the latter is about the possibility of a property of an object.

Theoretical Perspectives on Modality

Realism vs. Anti-Realism about Possible Worlds:

Realism: David Lewis’s modal realism posits that all possible worlds are as real as the actual world.

Anti-Realism: Saul Kripke and others argue that possible worlds are useful fictions or conceptual tools rather than concrete realities.

Actualism vs. Possibilism:

Actualism: The view that only the actual world and its contents exist, and possible worlds are just abstractions.

Possibilism: The view that possible entities (those that could have existed but do not actually exist) are as real as actual entities.

Essentialism vs. Anti-Essentialism:

Essentialism: The belief that entities have essential properties that define their identities.

Anti-Essentialism: The rejection of essential properties, arguing that what we consider essential is often context-dependent or constructed.

Epistemic Modality:

Concept: Epistemic modality concerns what is possible or necessary given what is known.

Argument: It deals with statements about knowledge and belief, such as "It might rain tomorrow" (epistemically possible) vs. "It must be raining now because I hear thunder" (epistemically necessary).

Maria Grazia Cucinotta

Arditi, Fiume, 2 October 1919

“Revolution

If the State is an eternal process of self-criticism, then revolution is not death for it but life. As a particular catastrophic happening, a revolution is a matter for relative judgment, and does not allow of exact definition; but in general the word covers any change in the constitution of a State. Now every constitution remains immutably fixed in its written formulas; but in practice, even without any express changes or explicit declarations, it is continually changing in its interpretation and application. Hence the suggestion by conservatives in all countries that the slow development of the State's fundamental institutions be left to time and usage, without any explicit deliberation about reform, which, by clearly establishing the possibility of change in the minds of the citizens, undermines their salutary faith in the perpetual untouchability of the charter that is the juridical foundation and the perennial guarantee of the State. In short the State charter can be a useful myth in the consolidation of the ideal static moment which is essential to the life of the State. But in spite of the myth constitutions change from day to day, with the changing of the minds in which they live; written words remain, but they are read, understood, and brought to life in the political consciousness of the people, which is continually renewing itself.

“So far as it is act, rather than fact, moral reality can be defined as liberty. This entails, first, mediation; and, second, universality. The spirit is free inasmuch as it is a process, in which its being is situated neither at the beginning, nor the end, but in the unity of the beginning and end. My will is free only insofar as I do not detach myself from my will as a consequence of my activity and my will does not detach itself from me. By detaching one from the other, we become—to use Kantian language—two phenomena: and, like all phenomena, each is intelligible solely according to the principle of causality. I, personally, cannot be what I am not; and operari sequitur esse (function follows being); so I cannot manifest myself except in certain given actions, each of which will be what it is able to be, given its conditions. Rather, I am only 'I' insofar as I act and want: I am what I do; beyond that act I do not exist; I become a simple presupposition. I find myself to be real when acting, that is, when the act is reaching its conclusion. Not, however, that we should consider the completion of this action in its tangible external crystallization. We should rather consider it in terms of its interior usefulness or spirituality. But if I only exist as a result of my own actions, it no longer makes sense to look for the conditions that pre-existed my actions and that might somehow determine my actions.

This process or mediation is the circle in which spiritual reality is realized as reflexive activity that does not act on or create anything but itself. It expresses itself, fundamentally and immanently, by speaking of self: Ego. This is not the representation of a reality that you might imagine existing prior to the representation; it is a realization, the self-realization of the realizing self.

But what of mediation and universality? Mediation realizes the universality of the subject that arises through the act; and without universality the subject would return to itself without having differentiated itself from its immediate being. In fact, it would not even be able to return, because it would not have sufficiently distanced itself from itself. The function of spirit is to actuate the Ego; it is self-affirmation. But it would not be an affirmation if it did not go beyond the ego that has to be the object of the affirmation. Rather, it would have to arrive at an affirmation in which the affirmation itself absorbs the presumed immediate object of knowledge through the act of idealizing the initial (abstract) object and installing the new concrete object. The idealization is thus a universalization, that is, mediated universality (which is not there initially but presents itself. The thought is always this: the so-called reduction of the particular due to universal categorization. And the act of self-consciousness is the thought that lies at its core and becomes its immanent form. This is its desire or moral act: it affirms itself only by the very act of affirming itself, thereby negating its own abstract or presumed particular subjectivity in order to become a concrete universal subjectivity. Only thus do we earn our freedom.

In fact, we believe ourselves to be naturally free, but all of spiritual experience demonstrates that we must seize our liberty. Indeed, every time we affirm our liberty we implicitly acknowledge that once we were not free. On the one hand, the history of humanity runs from slavery to liberty; and men have always fought, are fighting and will forever fight for liberty. The story of each individual man, regarded as the empirical succession of moments in his particular life, is the progressive release from bonds that the individual comes to consider constraining, and from which he periodically feels the need to break free. Within the intimate dialectic of our personality, what surprises us is how we seek to satisfy the need that hangs over us, that is, the need to make our freedom a reality. It is the realization of a concrete liberty that resolves the determined problem of our concrete personality. On the other hand, our own experience tells us that man's progressive emancipation in history—and the triumph by which, day by day, man manages to carve out his freedom in the natural and social environment in which he strives to live, and the profound liberty that we celebrate deep within our soul—is nothing but subjection to a law that draws us progressively ever higher. It strips us of the egoism that makes the individual appear to be by nature sealed beneath a skin of sensation or within some thought that is particular, relative, ephemeral and arbitrary. In fact, this is an egocentric conception of life, but it raises us to the realm of universal things, values and ideals, to a reality that is not limited by time and space, and is not circumscribed by accidental conditions. In short, it raises us to a reality that is not particular. A slave became aware of liberty and his own need for it, and was therefore spurred in his struggle for liberation by the same obedience that subjected him to the will of his master. It compelled him to act upon a will that was not his innate will, but a will that he considered a law. It is no longer an individual will, but a universal will relative to the basic society in which the slave finds himself bound to the personality of the oppressor. And the slave had to conceive of that law as universal, that is, as greater than his own self in its natural existence. It was in the name of that same law that, over time, he could call for equality of rights for himself and all the other members of society. Man continues along the path of freedom via school, social coexistence and social institutions; via his ideas, his beliefs and his customs. And no one will ever know how to command if he has never learnt to obey: that is, to recognize the ideality of law as absolute, which he will need to use as a norm and title of true authority. Others cannot take authority seriously if they begin to doubt it or if they stop respecting whoever claims to be exercizing it.

But the dawning of self-consciousness, even in the individuals ideal solitude, becomes clear as it brings men together, and drives them to live a common life, in the positive concreteness of spiritual universality. Before that, life's character (which, as I said, experience attests) reveals itself by realizing a universal reality: by uttering a word, again only mentally, that would have no meaning and would not correspond to a real moment of interior life if it did not arise like a flash of universal light. The universal light is swathed in transcendental value because of the narrow limits of the particular subject. It soars before the particular subject like a great being with an absolute sense of its own self-worth.

“The Absolute Purity of the Act of Thinking

When Gentile first presented his 'method of immanence' as the logical outcome of the philosophical tradition of Western Christianity, Croce objected in a public discussion that the 'pure act’ was a mystical reality about which nothing significant could be said; or that conversely, since everything was reduced to this pure act, the new idealism was a panlogism. In either case, having resolved all distinctions the actual idealist was quite unable to tell us just what makes any spiritual activity what it is.

Gentile defended himself indignantly against both charges, by pointing out that the unity of the pure act was not the mystical immediacy of a simple substance but an activity productive of distinctions. He was therefore not trying to destroy the distinctions but only to understand them. This, he said, was the aim of every philosophy worthy of the name, and his idealism was therefore no more and no less of a panlogism than any other.

There is no need for us to become embroiled in this discussion at such a rarified level of abstract generalities. For apart from the metaphysical issue, there is a practical question involved about the adequacy of the 'pure act of thinking’ as an account of ordinary conscious experience. It may be that pensiero pensante is always individualized and that the 'particular’ moment of the dialectic is not lost in the immediacy of a mystic universal; but if it has no necessary connection with any particular distinction considered in its particularity, how can it serve to illuminate our actual enjoyment of a life which is certainly far removed from pure thinking? Thus even if Gentile were justified in theory we might still have to agree with Croce in practice; for although the philosophy of the pure act may be a system of necessary and universal knowledge, its very necessity and universality will render it valueless unless it helps us to deal with the personal problems of our lives as individuals.

This practical nemesis of 'panlogism' emerges clearly in Roger Holmes's contention, based on a careful and sympathetic study of Gentile's Logic, that

When the full expression of reality comes to be the "act of thinking," the Ego must necessarily fall with the Noumenon and the Absolute into disuse. The Sistema di logica possesses all of the ingredients necessary to this final step in the idealist's progress but it appears that the metaphysical vagueness of "Ego" is not noted by Gentile. The fault is undoubtedly explained by the nature of pensiero pensante, for it seems to connote a self-conscious thinking personality. But such a connotation would involve a presupposition, and it is precisely such presuppositions that pensiero pensante is brought forward to overcome. No thinker breaks completely from his past; his thinking develops out of his heritage. The "Ego" is Gentile's Darwin's Point.

“To think means to object. The naïve person listens and believes: his gullible mind accepts words much like his eyes receive light. No sooner the first shadow of doubt issues from his soul, and he progressively becomes aware of it, dogma is replaced by the problem, thought comes forth. He is no longer a passive listener but reacts and speaks. The first word that enlivens his discourse also nourishes his personality; yet that first word, which defines and asserts his personality, is a terrible monosyllable: but.

Antithesis overcomes thesis, doubt overcomes faith, and antinomy overcomes conclusion, giving rise to discourse with others and with oneself, to the desire to persuade others and himself, to resolve the problems that continually reappear, and to answer the objections that always turn into new objections until, finally, this process comes to a stop. Individuals either show disappointment for not being able to reach a solution, or they are satisfied for having achieved it: but the result is that in both cases, thinking stops, and when all objections are exhausted, discussion ends.

In its historical development, human thought not only is incapable of putting an end to the debate, but takes it to the extreme, multiplying the antinomy by an infinite number of antinomies: an endless series of subsequent buts. I look around and observe a multiplicity of things that have a history, and only within the context of that history can I understand them. However, history tells me what happened yesterday and the day before yesterday, when none of today's things existed. As well, other things that exist today did not exist then. Afterwards, history tells me nothing more than that the initial chaos existed. I can look at tomorrow and think about the modifications that today's things will undergo; at the day after tomorrow when today's things will have ceased to exist and others that I can only force myself to imagine will have come into being. Finally, I stop imagining and everything gets lost in that distant vagueness. So many civilizations have flourished and disappeared. What will the future of our civilization become? Progress can be identified as an ascent of a parable, which subsequently descends. Even the industrial civilization may begin to fade and, little by little, airplanes and skyscrapers will disappear into the void just as all things that once existed inside [the ancient city of] Ninive or within the Chinese walls have passed out of existence. Even human beings and our planet—of which our astronomers strive to measure the past and tuture ages from that of tire to the glacial one, from the origin to the end of the solar system—will vanish someday. Caught in this fatal succession of birth and death of everything, retreating into that microcosm that is my conscience, I cannot help but consider life as nothingness. Everything becomes, while the infinite flow of things nullifies all that exists in its incessant motion, without me being able to preserve anything of the world or of myself.

In the meantime, this flow is powerful and the world that surrounds me is full of wonders; if I fully open my eyes, I cannot help but remain stupefied. Our civilization will be destroyed someday. However, it continues to live with an even faster rhythm while its complexity becomes even more structured. Everything will be 'in vain, but the reason of the flow itselt—of such a wonderful flow—cannot be 'in vain.' Moreover, the same thinking the 'in vain' implies the thought of that which 'in vain is not,’ and it cannot be different. If something is preserved from the eternal becoming, and with it the reason of its being, the whole becoming is also preserved, and nothing can be thought of if not absolutely necessary. Both the walls of Ninive and those of China are elements of our civilization just as the entire history, pre-history, original chaos, and the future that we need to determine with our daily creativity and with our most profound ideals are elements of it.

Anyone who delves into the multiplicity and variety of things and, above all, into the logical structure of certain partial organisms, cannot doubt the logic of the entire organism. Though swept by the desperation of not being able to conclude the discourse, we can still affirm that everything is merely appearance. Afterward, we are blocked by the thought that such a complex appearance must carry a meaning and must have a reason behind it; and the reason for the existence of appearance cannot be appearance. Variation implies that which varies; appearance that which appears; becoming that which is: there is, therefore, a principle, a reality, a value, a reason for everything and for myself.

I deny and affirm. I reduce the world to the void and the void itself reintroduces the world as even more complex and rich. I deny life, and I realize that the negation itself is an act of life. However, if I want to affirm something, moved as I am by the conviction of not being able to negate everything, just before any affirmation, but reappears inexorably and the problem renews itself in the same antinomic manner.

The problem renews itselt trom the time a philosopher's activity was recorded and continues to renew itself for anyone who thinks even if advanced in age and philosophical knowledge. The antinomy that we previously mentioned and captured in its most immediate and elementary form, more or less the way it may reveal itself to a more naive and uneducated spirit, is the antinomy that manifests itself in the most difficult problems of contemporary dialectic. This seems to be anachronistic to those who are familiar with the history of philosophy. Yet it is found at the root of the philosophical inquiry of every true thinker and in a manner ever more radical and primitive as he is more profound and sincere. Sincerity generates in him the need to free himself from every superstructure, from all the knowledge that distracts him, by showing him many other paths and problems. This need leads him back to the point of departure, producing in him even the illusion of liberation from all kinds of experiences. However, he cannot be completely free, because he cannot free himself from himself and because he feels the need to return to the initial formulation of the problem since he acquired a progressively greater awareness of the many antinomies that derived from it. For example, he wants to conceive the world as good and considers love as its law, but he also realizes the presence of evil and hatred that divides. He affirms the existence of God and cannot help but think of him as the principle of goodness. At the same time, he searches in the world for the rationality underlying the development of that principle. However, as he discovers resistance that does not bend to the logic of this rationality, he turns in despair to the affirmation of the principle of evil. He is conscious of his autonomy and enjoys the freedom that allows him to be and to want, to realize himself in the world and to transform the world.

Soon after, the philosopher considers the infinite whole that transcends him and believes that he is at the mercy of a force, of a system of causes that acts in him, from which he is unable to differentiate himself or to resist. He turns to God as a guarantor of his freedom, and freedom becomes the result of God's grace. He denies God as will and infinite freedom to save his will and freedom, only to see God resurrected as a materialistic principle excluding by definition any manifestation of spiritual life. He needs to believe in his immortality with the purpose of finding a meaning for his life, but he sees death before him and is unable to truly overcome it so that being and becoming, unity and multiplicity, spirit and matter, absolute and contingent, goodness and evil, whole and nothingness remain as a permanent condition that he has to face. The world becomes split in two, taking the form of a system of dilemmas, of a single great dilemma, and our soul continues in its perennial questioning from which it is not capable of escaping.

The mystery of life is not an unknown but an antinomy. If the mystery of life were only about the unknown, individuals could abandon themselves to the bliss of ignorance; however, confronted by antinomy, they have no rest. Even so, I cannot become aware of a thesis without being also conscious of its antithesis. This problem compels me to look for a solution even though I am conscious that this solution will turn into the thesis of yet a new antinomy, one that demands a new antithesis and a new solution. Nevertheless, this is not the solution of another problem but the real solution to the first problem, which is not true because it is a solution that posits itself as a new thesis, which is only conceivable apart from every other antinomy. Unless we can break this series of antinomies once and for all, the solution to the first problem, no matter how elementary or obvious it may appear to us, cannot be considered a solution. The first problem turns into the last one and it vanishes into indistinct vagueness. If I think, I cannot help but return to the first step. The airplane is the solution of an immense series of antinomies. However, the beginning of the apkń of the airplane is still today Thale's problem. This is so true that there are those who, after having flown and gone around the world and found the solution to uncountable problems, desperate or strongly convinced of themselves, in order not think anymore or to think more, to live without God or to find God again, return to a life in the woods. They return there to remain if inertia takes over them the same way inertia could have kept them in the vortex of the mechanical civilization. However, if energies don't let them down, they will come out of it again and, then, they will take new paths and reach new goals in a continuous alternation of a beginning and an end constantly converting one into the other and constantly separate: from war to peace and from peace to war, from work to rest and from rest to work in a Faustian state of mind that never calms down.