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In this systematic historical analysis, Nino Langiulli focuses on a key philosophical issue, possibility, as it is refracted through the thought of the Italian philosopher Nicola Abbagnano. Langiulli examines Abbagnano's attempt to raise possibility to a level of prime importance and investigates his understanding of existence. In so doing, the author offers a sustained exposition of and argument with the account of possibility in the major thinkers of the Western traditionPlato, Aristotle, Kant, and Kierkegaard. He also makes pertinent comments on such philosophers as Diodorus Cronus, William of Ockham, Spinoza, Hobbes, and Hegel, as well as such logicians as DeMorgan and Boole.
Nicola Abbagnano, who died in 1990, recently came to the attention of the general public as an influential teacher of author Umberto Eco. Creator of a dictionary of philosophy and author of a multiple-volume history of Western philosophy, Abbagnano was the only philosopher, according to Langiulli, to argue that "to be is to be possible."
Even though the concept of probability and the discipline of statistics are grounded in the concept of possibility, philosophers throughout history have grappled with the problem of defining it. Possibility has been viewed by some as an empty concept, devoid of reality, and by others as reducible to actuality or necessityconcepts which are opposite to it. Langiulli analyzes and debates Abbagnano's treatment of necessity as secondary to possibility, and he addresses the philosopher's conversation with his predecessors as well as his European and American contemporaries.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I: From a Positive Existentialism to a Radical Empiricism
1. The Backgrounds of and Initial Efforts Toward a Pure Conception of Possibility
The Influence of Antonio Aliotta's Experimentalism
First Publication: Against the Mythical Conception of Reason
Abbagnano's Concern with Science and with the History of Philosophy
2. Abbagnano's Systematic Thought: The Four Phases
Antirationalism
The Search for the Principle of Metaphysics
The Call for a Positive Existentialism
Developing a Positive Existentialism
The Three Requirements for a Positive Existentialism
3. The Program of a Positive Existentialism
Toward a Radical Empiricism
Parallels with Some More Recent American Philosophy
Dumping Philosophy and the Madness of It That Is Also Folly
Philosophy and Foundationalism
Convergence and Divergence
Marginal Comments on Derrida
Prospects and Conclusions
Part II: Sources for the Concept of Possibility
4. Plato
Defining Existence in the Sophist
Arguments Connected with the Definition of Existence in the Sophist
Abbagnano�s Interpretation of the Definition of Existence in the Sophist
Questions About Abbagnano�s Interpretation
5. Aristotle
Abbagnano�s Position on Greek Metaphysics
Aristotle�s Arguments for the Priority of Actuality over Possibility
Aristotle and the Master Argument of Diodorus Cronus
6. Kant
Kant�s Precritical Notion of Possibility
The Notion of Possibility in the Critique of Pure Reason
The Notion of Possibility in the Critique of Judgment
7. Kierkegaard
Rejecting the Notion of Possibility from the Concluding Unscientific Postscript
Accepting the Notion of Possibility from the Philosophical Fragments
An Incompatibility in Kierkegaard�s Sense of Possibility
Part III: Possibility and Existence
8. The Different Senses of Possibility
A Nominal Definition of Possibility
The Connective in the Nominal Definition
Three Conceptual Definitions of Possibility
9. The First Definition: Possibility as Noncontradiction
Variations of the First Definition
The Characteristics of the First Definition
Difficulties of the First Definition
10. The Second Definition: Possibility as Necessary Realization
Variations and Characteristics of the Second Definition
Some Consequences of the Second Definition
Some Objections to Hartmann�s Formulation
A Distinction Between Possibility and Contingency
11. The Third and Proper Sense of Possibility
Formulating the Third Sense
The Logical Behavior of the Third Sense
The Relation of the Third Sense to Existence
Differences Between Possibility Proper and Actuality
Possibility Proper and the Ontological Predicate (the �Is� of Existence)
The Specter of Circularity
Considerations on the Ontological Predicate
12. Various Senses and Theories of Being
The Article "Essere"
The Predicative Use of To Be
Some Critical Comments
The Existential Use of To Be
13. Some Concluding Critical Reflections
A Doubt About Abbagnano's Antimetaphysic
The Truth or Consequences of an Ontology of Possibility
The Difficulty of Connecting Existence and Possibility
The Question of Necessity
Possibility Without Necessity Is Meaningless
Postscript
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Names
Nino Languilli is Professor of Philosophy at St. Francis College, Brooklyn, New York.
Themes in the History of Philosophy, edited by Edith Wyschogrod.
Themes in the History of Philosophy, edited by Edith Wyschogrod, will serve as a collection of outstanding work in the history of philosophy. It will include interpretations of significant themes, problems, and tendencies in the history of thought; studies of important thinkers, schools, and movements; and inquiries into the relation of previous philosophies to literature, art, and history.
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