Possibility, necessity, and existence: Abbagnano and his predecessors
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. The problem of possibility has been a central theme in the history of philosophy and is of fundamental importance to present-day thought. In his critical introduction to the essentials of Abbagnano's thought, Langiulli examines Abbagnano's attempt to raise possibility to a level of prime importance and inves…
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- Full title :Possibility, necessity, and existence : Abbagnano and his predecessors / Nino Langiulli.
Summary
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. The problem of possibility has been a central theme in the history of philosophy and is of fundamental importance to present-day thought. In his critical introduction to the essentials of Abbagnano's thought, Langiulli examines Abbagnano's attempt to raise possibility to a level of prime importance and investigates his understanding of existence. Langiulli offers a sustained exposition of and argument with the account of possibility in the major thinkers of the Western tradition--Plato, 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 De Morgan and Boole. Nicola Abbagnano, who died in 1990, recently came to the attention of the general public as an influential teacher of the 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." Abbagnano's boldness and originality consist in connecting explicitly and essentially the concepts of possibility and existence. 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 necessity--concepts that are opposite to it. Existentialists, for example, want to define human existence in terms of possibility, yet they go on to describe it in terms of impossibility or necessity. 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.
Read More ↓Edition Statements
- Publication Date:1992.
Publication Statements
- Publisher(s):Temple University Press
- Place of Publication:Philadelphia
- Language:eng
- Publication Date:1992.
The Physical Object
- Description:1 online resource (xv, 205 pages)
Edition Identifiers
- ISBN:9781439904084, 1439904081
- oclc:ocn646066457
- LC Classification:B3611.A234
- Dewey Decimal:110
Table of Contents
Preface; Acknowledgments; Part I: From a Positive Existentialism to a Radical Empiricism; Chapter 1: The Backgrounds of and Initial Efforts Toward a Pure Conception of Possibility; Chapter 2: Abbagnano's Systematic Thought: The Four Phases; Chapter 3: The Program of a Positive Existentialism; Part II: Sources for the Concept of Possibility; Chapter 4: Plato; Chapter 5: Aristotle; Chapter 6: Kant; Chapter 7: Kierkegaard; Part III: Possibility and Existence; Chapter 8: The Different Senses of Possibility; Chapter 9: The First Definition: Possibility as Noncontradiction.
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