Metafisica dell’ essere parziale by Carmelo Ottaviano (review)

374 BOOK REVIEWS Metafisica deU' easere parziole. By CARMELO OTTAVIANO. Padua: Cedam, 1947. (2nd. ed. revised and enlarged) Pp. 667, with index. The author is known by several works, historical and others; he has edited some treatises by Campanella, written on medieval philosophy, and publishes a philosophical review. The first edition of the present volume appeared in 1942: it is not without amazement that one realizes that a republication has been necessary and possible in the Italy of to-day. I regret that it will prove hardly feasible to do full justice to this work. If it is always difficult to render account of a lengthy work in philosophy on the few pages of a book review, this task is even more difficult here, partly b(.'Cause of the method of presentation adopted by the author, partly because of the novelty of some of his ideas which cannot be appreciated correctly unless exposed in greater detail and critically examined. The author feels that he has restricted digressions on the history of philosophy to the indispensable minimum; but even so, these digressions are of considerable length. They are indeed as important in the progress of the author's exposition as they are interesting. But they are so much interwoven with the systematic discussion of the main problems and the particular points the author wants to make that it becomes impossible to disengage the &ystematic from the historical. It is therefore inevitable that this review must content itself with pointing out the intentions and the fundamental views of the author. With respect to Dr. Ottaviano's intentions, these are not less than the presentation of a new all-comprising philosophy which, without ignoring, least of all despising, the work of predecessors, would open the way towards the " fourth age " in philosophy. This age will be equally aware of the demands evolving from scientific and social progress, of the eternally immutable truths contained in Revelation insofar as the supernatural is concerned, and of the work by the great. thinkers of the past. This new philosophy is consciously and thoroughly a Christian, a Catholic philosophy. If it is to be related somehow with the great trends of Christian philosophy, it is more in line with the thought of Augustine-Anselm than with that of Thomas and the medieval Aristotelians; but not as if Dr. Ottaviano were not an admirer of St. Thomas or disregards the achievements of other medieval philosophers. The Augustinian-Anselmian heritage becomes visible in a basic attitude strongly reminiscent of what some have called the " Christian rationalism " of St. Anselm. Perhaps, our author does not go as far as his great predecessor who wanted to prove by rationes necessariae some of the fundamental tenets of the Faith, quasi nihil sciatur de Christo, as he says in his Cur Deus homo. Dr. Ottaviano recognizes that speculation would be lost in the tangle of multiform problems and approaches did it not find a sure guide in:'revealed truth. But he apparently thinks that the BOOK REVIEWS 375 mysteries, at lf·ast some of them, can be demonstrated, not in the quomodo aint, but in the an aint, by speculative reason, which however needs for surety the confirmation by Revelation. The three preceding ages of human thought are those of Greek Antiquity, of the Christian Middle Ages, and of the modem time, from the Italian Renaissance to our own days. The author envisions the notion of the eternity of matter as the fundamental tenet of Greek philosophy; in virtue of this notion, Greek speculation could conceive of God only as a demiurge or a physical mover of the material universe. This mode of approaching the problems of reality and life ends in a deep pessimism as soon as matter appears as the principle of death, imperfection, finiteness, of the tragic aspect of existence. Medieval thought conceived of God, aided therein by faith, as Creator and as the metaphysical principle of being, the summum bonum and the true end of human existence. This view was, says the author, essentially anthropocentric and hence implied the notions of God's transC'endence on one hand, as origin and goal, and transcendence of the material world on the...