1. A problem The method
utilitarianism, understood as welfarism, has been variously criticized, especially after the success of A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (1971), by neo-Kantians, rights theorists, communitarians, and liberals.
Nevertheless, it still remains the doctrine of reference of the entities, in practice, guiding the policies of the global market.
In Italy, the debate for and against utilitarianism has in fact been "imported" from the Anglo-Saxon culture, and in the last two decades has emerged as a central theme of our political philosophy (Maffettone, Veca etc.). . Such a reception is possible, however, was based on a methodological turning point in the field of social science and human affairs in our country after World War II.
The introduction in Italy, by figures such as Bobbio and Scarpelli, the great divide "Hume" between being and ought, fact and value, description and prescription, leading to the apologia Wertfreiheit of scientific research, was its raison d'etre in political events, social change and cultural policies aimed at "de-provincialize" our political science. In fact, such a methodological turn, while he tried to bring the social sciences and legal milieu in the Italian mainland and analytical, the other is come to break off relations with a specific national tradition of thought that developed in Italy since the Renaissance, through Vico, the masters of spiritualism Risorgimento (Rosmini, Gioberti, fright), until the twentieth century neo-idealism of Croce and especially Gentile.
This cultural break made me forget that at the beginning of the twentieth century precisely the masters of Italian neo-idealism had already considered and resolved in a profound way the problem of the relationship between facts and values, the central theme of the great debate on the method (Methodenstreit) occurred around the epistemological status of the Geisteswissenschaften (Dilthey, Windelband, Rickert, Weber, etc..), whose outcome is still in affect modo decisivo il nostro modo di interpretare le scienze sociali. La soluzione più originale al problema viene da Giovanni Gentile che giunge nei suoi scritti ad una identificazione di individuale e universale, essere e dover-essere, nell’atto “in atto” del Soggetto.
Rispetto alla soluzione “dualista” dei neokantiani, il “monismo” gentiliano non distingue tra un momento descrittivo di tipo “oggettivo” delle scienze naturali ed uno valutativo “soggettivo” delle scienza storiche. Cade così subito la distinzione criticista tra forma e contenuto: non c’è un apriori trascendentale, scisso dal tempo e dalla storia, né una sfera di accadimenti che non abbia itself, at all times, the character of the full ethics. Spiritualism is a Gentile, while theoretical and practical work.
formulas to express themselves through moral philosophy and familiar to us today, now performs the duties of a "meta-ethics" because of the concepts discussed in the light of the dialectic of act and fact of "concrete" and " abstract "at the same time, it is however also know a" normative ", or prescriptive, but a fully prescriptive ethics, that is rooted in the free will of the person who puts himself and follows his rule, and therefore does not distinguish right from the well, as for example, wants the school to Kant to Rawls. The actualism Gentile, recognizing the centrality of the subject as the author of the object, permanently sets the scientific construction of its historical roots, the wanted his original will.
Science is a work of defining the next positive data by gender and the specific difference ("logo abstract") which, however, rests on a dynamic and always open to change ("logo concrete"): the duality of philosophy and science, and therefore of political philosophy and political theory (or political science) - instead it will establish itself in Italy after World War II - is in its absoluteness denied by the master di Castelvetrano.
Fino all’ultima sua opera uscita postuma, Genesi e struttura della società (1946), Gentile intenderà infatti la sua filosofia politica come una pedagogia della libertà attraverso la vita civile, che si realizza pienamente solo sul piano della prassi e nelle dinamiche uniche e irripetibili della storia, al di là dei vincoli astratti di leggi scientifiche o di “valori” trascendenti.
Cercare di affrontare oggi un’analisi critica della dottrina utilitarista con l’armamentario concettuale dell’attualismo gentiliano significa quindi prendere in considerazione, da un punto di vista speculativo, un modo di ragionare che ha condizionato fortemente la filosofia and moral economy of the past two centuries, but without limiting ourselves to do so by means of categories and intellectuals who coordinates gives us the Anglo-Saxon scientific debate, recognizing, in the case, similarities or differences between the two interpretations. Such an attempt, which can obviously be only sketched here in broad terms, must of necessity go beyond an accurate reconstruction Gentile's interpretation of utilitarianism: it must become an opportunity to try to "think together" on issues that Gentile the author could not, in her teens, face in all their complexity.
With the help of philosophical categories of actualism you want to highlight not only the limits of utilitarian reasoning due to its abstractness, but as most of the current opponents of this doctrine does not reach its target because the philosophical arguments they make their start from some common methodological assumptions and accepted dogmatically same utilitarianism and, for this reason, they can not fight to the end.
2. The limits of utilitarian reasoning
Gentile's critique to utilitarianism can not, therefore, from an economic philosophy or even a doctrine of political and economic - for the truth less developed areas by the author in his work - but the plan general philosophy, that in - for the identity theory and practice - will be the same sphere of morality, namely the analysis of the structure of utilitarian reasoning as a method of deliberation.
joint processing of multiple currents of utilitarianism - from that hedonistic Bentham, to the most recent of the preference of the Act, or standard, etc.. - Is the search for "best consequences" for which "the action that the subject should choose is ... the one that has the highest expected utility."
Apart from its substantive content, that is what you mean to profit, is first of all in the structure of utilitarian reasoning that lurks what Gentile considers an abstraction from the concreteness of the act, ie the separation between the means (the action, in fact) and the end.
From the works of his maturity speculative, Giovanni Gentile put it out in the act as "pure" is not possible to separate subject and object, ego and non-ego, intellect and feeling, soul and body, will and subject of his will.
The Subject of the non-empirical is the individual or the end toward which it is a principle, however, a good or a rule that transcends it. I
empirical and end "objective" are two abstractions of one and the infinite spiritual reality, which it produces its own negation, "in its resolve attuosa unity."
utilitarian reasoning, from this point of view, is therefore interpreted in a paradigmatic way "nature" of human action because it will be facing a fine which must be adapted so rigid and not free and creative.
A pupil of Gentile, the philosopher of law Ermanno Angelo Cammarata, with some originality with respect to his teacher, talks about - about - an assessment "teleonomic" bound by the reasoning the conviction of common sense, that it would be possible to separate the unity of purpose of the conduct and behavior, the individual is represented abstractly face a variety of purposes which transcend and hierarchical order, choose one that becomes the reference goal of every action, thereby establishing a relationship between this type of purpose and action "in need" (the "norm" ortotelica).
The separation of means and ends presupposed the structure of the resolution gives a utilitarian nature teleological, consequentialist and objectivist.
utilitarian reasoning is teleological, because - as we have visto – parte dal presupposto, accettato dogmaticamente, che sia possibile scindere i mezzi (l’agire umano, o di un soggetto pubblico) dal fine da raggiungere, inteso come la massimizzazione dell’utilità, e stabilisce un vincolo rigido tra l’agire e il fine atteso, laddove il primo è subordinato al raggiungimento del secondo.
Al contempo, il teleologismo utilitarista ha la caratteristica di essere consequenzialistico: esso non è infatti un teleologismo di tipo ontologico, non si agisce, cioè, in vista della realizzazione, del compimento e della perfezione della cosa in sé, ma per ottimizzare il risultato delle nostre azioni. In tal modo, possiamo dire, il consequenzialismo instrumentalistic is also utilitarian, because it folds the means to the logic of the end: those who act in its application accepts the possibility of harm or deny a "good" if the purpose of this act promises to achieve a "good" considered the most value, or fulfilling a greater number of individuals. Again: Utilitarianism is a form of resolution to objectivist kind, and thus universal: all utilitarianism in its teleological aspect consequenzialistico and is based on the assumption that there is a unique and invariable criterion in the evaluation of what is useful ( pleasure, happiness, preference as such, etc..) valid at any place and time.
Secondo Amartya Sen e Bernard Williams, il progetto utilitarista rappresenta in effetti un espediente teorico “per affrontare problemi di riflessione morale pratica… in condizioni di tensione”, e ha come obiettivo quello di garantire l’accordo sulle decisioni collettive.
Due sono, grossomodo, i limiti teorici (e anche pratici) di una tale forma di ragionamento, tra loro, comunque, strettamente connessi: da un lato il suo riduzionismo, dall’altro la sua meccanicità. Nell’analisi del primo di questi limiti l’approccio gentiliano non è distante dalla critica delle dottrine più recenti del mondo culturale anglosassone; è invece nell’analisi del secondo che si rivela la radicalità e l’originalità del contributo attualista al giudizio sull’utilitarismo.
Il ragionamento utilitarista si dimostra riduzionista prima di tutto sul piano antropologico, ossia sul modo in cui interpreta la natura umana e il tipo di finalità somma che questa si prefigge; proprio la critica speculativa del dualismo di intelletto e sensazione, anima e corpo, permette a Gentile di contestare il modello astratto e astorico di un homo oeconomicus volto alla soddisfazione meccanica dei propri bisogni naturali e, con esso, di relativizzare il contributo di quelle scienze quantitative e matematizzate che su un tale presupposto si fondano.
Per un verso, una tale critica si avvicina a quella che alcuni filosofi ed economisti hanno sviluppato in tempi più recenti, laddove essi mettono in evidenza le “severe restrizioni sull’informazione” del modello utilitarista, che imporrebbe a chi delibera un unico fine o più finalità tra loro però non incommensurabili, mentre non terrebbe a sufficienza conto della ricchezza della natura umana e della pluralità di possibili scopi di vita, anche “irrazionali”, ossia non conformi alla logica utilitaria, e comunque variabili a seconda dei differenti contesti storici, sociali e culturali.
Il secondo aspetto del riduzionismo utilitarista riguarda la concezione dell’individuo nel suo rapporto con la società e con lo stato. E 'known as utilitarianism means the collective well-being as an expression of the sum or average of individual interests, so that a collective well-being can also be sought when, increasing as a whole, makes some poor and dissatisfied. At this point we are rightly focused criticism of the theorists of rights and a just society (Rawls, Dworkin, etc...)
But what even they call into question the human nature of utilitarianism is understood in an atomistic conception of society and derives from that. That is not enough to switch between Bentham and Kant. We have to rethink more radically the nature of man in social life.
From this perspective may be shedding new light on the much-discussed concepts of Gentile identity of the individual and the state and society in inner homine.
Man is not a self-sufficient being, already accomplished in himself, that only later turns to the other, but it is thought from the outset in its original social and complex web of relationships with others who enhance creativity and realize spirituality: "After all there is ego We, the community ... that is the basis of his spiritual existence," says Gentile.
This conception of the individual, società e dello stato obbliga ad un ripensamento non solo delle finalità, ma anche del ruolo e dell’autonomia dei soggetti portatori delle decisioni collettive. In effetti, l’utilitarismo, riducendo il bene collettivo alla semplice somma o media dei beni individuali, nega – di fatto – autonomia e dignità agli agenti portatori di specifiche finalità pubbliche e realizzatori di quei servizi che sono irriducibili all’immediato al riscontro economico delle logiche welfaristiche.
3. Immoralità dell’utilitarismo
Il secondo fondamentale limite del ragionamento utilitaristico, nell’ottica gentiliana, è la sua natura meccanica, impersonale. Qui il contributo actualistic the debate is more original, because the trial utilitarianism shows the full implications of his moral character. As mentioned, the spiritualism of Gentile leads to a philosophy of absolute freedom. If it is the party that puts the object, you can not think of a useful "objective", which exists separately from those who believes that "the utility is not in the thing ... independent of the subject prior to the report, nor in the thing anyway placed outside the relationship, but in the thing because that is enjoyed and absorbed in his relationship with the person who will profit. " What is useful, therefore, is not "tyranny" di fronte all’uomo, il quale vi si deve adeguare obbligatoriamente, ma esso è parte del mondo, delle trame di significati creati dallo stesso uomo.
Il ragionamento utilitaristico, secondo Gentile, in quanto dogmatico nella sua soluzione, è proprio addirittura di una dimensione “subumana”. La libertà è autenticamente morale solo quando, di fronte ad ogni dato fattuale ed empirico, cerca di superarlo e di farlo proprio, ripensandolo e rivivendolo in modo originale e irripetibile. Compito dell’uomo, secondo il filosofo di Castelvetrano, è infatti quello di eticizzare continuamente la natura. Ma se non è separabile l’azione utilitaria dall’utile in sé, il half from the end, then it means that "pleasure is the positivity of the spiritual, every pleasure is sought outside of the virtuous, as his just reward, can not be true pleasure but a pleasure to vacuum and accidental, the result of an agency that intervenes from the outside and at odds with the nature of the mind repugnant to any extrinsic destructive interference of its inherent freedom. "
The civil community and the state, as the size of the full realization of the individual, then it must also represent the highest place of the expression of freedom and morality. Even here, not enough to oppose the mechanistic utilitarian referring to a concept such as Kant thinks that the state as the sphere of regulation and protection of individual freedom and formal heteronomous thumb.
Liberalism of Giovanni Gentile stands out clearly from the individualistic dominant today precisely because it is centered on a concept of ethics and social and not only "negative" of freedom, the state or any other party implementer of public purpose can not be crushed on the determinism of utilitarian decisions. It must be the same creator of new and wider spaces of thought and action which may be based on the logic of profit. From such a subject we can not just wait ratification law of a deliberation that precedes it. Gentile writes in Genesis and structure of society that utilitarianism must be their state of nature "superior", that is based on the "duty" of freedom and spirit.
policy can not adapt to the mechanical laws of economics: it is characterized by "changing needs" and, if necessary, can not exclude, among its choices, even that of an economy uneconomic. Otherwise, if society and public sphere to become the dominant forms of natural and mechanical reasoning, the entire civilian life would lose its strength and the ideal their creativity, and walked to an inexorable decline.
John Franks
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