Background
Marchesini, Giovanni was born on September 18, 1868 in Noventa Viccntina, Italy.
Marchesini, Giovanni was born on September 18, 1868 in Noventa Viccntina, Italy.
Student of Ardigo at Padua.
Biographer of Ardigo. Since 1902, Professor, University of Padua.
Marchesini’s philosophy is a record of the debates about positivism in Italy at the turn of the century. His approach to positivism led to the ‘theory of fictions' which on the one hand denies metaphysical validity to ethical ideals in order to constrain them within a positivistic interpretation of moral life and on the other recognizes their normative and pragmatic office in human action. He stressed the merely negative significance of the concept of the absolute and its merely symbolic character but in such a way as to reveal a commitment to what may be called ‘idealistic positivism’ involving the theory of fictions, which justifies the practical utility of ideals of value while asserting their lack of theoretical validity. Values are fictitious projections that help preserve us by projecting the products of the imagination on to the world. Scientific truth is a fiction in which we ideologically transform nature, as is the ethical ideal with its notion of good and duty. Calling these ‘fictions’ is not to deny their regulative force. Marchesini is a possible precursor of Vaihinger's philosophy of the ‘as if’.