Background
Spirlto, Ugo was born on September 9, 1896 in Arezzo.
Spirlto, Ugo was born on September 9, 1896 in Arezzo.
Professor of Economics, University of Pisa, 1932-1935. Professor of Philosophy, Universities of Messina, 1935-1936, Genoa 1936-1938, and Rome, from 1938.
Spi rito's philosophy has at its core the thesis of the identity of philosophy and science. The distinction between philosophy as knowledge of the universal and science as knowledge of the particular is rejected and is replaced by the notion of a process that moves from the particular to the universal and vice versa, in which the identity of philosophy and science consists, and in which the absolute unity of traditional metaphysics is construed as the ideal limit sought but never attained by science. Because of the obscurity of this final goal Spirito adopted a ‘problematist view’ of philosophy which recognizes and exposes any contradictory quest for total truth. The elaboration of this philosophy took Spirito into the notion of life as love. Rather than claiming to know the whole truth we recognize instead that each point of the universe has its own centre, what Spirito calls omnicentrism. Spirito notes the mutliplicity of philosophical views in the modern world, but notes also the unifying force of science and technology. Spirito develops his thought in two directions. On the one hand he shows the evolution of a collective, anti-individualistic society founded on the commonly agreed values of science which will transcend idiosyncratic ideologies. That pushes us towards corporativism. On the other hand there is the individuality implicit in the notion of science as ever self-critical and hypothetical.