PASTORE, VALENTINO ANNIBALE
(1868–1956)

Valentino Annibale Pastore, an Italian philosopher and logician, was born at Orbassano (Teramo), Italy. He educated himself in literary studies, and then obtained a degree in letters from the University of Turin, under Arturo Graf, with a thesis on La vita delle forme letterarie (The life of literary forms), which was published at Turin in 1892. Pastore then turned to philosophy and was influenced by Hegelianism through the teachings of Pasquale d'Ercole. At the same time he was influenced by such scientists as Friedrich Kiesow, A. Garbasso, and Giuseppe Peano. In 1903 he published in Turin his thesis in philosophy, Sopra le teorie della scienza: logica, matematica, fisica (On the theories of science: logic, mathematics, physics). In 1911 he began teaching theoretical philosophy at Turin, where he was full professor from 1921 until 1939 and where he instituted a laboratory of experimental logic.

Pastore's thesis was published in the same year in which Benedetto Croce's La critica appeared and in which irrationalism burst out in Italy in diverse forms—as a revolt against positivism, as a rebirth of idealism, as an expression of the "bankruptcy of science." Having been educated in an environment in which Hegelianism was not ignored but was linked with the point of view of classical positivism, Pastore became aware of the impossibility of separating the sciences (mathematical and natural) from philosophy, or of substituting the sciences for philosophy. In the first case, if philosophy were severed from the conditions that render it possible and nourish it, it would become empty and would wither; in the second case, the sciences themselves would eventually lose consciousness of their relationships, their fundamental rationale, and their methods and goals. Pastore therefore sought to assess the meaning of scientific knowledge and of its logical procedures.

Turning his attention to logical problems in particular, Pastore was at first drawn toward Bertrand Russell's thesis of the identity of logic and mathematics, as is shown in Logica formale e dedotta dalla considerazione dei modelli meccanici (Formal logic deduced by the consideration of mechanical models; Turin, 1906) and Sillogismo e proporzione (Syllogism and proportion; Turin, 1910). His principal work of this period, Il problema della causalità, con particolare riguardo alla teoria del metodo sperimentale (The problem of causality, with particular attention to the theory of experimental method; 2 vols., Turin, 1921), which deals with causality, shows his systematic effort to single out the mutual relationship between scientific investigation and philosophical research. Pastore examined three aspects of causality—experience, science, and philosophy—and distinguished and analyzed the idea of cause, the concept of the causal relation, and the principle of causality.

After 1922, Pastore's interests were still focused on scientific knowledge, but he clarified his conception of philosophy as the study of "pure thought," as "not of that which is common to all particular systems, by being inherent in each one, but of that which results from all the particular systems, even though not being inherent in each one." From this conception he evolved his idea of a "general logic" whose basis lies "outside of particular logical systems." Around 1936, assisted by Ludovico Geymonat, he investigated the "logic of strengthening" as a "theory of primal systems," that is, as a search for "the process of construction of the most elementary forms of thinking and of their relationships," by means of a distinction between logic as logicality (general presystematic logic) and logic as a particular system, joining, as he himself said, "the deduction of the discourse (D ) with the logical intuition of the universe (U )." Pastore did not seek to reach a demonstration of intuitive principles, nor to propose an ontological intuition, but rather to establish the laws of the relationship between D and U, between the analysis of the discourse and a synthetic vision of the universe.

In the final phase of his work Pastore's concern with the sense of mystery became marked ("logic has always two allies at its side: sadness and mystery"). In the light of this concern he examined and discussed both the existentialist movements and the historical materialism of Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin.

See also Croce, Benedetto; Experience; Hegelianism; Irrationalism; Lenin, Vladimir Il'ich; Logic Machines; Marx, Karl; Peano, Giuseppe; Positivism; Russell, Bertrand Arthur William.

Bibliography

Additional works by Pastore are Il solipsismo (Turin, 1923); La logica del potenziamento (Naples, 1936); Logica sperimentale (Naples, 1939); L'acrisia di Kant (Padua: CEDAM, 1940); "Il mio pensiero filosofico," in Filosofi italiani contemporanei, edited by M. F. Sciacca (Como, 1944), pp. 333–349; La filosofia di Lenin (Milan: G. Bolla, 1946); and La volontà dell'assurdo. Storia e crisi dell'esistenzialismo (Milan: G. Bolla, 1948).

Works on Pastore are Carmelo Ottaviano, "La 'logica del potenziamento' della scuola di Torino," in Logos 17 (1934): 277–289; Francesco Crestano, "Intorno alla logica del potenziamento e alla logica dei comportamenti," in Archivio di filosofia, 5 (1935): 322–331 (and in Idee e concetti, Milan, 1939); and Filippo Selvaggi, Dalla filosofia alla tecnica: La logica del potenziamento (Rome: Apud aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, 1947), with bibliography.

Eugenio Garin (1967)

Translated by Robert M. Connolly