Logic as a Positive Science

First English Edition. 292pp. Sewn binding in brown cloth. FINE copy in FINE jacket, both exceedingly clean and sharp. 'The Italian philosopher Galvano Della Volpe was the founder of one of the major currents of Western Marxism. Although the cardinal works of other leading theorists - Lukács, Gramsci, Adorno, Althusser, Sartre - have been widely translated, Della Volpe is known in the English-speaking world primarily through the output of his followers (notably Lucio Colletti) or his own writings on aesthetics and political theory. The cornerstone of his achievement, Logic as a Positive Science, has hitherto been unavailable. The underlying theme of this work is the relationship between Marxism and science. Della Volpe is concerned to establish a scientific logic wholly free of aprioristic speculation. The pivotal step in his argument is the rehabilitation of the principle of non-contradiction in its original Aristotelian spirit, intimately connected to materialist ontology. This he sets out to accomplish through an exacting historical analysis of the epochal steps in the liberation of philosophy from idealist dogmatism: Aristotle's critique of Plato, Galileo's demolition of scholasticism in favour of experimental science, Kant's refutation of Leibnizian rationalism, and the young Marx's critique of Hegel. He concludes that Marx did for the 'human' what Galileo had done for the 'natural' sciences, and issues a powerful plea that there can be no special philosophical logic, but only one method and one logic: that of modern, experimental science. A seminal work, comparable in the scope of its implications to History and Class Consciousness, Della Volpe's Logic as a Positive Science will have a momentous impact on all future debate about Marxism and the philosophy of science.' (Publisher's Blurb from the DJ).…