Immanenza o trascendenza? La grande alternativa della metafisica

Philosophical wonder is not aroused by reality as such, rather it is aroused by that kind of reality which is the object of our immediate experience. Such a fragmented and changeable reality appears to be imbued with negativeness and this in itself is a challenge to our reason, for it seems that negativeness is able to limit positiveness provided that it is itself something positive, against the law of non-contradiction. From all this it follows that immediate experience cannot give us absolute or primary reality. But immanentism does not face this problem in the same way as classical metaphysical does: the latter subordinates empirical reality to a pure positive Reality beyond experience, while the former attempts to read experience in such a way as to be entitled to infer that the negativeness which it contains is only a seeming one. This is an undoubtedly noteworthy attempt which deserves to be defended against some over-estimated objections raised by the upholders of the opposite trend. After all, however, it is an unsuccessful attempt, because a humanly satisfactory solution of the metaphysical problem can only be brought about by a philosophical trend that supports an ontological, and not merely epistemological, overcoming of empirical givenness.