The method of philosophy

1. The Commitment of the Philosopher

Many times I have asked myself about what the fundamental commitment of a philosopher consists in; I mean, that commitment that constitutes his point of honor, his raison d'étre as a philosopher. The answer may seem facile: the commitment is to "Truth." But aside from the question of Pilate, which immediately comes to mind, and without indulging too much in facile skeptical considerations, I shall say that the notion of truth is too noble, too high and too distant to be the terminal of a commitment of effective work like that of the philosophic inquirer whose perspective is limited, as is the perspective of every other inquirer, by a set of conditions that act as both stimulants and impediments to his activity. The philosopher's commitment must find its terminal within this limited perspective to be effective and persuasive; otherwise by its generic nature he risks not being committed to anything, since in the name of Truth, everything can be admitted or permitted. The day-by-day limited but effective and compelling feature of philosophic commitment can never be sufficiently insisted upon. Permit me to indicate its importance with an apologue.
Let us imagine that in a group of people who live by bartering, there is a man who possesses a great quantity of gold. Let us imagine that this man preaches to the others that gold is the only wealth and that he is the only rich, intelligent and wise person and looks with contempt upon the others who wear themselves out in their wretched bartering. It is clear that this man will not only be more annoying than helpful to the others; he will also be destined to die of hunger, because his gold is incapable of being exchanged for usable goods or services.
But, let us suppose that instead of preaching that gold is the only wealth, this man mixes with the others, participates in their work and their exchanges and shows how the use of gold as money can facilitate and better the economic relations of his community. In this second case he will be committed, not to the thing he believed to be and was for him the truth, but to something more limited yet more effective - a certain method of exchange - and he will be committed to it by his daily activity, by joining other men in a common labor. This is the apologue. Now I do not say that philosophers have often been comparable to the fictitious personage who preaches the truth that gold is the only wealth to a community that lives by bartering. I only say that this has been and is a temptation to the philosopher - a temptation of the past and of the present which he does better to avoid, taking instead the more modest but more effective way of the one who, knowing well that he lives with and among others, limits himself to proposing a new technique of living, that is, some new method of thinking, of acting and feeling (however these words are meant) - not in the absolute sense of new, but as regards the situation he seeks to correct. Consideration of this kind convince us that we should focus our attention on the techniques, that is, upon the methods of inquiry, rather than on the "truth". A proposal of truth can be taken or left; a method, in order to be judged, should be actively put to thc test by someone and may be corrected or improved. It has sometimes happened in the course of the history of philosophy that a philosopher had to abjure his "truth" in the name of another "truth." It has also happened that the philosopher refused and had to pay the consequences. But if instead of having another "truth" imposed on him, he is shown that the method be has used does not bring the result that he believes is truth or that the method itself must, in some way, be rectified, the philosopher should have no objection, in principle, to abandoning his "truth". And this is what in reality any philosopher has done, more or less, in the course of his lifetime, that is, change or correct his ideas under the influence of self-criticism or the criticism of others or because of circumstances or facts of any nature whatever. This observation demonstrates the nature of the philosophic commitment, and generally of the commitment to any rational inquiry. The tragedy of Galileo would not have occurred if he could have been convinced, on the basis of the methods that he held valid for inquiry, that the Copernican theory was false. The "commitment to truth" is, in every case, the commitment to a specific method of inquiry.

2. The General Methodological Principle

The preceding considerations and their conclusion can be expressed in another way by saying that the proposal of something as "truth" implies in each case the explicit or implicit proposal of a method in virtue of which the "truth" proposed can be verified or checked. I hold that this rule is of the greatest importance for science, just as it is for philosophy and, in general, for every type, form or kind of rational inquiry. I do not mean here that there is or can be a single method for all the sciences and disciplines, nor do I assume the contrary thesis of tbc irreducible diversity of the methods. For the moment let us leave this problem in abeyance. Nor may I stop to argue the proposed rule with regard to science; this rule, however, can easily be shown, I believe, to have been enforced, from Galileo to the present, with ever greater rigor. I simply intend to affirm that if one speaks of "truth" in a sense different from an imposition of authority or from personal gratuitous belief, he constantly assumes that there is a method by which anyone can, in some way or degree, attest or cheek the truth itself. A method is not necessarily a complex series of operations and calculations guided by explicit rules. But it always is an operation, even if very simple or completely entrusted to an organic structure; and it is a repeatable operation. If I say, for example, "The lamp is on the table," asserting this statement as a truth, I assume that whoever is in posssession of normal eyesight can attest to the proposition in question, and can eventually check it by means of touch. We may admit, naturally, that there exist "self-evident truths", that is, truths which are judged such by a glance or that turn out to be such by the simple arrangement of the words. But in this case we simply have recourse to a particular method, that of self-evidence, which, as we know from Descartes on, is certainly not the easiest to utilize, and entails many logical problems. And we cannot ignore that many rationalist philosophies, past and present, employ deduction to confer value on their affirmations; but deduction is, in each case, a methodic procedure in which the single propositions acquire the value of truth only in virtue of the order in which they are derived from one another. Whether the method is obvious, easy and connected with the dynamism of perception (though modern psychology demonstrates the structural complexity of this dynamism), or whether it is difficult to employ and is composed of operations that can be followed only by those who have special competence and training, the rule that the assertion of a truth, in any field and at any level of rational inquiry, implies the use of an adequate method, that is, of a technique of confirmation and of testing, remains constant.
The words "technique of confirmation and of testing" need some clarification. They obviously do not refer to techniques that yield irrefutable proofs or apodictic demonstrations, although they include these techniques as limited or privileged cases that can be found in particular fields of rational inquiry. Nor do they refer exclusively to empirical verification as it is understood by the empiricist tradition (whose appeal is to the sense data emerging from experience) or by science. They must be taken in a more extended and comprehensive sense so as to include the appeal to every type or kind of clue, indication, sign, testimony proof, and demonstration with the sole restriction that this appeal be, in the right circumstances, re- peatable, that is, testable. The strict and rigorous significance of the techniques of verification, confirmation and testing which are found in the sphere of specific disciplincs that have reached a high degree of scientific maturity, is not excluded from the expression I have used but obviously includes only tiny zones of the entire area covered by that expression. The proposed rule is assumed to be valid by every statement, even the most banal, that claims to assert any truth. The innumerable statements which make up our ordinary discourse about situations or matters of any kind, importanti less important or unimportant, are always supported by the possibility of recourse to techniques of confirmation, simple or primitive as they may be but nonetheless fairly adequate.
Such techniques are often simple and primitive only at first glance, for an accurate analysis may uncover in them a rich complexity of operations, made quick and easy only by the prevailing biological, psychological and sociological structures. "Where Peter?" "He's in the next room. I saw him a moment ago". This means that anyone could have seen him in the next rooms a moment ago - it is an appeal to a tecnique of testimony. We all, however, and especially jurists and historians, know what difficult problems can arise from the use of this technique. The proposed rule, nevertheless, is of the greatest generality because is conneeted to any assertion of which one may humanly wish to give an account. There are assertions, undoubtedly, of which one cannot and will not humanly give an account; but these fall outside of the domain of philosophy and rational inquiry in general. Yet, it is true that when these assertions need to be justified and defended in some way or their claims or rights to validity propounded, one merely falls back on the rule expounded and appeals to one or another of the techniques of confirmation or testing which the rule generally designates.

3. The Diversity and Connections between the Methods

Because of its generality the proposed rule can be called a principle, and if there are no objections I will call it the general methodological principle. This principle does not permit, at first glance, any discrimination between philosophie. Given the form in which I have expressed and illustrated it, it can be shown rather easily that any philosophy (excluding, however, the extravagant ideas of the dilettantes) satisfies, in some way and degree, the principle itself. Undoubtedly, philosophies are often in the most complete disagreement concerning the methodological technique suitable for giving philosophic statements their validity. In this, philosophies differentiate themselves from the scientific disciplines, wherein the disagreement on this point is reduced to a minimum. But this disagreement does not exclude the fact that philosophies satisfy the requirement contained in the methodological principle, each in its own way.
This principle, therefore, does not permit the negative criticism of a philosophy by means of a technique of confirmation and testing which it has not implicity or explicity admitted or has altogether denied. Hegel cannot be reproved for not basing his assertions on the technique of confirmation and testing utilized by Locke or vice versa. This might be done if the unity of philosophic method could be established once and for all; but it is clear that every attempt of this kind (the history of philosophy is full of such attempts) only multiplies the methods themselves. This happens because the very notion of "unity of mothod" is a philosophy, in fact a metaphysic. That every assertion, whatever field it belongs to, must make reference to some suitable method of confirmation and testing, is a reasonable demand from which no philosophy in fact escapes. But that all the assertions pertaining to all possible fields and therefore also to all philosophies can and should have recourse to a single method, is a completely different demand which cannot find, in its turn, methodological justification and can be, therefore, only the postulate of a particular philosophy. The different logical import of the words that I have underlined in the two preceding sentences relieves me of any further illustration of this point.
The rejection of the notion of a "unity of method" in the domain of philosophy does not imply, however, an automatic recognition of the plurality, heterogeneity and unrelatability of the methods utilized and proposed by various philosophies. This thesis, in effect, being totalitarian like its simmetrical opposite, is regarded, exactly like the other, as not susceptible of an adequate justification but only susceptible of being postulated by a particular philosophy. Fortunately, in similar circumstances, logicians elaborated an extremely fruitful notion which permits one to prescind completely from the notions of total unity and radical plurality. The notion is that of a "family of concepts". The members of a same family are not stamped with a single, common trait but by many traits or features, each of which is possessed by only a few members. But the set of those features constitutes an ensemble of multiple relations that in some way stamp the family group. Thus, for example, not all will have the same nose or the same color hair or eyes, the same way of walking, of carrying themselves, etc., but these and other resemblances always found in the group will make it easily recognizable as a family group. The notion is fruitful because even if it were possible to find among all the members of a family the same sort of resemblance, the color of the eyes or hair for example, this resemblance alone should not be hypostatized to define the family group because to do so would be to exclude other resemblances which should be sought and brought to light.
Numbers, for example, are considered today as a family of concepts, and the terms "arithmetic," "geometry," "calculus," etc., can also be understood as a family of concepts. Analogously, we can also speak within the field of philosophy and in respect to the problem which interests us here, of "families of methods" and we can seek, inside each family, and even between families, various relations of concordance and discordance, of dependence and rhetorical interdependence, etc. We should never presume to have exhausted, with the ascertainment of only one feature, the familial resemblance of the methods under consideration, but remain always committed to the inquiry of possible relations in every direction and at every level.

4. The Rectifiability of Methods as a Criterion

We have said that the general methodological principle does not permit, at least at first glance, any discrimination among philosophies. While maintaining the validity of this assertion within the limits established in the preceding section, we can now reconsider it to see if that principle contains at least some indication that emphasizes the importance of some particular methodological technique. It is clear that, if it were so, this technique would recommend itself in a special way to our attention and that we would be authorized to expect less disputable and more objective results from its use. I believe that some indication of this kind can be obtained from the principle in question, if we begin with the presumption, strongly supported by facts, that no method can be called perfect and unmodifiable (perfect because unmodifiable, or unmodifiable because perfect), and that one of the results of the use of a method must be that of making the method itself more supple and, at the same time, more precise, more expansive in its application and more effective as an instrument of testing the results which it permits. More generally, we might say that the commitment to a given method of inquiry is, also, the commitment to bring to this method the modifications that its use eventually demands; and these two commitments are, in reality, a single commitment since the commitment to a method means nothing but a commitment to its effective use and the effective use may continually require some change in the method used.
If a method, in the field of inquiries where it is utilized, meets difficulties due to elements, facts, and conditions arising in this field, its use cannot be continued and the commitment to utilize it, therefore, becomes nullified, unless the method itself is suitably modified in such a way that it can face the difficulties that arise. It may be that the philosopher or philosophers committed to the use of this method prefer to ignore the difficulties that it encounters rather than to suitably modify it and, therefore, to neglect the elements, facts or conditions that cause the difficulties. This subterfuge, however, though rather frequent, cannot be considered as a reasonable alternative and can hardly be proposed as a rule in the realm of philosophic methodology. All that can be said here is that there are philosophies which, through the requirements of their development, in fact achieve the modification of their method without intending or foreseeing this modification in advance. And there are other philosophies which admit, in principle, the modifiability of their methods and include in them, therefore, the possibility (which they try to guarantee) of their self-correction. To take a clearly significant example, I would say that Hegel's Philosophy is of the first type; although Hegel modified his method, from the Phänomenologie des Geistes to the Encyklopädie, and in the latter in passing from the first to the last categories of logic and from the logic to the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of the spirit, the possibility of correction is not part of the method itself as Hegel intended and described it. On the other band, the so-called empiricist philosophies may be characterized by their attempt to incorporate within their very method the possibility of self-correction.
The possibility of self-correction defines, moreover, the method of the scientific disciplines, and this establishes the kinship, or at least the affinity and the sympathy, between empiricism and science. The method of experimental observation, for example, which the natural sciences use, includes an unlimited number of techniques each of which repeatedly permits the checking and questioning of its own results. Each of these techniques, in turn, can be rechecked and questioned so as to try to guarantee, in any direction or on any level, the possibility of correction. It can be said, then, that the method of experimental observation guarantees the possibility of its own self-correction.
We can, at this point, take account of the important difference that exists between the factual rectification of a method (a fate which none of the known methods has escaped) and the possibility of the rectification enforced as the requirement of the method. The first is the surreptitious modification of the preposed method. It is made by chance and arbitrarily and always ends, in some measure, in contradicting the method. The second, instead, not only allows, but requires the eventual correction of the method and organizes the method itself for the purpose ot this correction. Only this second way makes possible an authentic methodological commitment, that is, a commitment which does not find itself constantly faced with the alternative either of contradiction or of impotence in operating in the very field for which it was proposed. We can thus add something to the general methodological principle by saying that ít not only commits one to the use of techniques of confirmation and testing, but requires, as a rule, that these techniques be susceptible to self-rectification.

5. Methodological Empiricism

I have just stated the reasons for my sympathy for the empiristic direction of philosophizing. For the same reasons, empiricism should not be understood as a theory about the origin of cognition or as the claim of reducing cognition to sense data or elements, but rather as a method or, better still, a methodological requirement. The problem of the origin of cognition may be declared fictitious; the possibility of reducing cognition itself to sense data or elements can be rejected as chimerical; nevertheless, the requirement foreseen by empiricism remains valid. Empiricism can be effectively characterized only by the explicit recognition (which is repeatedly found in its historical forms) that every assertion must be supported by a technique of confirmation and of testing and that this technique must be susceptible to self-rectification. In other words, what defines the empirical orientation in philosophy is not a particular philosophic thesis or a complex or system of specific results, but the explicit recognition of the general methodological principle and, therefore, the disposition to utilize, without prejudicing objections, every technical instrument which satisfies that principle and every result that can be confirmed or tested by one of these instruments.
Hence derives the attitude that empiricism assumes in its relations with science, by which I mean not only the natural sciences, but also the social, philological and historical disciplines insofar as they have their own techniques of confirmation and testing. The empirical attitude includes the recognition of the validity of science and employs its techniques and its results, precisely and only in the measure in which every science succeeds in effectively organizing these techniques and thus adequately guaranteeing its results. It cannot go beyond science in the sense of attributing to scientific techniques and results a greater value than that which can be acknowledged to them on the basis of the efficacy of the techniques and, therefore, to the degree of certainty offered by the results. It can never become scientism, that is, the exaltation and dogmatization of science beyond the limits of the validity that its techniques impose, for it is precisely in the limits and the rectifiability of these techniques that empiricism is interested. Science cannot be, for the empirical orientation, a myth to be displayed and exalted. In science, rather in the various sciences (since a unique and total science does not exist), empiricism sees only more or less organized and coherent sets of techniques that are more or less efficacious for guaranteeing the validity of certain acquisitions and for putting continually to the test those various acquisitions and the techniques by which they were procured. It is to this attitude that the operative sense of the limits of the sciences, the imperfections of the techniques, and the non-dogmatic character of the results are connected.
On this last matter w should linger a moment. It is not only empiricism which utilizes the results of scientific inquiries. Any philosophy, even the most alien to empiricism (consider Hegel's, for example) utilizes or tries to include within itself a certain sum of these results, either by assuming them directly from the sciences of the time or by receiving them from the philosophical tradition and therefore accepting them in the form that this tradition has elaborated. This second case is more frequent than the first and very often takes the form of the unwitting translation of antiquated scientifle results into the "absolute truths" of philosophic nature. But it is not the acceptance of the results of science that is important for correct philosophizing. What is important rather is the non-dogmatization of these results -something made possible only by considering those results in the context in which they were obtained, that is, in relation to the techniques that have produced them and to the possibilities of modifying the results themselves. It is not that they are "provisional" results that necessarily have value only at the moment in which they were attained. We cannot reject the fact that many or at least some results of science may be "definitive" in the sense that they can suecced in victoriously passing the test of techniques that are in a continuous process of self- rectification. What must be rejected is the dogmatic stiffening of these results considered outside of their context, and of the limits of validity permitted by the testing operations, and their use as pieces of raw material for constructions of diverse nature to whose solidity they can contribute nothing.
The campaign carried on against "metaphysics" so frequent in the empiricist tradition is not only an argument against methods that refuse to remain open to testing (an argument connected to the very methodological commitment of empiricism), but is also an argument against unwitting scientism, which does not ignore science (or at least science of the past) but arbitrarily uses its results without taking into account the intrinsic procedures that guarantee them to some degree.
That philosophy can and should be disposed to utilize the technical instruments and the results of the sciences is something that implies neither the passivity of philosophy with respect to science nor the reduction of the domain of philosophy to the domain of science. It does not imply passivity because the utilization of the sciences (within the limits proposed) on the part of philosophy is not only in the interest of philosophy, but also in the interest of the sciences. Today with ever greater urgency and frequency the sciences (especially those more richly developed) need the active intervention of philosophy not only on methodological questions, but also on certain levels of their conceptualization and generalization (as, for example, in the formulation of the "general theories") and for the demarcation of certain zones in which various disciplines overlap. Precisely on account of their advanced specialization, certain disciplines find themselves lacking a common ground to treat problems that arise in those zones. Philosophy's utilization of the techniques and results of the sciences does not imply the reduction of the domain of philosophy to that of science - both for the reason just stated and because no science nor complex of sciences can furnish a reasonable motive for this reduction, nor can philosophy ever practically furnish it. Philosophy cannot set up for itself, a priori, prohibited zones, except through the recognized impossibility of penetrating into these zones in the light of the precautions prescribed by the general methodological principle.

6. Empiricism and the Human World

Now, this principle has not yet indicated a method but only a family of methods or, in other words, certain general and formal features of the methods that can be chosen and employed by an open philosophic inquiry. Up to this point, therefore, it does not follow that this principle can be assumed as the foundation of an exclusive choice, that is, of a choice which assumes a particular technique of inquiry to the exclusion of all the others. Let it be understood that I do not hold this situation to be harmful for philosophy; for if the methodological principle expresses the fundamental commitment of the philosopher, it would be strange that it commit him to the artificial impoverishment of the domain of philosophy by forbidding him, with the prohibition of all methods except one, access to regions where other methods would be effective; or in other words, that it commit him to reduce philosophy from the fruitful dialogue that it has been through centuries to a sorry monologue.
But, if this is true, it is also true, for the same reason, that every philosopher must in good faith make the choice of the method that yields him the most fruitful results, and the best choice here is that of method chosen that does not tend to exclude all others, but shows itself converging with, or at least compatible with, the others. Now, this compatibility and convergence can be posed as a problem and thus directed toward realization only if we succeed in delineating a common perspective wherein different techniques can meet and demonstrate their consonance and dissonance as well as the degree of their respective efficacy. Is it possible that the methodological principle of which I have spoken gives us some indication concerning this perspective?
The methodological principle commits me as a philosopher (and also as a non-philosopher) to give a human account of my assertions, that is, to give an account to other men (and to myself insofar as I do not want to make myself the victim of my own errors, illusions, and fallacies) by means of procedures that others (or I myself if I want to diminish the above dangers) can understand and employ with a certain efficacy. It places me, from the very beginning, within the perspective of intersubjectivity. What it negatively requires from me as a philosopher is that I renounce the claim of being the all-seeing eye of the world or the supervisor, would not have to give anyone an account of the truth that be asserts or discloses. By committing me to give an account to others, this principle commits me to consider myself constantly in relation to others, and, therefore, to consider the disparate, different and conflicting situations in which I, like any other man, find myself or can find myself.
At this point we take account of a second characteristic of the empirical orientation. This orientation which, in its various directions, employs an entire "family" of methods, not only prescribes the use of rectifiable instruments of inquiry, but likewise directs the employment of these instruments in the human world. The two things are connected and we can express them in a single formula by saying that empiricism is the attempt to explore, with a human eye, the human world.
This is why analysis has always been the fundamental methodological instrument of empiricism, even if it has been understood and practiced (and continues to be so) in different ways. Precisely on the strength of its methodological commitment, empiricism paves the way for the analysis of human situations-not of man in general, in his isolated and eternal essence, but of man in this or that situation, in the actual possibilities (which are always limited and not always victorious) that this or that situation permits him. Empiricism has also insisted on the limits of man. These limits belong to man from the natural and historico-social conditions that define his situation in the world. "Limit" indeed means "conditionality"; and the analysis of human situations is, in this frame-work, the analysis of the conditions that delimit - that is, define and at the same time limit - the effective possibilities available to man in a more or less important context of testable events.
The expression "human world", wich I have employed to indicate the proper object of the techniques of investigation that can (in the meaning described above) be called "empirical", needs some clarification. In the first place, the word "world" is not taken here as "an absolute totality" but as simply the more or less indeterminate sphere of convergence, of encounter or even of the eventual conflict of a family of techniques of inquiry. A particular technique, if it can be determined precisely enough, delimits a field of possible inquiries whose radius is more or less extended according to the scope of the technique itself (e.g., the field of physics can be defined in relation to the scope of the two fundamental instruments of this science: the ruler and the clock). The notion of "world" in its non dogmatic use (I call "dogmatic" that which has undergone the criticism of Kant) designates precisely a totality of fields defined by techniques that are relatively compatible and in some measure converging. Thus, we can speak of the "natural world" as the totality of fields covered by the natural sciences to the degree in which their techniques are relatively compatible and converging, or of the "historical world" as the totality of fields in which the techniques of historiographic investigation can be employed, etc.
The use of the notion of "world" in this restricted and specific sense implies another important corollary: man as a "subject" that is, as an initiator of inquiry and forger of its tools, is already, by this very fact, in the world, inasmuch as his initiative falls from the beginning under the control of those same conditions that the inquiry is directed to determining. This is to say, for example, that the study of physics cannot be carried on by placing oneself outside of the conditions that limit the use of the instruments of physics, (Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy); or that historiography cannot be done by placing oneself outside of history, that is, outside of those conditions that the same historiographic inquiry tries to determine. The adjective "human," which I have employed in the before-mentioned expression, does not indicate the inclusion nature of the world in man or the anthropomorphic nature of the world itself, but just this relationship of reciprocal conditioning between the instruments and the field of investigation, a relationship through which the field of investigation shapes itself as a "world" at the same time that the operations of investigation pursue extended and perfectable successes.

7. Empiricism in Contemporary Philosophy

We have said that analysis is the method par excellence of empirically oriented philosophies but that analysis can assume different shapes and forms. Because a cataloguing, and an exhaustive critique of these modes and forms, must, if we wish to remain within the empirical perspective, be declared chimerical, I shall limit myself to citing the forms that analysis has assumed in contemporary philosophy.
Herein the reference to a world as a perspective of specific inquiries assumes three forms: the appeal to experienee; the appeal to ordinary language; the appeal to existence.
1. The appeal to experienee proper to pragmatism is the appeal to the use of the experimental method and to the wealth and variety of human situations which require the continuous extension and rectification of the method itself. Pragmatism views the experimental method, above all, as the instrument suited to give coherence, order and harmony to human situations. It is, therefore, the instrument of action par excellence inasmuch as it is destined to modify these situations. The weakness of pragmatism resides in presuming the unity of method, in assuming the method of some disciplines as the only one, and in reducing every type or form of human action, therefore, to the exercise of this method.
2. The appeal to ordinary language, proper to logical empiricism, is the appeal to the use of the analysis of current language for the clarification of human situations. The analysis here start from the structures of a deteterminate language to arrive at the categories, that is, at the linguistic uses of ordinary language which it is presumed express ordinary and recurrent situations and are, therefore, in a position to eliminate confusion and fictitious problems and to achieve a critical clarification of the situations themselves. No prejudicial objection can be posed to this type of analysis, which takes account of the fact that man is, par excellence, a speaking animal and that all the techniques of confirmation and testing in his possession are conditioned in general by language and particular by determinate linguistic usages. It should be observed, however, that this technique of analysis cannot be taken to be exclusive of all the others and alone exhaustive of the task of philosophy. I shall return to this point in a moment.
3.The appeal to existence made by existentialism the appeal to the analysis of human situations considered as "fundamental" or "essential" or "decisive" or as "limit-situations"; that is, the more ordinary and recurrent human situations, which are less prone to be evaded or forgotten-those, for example, in which man has needs, or in which he must struggle, or must die, or must live with others. The analysis of these situations is accomplished by contemporary existentialism, although in different accents, with the constant appeal to ordinary and scientific language corrected or complemented with elements drawn from traditional philosophical language or devised and proposed ad hoc. Although the appeal to "existence" proceeds analogically to the appeal to experience, as the memento to test the results and procedures of existential analysis, this analysis leads, nevertheless, to the danger of claiming that its results yield the "essential" and therefore necessary structures of human situations such that once they are illuminated, it becomes useless to retest them or to discuss them further. The danger of this type of analysis is, in other words, metaphysical rigidity, that is, the surreptitious transformation of analytic acquisitions into the old-hat "eternal truths".
These three analytic procedures are not necessarily mutually exclusive and, if we whis to be faithful to the fundamental methodological commitment, we can and must avoid their every distortion which leads to such an exclusive rigidity. More precisely, what the methodological rule requires is that the particular problem that the philosopher is facing and that he is interested in investigating not be artificially impoverished and reduced to only one of its aspects, the one that the preferred analytic technique can deal with. Let us consider, for example, the case of the problem of morality understood as the problem of the features and relations of events called "moral" or, if one prefers, of the function that such events have in man's private and public life. Understood in this sense that is, within the empirical perspective, the moral problem obviously cannot be met with a panegyric on morals and with the claim of establishing hierarchies of "absolute" values which furnish necessary criteria of evaluation. It will be a question rather of comprehending the moral events, that is, of clarifying their significance and perceiving, therefore, what the function is, in ordinary and recurrent human situations, of that which is called "moral." From this point of view, the moral problem will present various aspects. It will be:
(a) The problem of the meanings of the moral expressions in current language, that is, of the rules of usage of the moral propositions in this language.
(b) The problem of the logical structure of the propositions called moral, or, at least, in generali of prescriptive propositions.
(c) The problem of the disparity of moral evaluations and therefore of the disparity of usage of mora propositions in human groups on the same level or at different levels of development-a problem to be considered on the basis sociological observations.
(d) The problems of the relations between morality and professional techniques, between morality and economics, between morality and law, between morality and law, between morality and religion, etc.
It is clear that each of these problems or group of problems requires the operation of special techniques of inquiry and therefore the collaboration of inquirers of different background. But it is also clear that none of these problems, taken by itself, is the philosophic problem of morality, as described above, that is, the problem of the features and the functions of moral life. This problem is present in each and every one of the problems enunciated above, but it is not reducible to any of them. It resides, rather, in the zone of encounter, and eventually of conflict, between the techniques suited to face the before-mentioned problems. It is not capable of being met, in its turn, in its relative entirety, except on the basis of an ad hoc hypothesis of philosophic nature which the particular techniques called upon can confirm or deny.
This example, which I have not chosen at random, since I too am now engaged in such an inquiry, can serve at the same time as an illustration and as a test of the methodological principle that I have proposed in this paper.

From: N. Abbagnano, Critical Existentialism, translated and edited with an introduction by Nino Langiulli, Doubleday Anchor Books, Garden City, N.Y., 1969, (selected from: Nicola Abbagnano, Possibilità e libertà, Taylor Editore, Torino, 1956).