Gustavo Bontadini

Gustavo Bontadini (27 March 1903 – 12 April 1990) was an Italian philosopher, writer, and a teacher. He was born in Milan and died in 1990, aged 87. Bontadini was also an influential representative known for Neo-Scholasticism in the 20th century. From 1951 to 1973, he became a professor of Theoretical philosophy in the Catholic university in Milan. He was also a teacher of Emanuele Severino, Angelo Scola and other Italian philosophers.

The Milan Catholic University great hall was named in honour of Bontadini. It was an ancient ice house shaped a circle of 8 meters radius and located at a depth of 11 meters.

The controversy with Emanuele Severino

Emanuele Severino, drawing conclusions from his teacher Bontadini's conception in 1964 in an essay published in the Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica (fasc. II) entitled Ritornare a Parmenide (Returning to Parmenides), eliminated any difference between the immutability of God and that of the world subject to becoming, so that everything would be eternal as God is eternal.

Responded in harshly ironic tones Bontadini in an article titled in ancient Greek Sozein ta fainomena (Saving Phenomena): "... I wondered [...] with what beard is to be found, in the world of being, my immutable alter ego. Since, from the time I was a freshman coming until today, of beards I have changed many hundreds. Now, if we assume that all of them are immutable, it seems to me that I would not find enough surface area on my body—the one fixed for eternity—to make room for all of them." Bontadini then reiterated his conception of the "principle of creation" that allows the contradictory nature of becoming to be overcome through the creative action of God: "inasmuch as that identification of being and non-being, which we encounter in experience, is now seen as the result of the action of Being (indivensible action of indivensible Being)."

The long-distance dialogue continued in the following years. The central point of disagreement centered on whether or not experience attests to becoming: a truth admitted by Bontadini (even if we do not experience the annihilation of entities, but only their appearance/disappearance, such experience is still change), in agreement with common sense and the Western philosophical tradition, but denied by Severino, for whom the traditional conception of becoming is a misinterpretation of experience.

Further reading

• Saggio di una metafisica dell'esperienza, Milano, Vita e pensiero, 1938.
• Studi sull'idealismo. Serie prima (1923–1935), Urbino, A. Argalia, 1942.
• Dall'attualismo al problematicismo. Studii sulla filosofia italiana contemporanea, Brescia, La scuola, 1945.
• Studi sulla filosofia dell'età cartesiana, Brescia, La scuola, stampa 1947.
• Dal problematicismo alla metafisica. Nuovi studi sulla filosofia italiana contemporanea, Milano, Marzorati, 1952.
• Indagini di struttura sul gnoseologismo moderno. I. Berkeley, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Brescia, La scuola, 1952.
• Il compito della metafisica, Bontadini e altri, Milano, Fratelli Bocca, 1952.
• Studi di filosofia moderna, Brescia, La scuola, 1966.
• Conversazioni di metafisica, 2 voll., Milano, Vita e pensiero, 1971.
• Metafisica e deellenizzazione, Milano, Vita e pensiero, 1975.
• Appunti di filosofia, Milano, Vita e pensiero, 1996. ISBN 88-343-3680-1