Antero de Quental and the Defense of the Naturalist Idealism

Abstract

This article problematizes the interactions between philosophy and science, based on the thesis of the naturalist idealism by Antero de Quental. This thesis is built on the criticisms of the philosophy of positive nature. This question is dominant in Antero de Quental’s work A filosofia da natureza dos naturalistas [The naturalists’ philosophy of nature], which proposes an idealism within naturalism, as a synthetic and systematic overcoming of the radical antinomy materialism versus idealism. This article questions: a) the monist theses and the different expressions of naturalism (positivism, materialism, scientism, etc.), and b) Antero de Quental’s evolutionary, metaphysical and positive unifying perspective as a way to overcome the materialism versus idealism antinomy. It demonstrates the complexity of the philosophical treatment of this question and the importance for science of a demarcation on metaphysical speculation, in a fertile epoch for Auguste Comte and Littré’s positivism, the evolutionism of Herbert Spencer, the naturalist monism of Ernst Haeckel and materialist scientism.