La personalità e la storia della filosofia. Alcune annotazioni sull’unità metodologica esplicita della Storia della filosofia di Nicola Abbagnano

This paper addresses a key concept in Nicola Abbagnano’s highly influential Storia della filosofia, namely the concept of personality. Steering away from the merely conceptual and abstract treatment of the history of philosophy popularized by Gentile’s idealism, Abbagnano emphasized how doctrines and theories also stem from subjective and historical experiences. True philosophy actually tries to clarify and discuss these original insights it is rooted in, in an inter-subjective and rational process. Sampling a good deal of the concept’s occurrences in Abbagnano’s Storia dellafilosofia, the concept of personality proves to be polyhedric and, though rich, also somewhat unstable. Abbagnano never rejected the idea of personality as a foundation for the historical comprehension of philosophy, but later he let it slip in the background.This is tentatively explained, both in terms of Abbagnano’s possible refusal of an excessively Diltheyan turn of his own approach to the history of philosophy, and of his theoretical and ethical priorities after 1950.