Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx)Ferri, Enrico
Philosophy
Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx)
Ferri, Enrico
Evolution; Socialism; Spencer, Herbert, 1820-1903
Among the numerous publications which, for or against socialism, have
appeared in Italy since my _Socialismo e scienza positiva_[90]--which
demonstrated the agreement of socialism with the fundamental lines of
contemporary scientific thought--the book of Baron Garofalo was looked
forward to with eager interest. It received attention both because of
the fame of the author and the open and radical disagreement which its
publication made manifest in the ranks of the founders of the school of
positive criminology, formerly united in such close bonds in the
propaganda and defense of the new science--criminal anthropology and
sociology--created by M. Lombroso.
It is true that the scientific union between the founders of the new
Italian school of criminology formed an alliance, but they were never in
perfect unison.
M. Lombroso gave to the study of crime as a natural and social
phenomenon the initial impulse, and brilliantly supported the
correctness of this conception by his fruitful anthropological and
biological investigations. I contributed the systematic, theoretical
treatment of the problem of human responsibility, and my psychological
and sociological studies enabled me to classify the natural causes of
crime and the anthropological categories of criminals. I showed the
predominant role of _social_ prevention--quite a different thing from
police prevention--of criminality, and demonstrated the infinitesimal
influence of repression, which is always violent and only acts after the
mischief has been done.
M. Garofalo--though he was in accord with us on the subject of the
diagnosis of criminal pathology--contributed nevertheless a current of
ideas peculiar to himself, ideas more metaphysical and less heterodox;
such, for instance, as the idea that the anomaly shown by the criminal
is only a "moral anomaly;" that religion has a preventive influence on
criminality; that severe repression is, at all events, the effective
remedy; that misery (poverty) it not only not the sole and exclusive
factor in producing crime (which I always maintained and still
maintain), but that it has no determining influence on crime; and that
popular education, instead of being a preventive means, is, on the
contrary, an incentive, etc.
These ideas, in evident disagreement with the inductions of biology and
of criminal psychology and sociology--as I have elsewhere
demonstrated--nevertheless did not prevent harmony among the positivists
of the new school. In fact, these personal and antiquated conceptions of
M. Garofalo passed almost unnoticed. His action was especially notable
by reason of the greater importance and development he gave to the
purely juridical inductions of the new school, which he systematized
into a plan of reforms in criminal law and procedure. He was the jurist
of the new school, M. Lombroso was the anthropologist, and I the
sociologist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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