Il trattato L’Amore e la «legge dell’egoismo universale»: il positivismo inquieto di Federico De Roberto

L’Amore. Fisiologia – Psicologia – Morale is probably the highest level of De Roberto’s ideology, and at same time it may be considered as a turning point in the poetic of this author. De Roberto lives in a Positivist age, and he deeply trusts in the instrument of reason. In this work he aims to demonstrate all the contradictions of love and the egoism of the social life. So, De Roberto arrives to a uneasy Positivism, which is focused not only on the “how” of the phenomena, but also to the “why”. Under this point of view, De Roberto’s relativism is similar to that one of Pirandello, and it announces the incoming Modernism. Even if it is impossible to join the truth, De Roberto doesn’t quit his research; at the same time reason doesn’t lose its supremacy. So L’Amore represents a particular crisis of De Roberto’s thought: Positivism is not anymore central, and the Verist ambition of representing life is coming less. It is the crisis of the poetic of L’illusione and of I Viceré.