ACRI, FRANCESCO. - Philosopher, b. in Catanzaro on 19 March 1834, d. in Bologna on 21 Nov. 1913. He is commonly recognized as the most conspicuous representative in Italy of Christian spiritualism in the second half of the nineteenth century, even if judgments on his speculation are not unanimous. Initiated into philosophy by reading Gioberti, he derived from him that inclination toward Platonism that would be his characteristic trait, while a stay in Germany, during which he heard Trendelenburg, facilitated his acquaintance with the most recent currents of thought. A professor of philosophy at the University of Bologna from 1871, he, caring little for a personal systematic construction, was an energetic assertor of a vision of the world and of things that could be called Christian idealism, an original union of Platonism and Augustinianism, equally far from and contrary to the scientific determinism and the metaphysical agnosticism then prevailing. And the defense of the values of the spirit (which sometimes resonated in broad cultural strata, as in the polemics with Imbriani, Spaventa, Fiorentino, for which cf. F. Fiorentino, La filosofia contemporanea in Italia, Naples 1876) was in A., beyond and more than the justification of a philosophical position, coherence with his Catholic creed, by which he always informed his life.
A.'s scientific production, if compared with his long life, is not conspicuous and is rather fragmentary. He himself collected the best of his publications in four anthological volumes: 1) Videmus in aenigmate, Bologna 1907; 2) Amore, dolore, fede, ibid. 1908; 3) Dialettica turbata, ibid. 1911; 4) Dialettica serena, Rocca S. Casciano 1917 (published posthumously, edited by his son Umberto). The first of these volumes, which may be considered A.'s most ingenious and profound work, mainly develops his doctrine on ideas, already previously set forth in Abbozzo d'una teoria delle idee, Palermo 1870. His conception postulates in perception a certain intuition of God (a Giobertian and Rosminian reminiscence adapted), as the condition for the mind to transform perception into idea and to understand the thing perceived. On the other hand, he maintains the impossibility of an adequate cognition of any thing, on account of the infinite relations of every idea. «Il tutto è in tutto e le menti il tutto non lo vedono» seems to be the summarizing formula of A.'s thought. He cannot, however, be accused of skepticism, inasmuch as he believes he obtains from mystical intuition what he does not deem possible for reason alone (cf. E. Chiocchetti, Il sistema filosofico dell'A., in Riv. Filosofia Neosc., 5 [1913], pp. 566-81).
A.'s major work, however, is his translation of Plato, the finest that exists in Italy. In a most elegant form, which at times even appears excessively precious, he makes Plato resound and live again, so as to render his soul by mirroring it in his own. The 1st ed. of the 12 dialogues translated by A. was printed in 3 vols. in Milan in 1914; better is the ed. edited in Milan in 1921 by the Libr. Ed. Pop. Ital. Noteworthy in it are two original writings, which may be considered as premises to the dialogues themselves: 1) Si considera secondo filosofia se si possa volgarizzare uno scrittore, qualunque egli sia e specialmente Platone; 2) Ragionamenti contro ai veristi filosofici, politici e poeti.
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Felicissimo Tiniavella