ALLIEVO, GIUSEPPE. — Philosopher and educationalist, born in S. Germano, a village in the Vercellese, on 14 September 1830, died in Turin on 24 June 1913. He completed his secondary studies at Vercelli, where one of his teachers, among others, was the archaeologist P. L. Bruzza of the Clerics Regular of S. Paolo. In 1853 he obtained a degree in philosophy from the University of Turin. At Domodossola, where he taught the following year, he met Rosmini, who had already praised one of his youthful works. He received various appointments from ministers of Public Education, among them Mamiani, Berti, and De Sanctis. In 1867 he was entrusted with teaching anthropology and pedagogy at the University of Turin and, in 1878, became ordinary professor of pedagogy there, occupying the chair until his death.
His earliest works were metaphysical in character; in his later works he dealt principally with problems of anthropology and pedagogy, always opposing absolute idealism and positivism, remaining firm in the creationist solution and in the principle of personality, according to which the human person is defined as a mind that animates an organism.
From his anthropological doctrine A. derives the essential elements of his own system, whose supreme principle is the development of the child’s organic personality. And just as anthropology, recognizing in man a dual reality, spiritual and corporeal, is divided into psychology and physiology, so pedagogy lays down the laws governing the education both of the spiritual powers and of corporeal activities. Proceeding then from the concept that the ego is the primordial cell of society, he opposes every form of that pedagogical statolatry which leads to dissolving the individual into social relations; and, maintaining that the true creator of the State is the family, he concludes that by nature the right to educate belongs to II.
The principal works and most significant writings by A. on metaphysical questions and on problems of philosophy, anthropology, and pedagogy are: Saggi filosofici (Milan 1868); L'Hegelianismo, la scienza e la vita (there 1868); Studi pedagogici (Turin 1879); Metaphysicae et psychologicae institutiones (there 1880); L'uomo e il cosmo. Studi antropologici (there 1891); L'educazione di se stesso e la vita interiore (there 1896); Lo spirito e la materia nell'universo: l'anima ed il corpo dell'uomo (in Atti della R. Acc. delle Sc. di Torino, 38 [1903]); Il ritorno alle idee del sapere umano (Turin 1911).
Il problema della coeducazione, Rome 1614: G. Vidari, G. A., Turin 1914: Per il primo centenario della nascita di G. A.: scritti di G. Vidari, A. Maletti, C. Mazzantini, in Rivista Pedagogico, 23 (1930), fasc. 2. Rosario Guido Tentori