BOVIO, GIOVANNI. - Thinker and politician, born at Trani in 1837, died at Napoli on 15 April 1903. In his time he was one of the most prominent and admired figures of Italian democracy. In his native city he spent his youth, wholly devoted to study, yet already caught up in the fervour of liberal ideas which, even in the Puglie, at the decline of Bourbon rule, were widespread among the educated class. Philosophy was his preference, and his first work was in fact the Verbo novello: sistema di filosofia universale, dedicated “to the tribunes of Liberty” (1864). Though emphatic in tone and at times bizarre, it nevertheless revealed the uncommon learning he had acquired in the history of philosophy, as well as an ardent intellect.
He then turned to studies in the philosophy of law, and here he attained much greater fame: he published (1872) the Saggio critico del diritto penale (3rd ed. 1883, reprinted in Milano in 1908), the Filosofia del diritto (4th ed., Roma 1894), and the cumbersome and often fanciful Sommario della storia del diritto in Italia (2nd ed., ibid. 1895). B. affirms, together with the classical school, the principle of personal liberty, but subjects it to a social determinism conceived as the development of humanity towards pure rationality. For his relation to Lombrosian doctrine vedi Il genio (Milano 1903). Thus he passed from the moral question to the juridical one, and from this to the political question, in order then to outline a
