CELESIA, PAOLO. – Biologist and thinker, b. in Genoa on 3 April 1876, d. in Rome on 12 June 1916. After graduating in natural sciences, he founded and directed for five years (1899–1903) the Rivista di scienze biologiche, with a positivist orientation. A spiritual crisis led him back in 1902 to the faith in which he had been raised, whose rational foundation he wished to understand through an in-depth study of S. Tommaso and of the best-known representatives of Catholic thought.
C. was a convinced finalist, and since the strongest opponent of final causes in the architecture of the universe was Kant, his greatest concern was to refute Kant’s conclusions, after having thoroughly examined his doctrine. In 1913 he translated E. Kant’s 1763 work, Der einzig mögliche Beweigrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes, the first Italian translation, which remained unpublished until 1923; while, from 1910 to 1914, in various observations and notes on the Kantian critique of teleological judgment, he opposed everything in Kantianism that runs counter to the fundamental positions of Christian spiritualism.
And since the true difficulty of the teleological proof lies not in the credibility of the supernatural ends that justify the objective reality of natural ends, but in demonstrating their rightness case by case, especially in the face of the existence of imperfection and evil, C. addresses the problem and resolves it by affirming the subordination of the lower element to the higher, of the non-living to the living, of the plant to the animal, of the animal to man, and of carnal man to spiritual man, who alone fully reaches his end in eternal beatitude. C. dealt with this argument in the volume Dalla natura a Dio, attraverso il sacrificio, resulting from various notes composed between 1906 and 1916. For him, sacrifice is the general law of cosmic life, and nature appears as chaos unless it is illumined by the law of sacrifice.
The final volume devoted to philosophical subject matter is intended to demonstrate God as the source of the moral law and therefore as the supreme distributor of rewards and punishments to human beings, according to their moral conduct, which is imputable to them insofar as they are endowed with free will. None of the best-known and most effective objections to free will is neglected: God’s foreknowledge, the various cases of psychic inhibition, scientific determinism, and supernatural Grace.
C. left thousands of unpublished sheets. This material, entrusted for coordination and publication to Prof. F. Raffaele for the philosophical series and to N. Turchi for the scientific series, was published in Rome. The philosophical series includes: Studi biologici (1923), previously published by C. himself in scientific journals; Appunti di cosmografia e astronomia (1927), edited by F. Porro; Nuovi studi biologici (2 vols., 1932–33). The philosophical series includes: La teologia, concetto e valore (1923); Biologia e finalismo (1924); Saggi di filosofia finalistica (2 vols., 1925–27); Dalla natura a Dio, attraverso il sacrificio (1927); Studi bautiani (1923), fifth in the series but first by date of publication; Appunti per una storia delle cause finali nella filosofia moderna (1926); Libertà e determinismo (1930).