GALLUPPI, PASQUALE. — Philosopher, born in Tropea, in Calabria, to Baron Vincenzo on 2 April 1770, died in Naples on 13 December 1846. He received his initial philosophical and mathematical training in his native city and at the Seminary of S. Lucia del Mela, in Sicily; he then attended the University of Naples, where his teacher was the regalist Francesco Conforti. Even in Tropea, Galluppi had come into contact with Leibnizian thought, and from the theological atmosphere of the local environment he derived a deep interest in theological problems, nourished by extensive biblical and patristic studies and focusing particularly on St Augustine. This Augustinian preference was not unrelated to the Jansenist inspiration of his sources and teachers; this explains why Galluppi’s first publication, the *Memoria apologetica* (1795), written to clarify his own views on the relationship between nature and grace, was of a theological nature, in polemic with certain ecclesiastical circles in the city.
From the study of Cartesian and Leibnizian philosophy, Galluppi moved on to that of Condillac, from which he derived an awareness both of the necessity for a critical inquiry into knowledge and of the inadequacy of sensism; a document of this anti-sensist stance is the pamphlet *Su l'analisi e su la sintesi* (1807). Between 1807 and 1815, Galluppi came into contact with Kantianism, whose critique of German dogmatism he acknowledged and whose need for a critical problem he accepted, while rejecting the particular a priori solution proposed. During this period, he refined and matured his own thought, outlined in a brief writing (1815) circulated as a preface to his principal work and systematic exposition of his philosophy, the *Saggio filosofico su la critica della conoscenza* (6 vols., 1829–32). He subsequently published (1820–22) in six volumes his *Elementi di filosofia* (Pure Logic, Psychology, Ideology, Mixed Logic, Moral Philosophy, Natural Theology); and in 1827 thirteen *Lettere filosofiche* on the vicissitudes of philosophy with regard to the principles of human knowledge from Descartes to Kant inclusively; in 1838 a fourteenth letter was added, presenting the state of French philosophy at the time and showing how the development of modern problems of thought required the solution offered by the author himself.
Galluppi’s growing reputation in Italy and abroad earned him a call to the chair of intellectual and theoretical philosophy at the University of Naples (4 October 1831). In the following November, the philosopher delivered an elevated inaugural address, later published as the *Introduzione e fronte delle Lezioni di logica e metafisica* (4 vols., 1832–34), which constitute the fruit of his academic teaching. To his Neapolitan period belong: a volume of *Storia della filosofia* (1840), the first of twelve projected volumes (only one other manuscript remains); and four volumes of a *Filosofia della volontà* (1832–40), a work left incomplete. On 29 December 1838, the French Academy, on the proposal of V. Cousin, elected Galluppi as a corresponding foreign member, and the King of France, on the proposal of the minister Guizot, awarded him the Legion of Honour; Galluppi responded by sending the Academy his *Considerazioni filosofiche sull'idealismo trascendentale e sul razionalismo assoluto* (1841). Besides the works mentioned, two political pamphlets are noteworthy: *Opuscoli filosofici sulla libertà individuale* and *Lo sguardo d'Europa sul Regno di Napoli* (both 1820).
Scrupulous in his scholarly work, Galluppi was not easily swayed from his opinions; his thought is crystalline, though his exposition is at times careless and betrays an inadequate literary preparation compared to his philosophical attainments. Of a liberal disposition, he opposed every excess of Jacobinism; sincerely religious, he felt the Jansenist atmosphere of the time, but always preserved and deepened, especially in the final years of his life, a fundamental and conscious Catholic orthodoxy, of which numerous manuscript documents remain. Indeed, from a letter to Rosmini and another to an unidentified Jesuit father, one can discern an essential apologetic inspiration in his speculation; he hoped for a decisive restoration of spiritual and Catholic values and worked to stem the tide of unbelief spawned by false philosophy (G. Di Napoli, p. 144): the general epistemological atmosphere of contemporary philosophy led him to emphasize the critical aspect of speculative inquiry, yet his thought was eminently, if not entirely, systematic and metaphysical.
Galluppi’s philosophy, which he himself described as a “philosophy of experience,” aims, on the modern terrain of the epistemological problem, to safeguard both the rights of experience and those of thought. Against sensism and empiricism on one side, and against transcendentalism on the other, Galluppi affirms the indispensability of an ontic datum grasped in experience and the consequent spiritualizing and universalizing elaboration proper to the intellect: neither pure passivity of sense, therefore, nor creative a priori, but rational mediation of empirical immediacy.
The starting point, shared with Augustine and Descartes, is self-consciousness, which grasps and affirms a reality, the “self,” providing that “shore of existence” so dear to the philosopher. Long and penetrating are the reflections scattered by Galluppi throughout his works on this radicality of self-consciousness, which, though inclined toward an excessive psychologism, rejects Cartesian consciousness as a position of speculative predominance of the *cogito*. And against the Cartesian deformation of self-consciousness, closed within its own world, Galluppi asserts that one cannot have the most intimate human perception of the self without also having that of a world outside the self (*Saggio*, III, § 1); here lies Galluppi’s doctrine of external perception of the external, which, against all modern speculation from Descartes to Kant and Rosmini, is vindicated in its extrasubjective immediacy, even while acknowledging its relativity to the subject.
A datum that is, as absolute reality, the identical or the different; the notions of substance and cause are objective in origin because derived from a datum, and in value because they correspond to it; the notion of God is subjective in origin because it is not derived from a datum but is the fruit of rational mediation, yet it is objective in value because it corresponds to a reality that is God.
On the basis of a realistic epistemology, Galluppi constructs a solid metaphysics of God and man, which, despite its gaps, is consciously spiritualist and leads toward an ethical-juridical doctrine inspired by the great Christian tradition. Kantian influence is undeniable in the establishment of duty against the crude utilitarianism of contemporary ideologues; yet the synthetic a priori judgments admitted by Galluppi coincide only formally with Kantian ones: that is, Galluppi calls practical judgments synthetic a priori insofar as the subject, representing a human action, is conjoined with the predicate of being, which is not identical to it; and while the subject of practical judgments is an objective notion because derived from a perceived datum, the predicate of being is a subjective notion, as is that of merit. Even in morality, therefore, the alleged Kantianism of Galluppi is unwarranted.
The fortunes of Galluppi’s philosophy, after an initial universal consensus, declined notably after 1860, particularly because of the impetuous ontologism of Gioberti linked to nationalist movements, and in the second half of the century it was overshadowed by the positivist wave. After the First World War, interest in Galluppi’s figure and thought has grown, as evidenced by the works published in the last fifteen years.
Cesare Galvani founded in 1831, after the Ciro Menotti insurrection, and directed for five years a periodical which, initially biweekly and then triweekly, maintained a highly combative stance against liberal ideologies. It vigorously opposed Italian unification, Mazzini’s doctrines, the July Monarchy, the Spanish “cristino” party, and the liberal policies of Great Britain, drawing wide attention in European journalism, as evidenced by the extremely heated controversies Galvani conducted with periodicals from various countries.
In 1836, when the British government protested in Modena over certain writings by Galvani concerning British support for Isabella II against the Carlists, he requested to be relieved of the newspaper’s editorship, which was then taken over by Marco Antonio Parenti. This did not, however, end Galvani’s activity, which continued through numerous articles and pamphlets defending legitimism.