LABANCA, BALDASSARRE. – Philosopher and historian of religions, born at Avignon on 17 August 1829, died at Rome on 23 January 1913. He first taught history of philosophy at Padua, then (1886) history of religions and (1888) history of Christianity at Rome.
A prolific but superficial writer, in philosophy he followed a kind of mysticism, expounded in his major work, in two volumes, Four Books on Dialectic (Florence 1874). He calls his method “inclusive” (conciliatory) and his philosophy dialectical (though not Hegelian) (“thesis” is being in its whole potentiality; “antithesis” is being itself in its parts, and “synthesis” is being in its whole actuality). The positive content of intuition consists of “innumerable ideas,” having as their centre one absolute God, who is neither personal nor impersonal, but “superpersonal,” neither immanent nor transcendent (Dialectic, II, p. 194). As a historian of Christianity, L. is a compiler of materials and rationalistic and heterodox tendencies: “The religious historian has the obligation to gather together the various religious beliefs as so many religious phenomena, without allowing himself, in evaluating them, to be influenced by ecclesiastical dogmas or theological pronouncements” (Once More on Certain Laws concerning the History of the Sciences, in Journal of Philosophy and Related Sciences, 2 [1901], p. 12 of the offprint). His Jesus Christ in Contemporary Foreign and Italian Literature. A Scientific Historical Study (Turin 1903) is likewise a patchwork compilation.
Other works by L.: On the True and False Spirit of Contemporary Philosophy (Naples 1857); On the Progress of Philosophy (ibid. 1860); On Italian Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (Chieti 1861); Marsilius of Padua (Padua 1882); For Universities, Religion Is a Problem, Not an Illusion (ibid. 1886); Primitive Christianity (Turin 1886); The Bankruptcy Neither of Science nor of Religion (Milan 1895); G. B. Vico and His Catholic Critics (Naples 1898); Jesus of Nazareth (Rome 1910).