AUGUSTO ROMAGNOLI. — Apostle of the new education for the blind, born in Bologna on 19 July 1879, after contracting conjunctivitis which left him blind within a few days, died in Rome on 8 March 1946.
At the age of five he entered the Institute for the Blind in Bologna, and subsequently managed to attend classical studies at public schools, obtaining his high school diploma at the age of 21. At 19, he felt called to publish a program for reforming the education provided to the blind; studying its psychology within himself, he gathered his observations and deductions in his philosophy thesis (1905), later published under the title *Introduzione all'educazione dei ciechi* [Introduction to the Education of the Blind]. From then on, Romagnoli dedicated his entire life to the mission of making the blind men among men. During the V National Congress of the Blind in Rome (December 1906), he forcefully affirmed his principles, which resonated widely and established him as the herald of the redemption of the blind. In the article *Dalla pietà alla scienza. I ciechi non saranno infelici* [From Pity to Science: The Blind Will Not Be Unhappy] (*Nuova Antologia*, 1 July 1908), he argued for the necessity that the education of the blind should start from the concept—not of alleviating an irreparable misfortune—but of healing it, making those affected fully aware of it so that they might learn to derive all its lessons and hidden resources, with the numerous physical, intellectual, and moral compensations that education must develop. Meanwhile, he offered himself as an example of how a blind person, educated according to these principles, could live and work among the sighted, achieving the distinction of being the first blind professor to teach sighted students, holding the chair of philosophy in Massa (1908), Rieti (1911), and Lanciano (1920). Among other achievements, he founded the Society of Italian Blind Teachers, of which he became president (1910).
In 1912, Queen Margherita entrusted him with conducting, at the Margherita di Savoia Home for the Blind in Rome, an experiment in the new education he advocated. He then applied his method at the Re-education House for Blind War Veterans. With the help of Carlo Delcroix and Aurelio Nicolodi, he secured in 1923 the law mandating compulsory schooling for blind children; in 1924, he was tasked with inspecting all Italian blind institutions and drafting a reform proposal, which led to the Ordinance on Elementary Education for the Blind, promulgated in June; and he was also commissioned to organize and then direct the Royal School of Method for Blind Educators in Rome, where he remained until his death, assisted by his wife, Dr. Elena Coletta. In 1924, he published the volume *Ragazzi ciechi* [Blind Boys], a report on the educational experiment conducted from 1912 to 1916, and in its second edition, the foundational work *Introduzione all'educazione dei ciechi*, expanded with significant additions and retitled *Pagine vissute di un educatore cieco* [Lived Pages of a Blind Educator] (1943).
He possessed a profound and conscious Catholic faith from his early youth, considering the religious problem as the first to be resolved among all the challenges presented by blindness; his life was strictly consistent with the faith he professed in every moment and environment.
that exist between human actions and their useful or harmful effects. Moral order is the "order of reason" built upon natural order; however, for Romagnoli, natural law is not eternal and immutable: it is "as extensive, as broad, as varied as are the needs, not artificial but natural, that is, those induced by the very force of nature, whether perpetually or in given times and places" (*Ragguaglio storico e statistico degli studi di diritto germ. e nat. in Allemanza*, § 2, loc. cit., p. 552). The order of reason varies according to the changing relations between facts; however, given one such relation, the corresponding right is of necessary reason.
Romagnoli was one of the earliest advocates of the principle of nationality; and "ethnarchy," as he called it, is the foundation of his constitutional doctrine. In the field of criminal law, in accordance with his fundamental naturalistic determinism, he disregards free will and understands punishment solely as a defense of society, conceiving it as a "repellent force" that must be opposed to the "implementing force" constituted by the motives that induce a person to commit a crime, so as to neutralize II.