ROMAGNOSI, GIANDOMENICO. - Philosopher and jurist, b. at Salsomaggiore on 11 Dec. 1761, d. at Milan on 8 June 1835; author of works on philosophy, public and private law, economics, statistics, history of culture, and also on mathematics and physics. Particularly notable: Genesi del diritto penale (Pavia 1791); Introduzione allo studio del diritto pubblico universale (Parma 1805); Assunto primo della scienza del diritto naturale (Milan 1820); Instituzioni di civile filosofia, ossia di giurisprudenza teorica (posthumous, Florence 1839); Scienza delle costituzioni (posthumous, Turin 1847).
R.'s thought is strongly marked by the philosophical atmosphere in which he was formed, which was that of the then-prevailing sensism (v.), but it reveals on the other hand traces of Wolffian abstractism; its dominant characteristic is nonetheless naturalism (v.). The act of knowledge is the effect of the concurrence of two powers, the I and the non-I (doctrine of causal competence): between spirit and nature there is a continuous series of actions and reactions, by means of which the former adapts itself to the latter, though it is not entirely passive with respect to it. His fundamental naturalism induces R. to attempt to treat the moral sciences with the same method as the physical ones; and indeed, especially in the field of the social sciences, his doctrine anticipates positions that would later belong to positivism and evolutionism. The life of society, which, in a manner similar to what Spencer would later do, R. conceives as an organism, is governed by natural laws, which constitute an order of necessity to which there corresponds in the moral field the ethico-juridical order, which thus comes to be subordinated to the former. A consequence of this is the utilitarian character of R.'s doctrine, for which natural law, which derives from the imperious order of goods and evils that man must serve for his own interest and well-being, is the systematic cognition of the regulating rules of human acts, derived from the real and necessary relations of nature, whereby to obtain the best or avoid the worst: (Assunto primo della scienza del diritto nat., § 1, in Opere, ed. De Giorgi, III, 1, Milan 1842, p. 555); the qualification of "just" or "unjust" refers to the constant and necessary relations that obtain between human actions and their useful or harmful effects. The moral order is the "order of reason" built upon the natural order; for R., however, natural law is not eternal and immutable: it is "as extensive, as broad, as manifold, as are ample, extensive and varied the necessities that are not artificial but natural, that is to say those that are induced by the very force of nature, whether in perpetuity, or in given times and places" (Ragguaglio storico e statistico degli studi di diritto germ. e nat. in Allemagna, § 2, loc. cit., p. 552). The order of reason varies according to the varying of the relations among facts; given one of these relations, however, the law corresponding to it is of necessary reason.
R. was one of the first assertors of the principle of nationality; and "ethnarchy," as he calls it, is at the basis of his constitutionalist doctrine. In the field of criminal law he, in accordance with his fundamental naturalistic determinism, prescinds from free will, and understands punishment exclusively as the defense of society, conceiving it as a "repellent force" that must be opposed to the "impelling force" constituted by the motives that induce man to crime, so as to neutralize them.
Bibliography10 works
Guido Fasso