Rosmini Serbati, Antonio

ROSMINI SERBATI, ANTONIO. - Philosopher, theologian, founder of the Institute of Charity, b. at Rovereto (Trento) on 24 March 1797 to Pier Modesto and Giovanna dei Conti Formenti, d. at Stresa on 1 July 1855.

I. LIFE

A singular and precocious talent, after his first schooling he continued his studies privately. In 1816 he followed the theology course at the University of Padua, where he formed a friendship with Tommaseo (v.). Ordained a priest (1821), he pursued for some years various studies (politics, history, mathematics, medicine, metaphysics, etc.) and attempted to establish a "Society of Friends." In 1826 he went to Milan, where his friendship with Alessandro Manzoni (v.) began. In 1828 he founded, on the Sacro Monte Calvario near Domodossola, the Institute of Charity (v.). In the same year he went to Rome and from Pope Pius VIII received the express order to devote his activity principally to writing. Gregory XVI confirmed the judgment of his predecessor with public attestations of esteem also for his "science of things divine and human" (Apostolic Letter: In sublimi, 20 Sept. 1839). In 1830 R. published in Rome the Massime di perfezione and the Nuovo saggio sull'origine delle idee, which constitute the foundations of his ascetics and of his philosophy. Having returned to northern Italy, he divided his time, both in the Trentino and in Piedmont, between the government of the Institute (which in 1833 was increased by the women's branch, the Sisters of Providence, and in 1835 extended also into England) and the composition of his numerous works, which procured him vast renown in Italy.

In Aug. 1848 R. was sent to Rome by King Charles Albert to negotiate political agreements with the Pope, which however came to nothing. Pius IX, having come to know R. personally, kept him near himself and enjoined him to prepare for the cardinalate for the next Consistory of Dec. After the assassination of Pellegrino Rossi (15 Nov.) R. followed the Pope in his flight to Gaeta, where he tried in vain to dissuade him from the new conservative direction regarding political liberties and the national movement, toward which Pius IX was gradually turning. In June 1849 R. was forced by the Bourbon police to leave the Kingdom of Naples; at the same time two of his short works were placed on the Index: Delle cinque piaghe della Chiesa and La costituzione secondo la giustizia sociale. His submission was prompt and sincere. He spent his last years at Stresa on Lake Maggiore, continuing to write, comforted by the devotion of his spiritual sons and daughters, and by frequent conversations with Manzoni, while a fierce polemic raged against all his doctrines. His tomb at Stresa is venerated by the faithful. His works, long examined by many consultors by order of Pius IX, were finally, in a solemn session (3 July

1854) of the Sacred Congregation of the Index, which the Pope wished to preside over in person, absolved from the many accusations of heterodoxy, with a prohibition against repeating them or raising new ones. Subsequently, while Pius IX was still alive, an attempt was made to weaken the force of his sentence concerning R.'s doctrines, seizing on the phrase of the exordium "Dimittenda esse" (it is usually rendered "Dimittantur"). But the sentence had a broader content than that formula, so that the Sacred Congregation of the Index, by a letter of 20 June 1876, ordered the directors of the Osservatore cattolico of Milan to declare that they had misinterpreted that formula in the case of R., and "that it was not lawful to inflict censures in a religious matter and one relating to the faith and sound morals upon the works of R.": the declaration was printed in the number of 1 July. Even more explicit had been the Master of the Sacred Palace, Fr. Vincenzo Maria Gatti O.P. (later cardinal), writing on 16 June 1876 a letter to L'Osservatore romano (published there on the 20th), in which he censures as offensive to the action of the Index and of the Pope the tendentious new manner of interpreting the sentence of 1854 on R., and adds that in the case in question, beyond the simple initial formula, the whole of the sentence itself is to be understood thus: "from the long and conscientious examination it has resulted that the accusations brought against the works of R. were false; that in these nothing was found against faith and morals; that the edition and the reading of them are not dangerous to the faithful."

But under Leo XIII, on 7 March 1888, a decree of the Holy Office "Post Obitum" was published (already prepared on 14 Dec. 1887): by it forty propositions of R. are condemned, taken both from the works already dismissed and from the posthumous works (these more extensively affected). The decree attaches no theological note to the propositions, but in its introduction it says that they had been denounced because they "catholicae veritati haud consonae videbantur." In effect the denouncers were repeating under Leo XIII the same accusations as under Pius IX. Opinions differ as to the manner of eliminating the apparent contrast between the two sentences; in any case the "Post Obitum" enjoys the full authority of analogous judgments of the Holy Office. Around R. in the last century the polemics were ardent and even bitter, now ceased. Speculative disagreements about his philosophy continue, but agreement is ever increasing in the appreciation of his ascetic writings and of his personal holiness.

II. ASCETICS

The figure of R. is characterized by a profound unity, constituted by the supreme appreciation of moral and spiritual values.

In his personal Diary at the beginning of 1813 he notes: "this was for me a year of grace: God opened my eyes to many things and I came to know that there was no true wisdom other than in God" (Scritti autobiografici, p. 419). At the age of 24 he establishes as a rule of life the "principle of passivity," by which he intends to overcome a nature rich in all the most human instincts, tending toward activity and command and toward intellectualistic "passion," shutting himself into a life of retreat, of prayers, of patient and solid studies, in order to make himself fit for God's "call." In 1828 he applies this principle to a society by founding the Institute of Charity and depriving himself on his own account, from that moment, of the advantages he could derive from the comfort into which he had been born and from the milieu of Milan, but above all renouncing a choice made by his own arbitrary will of his place in the world. His Massime di perfezione cristiana and his discourse Della carità (in the vol. La dottrina della carità) sum up his ascetic ideal, echoed in his Epistolario completo (13 vols.), a documentation of an extraordinary industriousness and at the same time of a constant commitment to subordinate this to a single principle: which presents itself as "charity," if considered in God, the actualization of the essential "Good" in itself and the source of every participated good, or as "Justice" (in the sense of Mt. 5:6), if considered in us, that is, as our participation in Love and in the essential Good, through Grace and our voluntary correspondence. For R. this single principle leads the Christian to seek at once the greatest direct union with God and - in a disposition of full indifference to the divine will - the greatest cooperation with him in the unfolding of his creation. The active life thus becomes also a way of practicing union with God, insofar as it is adherence to his will which manifests itself expressly in the "call." It seems that R. attempts along this path an organic solution of the problem concerning the value of the two lives, the contemplative and the active, preserving the traditional doctrine of the intrinsic primacy of the first and recognizing the modern demand for a higher valorization of the second. The basis, however, and the nourishment of the whole spiritual life remains contemplation.

On the other hand R. insists on the character of unlimited potentiality that is proper to charity, and makes it one of the principles of his personal conduct and of his Institute. To one who objected that man must after all limit himself in his practical activity, he replied that the limit must come not from our choice, but from God, according to those indications of Providence that determine for each one a certain field of action. One of the consequences of this principle of R. is the adaptability of his Institute, with the exercise of the most diverse forms of charity and yet within the limits suggested by the dispositions of Providence, to the variations of circumstances and times. He further held that his Institute, arisen not from a special and extraordinary inspiration of God, but from the simple and immediate meditation of the Gospel, the common patrimony of Christians, must be considered before the Church simply as a possible auxiliary, a militia of the second line. The ascetics of R. has as another of its characteristics the most profound union with the Mystical Body of Christ (v.); the work of individual sanctification is identified with the full dedication to the Church, toward whose "increase and glory," according to the very title of the second Massima di perfezione, "all one's thoughts and actions" must be directed. Hence also the importance given by R. to the liturgical life, tempered however by his study of Ignatian ascetics, of which he proposed new developments in the Manuale dell'esercitatore. The love of the Church was his most constant passion and from this came the occasion for the deepest sorrows of his life. Even the activity of writer and philosopher was in R. directed by his ascetic principles. It was for him a way of exercising charity (cf. G. Capograssi, in Studi rossiniani, Milan 1940, p. 104); and although by nature inclined to philosophy, and urged by friends, especially by Manzoni, to devote himself to it entirely, he did not decide to do so definitively until after the exhortation and command of Pius VIII, in which he seemed to see the most authentic sign of the divine will (Introduzione alla filosofia, n. 11).

III. PHILOSOPHY

For R., charity extends also to science. Hence his effort of understanding toward modern thought. He was solicitous about what he called the "conciliation of opinions" (Introd. alla filos., 45-54), that is, the study of bringing out what is common in the thought of philosophers of the most opposed schools and of giving value to whatever truth is found in doctrines that are unacceptable as a whole. He wanted a Christian philosophy, that is, as he understood it, not a philosophy "that would be mixed with the dogmas of religion" or that would have a directly apologetic aim, but a philosophy valid in itself, capable of forming minds vigilant against the snares of error and open to the Truth, by whatever way it presents itself, including Revelation. Hence the not a few pages he devoted to the principle "of the freedom of philosophizing" in the Introduzione alla filosofia (20-40). Although he did not follow a strict systematic order in the exposition of his thought, he held that philosophy must be composed into a system, that is, into an order that gathers all the reflections of human thought, varied in aim and in subject matter, around a single principle, from which they receive a stamp of organic unity; a principle that he identified with being (v. below). Profound was his historical sense. He intended to link himself to the philosophia perennis, giving value to tradition and particularly to Scholasticism and St. Thomas, of whose rebirth, in the second half of the 19th century, he may be called a conscious precursor. In all his works there is evident a continual concern to show the substantial agreement of his doctrines with those of the Angelic Doctor along the line of classical metaphysics.

Here it will be appropriate only to indicate the principal directives of Rosminian doctrines. Assisted R. gives the greatest importance to immediate experience, as the basis of dialectical reasoning. He reproached German idealism as a grave error of method and a true sophism for having claimed to start from the I (self-consciousness) and from philosophical thought, without taking into account the human rational activity that precedes and grounds them, indeed presuming to be able even to deny it or to devalue it entirely (Teosofia, V, ch. 6 and passim). Profound in R. is the tendency to psychological analysis and to the search for what is the "direct" life of man (Psicologia, nn. 1670-75), in contrast to that of which the subject is conscious and which he directs with a reasoning will. The unconscious is one of the laws of human activity (ibid., 1479-84); and many things "are or are born in the mind and heart of man without his becoming conscious of them. This is one of the factors of the human spirit, which easily escape and which are nevertheless of supreme necessity to one who wishes to philosophize" (Filosofia del diritto, II, n. 638, note).

Psychological analysis gives R. as a result that the first act by which man exists is a synthesis, whose elements are: 1) the fundamental corporeal feeling; 2) sensitive perception; 3) the intuition (or intellection) of being. The first two posit and circumscribe the individual subjectivity of man; the third actuates man as intelligent; but their subsistence is one single thing given the mutual need that they have of one another in order to be realized. The saying of St. Augustine: "Commonebo, si potero, ut videre te videas" (De Trinit., XI, 12) is placed as a motto at the head of vol. II of the Nuovo saggio where R. expounds his solution of the problem of knowledge (v.) and illustrates the three indicated elements. They are something immediately present in us, even if habitually unnoticed (cf. Nuovo saggio, nn. 1038-39). In the Nuovo saggio (nn. 693-719) the "fundamental feeling" is illustrated especially insofar as it refers to the body. Later, in the Teosofia, it takes on a broader sense: "man knows in himself no other real thing than his own fundamental feeling and his own intellective feeling" (II, n. 513). But these two feelings in fact do not exist except in a living unity, the "rational feeling," which truly is "fundamental to us" (ibid., III, n. 1419). Such a feeling individualizes the human subject, which is a single principle of two terms, which simultaneously characterize it: 1) the body, in which and through which man finds himself in relation with the world of material sensitive experience, 2) ideal being ("idea of being" in the Nuovo saggio), objective form or "formal object," which by its presence gives the subject its true intellective and therefore rational actuality. Therefore man results from an intellective principle that is individuated by means of a corporeal feeling "perceiving it" (Sistema filosofico, n. 142), that is, actuating itself by way of a permanent synthesis with it.

The fundamental corporeal feeling is the single, uniform, continuous, unshaped act with which we feel our body as alive: it makes it possible for the body to react to external stimuli and to give occasion to sensations, varied, discontinuous, particular, determined by the different organs of sense, but identical in belonging to a single "individual" of which they are from time to time transient modifications. One's own body, "substance endowed with extension, which produces in us a pleasant or painful feeling, which terminates in that same extension" (Nuovo saggio, n. 871), is perceived in the fundamental feeling as a force in relation to which the soul is passive, and this is proof of the otherness of the body with respect to the soul. But at the same time the soul reacts upon the body, and occupies it and makes it its own (a psychological fact from which the concept in general of property is born), using it as its instrument and yet withstantly finding in it a power of resistance to its activity. The body therefore presents itself under a twofold aspect: 1) subjective, insofar as it is proper to the soul and has become a co-subject with it (ibid., n. 1003); 2) extra-subjective, insofar as it is perceived in the same way as bodies foreign to us. The subjective body is the true "my" body. The body as extra-subjective is "mine" in a sense analogous to the way in which the garment I wear is mine. However, the two modes of the body are inseparable in the order of nature (not so in the supernatural order, as R. held regarding the mystery of the Eucharist; cf. Antropologia soprannaturale, III, p. 485). The subjective body must not, however, be confused with the fundamental feeling; this is an act of the soul, whereas the subjective body involves physical matter in its immediate relation with the soul that vivifies it. The sensitive perception (Nuovo saggio, nn. 740-958-963; Antropol. morale, n. 197) is likewise a primitive act of the soul, whether of one's own body as extra-subjective or of other bodies. To feel our body is to feel together with it all the actions that the forces of the world exercise upon it: in a certain way it is to feel the whole material universe, through the syntheism of all its elements, none of which exists absolutely for itself, but exists in relation to others, while these in turn exist through the relation they have with it (which is one of the applications of the law of syntheism); cf. Teodicea, nn. 574-93; Psicologia, nn. 34-44 and 1337-39; Teosofia, n. 199 etc.). On the nature of bodies, of space, of physical matter, R.'s doctrines, original and in accord with the most recent scientific views, are developed, besides in the Nuovo saggio (vol. II), in the Antropologia (part 1), in the Psicologia (passim) and in the Teosofia (VI, passim).

But neither feeling nor perception is a human act except insofar as both form a synthesis with what for R. is the form of the "rational feeling" proper to man, that is, the presence of the intellectual formal object, ideal being, being as the light of the mind. A "form" that makes perception true cognition, that is, intellectual perception (Nuovo saggio, nn. 528-38; Psicologia, nn. 256-72); a "form" in a sense very different from the Kantian one, because it is objective and not merely functional (R.'s critique of Kant is close-knit, both for the persistent subjectivism — an involuntary residue of sensism — of human knowing, and for the groundlessness of "synthetic a priori judgments": ibid., nn. 346-60). The objectivity of the "form" of human knowing is what R. most insists upon against Kant and idealism. From a passage of the Sum. Theol.: "Obiectum intellectus est ens, seu verum commune" (1a, q. 55, a. 1) he intended to draw inspiration for his theory of the idea of being, of whose innateness he sets out a minute proof in the Nuovo saggio (nn. 413-72), distinguishing however his innatism (v.) from that of Plato and other thinkers, because what he posits as innate in the mind has the characteristic of indeterminateness. Hence in the Teosofia (V, n. 57) he declares that "if by cognition are meant those notices that come (to man) from his own mental operations, the name of cognition cannot be given to the notice of indeterminate being as it stands present to intuition." This being is "indeterminate" in the sense that it carries with it an infinite potentiality to determine itself, dialectically prior to any actual distinct operation of the intelligent subject. It is what makes the subject capable of performing such operations; it is the light of reason, having the characters of universality, absoluteness and necessity, and containing implicitly the principles of reason. It must not, however, be confused with the idea of being as the ultimate result of the abstractive process. To avoid the danger of this confusion R. later preferred the expression "ideal being," which seemed to him also suited to show the connection between gnoseology and ontology (v.).

Being has an immediacy of relation with the human soul not only in the ideal form (by which man is made capable of realizing truth and certainty: Nuovo saggio, nn. 1044-1142), or in the real form through the perception of the I or of bodies, but also in the moral form, that is, insofar as being is the object and criterion of appreciation. The light of reason has indeed a logical priority over the principle of morality, but together with this it "informs" the human soul in a single primordial act, and thus reason and will arise in him at one and the same time; and the "primitive perception" (Psicologia, n. 265), or first substantial synthesis with which man begins to realize himself, is at the same time an act of appreciation (R. will later make an application of this in his theory on original sin; Antropologia soprannaturale, II, p. 255). The formula of the supreme moral principle is the "practical (voluntary) recognition (esteem, love) of being in its own order" (Principi di scienza morale, ch. 5, a. 4, and passim). The concept of the order of being arises from the measure that each thing has when seen in the universal relation of beings, and appears progressively clearer with lived experience: "love being wherever you know it, in that order which presents itself to your intelligence" (ibid., ch. 4, a. 7). Every moral act, even while directing itself toward a particular and limited object, sees and loves it in the universal order of which it is a part, and therefore loves in it implicitly all being: morality by itself renders to the infinite good. When, then, the intelligence presents to man the Absolute and Supreme First Being, man sees that "all other beings compared to him have but a relative entity, and hence he is the end of all. Therefore... all other beings and the estimations made of them must be ordered and referred to that Supreme Being" (Storia compar. e crit. dei sistemi intorno al princ. della mor., ch. 1, a. 111). It follows that morality finds its completion, indeed its most real and concrete foundation, in the Absolute Being "as the one to which every entity refers and consequently every estimation made of the various entities" (ibid.). Here morality meets religion, and one understands in what sense there can be no full morality that is not religious (Filosofia del dir., I, Sistema moral system, section 3). In any case, the moral law is in man, it enters into the very act of his being constituted man with intellect and will, but it does not thereby become his subjective and individuating element; it remains, in relation to this, just like the light of reason (the idea of being), in a relation of immediacy, yes, but at the same time of objectivity, and it preserves its absoluteness in the face of the relativity of his subsistence as an individual. In this way R. intends to save the interiority of the moral life and at the same time the absolute supremacy of the law. At the same time he preserves the reconciliation between human reality, in its irrepressible need for happiness (eudaemonology), and the moral demand: "Both justice and beatitude may be called the end of man; but justice is the end that man must propose to himself, beatitude is the end that God, in creating man, proposed to himself. Man's nature essentially desires beatitude; for this very reason beatitude is not a duty, it is not, as such, the end that man's will must propose to itself, but it is the end that it can propose to itself, and that it cannot help proposing to itself. If, however, one considers in beatitude... what it "has of the just, then beatitude too is an end that man must propose to himself: that is, he must... love happiness considered as an effect of justice, and therefore as a thing willed by God: since God wills the beatitude of the just man; and it is only too just that the just man be blessed" (Lezioni spirituali, X, 1).

Against idealism, which attempted to reduce the whole of man to pure thinking activity, R. affirmed the true concept of man as "an animal subject, intellective and volitive," highlighting his manifold nature in its unity. The subject "man" insofar as rational is also person. To the person belong all the activities of nature, including instinct, of which R. illustrates the two aspects, citate and sensual (ibid., nos. 370-426), showing in what way it imitates rational activity (ibid., nos. 430-94); but the human person has as its principal instrument and basis the will (ibid., 833-51), which R., against Kant, does not identify with the moral law, vindicating the true nature of moral obligation (v.). This is "the obligation that a person has to act in a determinate way so as not to render himself defective," that is, so as not to diminish the value that derives to him from being in communion with the objective order of being (Filos. del dir., Sistema morale, section 1, VII). It can refer only to a free being: freedom is precisely the summit of personal acting. Free will is the faculty of choice between the objective order and a subjective good (Antropologia... morale, nos. 580-82), that is, between two criteria of evaluation, which can come into conflict, the one offered by the demand of subjectivity, necessary to man in order to exist as an individual, the other offered by the demand of the objective and universal value of being, also necessary to man in order to exist as a person. It is up to man to decide between the two demands, each of which has, in a different way, something totalitarian and irreducible, while each promises man, if satisfied, an increase; the one of natural life, the other of personal value. In the Antropologia morale the distinction of concept between nature (v.) and person (v.) is given. While both embrace the whole subsistence of the entity itself, they indicate, the first, the complex of all the elements of the entity (evaluated in their own quality and function), the second the intrinsic order of those elements: "person is an intellective subject insofar as it contains a supreme (independent) active principle" (ibid., nos. 769 and 832-37). Of this doctrine R. developed applications not only in ethics, but also in law, in politics, in education, in theology: doctrine of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, of original sin. The human person has absolute dignity, insofar as man by nature has a divine light inherent in his reason (ideal being), and "since the dignity of this light is infinite, therefore nothing can stand above the personal principle" (Filos. del dir., I, no. 53).

The metaphysical justification of this affirmation is given in the vast posthumous work, the Teosofia (that is, theory of absolute thinking). The central question is the antinomy (R. acknowledged Kant's merit in having posed the problem of the antinomies) between the unity of being and the manyplicity of entities. Unity, for R., is found in the "ens communissimum," which he calls the "essence of being" (Sistema filosofico, no. 10 and passim; Teos., I, no. 174; III, 757 etc.), the common ground of all the determinations in which being manifests itself. It is not the "idea of being" of the Nuovo saggio, which is one of its determinations insofar as it is the light of the mind. Its fundamental character is the infinite virtuality of receiving determinations, in which precisely lies the reason (the capacity to be thought) of multiplicity. It is therefore the "dialectical beginning" of all entities. Having confused it with God (idealism) had to lead to pantheism (v.). It is true that the "identical initial being is in the divine Mind, in the human mind, and in finite entities, created by the divine Intelligence, and perceived by man" (Teos., II, no. 483); but this as a consequence of creation. God draws it from himself in his will to participate: with respect to God himself it is only an abstract, and its ontological existence is founded in its relation to the creative act. It is with regard to us that it exists as something truly ontological; it dialectically precedes every single existence in the created order and formally constitutes the light of reason. However, it has, first of all, an intrinsic multiplicity.

Hence the doctrine of the three forms of being. Ideal, real, moral (or subjectivity, objectivity, morality) are no longer merely, as in R.'s early works, supreme categories, inductively derived from observation; they are, under another aspect, essential forms which are deductively shown to be all three necessary to the "essence of being," and distinct from one another yet interdependent. The demonstration is given in the Teosofia (I, 175): "I. Supposing that there were ideal being, but that in the universality of things there were nothing at all real, one would be supposing an absurdity, that is, a contradictory concept. II. Supposing that there were real being, but that in the universality of things ideal being were not found at all, the supposition would be equally absurd. III. Supposing that there were ideal and real being, and that there were not that relation between them which constitutes the moral form, still the supposition would be absurd." The virtuality, then, characteristic of the "essence of being" is a virtuality of real, ideal and moral at one and the same time, and if it were not simultaneously a virtuality of all three and of their organic relation, it would remain annulled. Form of being is: "being itself which, although entire, exists in modes essential to it" (ibid., n. 148). The analogy with the three Divine Persons of Catholic dogma is evident, an analogy which R. excluded could lead to confusion, when one kept in mind the essential impersonality of the "essence of being" and therefore of its "forms." Ideal being, moreover, is the only "form" that is communicated totally to man, as the light of his mind. As for real being, man, like the other created beings, participates in it only in a limited way, and even of moral being he attains, albeit in a continuous possible development, only a limited measure. This is so because of the intrinsic multiplicity of being. The essence of being is furthermore open to an extrinsic multiplicity, that is, one not essential to it, receiving determinations or limited terms. Proper terms are those which conform to the proper characteristics of the aforesaid essence of being: absoluteness, necessity, totality. It is evident that of such terms there can be only one actualization. In this way the human soul, after having received directly from God ideal being as the light of reason (a quid that absolutely is, without however being the subsistent Absolute), through it ascends to God. It ascends by an act of reasoning (Nuovo saggio, nn. 1457-60; Teos., III, 744-45, 796-97, IV, 1341-44, etc.): R. excluded ontologism (v.), including that of Gioberti (v.). Multiple, on the other hand, is the actualization of being in improper terms, that is, relative, contingent, partial ones, the world of experience (v.). These, contrary to proper terms, amount to limits placed upon being (Teos., II, 518, 679-726, etc.). How are they actualized? In themselves they have no reason to subsist. Nor has the "essence of being," the dialectical basis of their possibility, by reason of its impersonality, the power to actualize them. Hence the necessity for the human mind to have recourse to the activity of the Absolute and personal Being: creation (v.). But the manner in which those limits are inserted into virtual and initial being and form a synthesis with it without however being confused with it remains mysterious. In any case, the theory of creation comes to be inseparably linked to the whole of ontology.

R.'s views on the mode of creation are original; and so too are those on the origin and immortality of the soul (v.), on the link between psychology and the principle of medicine, on the moral conscience, on aesthetics (v.) and callology (the science of the beautiful), on logic and dialectic as opposed to Hegel (v.), on the interpretation of Aristotle and Plato (v.) in their influence on the whole of philosophy, etc.

IV. THEOLOGY

In his philosophical works R. constantly keeps in mind the points of contact between Catholic dogma and philosophy. In his writing against Wegscheider (in the appendix to vol. I of the Supernatural Anthropology) he shows the harmlessness and absurdity of a "liberal theology" that ignores the reality and the raison d'être of the Supernatural (v.).

Rational truths and revealed truths coincide insofar as they are truths (manifestation of Being), but they differ specifically by virtue of the different determination of their content and of the mode by which they are communicated to man. At the basis of rational cognitions and of the natural life stands (in the act in which the soul is created by God) the communication of being, the whole of it, in its ideal form, whereas as regards real being, man can grasp, through bodily subjective feeling, only certain limited actualizations. At the basis of supernatural cognitions and life, on the other hand, stands once again the communication of being, but of the Being of God, together with the new faculty of perceiving it "initially" precisely as the full actualization of real Being. In the light of nature there is communicated to man "a belonging to God," in the light of Grace God himself: God in his inseparable and ineffable whole, but not totaliter. "Eternal life" (Jn 6, passim) is communicated to man only as a beginning, open to a development, during the earthly life, into which there enters the free correspondence of man elevated to a new state. Great importance is given to the sacred humanity of Christ as the "means" of communicating "eternal life" to man, and likewise, in the theory of the Sacraments, the greatest prominence is given to the intervention of that sacred humanity (Supernatural Anthropol., III, p. 174 and passim); the Grace of the New Testament is considered as bound to the mystery of the divine Trinity. With regard to original sin (v.) R. did not accept the theory that makes it consist solely in the privation of Grace; he also included in it a voluntary element, connected with Adam's sinful will, but also proper to each man. In his psychology R. believed he found the data with which to make this thesis plausible. He devoted particular interest to the subject of the justification of Divine Providence in the creation and government of the universe, whence his vast work the Theodicy.

V. PEDAGOGY

R. is acknowledged to hold a distinguished place among the great educators of the 19th century. His youthful work Dell'unità dell'educazione (1826) is appreciated even by philosophers of other schools (G. Gentile [v.]).

R. furthermore founded, in Italy and abroad, colleges of classical instruction, elementary and industrial schools, and infant asylums (then a novelty). He devoted intense activity to this work, employing in it no small number of his religious men and women. He had also accepted (1840) the chair of pedagogy at the University of Pisa, a plan that was never realized. More than through his specifically pedagogical writings, he made a strong contribution to the most fundamental educational problems through his Antropologia e Psicologia. Numerous and interesting are his letters on the subject of education with the leading educationalists of the time, Lambruschini, Aporti, Parravicini.

VI. POLITICO-SOCIAL DOCTRINES

Of the many youthful writings (1821-26) on political theories, R. published few, later reworking them. The greater part remained unpublished until recent years. In them it is possible to trace the gradual evolution of his thought from the concept of the "prince" (paternal government) to a regime of liberty. With '48 he made manifest this conclusion, already long matured in his spirit. Hence the accusation of "liberal." But of historical liberalism there is found in R.'s works a meditated and forceful critique.

He affirms as one of the functions of the State to provide for the conditions of the poor (Filos. del dir., II, n. 2630) but condemns equality of the vote for the election of Parliaments as unjust in itself and contradictory to a true regime of liberty, because it necessarily leads to demagogy and therefore to the loss of liberty (La costituzione secondo la giustizia sociale, years 48-53): he maintains instead the vote proportional to each elector's contribution to the well-being of society. Moreover R. accuses contemporary liberal doctrine of a vague or erroneous concept of the "human person" and of his essential rights, which are anterior to the State; an example of the violation of such rights is the suppression of the religious Orders (La società e il suo fine, II, ch. 13) and civil marriage imposed on Catholic peoples. For R. the fundamental liberty for a Christian people is the liberty of the Church, without which every other liberty is destined to perish. Liberal governments deny in law and in fact the liberty of teaching (v.), and parliamentary governments easily degenerate into the tyranny of the majority, through ignorance of the principle of justice, which is superior to every human power, including the legislative power. R. therefore proposes, anticipating the times, a supreme Court of justice which he calls a "Political Tribunal," elected by universal suffrage (here R. admitted equality of the vote), with the task of judging not only on the possible unconstitutionality of laws voted by parliamentarians, but also on any violation of "rational" (or natural) right. That the happiness of peoples, to which politics is ordered, is reduced in the end to an ever deeper and more vivid consciousness of justice and to its practical consequences is the guiding thought of all R.'s political writings; hence the emphasis given to the link of politics with right, and of right with morality (Filos. del dir., I, ch. 1; II, part 3, and passim). The problem of nationality (v.), which then asserted itself dramatically, is posed by R. in these terms: as the consciousness of political liberties, so the consciousness of national independence, insofar as it indicates a maturity of the human spirit, is a real fact, which it is just to recognize. Legitimate therefore is the national movement of the Italians, as of every other people that was in fact mature for it. Nevertheless in the last pages of the Filos. del dir. (1841-45) R. denounces the danger of national egoisms, invoking as teacher of justice and mediator of peace the Church of Christ.

Right is a synthesis of subjective activity and objective exigency, in which there appears an application of the "moral form" of being. The complete realization of right is therefore had in the human person, declared precisely "subsistent right" (Filosofia del diritto, I, nn. 48-52). To be noted is the Rosminian treatment of family right and especially of marriage (ibid., II, nn. 983-1068), remarkable for singular psychological acuteness; and that on civil society, to which is attributed the faculty of regulating with a view to the common good the modalities of rights, while respecting their essence, over which the State has no power. This "essence" is reduced to the two fundamental points of liberty and property (ibid., nn. 59-67 and passim). Liberty concerns more directly the person in his essential and inalienable duties and rights. They are: 1) the search for Truth and principally for the truths that concern the supreme destinies of man, 2) the moral life and the commitment to justice or one's own sanctification, 3) the tendency to beatitude, which is the fulfillment of justice, and the full possession and enjoyment of being. Property concerns the natural means of which man must dispose in order to attain freely his essential ends and to preserve his dignity as a person: first among such means the life of the body, with all that relates to it; so-called external property is an extension of it, and is founded on the physical-moral nexus that persons have with things, given certain conditions (ibid., nn. 382-402). The State can determine the modalities of these conditions, it cannot destroy the very principle of property, which is in the natural order. Man can, but only by a free act, renounce it with a view to a greater "personal" good; but normally individual property is to be preserved as a real guarantee of the dignity and liberty of the person and of the family, a primary factor of the common good of society; hence the decided condemnation of communism (Saggio sul comunismo, passim).

The rights and duties of the human person acquire new value, with the elevation of man to the supernatural state and his participation in the supernatural society, the Church (cf. Filos. del dir., II, nn. 536-568). R.'s love for the Church appears in the work Delle cinque piaghe della S. Chiesa (1848, but written in 1832): his observations are today more appreciated and many of his suggestions are adopted in practice; but in the stormy days of '48 some of his affirmations seemed inopportune: especially the proposal of the election of bishops by the clergy and the people, which seemed a concession to demagogy, whereas in R.'s intention it was nothing but a way of withdrawing (returning to the usage of the first ten centuries) from lay princes the long-usurped right of naming bishops. R., a fierce opponent of Josephinism and of every intrusion of lay authority into the government of the Church, nevertheless excluded the principle of the separation of Church from State, which is at bottom a mutual ignoring, unreal and insincere: he maintained instead that of organic harmony. Not admixture between the two powers, nor protection of the State over the Church, to which nothing can better conduce than a true liberty. Notable is the theory on "political equilibria" (cf. Filos. del dir., II, nn. 2577-2646), and the studies on the Constitution, now in the course of publication in the national edition; among them his Progetto per lo Stato Romano, of 1848 hitherto unpublished, where there is no word of the appointment of bishops by clergy and people. His misadventures of '48 and '49 and the abuses or deviations of historical liberalism did not serve to diminish his persuasions concerning the principle and the genuine use of liberty.

WORKS: a) Life: Epistolario completo, 13 vols. (Casale Monferrato 1887-94); Scritti autobiografici inediti (national ed., I, Milan 1934; the national ed. edited by various authors is in progress, and will comprise no fewer than 80 vols.). b) Ascetics: Manuale dell'esercitatore (Milan 1840; Intra 1872); Epistolario ascetico (Rome 1911-12); La dottrina della Carità (Domodossola 1931); Massime di perfezione, 34th ed. (ibid. 1940); Conferenze sui doveri ecclesiastici (ibid. 1941). c) Philosophy: Antropologia in servizio della scienza morale (Milan 1838); Aristotele esposto ed esaminato (Turin 1857); Saggio sulle categorie e la dialettica (ibid. 1885); Introduzione alla filosofia (edited by U. Redanò, national ed., II, Milan 1934); Nuovo Saggio sull'origine delle idee (edited by F. Orestano, 3 vols., national ed., XIX-XX, ibid. 1941); Principi di scienza morale e storia comparativa dei sistemi sul principio morale (edited by D. Morando, national ed., XXI, ibid. 1941); Teosofia (edited by C. Gray, 8 vols., national ed., VII-XIV, ibid. 1943); Logica (edited by E. Troilo, 2 vols., national ed., XXII-XXIII, ibid. 1943); Psicologia (edited by G. Rossi, 4 vols., national ed., XV-XVIII, ibid. 1941). d) Theology: Trattato della coscienza morale (Naples 1849); Opuscoli morati (ibid. 1849); Dottrina del peccato originale (Milan 1851); Teodicea (Turin 1857); L'introduzione al Vangelo secondo s. Giovanni (ibid. 1882); Il razionalismo che tenta d'insinuarsi nelle scuole teologiche (Prato 1882); Antropologia soprannaturale (3 vols., Casale 1884). e) Pedagogy: Del principio supremo della metodica ed altri scritti (2 vols., Turin 1857); Dell'educazione cristiana (Rome 1900); Sulla libertà dell'insegnamento (ibid. 1912); Sull'unità dell'educazione (ibid. 1913). f) Political and social doctrines: La Costituzione secondo la giustizia sociale (Milan 1848); Delle cinque piaghe della S. Chiesa (ibid. 1848); Filosofia della politica (ibid. 1858); Filosofia del diritto (2 vols., Intra 1865-66); Della missione a Roma (Turin 1881); Della naturale costituzione della società civile (Rovereto 1887); Scritti sul matrimonio (Rome 1902); Progetti di Costituzione (national ed. edited by C. Gray, Milan 1951).

Giuseppe Bozzetti