ROSMINI SERBATI, Antonio. — Philosopher, theologian, founder of the Institute of Charity, born in Rovereto (Trento) on 24 March 1797 to Pier Modesto and Giovanna dei Conti Formenti, died in Stresa on 19 July 1855.
SUMMARY:
I. Life
II. Ascetics
III. Philosophy
IV. Theology
V. Pedagogy
VI. Political and social doctrines.
I. LIFE
A singular and precocious intellect, after his early schooling he continued his studies privately. In 1816 he attended the theology course at the University of Padua, where Tommaseo (v.). Ordained a priest in 1821, he pursued various studies (politics, history, mathematics, medicine, metaphysics, etc.) for several years and attempted to establish a “Society of Friends.” In 1826 he went to Milan, Manzoni (v.) began. In 1828 he founded, on Mount Calvary near Domodossola, the Institute of Charity (v.). In the same year he went to Rome and from Pope Pius VIII received explicit orders to consecrate his main activity, and from 1830 his reputation as a scholar grew with public expressions of esteem for his “science of divine and human things” (Apostolic Letter: *In sublimi*, 20 Sept. 1839). In 1830 R. published in Rome the *Maxims of Perfection* and the *New Essay on the Origin of Ideas*, which constitute the foundations of his ascetics and his philosophy. Returning to northern Italy, he divided his time between Trentino and Piedmont, governing the Institute (which in 1833 acquired a female branch, the Sisters of Providence, and in 1835 extended to England) and composing his numerous works, which brought him wide renown in Italy.In August 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 met R. in person, kept him at his side and ordered him to prepare for the cardinalate at the next Consistory in December. After the assassination of Pellegrino Rossi (15 Nov.), R. followed the Pope in his flight to Gaeta, where he vainly tried to dissuade him from the new conservative direction regarding political freedoms and the national movement to 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 pamphlets were placed on the Index: *The Five Wounds of the Church* and *The Constitution According to Social Justice*. His submission was prompt and sincere. He spent his final years in Stresa on Lake Maggiore, continuing to write, sustained by the devotion of his spiritual sons and daughters and frequent conversations with Manzoni, while a fierce controversy raged against all his doctrines. His tomb in Stresa is venerated by the faithful. His works, long examined by many consultors by order of Pius IX, were finally absolved of the many charges of heterodoxy in a solemn session (3 July 1854) of the Sacred Congregation of the Index, which the Pope himself wished to preside over, with a prohibition against repeating or advancing new accusations. Subsequently, while Pius IX was still alive, an attempt was made to weaken the force of the sentence regarding R.’s doctrines by appealing to the opening phrase “Dimittenda esse” (usually rendered “Dimittantur”). However, the sentence had a broader scope than that formula, so that the Sacred Congregation of the Index, in a letter of 20 June 1876, ordered the editors of the *Osservatore cattolico* in Milan to declare that they had misinterpreted that formula in R.’s case and that it was not permissible to impose censures in religious matters or those relating to faith and sound morals on R.’s works. This declaration was printed in the issue of 1 July. Even more explicit was the Master of the Sacred Apostolic Palace, Fr. Vincenzo Maria Gatti, O.P. (later a cardinal), who on 16 June 1876 wrote a letter to the *Osservatore romano* (published there on 20 June), in which he condemned as offensive to the action of the Index and the Pope the tendentious new manner of interpreting the 1854 sentence on R., and added that in this case, beyond the simple opening formula, the entire sentence was to be understood as follows: “from a long and conscientious examination it has been shown that the accusations against R.’s works were false; that nothing in them was found contrary to faith or morals; and that their publication and reading are not dangerous to the faithful.”
Yet under Leo XIII, on 7 March 1888, a decree of the Holy Office “Post Obitum” (prepared on 14 Dec. 1887) was published, condemning forty propositions of R., drawn both from works already dismissed and from posthumous writings (the latter more severely struck). The decree does not attach any theological note to the propositions, but in its introduction it states that they were denounced because “they seemed not consonant with Catholic truth.” In effect, the accusers under Leo XIII repeated the same charges that had been made under Pius IX. Opinions differ as to how to reconcile the apparent contradiction between the two sentences; in any case, the “Post Obitum” decree carries the full authority of similar judgments of the Holy Office. In the past century, intense and even bitter controversies raged around R., now settled. Speculative disputes about his philosophy continue, but there is ever greater agreement in the appreciation of his ascetical writings and his personal holiness.
II. ASCETICS
R.’s figure is marked 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 year was for me a year of grace: hatred opened my eyes to many things, and I came to know that there is no other true wisdom than in God” (*Scritti autobiografici*, p. 419). At twenty-four he established as his rule of life the “principle of passivity,” by which he intended to overcome a nature rich in all the most human instincts, inclined to activity, command, and intellectualistic “passion,” closing himself in a life of retreat, prayer, and patient, solid study, to make himself ready for God’s “call.” In 1828 he applied this principle to a society by founding the Institute of Charity and, for his own part, renouncing from that moment the advantages he might have derived from the comfort into which he was born and the Milanese environment, but above all resigning any choice by his own will of his place in the world. His *Maxims of Christian Perfection* and his discourse *On Charity* (in the volume *The Doctrine of Charity*) summarize his ascetical ideal, echoed in his complete *Epistolary* (13 vols.), a record of extraordinary industry and at the same time of 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 the Essential Good through grace and our voluntary correspondence. For R., this single principle leads the Christian to seek both the greatest direct union with God and—through a disposition of complete indifference to the divine will—the greatest cooperation with Him in the unfolding of His creation. The active life thus becomes a way of practicing union with God as well, inasmuch as it is adherence to His will that is expressly manifested in the “call.” It seems that R. sought by this path an organic solution to the problem of the value of the two lives, the contemplative and the active, upholding the traditional doctrine of the intrinsic primacy of the former while recognizing the modern need for a higher valorization of the latter. The foundation, however, is that the nourishment of the entire 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. When it was objected to him that man must 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 assign to each person a certain field of action. One of the consequences of this principle of R. is the adaptability of his Institute, through the exercise of the most diverse forms of charity—yet within the limits suggested by the dispositions of Providence—to the variations of circumstances and of times. He also believed that his Institute, which arose not from a special and extraordinary inspiration of God, but from the simple and immediate meditation of the Gospel, common patrimony of Christians, must be considered in relation to the Church simply as a possible auxiliary, a militia of the second line. Another characteristic of R.’s asceticism is the deepest union CRISTO (v.); the work of individual sanctification is identified with the full dedication to the Church, to whose “growth and glory,” according to the very title of the second Maxima of Perfection, “all one’s thoughts and actions” must be directed. Hence also the importance given by R. to liturgical life, though this was contemporaneous with his study of Ignatian asceticism, of which he proposed new developments in the Manuale dell’esercitatore. The love of the Church was his most constant passion, and from it 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. For him, it was a way of exercising charity (cf. G. Capograssi, in Studi rosminiani, Milano 1940, p. 104); and although by nature inclined to philosophy, and urged by friends, especially by Manzoni, to dedicate himself entirely to it, he did not decide to do so definitively until after the exhortation and command of Pius VIII, in whom he saw the most authentic sign of the divine will (Introduzione alla filosofia, n. 11).
III. Philosophy
For R., charity extends even to science. Hence his effort to understand modern thought. He was solicitous of what he called the “reconciliation of judgments” (Introd. alla filo., 45-54), that is, the study of highlighting what is common in the thought of philosophers of the most opposed schools and of valuing that which is true in doctrines unacceptable in their entirety. He desired a Christian philosophy, that is, as he understood it, not a philosophy “that would mix with the dogmas of religion” or have a direct apologetic intent, but a philosophy valid in itself, capable of forming alert minds against the snares of error and open to the Truth, by whatever path it may present itself, including Revelation. Hence the not a few pages he dedicated to the principle “of the freedom to philosophize” in the Introduzione alla filosofia (20-40). Even if he did not follow a strict systematic order in the exposition of his thought, he believed that philosophy must compose itself into a system, that is, into an order that gathers all the reflections of human thought, varied in intent and in matter, around a single principle, from which they receive an imprint of organic unity; a principle that he identified in being (v. infra). Profound was his historical sense. He intended to connect himself to the philosophia perennis, valuing tradition and particularly scholasticism and St. Thomas, of whose revival in the second half of the 19th century he may be considered a conscious precursor. In all his works, a continual concern is evident to show the substantial agreement of his doctrines with those of the Angelic Doctor along the line of classical metaphysics.We can only indicate here the principal directives of Rosminian doctrine. First of all, R. gives the greatest importance to immediate experience as the basis of dialectical reasoning. He reproached German idealism for the grave methodological error and true sophism of having pretended to start from the ego (consciousness of self) and from philosophical thought, without taking into account the human rational activity that precedes and founds them, indeed presuming to be able to negate or entirely devalue it (Teosofia, V, ch. 6 and passim). Profound in R. is the tendency toward psychological analysis and the search for what is the “directed” 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 among the laws of human activity (ibid., 1479-84); and many things “are or come to be in the mind and heart of man without his forming consciousness of them. This is one of the factors of the human spirit that easily escape and that are nonetheless of supreme necessity for whoever wishes to philosophize” (Filosofia del diritto, II, n. 638, note).
Psychological analysis leads R. to the result that the first act by which man exists is a synthesis, whose elements are: 1) the fundamental corporeal sentiment; 2) sensitive perception; 3) the intuition (or intelligence) of being. The first two posit and circumscribe the individual subjectivity of man; the third actualizes man as intelligent; but their subsistence is a single thing, given the reciprocal exigency they have of one another in order to be realized. The saying of St. Augustine: “Commonebo, si potero, ut videre te vides” (De Trinit., XI, 12) is placed as a motto on the front of vol. II of the Nuovo saggio, where R. expounds his solution to the problem of knowledge (v.) and illustrates the three indicated elements. They are something immediate, intimately present in us, even if habitually unnoticed (cf. Nuovo saggio, nn. 1038-39). In the Nuovo saggio (nn. 693-719) the “fundamental sentiment” 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 reality than his own fundamental sentiment and his own intellectual sentiment” (II, n. 513). But these two sentiments in fact do not exist except in a living unity, the “rational sentiment,” which truly is “fundamental for us” (ibid., III, n. 1419). This sentiment individuates the human subject, which is a single principle of two terms that simultaneously characterize it: 1) the body, in and through which man is in relation with the world of material sensitive experience, 2) the ideal being (“idea of being” in the Nuovo saggio), the objective form or “formal object,” which with its presence gives the subject its true intellectual and therefore rational actuality. Hence man results from an intellectual principle that individuates itself by means of a corporeal sentiment “perceiving it” (Sistema filosofico, n. 142), that is, by effecting itself through a permanent synthesis with II.
The fundamental corporeal sentiment is the unique, uniform, continuous, figurate act by which we feel our body as alive: it renders possible for the body to react to external stimuli and to occasion sensations, various, discontinuous, particular, determined by the different organs of sense, but identical in belonging to a single “individual” of which they are in turn transient modifications. The body itself, “substance provided with extension, which produces in us a pleasant or painful sentiment, which terminates in the extension itself” (Nuovo saggio, n. 871), is perceived in the fundamental sentiment as a force with respect to which the soul is passive, and this is proof of the alterity of the body with respect to the soul. But at the same time the soul reacts upon the body, occupies it, and makes it its own (a psychological fact from which the very concept of property arises), using it as its instrument and yet with
But neither feeling nor perception is a human act unless both are synthesized with what, for R., is the form of the “rational feeling” proper to man, namely, the presence of the formal object of the intellect, the ideal being, the being as the light of the mind. This form renders perception true cognition, that is, intellectual perception (Nuovo saggio, nn. 528-38; Psicologia, nn. 256-72); a form that differs greatly from the Kantian sense because it is objective and not merely functional (R.’s critique of Kant is incisive, both for the persistent subjectivism—an involuntary residue of sensism—of human knowing, and for the unfoundedness 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 in the Summa Theologiae: “Obiectum intellectus est ens, seu verum commune” (Ia, q. 55, a. 1), he drew inspiration for his theory of the idea of being, of whose innateness he presents a meticulous proof in the Nuovo saggio (nn. 413-72), though distinctly separating his innatism (v.) from that of Plato and other thinkers, because what he posits as innate in the mind is characterized by indeterminacy. Hence, in the Teosofia (V, n. 57), he declares that “if by cognition one understands those pieces of knowledge that come to man from his own mental operations, one cannot give the name of cognition to the knowledge of the indeterminate being as it is present to intuition.” This being is “indeterminate” in the sense that it carries with it an infinite potentiality for determination, dialectically prior to any actual distinct operation of the intelligent subject. It is what renders the subject capable of performing such operations; it is the light of reason, possessing the characters of universality, absoluteness, and necessity, and implicitly containing the principles of reason. Yet it must not 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 link between gnoseology and ontology (v.).
Being has an immediacy of relationship with the human soul not only in its ideal form (by which man is made capable of realizing truth and certainty: Nuovo saggio, nn. 1044-1142), nor only in its real form through the perception of the self or of bodies, but also in its moral form, that is, insofar as being is the object and criterion of appraisal. The light of reason indeed has a logical priority over the principle of morality, but together with it “informs” the human soul in a single primordial act, and thus reason and will arise in him simultaneously; and the “primitive perception” (Psicologia, n. 265), or first substantial synthesis by which man begins to realize himself, is at once an act of appraisal (R. would later apply this in his theory of 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 proper order” (Principi di scienza morale, ch. 5, art. 4, and passim). The concept of the order of being arises from the measure that each thing has when viewed in the universal relation of beings, and becomes clearer progressively through lived experience: “love being wherever you know it, in that order which presents itself to your intelligence” (ibid., ch. 4, art. 7). Every moral act, though directed toward a particular and limited object, sees and loves it within the universal order of which it is a part, and thus implicitly loves all being in it: morality, of itself, tends toward the infinite good. When, moreover, the intelligence presents to man the first Absolute and Supreme Being, man sees that “all other beings, when compared to Him, have only a relative entity, and yet He is the end of all. Therefore... all other beings and the esteem in which they are held must be ordered and referred to Him” (Storia compar. e crit. dei sistemi intorno al princ. della mor., ch. 1, art. 111). It follows that morality finds its fulfillment, indeed its most real and concrete foundation, in the Absolute Being “as that to which every entity—and consequently every esteem of the various entities—refers” (ibid.). Here morality meets with religion, and it is understood in what sense there can be no full morality that is not religious (Filosofia del diritto, I, Sistema morale, sect. 3). In any case, the moral law is within man; it enters into the very act of his constitution as a man with intelligence and will, yet it does not thereby become his subjective and individuating element; in relation to this, like the light of reason (the idea of being), it maintains an immediacy, but at the same time preserves its absoluteness over against the relativity of his subsistence as an individual. In this way R. intends to safeguard both the interiority of moral life and the supreme absoluteness of the law. At the same time, he preserves the reconciliation between human reality, in its ineradicable need for happiness (eudemonology), and the moral exigency: “Both justice and beatitude may be called the end of man; but justice is the end that man must propose to himself, while beatitude is the end that God, in creating man, has proposed for him. The nature of man essentially desires beatitude; precisely for this reason beatitude is not a duty, nor, as such, the end that the will of man must propose to itself, but the end that he can and cannot help proposing. Yet if one considers in beatitude... what is just, then beatitude too becomes an end that man must propose to himself: that is, he must... love happiness considered as the effect of justice, and thus as something willed by God; for God wills the beatitude of the just; and it is only right that the just should be happy” (Lezioni spirituali, X, 1).
Against the idealism that attempted to reduce the whole of man to mere thinking activity, R. affirmed the true concept of man as « an intellectual and volitional animal subject », highlighting his manifold nature within its unity. The subject « man » as rational is a person. To the person belong all the activities of nature, including instinct, whose two aspects, vital and sensual, R. illustrates (ibid., nn. 370-429), showing how it imitates rational activity (ibid., nn. 430-94); but the human person has as its principal instrument and foundation the will (ibid., 833-51), which R., unlike 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 certain way so as not to render himself defective », that is, not to diminish the value that derives from being in communion with the objective order of being (Filos. del dir., Sistema morale, sez. 1°, VII). It can only refer to a free being: freedom is precisely the summit of personal action. Free will is the faculty of choice between the objective order and a subjective good (Antropologia... morale, nn. 358-82), that is, between two criteria of evaluation that may come into conflict, one offered by the exigency of subjectivity, necessary for man to exist as an individual, the other by the exigency of the objective and universal value of being, also necessary for man to exist as a person. It is for man to decide between these two exigencies, each of which, in different ways, has something totalitarian and irreducible about it, while each promises man, if satisfied, an increase: one of natural life, the other of personal value. In the Antropologia morale the conceptual distinction is made between nature (v.) and person (v.). While both embrace the entire subsistence of the entity itself, the former indicates the complex of all the elements of the entity (evaluated in their proper quality and function), the latter the intrinsic order of these elements: « a person is an intellectual subject insofar as it contains a supreme (independent) active principle » (ibid., nn. 760 and 832-37). R. developed the applications of this doctrine not only in ethics, but also in law, politics, education, and theology: doctrine of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, of original sin. The human person has absolute dignity, inasmuch as man by nature has a divine light inherent in his reason (the ideal being), and « since the dignity of this light is infinite, therefore nothing can stand above the personal principle » (Filos. del dir., I, n. 53).
The metaphysical justification of this affirmation is given in the vast posthumous work, the Teosofia (i.e., theory of absolute thought). The central question is the antinomy (R. acknowledged Kant’s merit in having posed the problem of antinomies) between the unity of being and the multiplicity of entities. For R., unity is found in the « ens communissimum », which he calls « essence of being » (Sistema filosofico, n. 10 and passim; Teos., I, n. 174; III, 757, etc.), the common ground of all determinations in which being manifests itself. It is not the « idea of being » of the Nuovo saggio, which is one of its determinations as the light of the mind. Its fundamental character is the finite potentiality 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. To have confused it with God (idealism) had to lead to pantheism (v.). It is true that « the identical initial being » exists in the Divine Mind, in the human mind, and in finite entities created by the Divine Intelligence and perceived by man » (Teos., II, n. 484); but this is a consequence of creation. God draws it from Himself in His will to communicate Himself: with respect to God Himself it is nothing but an abstraction, 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 creation and formally constitutes the light of reason. Yet it has, first of all, an intrinsic multiplicity.
Hence the doctrine of the three forms of being. Ideal, real, and moral (or subjectivity, objectivity, morality) are no longer merely, as in R.’s earlier works, supreme categories inductively derived from observation; they are, from another perspective, essential forms that are all three demonstrated as necessary to the « essence of being », distinct from one another but interdependent. The demonstration is given in the Teosofia (I, 175): « I. Supposing there were ideal being, but that there were no real universality of things at all, one would be supposing an absurdity, i.e., a contradictory concept. II. Supposing there were real being, but that in the universe there were no ideal being at all, the supposition would be equally absurd. III. Supposing there were ideal and real being, and that there were no relation between them constituting the moral form, the supposition would still be absurd. » The potentiality characteristic of the « essence of being » is therefore a potentiality of real, ideal, and moral being simultaneously, and if it were not simultaneously of all three and of their organic relation, it would be annulled. A form of being is: « being itself which, although whole, is in ways essential to it » (ibid., n. 148). The analogy with the three Divine Persons of the Catholic dogma is evident, an analogy that R. excluded could lead to confusion, provided one kept in mind the essential immateriality of the « essence of being » and therefore of its « forms ». The ideal being is then the only « form » that is communicated totally to man, as the light of his mind. As for real being, man, like other created entities, participates in it only in a limited way, and even for moral being he attains only a limited measure, albeit in a possible continuous development. This is due to the intrinsic multiplicity of being. Moreover, the essence of being is open to an extrinsic multiplicity, i.e., not essential to it, receiving limited determinations or terms. Proper terms are those that correspond to the proper characteristics of the aforementioned essence of being: absoluteness, necessity, totality. It is evident that only one actualization of such terms is possible. In this way the human soul, after having received directly from God the 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.), Gioberti (v.). The actualization of being in improper terms, i.e., relative, contingent, partial, is manifold—the world of experience (v.). Unlike proper terms, they amount to limited posits of being (Teos., II, 518, 679-726, etc.). How are they actualized? In themselves they have no reason to subsist. Nor does the « essence of being », the dialectical basis of their possibility, have, by reason of its impersonality, the power to actualize them. Hence the necessity for the human mind to resort to the activity of the Absolute and personal Being: creation (v.). Yet the manner in which these limits are inserted into the 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 is inseparably linked to the whole of ontology.
Original are R.'s views on the manner of creation; likewise on the origin and immortality of the soul (v.), on the connection of psychology with the principle of medicine, on moral consciousness, 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 all philosophy, etc.
IV. THEOLOGY
In his philosophical works R. constantly keeps in view the points of contact between Catholic dogma and philosophy. In his writing against Wegscheider (in the appendix to vol. I of his Antropologia soprannaturale) he demonstrates the futility 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 as truths (manifestations of Being), but they differ specifically in the different determination of their content and in the manner in which they are communicated to man. At the basis of rational knowledge and natural life (at the moment when the soul is created by God) stands the communication of being, all around, in the ideal form, while as regards real being, man can grasp, through subjective bodily feeling, only certain limited actualizations. Instead, at the basis of supernatural knowledge and life stands the communication of being, but of the Being of God, with the new faculty of perceiving it “initially” precisely as the full actualization of real Being. In the light of nature, man is given “a belonging to God”; in the light of grace, God Himself: God in His indivisible and ineffable whole, but not totaliter. “Eternal life” (John 6, passim) is communicated to man only as a beginning, open to development during earthly life, in which 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 emphasis is placed on the indwelling of that sacred humanity (Antropol. soprannat., III, p. 174 and passim); the grace of the New Testament is considered as bound up with the mystery of the divine Trinity. Regarding original sin (v.), R. did not accept the theory that makes it consist solely in the privation of grace; he included in it also a voluntary element, connected with the sinful will of Adam, but also proper to each man. In his psychology, R. believed he could find the data with which to render this thesis plausible. He devoted particular interest to the question of the justification of Divine Providence in the creation and governance of the universe, hence his extensive work on Theodicy.
V. PEDAGOGY
R. is recognized as holding a distinguished place among the great educators of the 19th century. His early work Dell’unità dell’educazione (1826) is appreciated even by philosophers of other schools (G. Gentile [v.]).R. founded, both in Italy and abroad, colleges of classical instruction, elementary and industrial schools, and infant schools (then a novelty). He devoted intense activity to this work, employing not a few of his religious men and women. He had also accepted (1840) the chair of pedagogy at the University of Pisa, a project that did not come to fruition. More than through specifically pedagogical writings, he made a strong contribution to the most fundamental educational problems through his Anthropology and Psychology. Many and interesting are his letters on the subject of education, exchanged with the principal pedagogists of the time, Lambruschini, Aporti, Parravicini.
VI. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DOCTRINES
Of the many early writings (1821–26) on political theories, R. published few later, revising them. Most remained unpublished until recent years. In them one can trace the gradual evolution of his thought from the concept of the “prince” (paternal government) to a regime of liberty. By 1848 he had made this conclusion manifest, already long matured in his mind. Hence the accusation of “liberalism.” Yet in R.’s works one finds a thoughtful and strong critique of historical liberalism.He affirms as one of the functions of the State the provision for the conditions of the poor (Filos. del dir., II, n. 2630), but condemns universal suffrage for the election of Parliaments as unjust in itself and contradictory to a true regime of liberty, since it necessarily leads to demagoguery and thus to the loss of liberty (La costituzione secondo la giustizia sociale, 1848–53): he instead supports suffrage 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 its essential rights, which are anterior to the State; an example of the violation of such rights is the suppression of religious orders (La società e il suo fine, II, ch. 13) and the imposition of civil marriage on Catholic peoples. For R., the fundamental freedom for a Christian people is the freedom of the Church, without which every other freedom is doomed to perish. Liberal governments deny, both in law and in fact, the freedom 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 legislative power. R. therefore proposes, anticipating his times, a supreme court of justice, which he calls the “political tribunal,” elected by universal suffrage (here R. admits equality of suffrage), with the task of judging not only the possible unconstitutionality of laws passed by parliamentarians, but also any violation of “rational” (or natural) right. That the happiness of peoples, to which politics is ordered, is ultimately reduced to an ever deeper and more vital consciousness of justice and its practical consequences is the guiding thought of all R.’s political writings; hence the emphasis placed on the connection of politics with law, and of law with morality (Filos. del dir., I, ch. 1; II, part 3 and passim). The problem of nationality (v.), then dramatically asserted, is posed by R. in these terms: just as the consciousness of political liberties, so the consciousness of national independence, inasmuch as it indicates a maturity of the human spirit, is a real fact that ought to be recognized. Therefore the national movement of the Italians, like that of any other people that has in fact attained such maturity, is legitimate. Yet in the final pages of Filos. del dir. (1841–45) R. denounces the danger of national egoisms, hoping that the Church of Christ may be the teacher of justice and the mediator of peace.
Law is a synthesis of subjective activity and objective necessity, in which an application of the “moral form” of being is manifested. The complete realization of law therefore occurs in the human person, who is precisely declared to be “existing law” (Filosofia del diritto, I, nn. 48-52). Noteworthy is Rosmini’s treatment of family law and especially of marriage (ibid., II, nn. 983-1068), remarkable for its singular psychological sensitivity; and his discussion of 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 freedom and property (ibid., nn. 59-67 and passim). Freedom pertains more directly to the person in its essential and inalienable duties and rights. These are: 1) the search for Truth and principally for those truths that concern man’s supreme destiny, 2) moral life and the commitment to justice or one’s own sanctification, 3) the tendency toward beatitude, which is the fulfillment of justice and the full possession and enjoyment of being. Property concerns the natural means that man must be able to dispose of in order to freely attain his essential ends and preserve his dignity as a person: foremost among these means is the life of the body, together with all that pertains to it; external property is an extension of this, and is founded upon the physical-moral bond that persons have with things, under certain conditions (ibid., nn. 382-402). The State may determine the modalities of these conditions, but it cannot destroy the principle of property itself, which belongs to the natural order. Man may, but only by a free act, renounce it for the sake of a “personal” good that is greater; normally, however, individual property must be preserved as a real guarantee of the dignity and freedom of the person and of the family, a primary factor in the common good of society, whose decisive condemnation of communism (Saggio sul comunismo, passim) is well known.
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). Rosmini’s love for the Church is evident in the work Delle cinque piaghe della S. Chiesa (1848, but written in 1832): his observations are now more appreciated, and many of his suggestions have been adopted in practice; yet in the stormy days of 1848 some of his statements seemed untimely. Especially controversial was his proposal for the election of bishops by the clergy and the people, which appeared as a concession to demagoguery, whereas in Rosmini’s intention it was merely a way of wresting back (returning to the practice of the first ten centuries) from lay princes the long-usurped right to appoint bishops. Rosmini, a staunch opponent of Josephinism and of every intrusion by civil authority into the governance of the Church, nevertheless rejected the principle of the separation of Church and State, which in the end amounts to a mutual and unreal pretence of ignorance; instead, he upheld that of organic harmony. There was to be no mingling of the two powers, nor any protection of the Church by the State—nothing benefits the Church more than true freedom. Notable is his theory of “political equilibria” (cf. Filos. del dir., II, nn. 2377-2646), and his studies on the Constitution, now in the course of publication in the national edition; among these is his Progetto per lo Stato Romano of 1848, hitherto unpublished, in which there is not a word about the election of bishops by clergy and people. His misfortunes in 1848 and 1849, and the abuses or deviations of historical liberalism, did not diminish his convictions regarding the principle and proper use of freedom.
Works: a) Vita: Epistolario completo, 13 vols. (Casale Monferrato 1887-94); Scritti autobiografici inediti (ed. naz., I, Milano 1934; the national edition, edited by various scholars, is in progress and will comprise no fewer than 80 vols.). b) Ascetica: Manuale dell'esercitatore (Milano 1840; Intra 1872); Epistolario ascetico (Roma 1911-12); La dottrina della Carità (Domodossola 1931); Massime di perfezione, 34th ed. (VII 1940); Conferenze sui doveri ecclesiastici (VII 1941); c) Philosophy: Antropologia in servizio della scienza morale (Milano 1838); Aristotele esposto ed esaminato (Torino 1877); Saggio sulle categorie e la dialettica (VII 1885); Introduzione alla filosofia (ed. U. Redanò, ed. naz., I, Milano 1934); Nuovo Saggio sull'origine delle idee (ed. F. Orestano, 3 vols., ed. naz., XIX-XX, VII 1941); Principi di scienza morale e storia comparativa dei sistemi sul principio morale (ed. D. Morando, ed. naz., XXI, VII 1941); Teosofia (ed. C. Gray, 8 vols., ed. naz., VII-IX, VII 1943); Logica (ed. E. Troilo, 2 vols., ed. naz., XXII-XXIII, VII 1943); Psicologia (ed. G. Rossi, 4 vols., ed. naz., XV-XXIII, VII 1941). d) Theology: Trattato della coscienza morale (Napoli 1849); Opuscoli morali (VII 1849); Dottrina del peccato originale (Milano 1851); Teodicea (Torino 1857); L'introduzione al Vangelo secondo S. Giovanni (VII 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., Torino 1857); Dell'educazione cristiana (Roma 1900); Sulla libertà dell'insegnamento (VII 1912); Sull'unità dell'educazione (VII 1913). f) Political and social doctrines: La Costituzione secondo la giustizia sociale (Milano 1848); Delle cinque piaghe della S. Chiesa (VII 1848); Filosofia della politica (VII 1858); Filosofia del diritto (2 vols., Intra 1865-66); Della missione a Roma (Torino 1881); Della naturale costituzione della società civile (Rovereto 1887); Scritti sul matrimonio (Roma 1902); Progetti di Costituzione (ed. naz. ed. C. Gray, Milano 1951).
BIBL.:
G. BORDON, *Rosmini e la sua opera*, Milano 1933;
G. BOZZI, *Rosmini e il problema della libertà*, Milano 1941;
G. MESSINA, *La dottrina rosminiana della proprietà*, Roma 1942;
G. ROSSI, *Rosmini e il problema della Chiesa*, Milano 1943;
G. ZANOTTI B. *Rosmini e la pedagogia*, Brescia 1946.