SOAVE, FRANCESCO. - Scholar and philosopher, b. at Lugano on 10 June 1743, d. at Pavia on 17 Jan. 1806. A Somascan religious, he dedicated his life to teaching and study. A professor at the University of Parma, he oriented his thought toward the sensism (v.) of Condillac (v.); subsequently he taught moral philosophy, logic and metaphysics at the Liceo di Brera in Milan; after many wanderings, owing to the political events of his time, he obtained the chair of "analysis of ideas" at the University of Pavia.
A man of varied culture and manifold interests (literary, philosophical, pedagogical, scientific), he translated from Latin, from Greek, from English; he is the author of numerous school textbooks and was a good educator. He gathered the fruits of his philosophical teaching in the Istituzioni di logica, metafisica ed etica, preceded by a Compendio della storia della filosofia (Milan 1791, 2nd ed. ibid. 1794), to which must be added La filosofia di Kant esposta ed esaminata (Modena 1803; 2nd ed. Venice 1804).
S. is an easy popularizer and expounder, devoid of originality and at times colorless, of the empiricism of Locke (v.) and the sensism of Condillac, here and there tempered by extrinsic approximations to scholastic philosophy. Thus, for example, after having accepted the "metaphysics" of Locke, which concludes with the critique of the idea of substance (unknowable), he defines the soul as "a substance spiritual by its nature, that is, pure, simple, indivisible, essentially different from matter..." (Opere, II, Florence 1797, p. 77). Nor does his critique of Kant go beyond the generic and the counterposing to it of "experimental philosophy," that is, of Lockean empiricism.
Bibliography6 works
Michele Federico Sciacca