SOAVE, FRANCESCO. — Scholar and philosopher, born in Lugano on 10 June 1743, died in Pavia on 17 January 1806. A Somascan religious, he devoted his life to teaching and study. Professor at the University of Parma, he directed his thought toward the sensationalism (v.) Condillac (v.); subsequently he taught moral philosophy, logic, and metaphysics at the Brera Lyceum in Milan; after much wandering, 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 multiple interests (literary, philosophical, pedagogical, and scientific), he translated from Latin, Greek, and English; he was the author of numerous school textbooks and 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. there 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 expositor, lacking originality and at times colorless, LOCKE, JOHN (v.) and the sensationalism of Condillac, here and there tempered by extrinsic associations with scholastic philosophy. Thus, for example, after accepting Locke’s “metaphysics,” which concludes with the critique of the (unknowable) idea of substance, 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 general and the opposition to it of “experimental philosophy,” that is, Lockean empiricism.