TOCCO, FELICE. – Historian of culture and philosophy, philologist, born in Catanzaro on 12 September 1845, died in Florence on 6 June 1911.
SPAVENTA, BERTRANDO (v.) SETTEMBRINI, LUIGI (v.) Fiorentino (v.) in Bologna, whose influence he felt most strongly, he taught anthropology in Rome and subsequently the history of philosophy, first at Pisa and then at the Istituto di studi superiori of Florence. His theoretical orientation lies along the lines of Neo-Kantianism, but presents no original features; T. was a man of culture rather than a philosopher, a scholar and philologist of considerable stature. His studies on Eresia nel medioevo (Florence 1884) belong to the history of culture; to the finest philology belong his Ricerche platoniche (ibid. 1876), a notable contribution to the question of the chronology of the Dialoghi. A good monographic work is G. Bruno (ibid. 1886), for which T., together with G. Vitelli (v.), edited parts 3 and 4 of the Opere latine (ibid. 1889–91); he devoted another study to the Nolan, Le opere latine di G. Bruno esposte e confrontate con le Italiane (ibid. 1889). Subsequently T. concerned himself, among the first in Italy, with F. Nietzsche (ibid. 1897) and also with E. Kant, Principi metafisici della scienza della natura e passaggio dalla metafisica alla fisica (ibid. 1899). Of little significance are his Lezioni di filosofia (1869) and Pensieri sulla storia della filosofia (1877).
Michele Federico Sciacca